Blood Queen's Reign is Over!

Not bad, in my opinion!

I promise I will write more soon...Stupid Awards need to be done, there's bitching to be had, and I'm absolutely disgusted with the 10/25 shared lockout coming in Cataclysm.

Professor Down!

Last night we finally got Putricide down on 25! And, as the picture says, I will change the tabard for them. Recently it's been a vile combination of browns and greens with vials on it. Putricide themed don't you know!

We spent Wednesday wiping endlessly on him and I was prepared for a sudden influx of "something's come up" and to not have 25 on Thursday since they knew we were headed right back to him. Happily I was wrong. Our veteran raiders are estatic and I'm pretty impressed with some of our new recruits' stamina and determination even if there are some skills to refine. Showing up is the biggest part in my book...well, unless you are permantly stamped with the Stupid Debuff in which case we'll show you the door.

Later last night we knocked out Blood Council - farm boss - and spent some quality time with the Blood Queen. We made some decent progress and I think if we had not hit the end of raid time so quickly we would have had her.

Tonight its back to LK on 10...he must go down...please don't make me walk into another week of Marrowgar on regular mode!

Stupid Awards of the Week

The Flask on Hot Bar Bad Award goes to…

/drumroll

The tank who consumed 4 Stoneblood flasks in a boss fight because he put them on his hot bar where his cooldowns used to be


The Wait, What Did I Tell You? Award goes to…

/drumroll

The priest who changed his story about why his performance was low depending on who he talked to. If you are going to make excuses for bad performance don’t change the excuse you’re offering when you talk to different people. Does he think we don’t talk?


The Look Ma, I’m Special! Award goes to…

/drumroll

All the people who bought the Starry My Little Pony mount to show off their uniqueness


The Why Don’t You Just Gkick Me Now? Award goes to…

/drumroll
The priest and warrior who decided it was a really brilliant idea to ask the GM and Princess to go to TOC 10 and then give much, much sass and attitude about raid rules and loot rules - which were not standard - because “it was THEIR run” while carrying a brand spanking new 80 druid friend


The Left, Right, Left, Wait, Which Way? Award goes to…

/drumroll

The druid in ICC 10 who repeatedly wiped the raid by running ice tombs into the raid group on Sindragosa. Repeatedly. /facepalm


The I’m a Pally! Award goes to…

/drumroll

Me! For trusting a new update of Pally Power and not checking to see that for sure, for really really sure, I had Righteous Defense up before pulling Sindragosa…and then yelling at the dps for pulling aggro (and people say I never add myself here!)


The You’re a Pally! Award goes to…

/drumroll

A certain rogue who shall remain nameless for telling our warrior tank to drop consecration and use hammer of righteousness in her explanation of a boss fight (and she says she was looking at me at the time…I am hot after all!)

The Enforcer's Guest Post

/wave

I’m your friendly neighborhood rogue. Aka: ‘The Enforcer”. Yeah that’s right …/flex. Anyways Lark has been hinting at me writing a guest post on her blog. Well, I’ve been procrastinating for two reasons: 1. I’m horrible at typing. 2. I’m horrible at writing. So far 2 of 5 delicious combo pts.


Anyways this whole enforcer dealio started as a joke. Our guild was (I mean the casters – including healers btw /rollseyes) getting our faces PWNed by malleable ooze on Professor Putricide. So I send Lark a tell, “Can I be GM for a day? So I can kick these bads?” Little did I know she’d like the idea.


The night goes on and a list begins to form:

• Stand in shit that wasn’t there before…GKICK!
• Don’t switch from boss to slimes….GKICK!
• Somehow miss seeing giant green oozes flying at you…Also somehow miss blaring DBM warning telling you your going to get hit if you don’t gtfo….zomfg GKICK!
• Ask what an A-bomb is…GKICK!
• Stand in place so the orange ooze eats your face…zomfg GKICK!
• Run into the middle of the raid when you are the ice tomb…4 times…GKICK!
• Ask what the boss does after you’ve been in on kills 7 times…GKICK!
• Don’t suck up to me…GKICK! I mean…ummm…

You see where this is going don’t you? Now I enjoy smoking the green so I don’t exactly remember how many threatening whispers I sent to Lark or what was said before I logged on to a new guild rank: “The Enforcer” - Badass.


So where are our raiders’ brains? Probably the same place as my offhand dagger.


Take it from behind,

Bre

(Note: The Enforcer hasn’t actually been allowed to /gkick anyone…yet. We’re going to call them out, demand less Stupid Debuffs, and let The Enforcer scare the hell out of them for a week or so first!)

Lines in the Sand - Part II and Updates!

I appreciate the input on the situation with the over-the-line guildie. In the end we did talk about the things that were said and the behavior that has been disrupting progression. I think, I hope, that I have made it very clear that this is the last chance before something has to give permanently. /fingers crossed

This week’s Stupid Awards were taken by one person - who so very much deserved a spotlight - but there are soooooo many in the wings it’s going to take a few days to come up with the Epic Stupid Awards!

We have been recruiting - Is it again or still? Does it ever stop? - and I’m hoping to do some housekeeping soon. Sounds cold-hearted, I know, but damn…seriously? Do you really want me to go through the entire explanation of raid assignments again because you were messing with iTunes?

More to come soon!

And….

Maybe….

Just maybe….

A guest post by the new Guild Enforcer!

That’s right! Lark’s employing muscle! Be good!

Stupid Awards of the Week

The Hey, I Just Bought My Toon on eBay! Award of the Week goes to...

/drumroll

Anthealde, the pally "tank" who clearly hasn't looked up anything to do with paladins since TBC.

Ok, I wouldn't usually call someone out so blatently but this is just a prime example of someone who doesn't do the slightest bit of homework. I really thought he'd just forgotten to change gear when this started...little did I know....

Seriously....?

Yup, seriously.

Zomg.

I needed that giggle.

Lines in the Sand - Part I

What would you do if someone in your guild crossed those lines you just don’t want to go anywhere near? The deal-breaker lines. The lines that separate what’s acceptable to say and what’s not. The lines that if someone crossed with your mother or sister or wife would mean you would wind up in a fist fight.

What if this person became derogatory towards you as a woman and insulted your current lifestyle in a public chat? What about referring to the people you raid with and play with everyday as pixels to justify your lack of consideration for their time?

What would you do?

Science Class

Gotta love Tuesdays!

I’m all caught up on blog reading - found some new ones today too. Spent some time at Wow.com watching videos and perusing other class changes coming (tomorrow is pally day!).

I also dissected the guild today. Go ahead, picture that frog splayed out on the table looking at you with his beady eyes, the feeling was very similar. Ugh.

Out of 45 active mains in the guild 20 of them landed on this list:

• We know you will be gone because you were kind enough to let us know your work/life schedule changed and we’ll welcome you with open arms when you return

• You’ve always been flaky about attendance and you just moved to the side of the roster where we’ll let you raid if no one else wants to

• You’re new…shouldn’t you be making a better impression?

• You’re emo

• You’re name looks familiar and I’m pretty sure you used to be here every day…alien abduction?

• I’d like to /gkick you but you’re friends with the Princess

This leaves us with the following raiders - and includes 5 new recruits that I’m desperately hoping live up to at least some of the expectations - to form the bulk of our M-Th raiding team:

• 2 Tanks - Me and one who is completely untried with us (cue the scary horror movie music here)

• 15 DPS - 2 of which have solid tanking off specs and 2 of which have solid healing off specs

• 8 Healers - 4 of which have strong DPS off specs

Now remember, today is Tuesday, so I fully expect to see somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 people on for the weekly loot piñatas. So here’s the GM/RL dilemma:

Do I….

• Make sure to save absolutely everyone to ensure the reset raiders can’t pug later in the week? /cackles maniacally

• Only bring the new “core” to give them the best shot at upgrades? (Particularly since we are relying fairly heavily on duel speccing?)

• Ask for volunteers to sit like we usually do? (This is boring for the people who sit and I know they do it to be nice but I really hate it for them.)

• Pretend I’m suddenly deaf, mute and illiterate and ignore all whispers and set up the Dream Team?

What would you do?

Stupid Awards of the Week

I haven’t done the Stupid Awards of the Week for a while…partially slacking and partially that once I had a chance to look back on the potentials they just seemed sad. That being said I just have one for the week.

The OMFG Did You Seriously Think You’d Get Away with This Award goes to…

/drumroll

The former guildie who applied - and was accepted I might add - to the guild under an entirely different toon.

In our defense, it had been many, many months since he had been in Heroic and, quite frankly, we aren’t all that good about naming all our current guildies voices in vent if pressed!

Let me elaborate. Once the mage that went through the interview process was accepted we immediately moved into raid invite mode - for which he was accepted given that we are trying to replace the reset raiders - and the whispers started. “Isn’t that one of _______’s toons? “, “Who is that? The name/voice is familiar.”

I whispered the “new” mage and said, “There are some people here who think you are ________ ….”

He responds with, “Yeah, I am but I didn’t think you’d let me back in on my main.”

To which I replied, “Well, duh, you left on bad terms and tried to recruit people from out guild to go with you!”

At which point he was given the option to leave with dignity to be /gkicked.

Really?! Recruiting isn’t enough of a pain in the ass without re-recruiting!?!?

Dreamwalker Lives! (And so do I...mostly.)

Finally!!!

Dreamwalker is down…err…up! We went in Tuesday and got her healed on the first try. We tweaked the strategy and had two tanks gather all the adds in two spots and the melee just ate the damage. Healers knew it was incoming and were prepared. It worked beautifully! None of us could believe how easy it was…finally, after two weeks of wiping our faces off. But yay for new progression boss!

Attendance is still killing me on non-Tuesday raid nights. I’m recruiting my ass off but it takes time. I finally sent the entire guild in-game mail requesting they let me know if they have lost interest in raiding or if this is a temporary state. I figured it was the least I could do before I started the /gkicks.

I’ve opened communication with another guild about a possible merger but it’s very much in the early stages and we’ll have to see what happens there. It would have to be a case of them joining us…as much as I may bitch and have my moments where I’d sooner eat a family-sized bag of spicy Cheetos with no beverage than run a guild I’m not willing to give up the GM thing. Partially because of the inner control freak and partly because Heroic has been my baby from day one.

WTF Bunnies?!

Arthas has a moment.

Raider Black Hole

I’ve been a bit lax in posting lately because the only thing on my mind has been attendance. And you know what that means don’t you? Yes, indeed, another bitching post!

So here it is! The most annoying attendance issues I can think of:

New recruits that swear up and down that they will be here every raid night without fail. No matter what. Every night. And then they don’t show up for the first week…I have no idea where they are. They are about to be guildless though.

New recruits that show up and don’t get a piece of loot they want - despite the fact that they haven’t been here long enough to earn it and know about the trial period of no shiny pixels - and won’t raid for days. They are also about to be guildless.

Raiders who disappear with no word for days/weeks on end. Unless you are in a coma or in jail you can at least log on and shoot me an in-game mail or get on our website and send an email.

People that actually go to the trouble of signing up on the calendar…and then they don’t show up.

People who won’t accept or decline the calendar invite but instead choose “tentative” for every raid night. How is it you are only tentatively going to be here? You said you could raid those nights...help me understand.

Raiders who use any one (or more) of the following excuses more than once every two months:

I fell asleep
I was too drunk
Wife/GF/BF/Husband aggro
I was bleeding on my keyboard
I lost my authenticator
I was grounded
I didn’t feel like raiding
The power went out (and yet strangely you updated Facebook at that time…)

Emo excuses of any kind, don't care, over it, pop a Xanax and get on your damn toon.

There’s more I’m sure…heard any good/bad ones lately?