When Applying to a Guild...

Dear Applicant,


While we appreciate your interest in Heroic please understand we are at the end of Wrath and we’re planning for Cataclysm so unless you blow us away there is no point in adding you to a roster we are planning on trimming. You might want to consider that when thinking about doing any of the following:

Repeatedly whispering the GM or any of the class officers while they are in a raid…especially once they have told you they will talk to you later. Raid > you.

When told an online application is the first step in the process responding with, “do i have 2? : (“. Yes, yes indeed you do have to…and from you we will expect particularly detailed answers.

We really created the application with you in mind so you could pick and choose which questions to answer. Please don’t feel you need to give us an accurate, thorough answer to any of them if you don’t feel like it. Just go ahead and put “Cuz (insert class/spec) r leet” anywhere you choose to skip. /sarcasm

This is bad. “Why did you choose the main spec/off spec you have?”
“paladin ret/holy i chose cause i noticed holy gear dropped all the time and i chose ret cause i wanted to be dps”

Worse: “paladin, retribution, 5964(may be higher by now) gearscore
cause pallys are overpowered:P”

You were on board when told that everyone who applies starts in the Friday ICC 25 and that we are absolutely, positively, under no circumstances recruiting you into the main T-Th group. You stated this would be “perfect” and you just want to raid sometimes. You expressed immense love for the Friday idea…until we asked you to pick a Friday for a trial run and you said, “Well, I’m free on Tuesday or Wednesday but I can’t raid Fridays.” Huh?

You attend the trial run on Friday and proceed to talk over the raid leader explaining how you would do the fights and what you saw in videos when you looked them up. Sadly, your failure to ever down the boss we are discussing makes you less than credible. Mmm hmm…go on….

You don’t realize that:
Attending the trial run and being AFK for every ready check is bad.

Attending the trial run and insulting the other players is bad.

Attending the trial run having absolutely no idea what the bosses do is bad.



Good luck!

Woot! Dead Heroic Putricide!

The title really says it all.

Weeks of wiping and frustration and tonight it was a one-shot deal.

Happiness.

Nostalgia for Noobishness

Before World of Warcraft I had played things like Sims (Original, expansions, Xbox and PC…and before you ask, yes, I had the little extra expansions with things like kitchen furniture and pets.), Grand Theft Auto (I was really good at the driving but sucked at being a pimp.), and various sports related games (boys hate it when you beat them at hockey by the way). I picked up WoW on my way home from work at the beginning of a long weekend because I had no real plans, the weather was crappy, and I’d heard a few people at the office talk about it. I didn’t sleep for about 36 hours.

WoW was fascinating! Nothing I had played had ever been even remotely like it. I had no idea how to do simple things like move, open bags, and swim. I didn’t know about class trainers or flight masters. I was scared to death to die because I didn’t know what would happen and then when I did die it took me forever to figure out how to resurrect. (There was one very memorable death involving falling off a cliff into Wetlands at level 14 and taking three hours to get back to safety because I couldn’t find my body easily and didn’t know how to use the spirit rez.) I can still remember the first time I had 50 silver because the cat lady’s charge is something like 37 silver for a pet and I really wanted one but it seemed like a lot of money at the time.

While I spent a lot of time wandering lost in circles (my friends will tell you I still spend a lot of time lost but don’t listen to them…they don’t take their meds…crazy people) I was completely fascinated with the look and feel of the game. There was that thrill of discovery everything I found a new place; whether it was as grand as the world dragon in Duskwood or as small as accidentally catching a prize fish from the STV Fishing Derby it didn’t matter. There was the fun and challenge of leveling Lark and learning about what paladins can do, vanilla, TBC, and Wrath to explore and a myriad of alts to level and learn about. One of the most fun leveling times I’ve had was getting my horde mage to 80 and doing all the areas I’d loved from the other perspective.

And the people! Let’s not forget the people! I remember the first WoW friend I made. Manius was leveling a lock and we met at about level 8 and leveled together on and off on various toons for years. Countless toons and two main servers since I still talk with him whenever I’m on Drenden and can catch him. One of my other oldest WoW friends is raiding with me now. (/wave Zaka). Many of the key people in Heroic have been around for long time and the guild wouldn’t be the same without them. The game wouldn’t be the same without the people I’ve known.

Most of my time for the last two-plus years has revolved around raiding and the goals therein, or, in the last year or so raiding plus my guild. There are a few things I still want to achieve in Wrath: getting us our 25 man ICC mounts (got my ugly, bony birdie from 10 man on Sunday!), killing Putricide and Sindragosa on hard mode in 25 man (and giving at least a few honest shots at LK hard), and wrapping up the Ulduar 10 and 25 metas for those mounts (most of us are ridiculously close…it’s just silly we haven’t finished at this point). But mostly…I think I’m about done.

I’m ready for Cataclysm. I’m ready for the excitement of new things to see and do and learn. I’m ready to relearn all the classes and specs on Lark and the alts. I can’t wait to have the time to level a new toon from scratch and see how the leveling has changed and do the new quests. And, I think, I’m finally ready to take my little guild into the new content and make it a success there as well. It won’t be the same but I think it will be good.

I’ve flirted with other MMOs since I found WoW; Warhammer, EVE, AOC, and a few others but they couldn’t hold my attention for long. Either they were too buggy or didn’t have enough players or they simply weren’t interesting to me. However, I recently started the Final Fantasy XIV beta and that may have potential! That’s really where this wave of nostalgia for newness comes from. The game is visually stunning and very interesting so far. I have to learn from scratch what to do, where to go and what the classes mean since I never touched any of the other Final Fantasy incarnations. I still haven’t figured out how to start a profession and it’s driving me crazy. LOL. At any rate, it may give me something to do until Cataclysm comes out and WoW feels new again.

SOS! Mayday! Help! Drowing GM!

So, the general flakiness and lack of focus (and attendance) in many of our core raiders has me thinking. I’ve been putting off making decisions about what I’d like the guild to look like in Cataclysm but I might need to start thinking seriously about it. It seems that the end-of-expansion blues are starting to hit and a passion for raiding starting to wane in many people. While this is understandable to a point and I certainly expected it the reality is it sucks. We haven’t completed the progression I know we are capable of and I’m not sure we will unless I can figure out a way to get the raiders more motivated. It’s a tough situation to be in right now. We have many that want to finish what we started but just a few key people taking a mental and/or physical break completely screws us and fully pisses off the people that want to raid. (I’m getting more than a few /rage whispers during wipes on dumb shit. Trust me, folks, I feel your pain.)

I’m not entirely sure what the options are right now. Do we reduce the raid nights to put less “pressure” on folks that are starting to drift? If we do that it means extending timers on occasion to get to some progression - not sure how that would go over, lol. Do we take a break from progression and focus on the achievements needed to get the mounts? I can see where that might drive focus and attendance at least temporarily since only one person doesn’t care about mounts (Yes, I know you don’t care about achievements! Stop telling me!) I’ve pretty much ruled out recruiting at this point unless someone omguberamazing applies since we are tired of breaking in new raiders. I can pull from the Friday casual raid but then they are short and, frankly, there’s a reason most of them aren’t in the main group (sorry but it’s true) and the few that would be good there are either couples who insist on raiding together (have I mentioned how much I hate that?) or people with iffy schedules.

Damned if I know at this point…I just want to see a few more hard mode bosses down, get my mount, and then I’ll do whatever the group wants!


Anyways, back to Cataclysm. I was fondly hoping in a knowingly delusional way that they would change something…ANYTHING…to make 25s more appealing. Sorry, Blizz, but more of the same loot isn’t going to cut it for a lot of people. Personally, I like 25s soooo much more than 10s. I can understand the appeal of a close-knit group, less trouble to organize, blah, blah, blah. I don’t care. I still think it’s dumbing down raiding even more and catering to the casuals too much. 10s just lack the epic feel of 25s and I will miss that if they aren’t really do-able anymore. I don’t need to rehash the whole post…you can go look at it if you want to read the full rant.

So, for Cata here’s what I need to start figuring out….

Who wants to stay in the guild regardless of the raid size?

Who will stay if it’s one size or the other and which size would that be?

Who is definitely leaving to do their own thing?

If we stay a mainly 25 man raiding guild what will we need to recruit?

Who is changing mains/main specs?

If we become a 10 man guild (ugh, I think I’m nauseous) who do I want on the team?

And is it more than one 10 man team?

I think I’m narrowing down what I’d like to see just a bit. I’m thinking I’d like to reduce the size of the guild to about 30 people or so and be able to do three 10s and yet still be able to save a raid for 25s here and there. Once we get the feel for the content we may find that the appeal of more loot in 25s is a factor to gear for hard modes. That means we need 6 tanks, 9 healers, 15 well mixed DPS, and a whole lot of off-specs!


Anyone out there care to share what their guild is planning? Help! Please!