Married IRL

This be, as it were, a very nice way to end the week.

Second try for the night, we had about 6 PuGs, and a very dead BE Nambee Pambee.

Btw, I think MrT’s Gravity Lapse is harder…. you take more damage! XD

But all in all, I’m just glad that people got their shiney new titles, and I got to get rid of that silly Vashj vial that’s been in my bank since May.

Grats Guys! <3

PS: Felt nice to raid something again too. XD  Next time though, I’m bringing the Bansidhe, Cay’s shelving is now complete.

No no, not dead.

Just in a state of…. blarg?

Summer time funk? Check. Expansion blues? Check. Raid Burnout? Double Check. Bored and not sure what to do about it? Yea, that’s us.

It was bound to happen, I would think. I know last week, after our Canadian friends went to Georgia and then home, Jas and I looked and looked for something, anything, game wise to give us that spark of interest back.

The game store was BARREN. I swear, I’ve never come across such a crappy time for games. Everything that looks interesting is COMING SOON!

Well, why not be there now damn it?! There were a few things in WoW making me really not want to log in (get to that shortly), and as much as I love Mass Effect, I can only play it so much. But all the good stuff? Spore, Infinite Undiscovery, Spore… ok, so I’m really looking forward to Spore… but you get what I mean. The nifty games aren’t here.

Jason likes WoW, but he’s not a real MMO type of person. WoW has me hooked to the MMO environment, so I figured I’d experiment. I tried four or five different trials of other MMOs…

Out of all of them (Guild Wars is still HELLA BORING), EQ2 was the only one I might consider ever purchasing (Jas, and the internet apparently, refuses to let me try FFXI). So yea… not a bad experiment… I guess. But arg. Of the other types of games I’d like to play? Store didn’t have them. I miss EBgames. Game Stop sucks. /sulk

I’d love to try the Prequel God Of War, I love that series. It’s a ton of fun, and I definitely can’t wait for the third in the series. Crisis Core also looked awesome, but again, the store didn’t have it. I don’t have anything against my PSP, but sometimes, just playing on that tiny screen just… well, it’s TINY!

So, we bought Dynasty Warriors 6 for Jas (he’s in love with that series) and Gears of War.

I. Suck. At. Gears. Of. War. HARDCORE. I keep getting myself or Jas KILLED. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to tell which big beefy guy is my F’ing team mate and which one is the bad guy!

So yea, kinda trying to keep myself occupied… it’s hard. I’m very excited about some of the games coming SOON… and excited about the expansion for WoW… but blarg.

I deleted Leilu. Level 50 shaman with 350 JC’ing and 330 LWing… I’m cursed. NO MORE LEATHERWORKERS! They’ll just get deleted. I made a horde priest in her place. Cause I needed a priest there. I’m spending a lot of time on both sides now. Another Blood elf, though I’m kinda wishing I made her a troll, but she’s 21 and I don’t feel like starting over. So, all my hordies on Drenden be Blood elves. Yarrrr.

AC has pretty much given up on the raid scene till Wrath. Why? Well, between the stress, summer scheduling, our MT burning out and what not… it was just too much. Jas and I just said too much to re work. So it’s kinda sad, people have split off to keep seeing content. Which is fine by me. But the green has gotten kinda sparse and that’s kinda sad to see. But that’s life.  Edit:  Thought I put more… anywho, some will be back, others may stay where they are.  But either way, still have plenty of friend to chat and play with.  I’ll miss it, but I don’t miss the stress.

Our friend said we’re veteran raid officers now. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. ;P But it’s something!

I need to set aside some time to redo the layout of MIRL. It’s starting to get on my nerves…

Triple dots (…) seem to be very prevalent in this post. O.o Oh and I should probably update to WP 2.6.1… but it looks really difficult! I feel like I’m gonna fudge something up.

Oh, if you’ve made a comment to one of our posts for the first time and it’s never appeared… I’m sorry. I had to go through 100 spam comments like yesterday and … GAWD. How do people filter this stuff? I know there’s some sort of addon to WP (another thing I can’t seem to figure out) called Kismet? Er something, and it makes the spam go away… er something. Rarg. Any tips oh veterans of WP?

That’s all I can type for now. Time to go to work in like 40 mins so I should get some more Darkspear Troll rep grinding done.

Toodles!

My weekend was most excellent.  Flinging hapless wild boars into the middle of a bunch of bored lupus was mucho fun ^.^

Playing a psychotic pit fighter NPC was also like, the highlight for my weekend.  ZOMG it rocked.  So much so that I might make a Kindred of the East and play it with Fio in his vampire game who has a similar make up to the psycho pit fighter.

MAYBE.  Still not sure, because I’m not much of a vampire person, but KoE is a different flavor of Vamp.  We shall see.

Anywho, this post started on Monday, it’s now Tuesday, and time for me to talk about what’s been on my mind lately.

I love playing WoW with my friends.  But I’m getting to a critical point.  I think I’m starting to burn out with all this raiding shit.  Yea, I know, you’re thinking, “WTF HOW?  You only raid 3 nights a week for like 3 hours!” and yea, I do.  But I’m an officer too.  So along with the raiding, I’m stratigizing with the other officers on how to approach the new/problem boss, working with a different make up of raiders each time, getting the healers in order and giving them their assignments each raid.  Doesn’t sound like a lot when you look at it, but add on top of the whole pile the stress of “What if X or Y has to cancel last second, what then?” and you’re forced to bring an alt in that’s not prepared, or X was a tank or healer or mage (we only have 1 raiding one T.T) or something important to the raid.

The stress piles up.  I hate the stress.  I thought back in SSC/TK things were bad.  It’s just gotten worse.  And on top of all that, there’s been some differences with some people on where to take the guild progression wise.  Everyone’s got their thoughts, has loot they don’t want to leave behind, etc.  Everyone has an opinion on everything.  And I have this thing where I want to try and keep as many people happy as possible.

But it’s costing me my happiness.  I’m burning out.  I don’t even feel like logging in now.  And it sucks.

I’m not saying people are horrible, no good, very bad, er whatever.  If that’s what you’re reading into this, then you’re dead wrong.  If you’re an officer or a guildleader, you probably know all about what I’m experiencing.  It’s not fun.  I was the troupe “leader” for a while in my werewolf LARP a few years back.  Being in charge SUCKS.

We downed Azgalor for the first time ever last night.  And when one of the officers made a boo boo after some Archimonde attempts, we lost a guildie from it.  Not sure if they’re coming back.  I hope so.  But it’s like, you know, we’re human.  We have human failings.  Not everything is going to be perfect every time.  But it’s like, we took out a boss that was giving us grief for the past three weeks… and we lost a guildie.  Bad event kinda over shadows the boss killing high.  : /

I don’t usually blog about this kind of thing.  It’s that negative gossip crap that just isn’t me.  But honestly, I’m looking for advice.  Because I’m tired.  I love playing with my friends, though there are some things we’ve had to sacrifice to get where we are and I’m not even sure it’s worth it any more.  I know I want our guild to hit Illidan right in the face before Arthas comes out to freeze our butts with level 80 stuff.  It’s very DOABLE too.

What do you do?

Today’s post is gonna be one of those weirdly impromptu ones, where I sneak in time between work to write a tid bit.

Yesterday’s scheduled post ended up not happening because I’ve been working all week and haven’t had a chance to unload in all my thoughts onto Fio, so he can come back and edit this one with his own two cents (HINT) later ^.^

For now, a little bit of Whoa:

A’lar! Dead! We did it on Monday and frankly, we would have done it last week but bugginess said noooooooooo and we were DENIED our first kill. Well, no more. That makes us 3/4 TK and 5/6 in SSC. Huzzah!

Guild Woe: We lost one of our core healers on Wednesday. Now I’m of mixed thoughts on the subject. On the one hand, I can understand the desire to do more raiding. We only raid three times a week, Monday/Wed/And Sunday for about 3 hours that time. We have a smattering of other raid type things going on during the week, Kara runs, now ZA runs and the PuG Gruuls or Maggys, but the srs content, the progression content was on those three days.

So, off this person goes to raid some more, which ok, I can understand… but it still kinda hurts. Because as much as they professed to loving the guild… we never ever hid the fact that we were a casual raiding guild. Ever. This raider started out raiding only once or twice a week, but slowly and steadily worked their way into our core. Dependable, always on time, repaired and fully reagented and repaired… they will be missed. But still… it’s gonna be tough to try and replace them, especially now that we’re working on Vashj and soon to be Kael. /shrug But we’ll manage I guess. It was just… not something that we expected, and with all our Real Life crap, I know I’m slightly off kilter to have this affect me more than it should.

Guild Whoa: We did a 5 clear of SSC in one night! HUZZAH! That means Vashj all night Sunday! Here’s hoping we can get her to Phase three! Now that the SSO badge vender is up, it’s HIGHLY doable! So far our biggest problem is the Strider, but this week we’re gonna have one warlock with us and a new shadow priest, so … MOAR DOTS!

Woe: Our awesome of awesome warlock Leo tank burned out. /pout And that just sucks butt. Because while I found his Hellfiring if there was a possible wipe ways annoying as hell, he is otherwise a fun guy and a great raider. He shall be missed T.T

Whoa: Mount Hyjal on Monday. You heard meh. When our Raid Leader of awesome said if we can clear A’lar and get to the 3/4 and 5/6 in both the T5 content, we’re gonna try our hand at the joke that is Rage Winterchill.

Color me UBER EXCITED! From what I’ve read and heard so far, MH is pretty much like a 25 man version of Black Morass…. UG. But still, looks interesting. I’m playing Warcraft 3 so I can understand all this LORE! I love the lore in this game, hence why I and a friend are trying our hands at this whole RP thing… though I’m a bit out of my comfort zone because we’re horde but hey! You can’t grow if you don’t challenge yourself! ^.^

Woe: Drama. Capital D. I hates it. Wish there was an easy way around it, but there never is. I’ve been gaming for 7 years now, and doesn’t matter what the medium, it’s always there. The common denominator is as people. Where there is people, there is drama. /sigh

Whoa: We got two new recruits on Thursday and Friday. A new Shadow Priest and a new Holy Priest! /dance Both are pretty awesome people, both know their stuff. We had an impromptu Maggie’s scheduled Thursday, just to see how bad he was nerfed since 2.4 and we brought both new recruits on to see how they’d do…

Omg… Oh. Em. Gee! They nerfed Maggie BIG TIME! Like, I swear we didn’t need the 25 people there! It was amazing. We had only downed Maggie once before the patch and it was rough… timing the clickers, making sure they all stayed alive, making sure Celli stayed alive… it was hard core. Now he’s a loot pinata. Srsly. He’s also lucrative enough to kill each week, with all the goodies he drops. So another thing to consider XD

So yea, my week in a nut shell. Mostly good, some bad, but there it is ^.^

Oh, and saying hi to Dammerung last night made my night! Eventually I’ll catch B quad!

PS: Picture courtesy of WoWhead… cause Cay got a Hatchling last night! /squee!

We got TWO! Almost had the third, just one line of sight click away T.T

1.5 more to go!

/cheer

Ahhhh, Vashj pains T.T

So it’s raid time again. Wednesday nights is our SSC clear night, to prep for the Vashj attempts on Sunday.

On nights like this, organizing healing targets is a breeze. We can do Hydross and Lurker in our sleep, Leo wakes us up cause he’s a hooche, Fathom Lord is a walk in the park after the Shammy goes down, and Tidewalker while very annoying is doable.

But on nights like Sunday and Monday, progression nights, my desk is covered in notes and napkins with healing assignments and raid positions to snacks and whatever else just so happens to land there (like my cat).

I highly recommend that the raider has something handy to write stuff down on. Sticky notes are my bestest friend. These things are awesome when you might have something particular to a fight you’re learning. You can glance up from the screen really quick to refresh your mind on Phase Two area, and your sticky shows a big fat circle around “You Are Here”. That sort of thing.

Now with a title like raid prep, I bet you were waiting for some sort of in game reference. HAHAHAHAHAHAH SUCKERS! FOOLED JOO!

Seriously though, there’s all those awesome things you can do to prep in game for raid (bringing your consumables, i.e mana potions, food, elixirs/pots, being fully repaired, etc) and then there’s a bit of out of raid prep. Having handy dandy stickies = one bonus. But also, do your raid leader a favor? Read up on the strats. You may not be tackling things exactly as what you read, but at least you’ll know things like boss abilities, what to expect during phases and the like. That’s what’s most important. Let the RL worry about how things will go down. Just know what to expect. Best thing a raider can do to make things run smoother.

Yes, today is Raid day. Lovely, awesome, gut-wrenching, panic-attack inducing raid day. Figuring out who gets to come and who has to alt out is so stressful sometimes, but being a casual raid guild with lots of DeePeeEss, it’s what happens.

We use a really good system for sign ups in AC. The addon in our phpBB forums is called Event Registration by a guy named Netizen Kane, who if I met IRL I would give a big ol’ snog on the lips. Seriously this addon is awesome for raid set ups. Back in the day when AC was still trying to figure out this whole raiding thing, we used an in game addon called GroupCalender. Boy was that a disaster. GroupCalendar was a great addon for 5 mans, but it didn’t update unless people were logged on and whoever was logged in had the updated list. So suffice to say we got people who would sign up for Kara, but come raid day, the list of sign ups was all overbooked or crazy and things were just a mess.

Having people comment on a thread in the forums wasn’t always perfect either because, admin wise, it’s a lot to weed through. With everyone’s name at the top of the thread, things are cake.

At least, technically. Then there’s figuring out group synergies for the fights you’re about to experience, and that’s always rough. Some fights are AoE friendly/necessary, others are melee god sends (though so far, melee gets the shaft a lot in SSC/TK).

Then there’s Murphy. He’s such a bitch sometimes (pardon my french.) The sign up looks beautiful, people are logging on 15 mins before invites, everything seems like it’s going spectacular… then someone cancels, or a key person is missing and no where to be found. In most cases you can adapt, bring in the alts at the 15 min time before pulls, and now that warlocks can summon into instances, bringing in an emergency alt is no longer the epic time sink it used to be.

But sometimes you can’t adapt, too many people miss out, and then there’s no raid for the night. Epic bummer. If that happens, devolving into a Zul’Aman group or two is always a bonus. But people will be bummed, and for me, having people bummed sucks. So you tackle the problem right away. Round up the officers, figure out what went wrong, and from there try and correct it.

You know, for a second post, this is pretty random in structure. I’m making some kill videos, so all I can do is sit here and hum musical interludes. ^.^ I’ll try for something a bit more thought out Friday. As soon as YouNoob is done digesting the vids though, I’m posting them!

But for now, I’m curious: What does your raid leader/s do when raid has to be canceled for the night? I’d like to think that life happens all over and I wonder if other successful 25 man raiding casual guilds have off nights like we do.