Insert Foot Here...

Confessions of a Guild Lover

I love my guild. I don’t say that sarcastically either. I LOVE my guild. I’ve had several characters over several realms both on the Horde and Alliance sides of the game. I’ve been part of end game guilds and casual adult guilds, kiddie guilds and silly guilds, guilds that friends introduced me to and guilds that I happened upon when I first start in a server but Divine Forsaken I’ve loved since “Hello!” When BC was released my brother and I decided to re-roll characters. At the time I had a 60 Paladin (McGregor, at that time known as Wayne.) and he had a 60 Hunter (Forester, I know real original right?) on a server whose name has completely left me at this late date. We had a couple of guilds we had been a part of there and a handful of friends. We left it all behind, created space-goats (Dreanei) and began anew. I created Luciel and he created….Forester, the priest. Within two hours of being on the server we found Divine Forsaken. A group of Horde players that had also decided to re-roll Alliance to go with the new expansion; of course we were excited, this meant that we were all starting at the same pace.

I took a Sabbatical from guild for a bit and Alliance in general because I didn’t like a lot of the politics that went along with Alliance since it seems that many of the younger players choose to be part of that faction. We went hardcore Horde for several months until Divine Forsaken called us back. They had kept us in their ranks even though they hadn’t seen or heard from us in months.

Since my return to Alliance I’ve leveled 3 more toons to 70. That brings my total to 5 70s.

::Sigh:: I know you’re wondering what the point of this installment is and I’m getting to it. Yesterday I had a brain child. You see, with the exception of Shatterpoint on the Alliance side, NONE of my other 70s is totally keyed for Kara. Luciel just recently got the first Frag, only by accident because they needed a healer for the last bit. McGregor has gotten the three frags but has never been to OH or BM, so it’s not complete. Bosque, well I went out of my way to make sure he got his keys. I mean, I pugged every single fragment because I couldn’t get four people from my guild to have enough desire to make the runs together.

So I had a thought.

My thought was that perhaps we could work on coming together as a guild. Have a guild event day where we did things together. Maybe PVP or Instances, or quests or even just getting together and doing some world PVP. WHATEVER! Just something that would show the people in the guild that there was a united front and that we weren’t shying away from working together. I went to our website and posted, what I felt, to be an intelligent post with this idea in mind and left it up with the hopes that I would get some replies from some like minded people that felt the same and that thought it would be a good idea.

I was wrong.

Instead what I got was three replies from three people of some clout in the guild saying in no uncertain terms that, while they understood the concept of the idea, it wasn’t needed because people should know to ASK for help and that when that happened Help would be given. Another of the posters, who helped put together the alliance of our two guilds, was upset that I was trying to separate the guilds again instead of working together. The last poster talked about how they would rather be pvp-ing that dealing with having to tank for some such instance with his main because tanking was boring.

I got fed up. I’m sorry, I’m tolerant. I like to think that I let lots of stuff roll off my back and that I can take things with a grain of salt. I like to think that at least. Reading these three entries though really felt more like a ‘Shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about!’ and I let loose. I didn’t do it in a gentlemanly way or in a conservative way but in a finger pointing, I’m telling mom you took the last cookie and didn’t share, sitting in the living room while your roommate is watching a romantic movie with his girl and you want to prove a point that no woman should stand between your friendship way. I was livid and seeing red in a way that I hadn’t seen it in a long way. In case you were wondering, I had taken my meds that morning thank you very much and this wasn’t a bipolar moment.

I sat and wrote a long reply on how all I saw was three people that were basically saying, your paradigm does not interweave with my own and I want you to replace it with something that I’m more comfortable with doing. That in all the time that I had been part of the guild this was the time when it was at its lowest and it felt like no one gave a rat’s ass about how things went from now on. I wrote on how several guild members came to me and griped about how long it was taking them to get things done because no one was willing to help them. About how I went ahead and pugged through all three instances to get my key fragments because no one seemed to have the time, interest or desire to help.

I felt righteous, angry and defensive and I went for the jugular.

I’m sure today I screwed up. My veil of anger skewed my vision in what I was trying to get across and instead I came off looking as a self interested party that was upset because I wasn’t given the time of day when my own desires weren’t met in a timely fashion.

Do I have to tell you that it sucks to be wrong? Of course I don’t. Every person is wrong at least once in their lives. What I got back was a land blasting on how what I was doing was really just sitting there and creating waves that didn’t need to be there in the first place and just needed to stop trying to create guild drama.

Humble pie doesn’t taste good. While my intentions were great, my follow through sucked major monkey balls and I ended up paying for it in a huge manner by apologizing to the guild in both the forums and in guild chat while on the game.

I know that some of you are going to reply, I usually get at least one reply with something like this and it will boil down to me moving to a different guild. While I would normally take that under advisement and begin to hunt around for something that I thought was more appropriate for me, it’s not like that with DF. Yes they are stubborn, as am I. We don’t always see eye to eye but they are family. You don’t quit family. I know many of the players by a first name basis and not by character names and I would be remiss to lose them because of one argument. Fact is that I see it from their point of view as well; I’ve got how many 70s. There’s always something that I want to run with them (At least until Bosque). A little bit of an identity crisis character wise don’t you think?

Guild drama over.

Think I’ll stick to PVP for a bit.

Topping the Charts!

Last night I pugged it with an interesting group. Three of the members were of the same guild a shaman, a rogue and a hunter (Sounds like the intro to a bad joke) and the Shaman let me know not far into the run that the other two with him, well this was there first toon for each. They had never been to ZF, which was what we were doing, and needed to get the experience of playing in it and finishing the quests.

Let me say that I was impressed by the Shaman taking these guys under his wing, I even told him so, to which he replied that they were real life friends and he didn’t have much of a choice. (heh.) Still they managed to do a decent job. We only had one group wipe in the entire time. Bosque and the hunter were left up during the event at the steps, we managed to down both the troll boss and Sergeant Bly by ourselves.

Bosque topped the damage meter.

I have to admit that I’m loving being able to nuke the crap out of everything in sight. It’s much different from having to heal or get up close and tank. Standing back, rooting something and just blasting away at it is more fun that I could have realized. While running around in ZF Bosque went ahead and dinged 47. Outlands are closer than ever on my druid.

I haven’t put together that Marco like I threatened but I think, knowing the spells that I use, that it would look something this:

/castsequence reset=5 Entangling Roots, Insect Swarm, Starfire, Moonfire, Wrath

This would be for a solo situation, by the time you hit up Wrath the mob should be close to being dead and the Damage over Time from the other two spells is still taking effect. I use insect swarm because Farie Fire when I solo because I’m not doing melee damage, remember that a Moonkin is a caster form. Now if you were a Kitty this wouldn’t work at all and you’d want to focus on the cat attacks for your Macro. The same rule applies if you’re a big bear.

Other thing that you should always remember, buy your reagents before you go into an instance. I don’t care WHAT you play; buy your reagents because you never know what you might have to do.

On the Divine Forsaken front things are slow. I know they’re planning a raid for tomorrow, Kara of course, and together with our sister guild we should have enough people to get that accomplished. I’ve been focusing on the Druid and a lot of the players that I run with have just switched to playing alts. I think they have the same mindset; we play for fun, not to break our heads against ten man raids. I’ve already experienced it several times and it’s ‘aight’.

How about you guys? You finding yourself reaching for that Purple Pixel disease or are you satisfied with the accomplishment of having hit 70 and then moving on to a low level character that needs your love?

Also, anyone else have a useful macro they want to send over?

What Lays ahead?

So this weekend I have a couple of things that I want to get done; both on my toon and in real life.

Real Life: I need to help the Hooved Missus clean our room and tidy up the house. What y’all don’t know is that we do foster care for drug affected infants. Right now we’ve got a 6 month old that we’re fostering, a 3 year old that we’re trying to adopt AND we’re helping raise her 14 year old sister who’s adopted, bi-polar, schizophrenic. So we have a full house all the time. Usually because of my work schedule I get to head home and basically just veg because she feels bad for me. She’s the at home parent. With the type of thing we’re doing in our life you can’t NOT have an at home parent. So since we’ve been married I’ve been the bread winner and she’s been the parent. Now, don’t think that means we have a rich lifestyle because we definitely do NOT. We live just about paycheck to paycheck but we’re incredibly happy with our lives and that’s what’s most important to both of us.

Today is payday so I have to go out and get some supplies for the house (Read:Food) and of course diapers and formula. I might spend a little money on myself. Perhaps go pick up my comics and/or buy a book from Borders.

WoW: Well this is going to be a mixed bag. I need to get Old Hills done so I can do BM, it’s a MUST basically. McGregor is going to have to take his lumps in Old Hills to really be of any use in BM and in Kara. I have to admit that while I’ve enjoyed the venture to 70, being there and getting keyed and running 10 mans, really doesn’t get my motor going. I’m not sure why this is though. I think maybe I’ve put too much pressure on myself to make sure that things get done right with the characters. When I was doing the key fragment runs the other day one of the players from Celestial Storm basically invited me to his guild but the thing of it is, I love my guild.

Divine Forsaken is a home to me. In May of last year I left the Nordassil realm because I had had it with Alliance and the drama that just seems to come from being in a guild. I had a falling out with one of the other officers and I just didn’t want to deal with bullshit anymore. Forester, my brother, would check his accounts and they would ALWAYS ask when we were coming back. I know that some of you know that most guilds, when you’re inactive for a certain period of time, they just go ahead and boot you, Divine Forsaken never did. They kept us on the roster and they still remembered us. So we came back. I’m comfortable in my guild. I don’t much care for end game progression really. Purple or blue, armor is only as important as how much fun you have playing the character.

I find myself with several 70s (4) which all have flying mounts.

I’ve got a mid 40s Druid whom I will be getting a mount for soon and 2 incredibly low level clothies that I intend to level at some point in the future. (If I can get away from the love that I feel for my Druid).
These days when I log in all I want to play is my druid honestly. I know I have some high levels that I can instance with but I love playing my Druid. Is it because I get the gratification of leveling the character up? Is it that I like knowing that my feats are accomplishing something other than gaining more gold? Yea I know that it sounds like I don’t like money when I do but the question is, what is appealing more to me?

If you think back to when I started this blog I was leveling Luciel to be a good healer for the guild. (Since I respecced it seems like I’m needed less for healing and will be switching BACK to Enhancement the next time I feel the need to play him.) Once I achieve the level that I wanted with Luciel I moved onto McGregor to make him a viable tank. Once I upgraded his gears and got stumped on Shadow Labs I moved onto my Druid.

So is it the satisfaction of knowing that I have a level to attain that makes the game more interesting for me? I think it might be. While this makes me sound like a bed hopper I swear that I’m not.

I know that there are things that I need to learn as a Shaman. I know that there are things to learn as a Tankadin. The question is, do I care?

I don’t know. I love all the classes and I think that they’re all fun. Face melting with a shadow priest was incredibly fun for the short time that I did it while baby sitting a friend’s character. Having a well equipped Warlock is awesome as I have a 41 Horde Warlock that was lucky enough to get the Staff of Jordan to drop for him while he was in STV. My time with a mage has been fun, albeit I don’t know the mechanics as well as I would like and end up being Mob bait eventually, the dynamic of making my own food was lovely. Each class brings something to the table that, to me, makes it over all unique and fun to play.

Am I rambling? Sure. Still, I’m sure that there are a lot of you out there that are smiling and nodding your heads at the things that I’ve pointed out because you find yourself with alt-itis for the very same reason.

If you want to enjoy the game, try the rest of the flavors before you decide on one I guess is what I’m trying to say. I’m learning that I have at least 3 flavors that I enjoy immensely. (For those of you keeping track I have a 70 hunter but I think that we can all mostly agree that unless you LOVE the class, it’s the easy button of WoW.) Do not let your WoW days be filled with one flavor if you have yet to try the rest, you’ll regret it later or worse, you’ll never know the true love you might find in another character.

/end tangent.

Deconstructing the Guild

You’ve all heard about my guild issues in the recent past. How we’ve had some people leave and had to kick some people out. The departure of one of our main guild officers and his return; it’s really been an interesting couple of months for Divine Forsaken. While I continue to reach 70 (Ding’d 68 last night) and my brother has already hit 70, the structure around us continues to change.

The group that left us a couple of weeks for an end game guild seemed to run into a snag. From what I understand they did indeed join a raid guild…for about three days. After which, it seems, both sides came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the best fit for either of them. So those that left made a new guild. Good for them actually, I was impressed that they would rather work on their own than have to work under the auspice of another group they don’t entirely agree with.

At the same time DF came to its own conclusion, we’re just going to relax. Literally we’re not going to worry about end game content at this time and just have fun with the game again. Enjoy playing with our friends and remember what it is we play WOW for, to have fun! Understandably some people get wrapped up into Epic gear and making their toon the best that it can be but honestly, it’s just a game. For me the thrill has always been reaching the pinnacle in levels. That’s why I have as many alts as I do, because for me it’s about getting to 70. Once I’m there, meh. I enjoy being a high level and farming gold and such but that’s all that toon is now, a farmer. He’ll be farming supplies, gold and various other things for my low level toon.

So in an officer meeting this week, Monday to be exact, the ground work was set for us to just enjoy ourselves for a while. Give Kara a break and remember what makes us, us.

Unfortunately this happened at the same time that the raiders who left our guild started to recruit from our guild. The two things met in the middle and we’ve lost a few other members of the guild to this new raiding team. My question is, if they liked playing with the guildies so much, why didn’t they just stay? They could have easily led a Gruul’s Lair group from our banner. There were enough 70s to do that with. Why leave? That’s a question that I don’t know that I’ll ever get an answer to really. No one’s going to sit and tell me, “well the thing of it is…”

I’m okay with that.

There was one person that left that I’m shocked to see leave and still unwilling to believe it to be true. Darkzealot came back into DF with much fanfare. When the guild decided that it was time to put end game content on the backburner….he left and joined the new raiding guild. The same people that he condemned for leaving, the same people that made him want to quit WoW are now his guild mates. I don’t understand that one. How can you go from condemning someone to joining their ranks in the passing of a week?

I know that I’ve told you that DF is my guild and I think I explained to you that it’s a gaming Community. So he’s still part of the community, he plays other games with us and still works with us but not in WoW. So it’s not really a betrayal. He’s not leaving us completely but he’s desperate to see end game content as much as the other guys in that guild are.

I don’t see the dram, but that’s just me.

In any event, our guild is still big. We might not have as many 70s as we did at the beginning of the month but we’ve got some good players working their way up to that apex and when they reach it, DF will raid again. We’ll be more prepared for what lays ahead.

For now, Luciel is 2 levels away from 70, McGregor is at 64 and I’ve got several alts that are calling my name to have fun with them. Life, life couldn’t be better.

The guild will flourish again, it's all about the fun guys, it's all about the fun.

Thank you for reading, the Enhancement spec articles will continue shortly.

Kara, drama and everything in between

How was the weekend friends? Was it everything you hoped it would be or was it less that you desired? For me it was a mixture of both.

While the Hooved Mrs. didn't feel well this weekend and took it easy, I was busy with guild duties.

First let's comment on Friday. As I said on Thursday, I tried to get into Kara and it was a no go because I was an hour late. Friday was different. My brother, Forester, called me and told me that they were WAITING for me because they needed dps. I hustled home, got on my hunter and headed to Kara where we lived for about SEVEN hours until we finally downed Romeo and Juilet. We went ahead and cleared to Curator and called it a night.

Saturday is when the drama started.
________________________________________________________________

I was on my Shaman, working my way up to 65 (Which I dinged this weekend and am already halfway through) when one of the pillars of the guild logged in.

A little history on DIVINE FORSAKEN; it's a multi-game community. Which means that while we have a guild on both the Horde and Alliance side in WoW, we also play everything else like LOTR, Tabula Rasa, CSS and anything else that might be MMO style, including Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. So many of the players that we have, have played together for several years.

Darkzealot is one of those long time players. He's been playing so long that he has a Teamspeak server set up for us that can house enough players that we can run a 25 man comfortably and still have people in the lobby chatting it up. He also has been the one that put together our website, maintains it and allows us to have DF Radio. (that's right, we have our own tunes playing at any given time)

So, I'm questing away Saturday morning when he comes in game. He is usually the type of guy that will type something like "GET'ER DONE!" when he walks in cause he's just like that.

This is all he typed when he came in on Saturday:


Thank you DF for all the fun times that we had together. You guys are going down the right trackm just keep moving.

/gquit

I know that most of you are thinking, "So?"

You have to understand that he LOVES the guild but more importantly, he plays other games with us and uses the TS server so he would get bombarded with questions as to why in God's name he would leave. So he did what any rational man would do, he took down the TS server.

No explination.

No word to anyone.

Just gone.

Personally? I consider him a friend. He and I would go back and forth and harass each other non-stop about the dumbest things and have good laughs. His leaving REALLY took me off guard. I would not want to celebrate someone's departure. My first and only thought is, we are cancelling Kara for the night. I mean seriously why not? It's a good way to mourn the leaving of one of the important people in the guild. I tell this to some of the officers and what I get back is, "Why bother? He left us in the lurch, we shouldn't stop what we're doing because he's gone."

Granted I'm an emtional sap but that struck me as odd. I mean this guy was everyone's friend. He stuck up for the people that no one wanted to stand up for. He was always willing to help with a run, always willing to help with money in game. How difficult would it be to just take one day off when the instance is going to rest in 3 days? Plenty of time to still do whatever.

Kara was still run.

From what I understand it went well. They took down Curator and did the Chess event which garnered good pixels for all around. It was after this that things went south again.

Most of our players that were in Kara Group One suddenly said good bye and left the guild. It seems that they were the reason, the catalyst for Darkzealot to feel like he needed a break from WoW. They had told him earlier in the morning of their proposed plan and had taken it personally. These were people that he had stood up for time and again. When we booted a group of people recently, it was at the behest of this same group because they felt that the booted group was not contributing to the guild. Now here they were, doing the same to us. Yes it was hurtful, they had planned within themselves for a week but had never even bothered to tell the guild leader of what they were thinking of doing.

Of course the guild is fine. We still have a plethora of 70s, many of which are Kara tuned to run 2 groups at the same time. We still have the desire to do endgame content at some point but what alot of people don't realize is that there is life outside of WoW and that's what gets them bent out of shape.

I wanted to write all of this out to see if it made more sense. Some of the people that left I truly felt were good people, they still are good people, they just decided to take a different path.

Such is life.

Kara is a lofty goal...

Having a 70 available for me to play is almost a joke. Don't get me wrong I love the fact that I have him but because of my work schedule I get home at about six p.m. That means that Kara runs have already been going on for an hour. The possibility of me being able to attend a run is almost non-existent. I know this today.


Yesterday, yesterday it felt like the whole cosmos was against me in the pursuit to make it home for my guild's Kara run. From my office closing a few minutes late, to traffic, to having to stop and get dinner on the way home. It felt like anything that could make me late, did. By the time I got home there were already two teams in Kara, happily slaughtering their way to the Maiden.

So alas I didn't get to venture into the depths of Kara I began to wonder something, has Kara ruined the game? Sure some could argue that we already had ten mans available to us before this expansion and that end game content was nothing new but THINK about it. How many of us have 70s? How many of us are running around showing off our purty purple pixels? My hunter has a couple and my Shaman had one (Axe of the Deep Woods) before heading into Outland but it hasn't been my DRIVING need to play, it's been the fun of grouping with my friends. Now looking at Kara and at the prospect of being stuck there for several weeks or months, depending on how long we want to 'farm' it, WoW is beginning to look like a chore. If that's the feeling that I'm getting now, why would I want to keep playing?

Case in point one of my close friends, Trina. She's been in the same guild that I have for a long time, longer than me since she's been playing with them in other MMOs before WoW was in existence. Her warlock hit 70 about 2 weeks ago. She's not Kara keyed. Moreover, she's not even looking to get Kara keyed, at least not yet. She's waiting for some of the people that she's used to playing with to catch up with her so they can go in together. She's not the norm anymore. She, to many, is an oddity for not having RUN out and gotten keyed that same night.

I don't know, it'll sound silly writing it out for everyone to read but I really feel like the innocent feeling that was in WoW once has gone and will never come back. My deep thought of the week...

This weekend is payday weekend so I will make my customary jaunt to the comic book store and pick up the comics that I have waiting for me, including the ones that I need to review (I'm still debating on whether or not to add this to my own blog). World of Warcraft will be in my box, I wonder if it'll be any good.

I want to give a HUGE THANK YOU to Ryan Boussard! A fellow comic book lover that was nice enough to play with the pixels that gave me a banner, thanks man!

That's it for now...

In the Beginning...

So as you can see, if you've stumbled onto this blog, this is a work in progress. Don't judge it too harshly as I'm trying to get looking somewhat spiffy. (Who uses that work anymore beside me?)

My guild is and they've been playing MMOs together for longer, it feels, than I've been alive. It's more than a guild, it's a community and I'll tell you what, we have some silly stuff happen to us all the time. You'll get to hear about that.

You'll get to hear, hopefully, about the ups and downs of working Kara with my second 70 Shaman, my first has gone to Kara multiple times but not with this guild.

It should be interesting. Of course what's going to be more interesting to me is whether or not I am going to continue to have the desire to blog. Only time will tell.

Welcome to my life, as it were.