The Long Dark Time...

...before Cataclysm drops, or is it?

Recently, a couple of my World of Warcraft friends decided to create a new guild. One that would work towards recruiting people, but not the top elite. We wanted players that were interested in progression, wanted to improve their status and wanted to do it in a semi casual friendly guild.

We were pretty successful in recruiting about 5 additional people to help with our 10 man raids. We had just started working out a schedule when a slight snag hit. In the midst of our recruiting process, we also wanted to test out prospective candidates. So on a few occasions we would form a pug raid, for say Onyxia or Vault, just to see how they preformed. Well, during a Onyxia 10 man, we had issues. Not with anyone in particular, I'm sure everyone has been there, some players just don't work well with others. So, after failing a few times, the raid started to disband and during that, some exchanges took place with our guild leader and someone from another guild. That person got very graphic in the exchange and well, he got reported. That seemed to take care of the issue, except the next day after the event, our guild name got changed.

It seems that "Hardcore Pwnography" is just too offensive as a guild name and got banned. I just don't get it. How do we get banned when every day I see some pretty graphic character names running around Dalaran? Not to mention the multiple number of rude names I've seen while using the LFG tool.

The real grip about the entire affair is that Blizzard won't even tell you, they just change the name to something non harmful, like Oakstout's guild, and then, even after opening a ticket, they won't let you change it to something non offensive. You don't even get the chance to make it right. So, in order to fix the issue, everyone had to leave the banned guild and form a new guild, all the while hoping that members would see the guild message of the day explaining why everyone left the old guild. Officers had to constantly try and catch players online in order to get them into the new guild. Which made our week of recruitment kind of a problem. But luckily we've managed to gather everyone up into the fold of our new guild.

Having gotten that little obstacle out of the way, we decided to get our new recruits and some raiding newbies together to try taking on some 10 man content. First task was to do the weekly raid, to kill Noth the Plaguebringer from Naxxramas. No problem there, even after picking up a non guildie hunter to finish out our 1o for the raid. We then moved on to try 10 man Trial of the Crusader, which went better than expected, since some members hadn't seen much of that content. We did wipe a few times, but we still managed to learn from the mistakes and eventually took down Anub. Several guildie's got some decent upgrades while a good many of us only needed badges and practice. We then successfully took down Onyxia in our premade 10 man and then slaughtered 2 bosses in VoA before we called it a night.

The guild goal is to do Ice Crown. A lofty goal, probably, but after our successful night out, not something out of our grasp. Next week, we are going to get our feet wet and see how we do against the first few bosses in ICC. Who knows, we may just come away with very nice prizes, which is my hope.

On a personal level, I did pretty good at my first attempt at raid healing. I need to not stand in the fire and learn where I need to run when I have certain debuffs like the poison from Acid Maw. I do have a lot of raid knowledge but only from a tank's point of view, which is very very different from a healers. But even though I didn't do great at healing, I do know that I can make adjustments and should perform much better on my next outing.

I don't plan to be back tanking anytime soon. Healing probably will be my preferred class for some time, even after Cataclysm is released. It is so challenging and that is what I want from my MMO these days. I'm not saying that tanking isn't hard, but once a fight is learned, it pretty much stays the same. The only factors that can change a fight for a tank are the DPS and if they behave, then its the same old same old. But with healing, its never the same. You don't know how much damage will be dealt out to the tank or dps. You never know when someone is going to have a bad night and get stuck in the fire or not know how to get a debuff off. It's is never a dull moment, which is just fine for me. I'm tired of easy mod.

As you can see, things are going very well. Things have picked up. Raiding prospects have somewhat improved and I'm having a great time with friends. I just hope Cataclysm doesn't screw all that up.

The Ice Crown Citadel

I never did Zul'Gurub, the original Onyxia's Lair, nor Molten Core. I wasn't there at Blackwing Lair, Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj or Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. I never set foot inside Tempest Keep, Mount Hyjal or Black Temple.

Why? Because I wasn't a raider then. I rarely did instances unless with close friends. I soloed content, ganked with buds and did a little Battlegrounds when the mood suit me. To tell the truth, Raiding scared me. I had heard stories of people going crazy because they didn't get loot or mass exodus from guilds because of drama over small stuff. Leaders barking orders and people having to be there on time and not screw up or getting over looked on gear rolls because you weren't in the in crowd. It seemed like too much hassle to even consider being a part of it. That was then.

But now for some reason I got the fever to raid and I've got it bad.

A few months back I joined a raiding guild and although it seemed there would be problems and drama during the recent holiday season, things have turned completely around. For some reason, the guild has been performing spectacularly. As a result, we've managed to one shot all of Ice Crown Citadel in both 10 man and 25 man mode. This did not include the new release this past Tuesday of The Plagueworks, with several new and interesting bosses.



After successfully clearing our 25 man content, we decided to have a try at the new wing of the instance. To start off with, several members died on the "Frogger" part of the entrance. We first came up against Stinky and Precious, which let me tell you, those encounters were like trying to ride a bicycle blindfolded. We only had limited knowledge of the new section, because we didn't expect to be there in one try. We wiped the raid several times before we decided to call it an evening and that was on the named trash mobs. Later in the week, we did the 10 man mode, which as stated above went rather well. So again, we reached the Plagueworks ready to combat the new bosses, however, this time several people had read up on the encounters and had a pretty good idea on how to accomplish our goal. It took us several tries on both Festergut and Rotface, but we successfully, as a guild, took them down.



That was one proud moment, that as a guild we could come together and reach a place in the game that a lot of guilds hadn't even seen nor had they been able to accomplish so much so quickly. I mean the content came out on Tuesday and already by Saturday we had killed off two of the new bosses, that is some kind of accomplishment in my book. The great thing is we are a very casual guild. We schedule raids twice maybe three times a week, but nothing is manditory, people help others get what they need to raid, like food and flasks. No body is yelling at anyone for making a mistake and everyone has a great time. We aren't like the hardcore raiding guilds out there, we just try to have fun and so far, it seems to be working for us.

The point is, guilds don't have to be hardcore to have fun and accomplish major things in the
World of Warcraft. They don't have to be clicky or bossy. There doesn't need to be major drama and if there is, find a way to sort it out and keep people who do a good job together. The trick is to have fun, because its really just a game anyway.

The Merger

Well, this week my WoW guild has been making preparations for the upcoming expansion. I've been listening to them plan the future of the guild on Ventrilo and playing WAR at the same time. I wish I could feel bad for doing that, but I can't. lol

The planning involves merging with another guild and starting up the raid machine. Yippie! I think the last raid I did was over 4 months ago, but since it was a very productive raid, my warrior got 10 epics in Kara, I've not been complaining much. Well, by complaining much, I limited my begging to do more raids to only 5 times a week, but the leadership was too busy doing battlegrounds and arenas. The answer I got for not raiding was, and I quote:

"PvP is cheaper than Raiding and when the expansion comes out all your epics will be obsolete the minute you start questing in the new zones, so why even bother till the expansion comes out."

A statement, even to this day I don't even understand. Hey, if you don't want to raid, great, more power to you, but you should at least help the rest of us, who want to do something, especially those of us that want to stay raid spec and not spend tons of money switching from Prot to DPS every other day. Sure raiding can be expensive, but that is why they invented dailies so you'll be able to make money to pay for that expense.

But I digress.

So they are going to merge with another guild. This will take place as soon as they come up with a name. I listened to a few last night while I was running scenarios in WAR, but nothing they said seemed to have the same ring as Casualties of WAR. lol Honestly, I think it's great that the guild is merging and we will be raiding again. The problem for me is the implementation of DKP, Dragon Kill Points.

I have a real life. If I'm dealing with that and unable to raid, I don't get points, therefore, I will be gimped because I lack the gear to do the bigger raids. I'm being assured that this won't be an issue and that the guild's main purpose will be to help everyone who wants to progress not just the elite few that have no life and can raid all the time. The other issue is my current love, WAR. How am I going to split my time between WoW and WAR when the guild really starts to raid again, especially when the expansion comes out? All problems I will have to figure out.

Course this will be a moot point in December. I'm hoping to get my shoulder fixed then, which means surgery causing my left arm to be completely immobile for 3 weeks or more. Bummer! I'll just have to learn to do everything with one hand. lol I will need to earn some DKP some how.

Other than that little bit of WoW news, I've been spending just about all my time in WAR spending lots of great time doing sewer runs and scenarios with my guild mates, who are just fantastic by the way. I do hop on WoW for the guild meetings and to do a little bit of farming. I still need an epic flying mount for my Prot Warrior, Oakstout.

I purchases Spore, played it for maybe two hours and then I shelved it. It just didn't appeal to me as much as SimCity or Rollercoaster Tycoon did. I might fire it up again in the coming weeks, but it might, I fear, stay shelved for a long time.