Running Scared, Laying Low

May 13, 2009 at 8:48 am (Meanderings)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

So, I worry I might have to start seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go, looking for the places only they would know.

Layoffs have begun at my company and while we got the expected Calm The Troubled Waters email from the company bigwigs, I’m not so foolish as to believe that there isn’t an element of uncertainty in my future. I’ll keep my head down and do my job and hope that the spotlight doesn’t shine on me.

I know what it’s like to be unemployed for long stretches of time, I know what happened to me and my home life last time and I know that I don’t want to have to go back to that dark place.

Though, if I do get laid off, I could always just move to New Zealand.

But, to keep my mind off things, I have been planning a whole slew of new and exciting blog topics. I find that my muse is a capricious creature and I have decided that if I can create a few regularily occurring topics to blog about when all else fails, I might be able to muster up the words to say something relevant and readable.

The first series of posts I want to work on will be called “Portrait of a Raider.” I will be looking at different ‘types’ or ‘styles’ of raiders, how to recognise them, what they bring to a raid, what type of guild they work well with and what sorts of situations they don’t work well with. I have a few raider archetypes already planned, but this post is also a call for ideas and suggestions. Talk to me about some of the recurring types of raiders you’ve seen and how they’ve worked (or not) with your guild and your raiding style.

The second series of posts will hopefully hark back to my theme of examining the intersections of WoW and my life. I intend to call them “WoW! Geology!” posts and I will be looking at occurrances of geology in Warcraft, or using geology (and perhaps a smattering of other sciences) to explain and illuminate facets of Warcraft lore, maps and items. I’m open to suggestions on this topic as well. Did you seem some bit of WoW topography and wonder if it has any basis in reality? Have you seen some geology-related terms used in Warcraft and wondered just what the heck that term really meant? Do you want to know why the Venture Co. Geologists in Stranglethorn Vale shoot balls of lightning from their hands? (An unholy combination of scotch, limestone and a book of engineering jokes – known only to a few select initiates of a shadowy cabal.)

Bottom line is, work is good (though precarious) for now, raiding and recruting are doing very well, and the weather sucks bilgewater. Only amazing blog posts can come of these conditions. I can feel it.

12 Comments

I Lost on Jeopardy

April 7, 2009 at 8:51 am (Meanderings)
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

So, it looks like I was wrong.

When I got up this morning, I was able to log into my bank alt and play a little World of MakingMoneyCraft while I had my breakfast. While I’m a little relieved that the patch didn’t come today, I think I’m more disappointed.

I was really looking forward to Noblegarden!

I was also hoping that a new patch, and the new dungeon might be able to counter some of the apathy in the guild lately. It’s not exclusively my problem, it seems to be something going on in several guilds, but that doesn’t make it any more worrysome. We’re regularily running Naxx and OS with less than 25 people, and that number is shrinking every week. I was counting on the patch coming down the pipes today and injecting a little bit of freshness and excitement into raiding again.

I guess that gives me another week to farm up some more artic furs and also a bit of freedom to enjoy my Easter long weekend, but it also gives me another week to watch my guild slowly sag under the atmosphere of boredom.

Patch 3.1, you’d better be something pretty spectacular!

1 Comment

Behind Every Guild Leader …

January 13, 2009 at 9:04 am (Meanderings)
Tags: , , , , ,

So, being a guild leader is a lot like being an actor. Or maybe a politician. (Insert “is there really a difference?” joke here.)

It’s a good thing that Ventrilo has a push-to-talk button. Because it’s convenient for me to yell and scream and swear and call the raid and the boss every name under the sun and curse all the powers that be for making people so collectively stupid and lazy … and then push the magic left-control key, and in a calm, soothing, encouraging voice tell everyone to take a deep breath, step back, and we’ll rez, regroup and try the boss again.

As with any team, politicking in-guild is important. That co-worker in the cubicle next to you with the hacking cough and who insists on making every call on speaker phone and goes out at lunch and smokes really foul cigars and stinks all afternoon … yeah, he’s much more senior in the company than you are and you could never in a million years tell him that he’s the most annoying human being ever. Likewise, the enhancement shaman with the lousy spell rotation, the weirdly gemmed gear, the half-resto spec and the nails-on-the-chalkboard irritating voice comes to every raid, donates a metric assload of mats to the guild bank every week and brings some pretty sweet caster buff totems, and is not actually a bad guy, just an annoying one. You’ll never tell him either that his laugh makes you think of cats fighting in a dark alley or that his cloth warlock gear is absolutely pathetic. Sometimes, you just have to put on a nice face and smile politely.

That goes double for guild leadership. Or any leadership position.

When we talk to someone, we’re always in the spotlight. When I need to have a “hey maybe you need to shape it up a bit” talk with someone, it has to be done in the politest, most compassionate, politically correct ‘it’s not you, it’s the guild’ way possible. And it’s not always easy, but I do think that I manage it most of the time. I’m only human and it’s difficult sometimes to seperate my personal feelings about a player from my WoW-professional feeling about their raid performance.

All this niceness leaves me with a churning, burbling, seething excess of bile, however.

When I’m not online, I can sometimes be found stomping up and down the house raging about how X player did Y stupid thing in the raid last night and how I wish I could just reach through the screen and slap some sense into them. Or how badly I want to tell Joepaladin that he’s a useless drama whore and I wish I didn’t need his worthless Holy-spec carcass in the raid so damn badly.

Sometimes, it’s just me and the critters at home. The dog doesn’t have a clue what all the yelling is about, but he’s getting out of the line of fire just in case and vanishes under the couch like a shadow, the cats shrug and exchange knowing ‘oh aren’t these humans excitable creatures’ sort of looks and go back to thinking their inscrutable cat-thoughts and the parrot thinks it’s time to have a Loudest Animal in the House Contest.

Mostly though, it’s my better half who takes the brunt of my WoW-rage. He at least is a sympathetic listener, being a casual (though Horde-side) player himself. He understands concepts like gear suitability and spell rotation and aggro management and can nod sympathetically when I ramapge around the kitchen with eyes bloodshot raving about the rampant failure all around me. When I need someone to nod and go “mmm-hmm, oh, really?” in all the right places, he’s there. When I need someone to be with after crying all afternoon about someof the hateful comments that drama inevitably brings, he’s there. But, when I’m so worked up and tense and have myself wound into a right fury over some little thing and I’m just looking for any excuse to tear someone’s head off for no reason, he’s also there.

There’s a reason I call him ‘long-suffering’. When I went away two years ago for the summer and lived in a plywood shack in the arctic with another geologist, a geographer and a bear for company with 5 minutes of conversation via satphone every two weeks or so, he was patient and understanding. And this summer while I was away again living in a tar-stained, smoke-filled, 46 degree Centigrade hell, he was always there, keeping the home fires burning and giving me a home I was grateful to come back to. And almost since I started playing the game he has dealth with the abandonment by a video-game addict (me) and the stress that guild leading can lay on a person who maybe isn’t all that socially adept in the first place.

And I know it’s a lizard brain type response. If I took even two seconds to use my calm, rational forebrain, I’d see how I let the stress get to me when I shouldn’t. I’d notice that my guild is actually full of capable, competant peeople who just happen to be regular human beings who make mistakes from time to time. I’d see that I’m snarling at snapping at my better half because he’s there and I have to play nice with the guild. I’d realize that all too often I neglect our time for guild time.

We’re two individuals from a race of passionate people and that passion, that emotional fervor, extends up and down the emotional scale. Joys are more joyful, but rages are more intense, too. He’s a litte more level-headed and easygoing than I am, but we can set each other off at the worst of times. I know that my stress and emotional turmoil that can result from guild or raid issues, can easily spill over into a full-blown yelling and screaming match because he left a soggy, balled-up dishtowel on the kitchen counter.

All the enforced niceness that I have to undergo in guild (and at work too!) is an act, something that I – and all of us at times – must perform in order to keep our teams and our guilds and our society moving along properly. What that doesn’t do, however, is give me the excuse when I’m ‘offstage’as it were to act like a raging prima donna. Dealing with life’s frustrations without taking it out on the people around you is not a skill that comes easy to me, and it’s certainlysomething I need to work on. I need to be much more aware of when I’m letting guild issues put me under too much pressure and I need to be much much more aware of where and how I’m releasing that pressure.

Even I need to find time to take a deep breath, step back, rez, regroup and try the boss again.

11 Comments

You Aint Got to Tell Me ‘Bout Them Epics

December 3, 2008 at 8:57 am (Guides)
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

So, you want to be a raider, do you?

Maybe you didn’t do much raiding in BC and maybe you’ve decided that with the new expansion, now is your chance to get some serious raiding done. You’ve convinced a nice raiding guild to take you in and they’re starting to raid WotLK content.You’re eager and excited and ready to go to your very first big-boy raid! There are certainly other sources of advice out there, but, from my experiences as a Guild Leader and a Raid Leader, I’ve compiled a little list of things you need to do and to keep in mind. You want to make a good impression right? You want to be an asset to your raid and put yourself in the forefront of the competition for those limited raid spots, right? Here’s how.

See me after classDo Your Homework. When I was in University I was always told to do the assigned readings the day before the lecture. This way when I did get to my lecture, it wasn’t the first time this information was handed to me. Even if I didn’t understand everything that was going on in the readings, at least I had some idea of what to expect in class. This advice translates directly to raiding. My professors only had a short hour to get all sorts of information into my drink-addled and sleep-deprived mind. Your raid leader has about 5 minutes to explain the fight to you, depending on repop timers etc etc. So, if you’ve looked at boss fights on youtube or read boss strategies online, you might not know the fight as well as your Raid Leader does, but at least you’re not completely in the dark. Maybe you don’t know exactly what Inner Demon is going to look and feel like, but you have some concept of it and the explanation given by your Raid Leader should just be a clarification, not a full course of instruction.
Fun Fact: You might take 20 minutes to read some strategies and look at some videos. Your Raid Leader is putting in anywhere from five to 10 times that amount of time. They have to know the whole fight, every class and role, where everyone has to stand and move to and every spell that needs to be used and by whom as well as what they are supposed to be doing too. It doesn’t take much from you to make their lives easier and to show some appreciation.

don't askBring Everything You Will Need. There is nothing that makes me want to kick a guildie from the raid more than hearing “ooo anybody got any extra mana pots/buff food/water?” If you need it, bring it. Bring extra, because someone always will forget, or underestimate and run out. And you look good if you can share. Plan on buffing the entire raid, even if you’re not likely to and bring enough reagents, too. I play mostly mana users, so I can tell you that on a progression fight, where I’m expecting to wipe three times, maybe more, I will bring 10 pots per boss we’re heading to that night. That’s 5 for trash and 5 for the boss. I don’t typically go through them all, and with the new potion sickness cooldown, I will be going through even less, but I bring them anyhow. I also bring the same amout of food. I raid as both a squishy healer and a low-priority dps, so I am expecting to die anywhere from once to 5 times per set of trash leading up to a boss. And I will need buff food every time I die. And then plan for 5 wipes on the boss itself. Plan for more than you need. Because you look like a tool if you run out. And don’t always bet on there being mages. Bring your own damn food and water.
Fun Fact: Hybrid classes can expect to be used for any of their roles at any time. Shadow priests better bring some healing gear and dps warriors damn well better show up with a shield.

no welfare epicsCome in the Right Gear. Do not show up to a raid in greens. Unless it’s resist gear for a very specific fight. Don’t come in a full set of PvP gear either. There’s a reason it’s PvP gear. I get a lot of flak over my stance on this from the guild at large, but I stand by it. Yes, there are pieces of PvP gear that are really easy to get and better than raid gear until the very end of endgame raiding. I’m thinking of the druid A2 shoulders here. And yes there are times when you will need some PvP gear for a specific boss fight. Like if you need a stam boost for Najentus or the PvP trinket for Rage Winterchill. These are exceptions and not the rule! Stats on PvP gear are for PvP! Keep it there! It might be an easy way to get some epics and start out in Kara (or now Naxx) but for the love of god replace it ASAP.
Fun Fact: Not repairing your gear immediately before you get into the raid instance is the leading cause of gkicks.

is shadowform ok?Know Your Class. Do you know who the Elitist Jerks are? Do you at least have some inkling as to how to min/max and theorycraft? Have you been to maxdps lately? You don’t have to be the absolute best at your class, but you should have a working knowledge of your best spell rotation and when you should be using various abilities. Are you aware of what your raid roles may be? Yes you may be a healer but you might need to crowd control at times. Yes you may be a dps warrior but you’re going to need to offtank. Do you bring unique buffs or spells to a raid? It’s very frustrating for a Raid Leader to say “ok, you, Warlockjones, keep Malediction up please” and then getting a resounding “huh? male-what?” It’s enough to drive your Raid Leader to drink. Or kick you from the raid.
Fun Fact: You can raid very sucessfully with a non-optimal spell rotation or a non-cookie cutter spec. But be able to justify your choices. Intellgently.

Flame Wreathe! Don't move!Learn Raid Mechanics. This is the most frustrating thing to try and teach raiders but it’s supposedly the most simple. Manage your aggro. Stand in the right place. Move when you’re told to. Don’t frontload your dps. Don’t run ahead of the tank in the instance. Don’t break crowd control. It’s about being situationally aware. Know what is going on around you and act accordingly. “Sorry” doesn’t pay the repair bills so keep your head up and your eyes and ears open.
Fun Fact: If you’re surrounded by some sort of odd spell/effect/fire/lightning – move. Unless you’re told not to.

LF24MBe a Team Player. Raiding is very much about working as a team and realizing that what’s best for you isn’t always what’s best for the raid. Everyone would do leetsauce dps if the tank stood in once spot and you stood in another and pewpewed. It just doesn’t work that way. You need to be useful to the whole raid and you need to be aware and considerate of the rest of the people in the raid.
Fun Fact: Hunters, rogues and mages pay repair bills too. If it looks like a wipe, a good rule of thumb is to take it like a man and die. I’ve seen way, way too many bosses bug out because a hunter feigned or a rogue vanished. Don’t be a selfish bastard.

shut itListen to Your Raid Leader. This includes both shutting your cake hole and not talking when the Raid Leader is explaining a fight, or during a fight as well as doing what you’re told, when you’re told. In the middle of the boss fight is not the time to say “well in my old guild we just stood by the pillar and healed through it.” Your Raid Lead is leading you for a reason. If you want to talk strategy, or explain an alternate wayof doing the fight, in the raid is not the time. You’re there to get thing accomplished and you can’t do that by committe.
Fun Fact: Raiding is high stress, especially for those who are trying to make sure that 24 other people are standing in the right spot and doing the right thing at the right time. Talking back or criticising your officers and Raid Leaders in that sort of high stress environment is a good way to make sure your loot gets ‘accidentally’ given to someone else.

TLDRSo, here is the handy-dandy TL:DR summary of my Guide to Raiding Like a Pro:

1. Do your homework – knowledge is power.
2. Bring everything you will need – this means off spec gear and consumeables.
3. Come in the right gear – and make sure it’s repaired!
4. Know your class – don’t be a huntard.
5. Learn raid mechanics – de threat table’s connected to de repair bill …
6. Be a team player – there is no “I” in team, but there’s one in “gkick”.
7. Listen to your Raid Leader – if you don’t you’ll miss the call to MD onto you.

11 Comments

Stick it to The Man!

December 1, 2008 at 9:59 am (Meanderings)
Tags: , , , , ,

So, we’re giving power to the people.

Before Wrath hit, the officers and I sat down and decided on when we would start raiding again. We looked at the people we had, and the kind of players they were and what sort of play schedule they could manage while still being part of their real lives and figured that it was going to take most of them a month to get to 80. Which puts us into the middle of December. We also realized that Dec. 20th – Jan. 5th would be a complete write-off due to holidays. We then figured it would take folks close to another month to get heroics on the go and get badge gear and generally be ready to raid. Some would do it much, much faster than that, and some would be a little slower, but we had set the end of January as the time when we’d start raiding again.

This has been a problem for us.

The officers and I knew ahead of time that there were several folks who were going to try for the realm firsts and that there were folks who have a lot of time on their hands and would be able to level very quickly. We knew that there were also some who had school and work and families and the like and would be much slower. We forsaw the dichotomy this would produce and the tension that would result. And boy, were we right.

We have around 10 members now who are level 80, though only one healer. Most of them are tanks and a smattering of dps. This is not a good mix for us to raid with and anyhow and the bulk of our guild is hovering around the 75 mark, or even less so if we did start raiding now, there would be a lot of very upset people who felt they were being left behind.

But we have some very upset level 80 players right now, too.

So, on the reccomendation of one of our members, we decided to give the choice of when to raid to the guild. The end of January date that the officers set was done in order to accomodate as many people as we could, but it has begun to feel like a barrier rather than a goal. Instead of imposing this from above, we’ve decided to start raiding when enough players are ready.

However, we’ve defined ‘enough’ and ‘ready’ for them.

Enough
We will raid with two teams in Naxx, so that means we need:
4-6 tanks
6-8 healers
10-15 dps
allowing for substitutions and folks who can’t raid every night of the week.

Ready
We’re not going to step into Naxx in lolgreens and a few instance blues. We decided at the outset that Naxx was not going to be the 9-month-long wipe fest that Kara was. We will be geared and ready and we will go through there cleanly and efficiently. Initially we had vaugely said that folks needed “some blues and the right enchants” which wasn’t really stellar leadership on our part. So, we’re defining ready as having the Superior achievement. This gives our members a very specific goal to focus on and also gives a very specific method for those who are already 80 to help those who are not.

The other thing we are doing is giving folks a bit of leniency. If you have the badges to spend and purchase one of your T7 pieces, you are allowed to be short of the achievement by one slot. If you purchase both T7 pieces with your badges, you may be short of the achievement by two slots.

We will be rolling this plan out to the guild either today or tomorrow and I am really very optimistic that it will help ease a lot of the tensions. There have been two blow-ups on vent already over the differences in leveling speeds and the frustrations that it causes. (I admit it, one of them was me. I never said I was a great Guild Leader, I just said I try. It’s not the first time I’ve told someone to “fuck right off” and I’m sadly convinced it won’t be the last.) We’re really hopeful that by putting the choice into the hands of our membership that they will feel they have freedom and control.

I still think we won’t be raiding until the end of January, but at least folks will realize that was their choice and not our imposition.

4 Comments

Hanging Up the Halo

November 28, 2008 at 9:03 am (Meanderings)
Tags: , , , , , , ,

So, my priest is officially my alt now.

I waffled back and forth over the issue for the better part of a week. I was very stressed about the decision and have been stomping around the house in a state of great agitation while I weighed out the pros and cons of the choice. I always had the same thought running as a mantra in the back of my skull as each point and counterpoint of arguement vyed for attention: “is this what is best for the guild?”

Is it? Is it really?

I need a break from healing. The guild needs healers.
I want to play my hunter more than anything. I like playing my healer.
I’m a very good healer. Am I a good enough hunter?
We the officers keep telling people to play what they want to play and how they want to play. Do I get to do what I want, too?
Can I live with the guilt of knowing I’m leaving my healer and dpsing when my co-leader wants to do that too but isn’t?
What will my officers say? What will the guild say? And what will they think but not say?

I don’t know if it was just my inner turmoil or if I really was getting the cold shoulder from my officers for the first week. The first week while I logged the priest on maybe twice, and had brought the hunter to level 74. And maybe it is still my inner turmoil that is making me feel like I’m getting a frosty reception from the guild at large these days.

Am I wrong to want to have fun? Am I making up flimsy justifcations for doing what I selfishly want rather than what I should be doing as a responsible Guild Leader?

I’ve QQ’d at length to a few folks that I thought would listen, and been told the same sorts of things by each of them:
“You’re the Guild Leader, you do what you want.”
“Play what you want to play, it’s a game. You’re supposed to be having fun.”
“You can always recruit more healers.”

And my responses are always the same:
“I’m the Guild Leader. I have a responsibility to the guild before myself.”
“I have fun healing, I really do.”
“Oh? If it’s that easy, you do it.”

Now this is why I love my co-guild leader so much. She finally came to me and asked me if I was upset with her. I just about started crying. I told her that I was so worried she was upset with me and I had been sort of avoiding her because I didn’t want to make her more upset. It sounds very silly (not tomention very girly) but I think it’s a prime example of why our leadership works so well. We care about each other very, very deeply. She told me to just play my hunter and enjoy it and it was like the hand of God coming down on my soul. It was such a relief to hear it from her and for the next few days I gloried in my hunter.

Over the past few days, though, I’ve heard some grumblings from the guild that there aren’t enough healers and there won’t be enough to raid with. As well, there have been a few very pointed comments about me not being on my priest. So I made a post on our forums today and officially told everyone I will be hanging up the healing wings, at least for a little while.

I’ve seen that a few other Guild Leaders have decided to change classes and I’ve taken heart from that as well. I’ve realized that we have no officers who play dps roles, and our dps really needs some leadership. I need a change to keep the game exciting and fun and fresh for me. I want to try raiding from a different standpoint, I want to try leading from a different standpoint.

And if it doesn’t work, well I can only hope that my pride isn’t so much I can’t polish up the halo and put it back on, dents and all.

4 Comments

Where Have All the Raiders Gone?

October 23, 2008 at 10:32 am (Meanderings)
Tags: , , , , ,

So, I’m a pretty big SciFi buff. I love a good space opera and I love the more speculative stuff as well. I’m a huge fan of the classic SciFi authors like Heinlein and Clarke and Asimov of course. Right now I’m brought to mind of a Clarke novel called Childhood’s End as well as the Culture series by one of my favourite modern authors, Iain M. Banks.

In both series humankind is presented with a sort of conclusion. The purpose of their lives is taken away from them because they know that there is either an insurmountable barrier to face or they know for certain the answer to “where do we go from here?” There is a final destination, it is knowable and no longer mysterious. In both scenarios, this causes man to descend into indolence and self-indulgence. Knowing that there is no point to their goals of social evolution or scientific progress or even philosophizing, they become hedonists, living only to please themselves, and sometimes wandering aimlessly through life, or even ending it entirely.

That is what WotLK has done to my server!

Everyone seems to think that since Wrath is incoming in such a short amount of time, there is no need to do anything! People are scampering all over the world doing exploration and trick-or-treating achievements or pissing around on Alt #73548687420 or simply just not playing. I had to give a metaphorical /bitchslap to a few of my raiders who said that they weren’t planning on attending anymore raids until Wrath. WHY!? Seriously, this confuses the absolute hell out of me, not to mention how angry it makes me!

Here’s my point. When I started raiding at 60 I was so low on the allmighty dkp totem pole that I swear there were lvl 1 critters getting loot before I did. So I entered Burning Crusade with an unholy mixture of T0 and T0.5, and two or three pity blues I got in ZG runs. (Not including Will of Arlokk. You bastards. I still want my snake staff). So of course I replaced most of that shit before I even hit 62. I had crap to begin with, and the upgrades in BC were incredible. And incredibly ugly. How many other Alliance casters wore the green Wailing Caverns Druid style pants, the bright red floppy hat and that disgusting purple top until they were like 65? *shudder* However, if you went into BC with a goodly amount of T2 or T3, you didn’t replace it until you got to T4. Maybe with some D3 stuff. I know because I raided Kara with folks kitted out in their T3 and they were passing on loots.

I have not personally been on the Beta or the PTR, but I get regular reports from my raiders and officers who are. One of my bear tanks is in mostly T4 and badge rewards gear and he didn’t replace one single item until 73 on the Beta. Not one. And if you’ve been following Big Red Kitty, you know that he’s not shucking all his hard-earned gear the minute he steps foot into Northrend.

So I have to ask people why? Why are you giving up? Why are you sitting on your asses and doing nothing? All the bosses have been nerfed! Why aren’t you out there raiding now while its fun and easy and you can see all sorts of content that you’re not going to want to go back to once you hit 80? In the past three days I have gotten three pieces of T5 and I’m thrilled! I know that I will have some amazing healing gear that will take me right to Naxx. And likely well into Naxx as well. I’m having a complete blast raiding, seeing boss fights I havn’t seen, as well as feeling the freedom to try different spell rotations and specs. I don’t see how you could ask for anything more. Raiding right now is like being a kid in a candy shop. The bosses are easy. The mechanics are fun. The pressure is off so I can experiment and not berate myself too much when I don’t heal as well as I know I can. And the loot flows like water. It really does.

My guild will keep raiding. We will keep gearing folks to help them get to 80 faster, we will keep practicing raiding with each other. Fighting and healing side-by-side and learning how to be a team. We will explore boss mechanics and we will tweak and perfect our specs and our spells as we go. And we will have an incredible time doing it.

Why aren’t you?

6 Comments

Can you go home again?

October 4, 2008 at 9:15 am (Meanderings)
Tags: , , , ,

So, I’m back.

I’m done my field project for the summer, not much left to do but wrap up some testing in the lab here in the city and then off to the office to finish up the computer work. Enough to keep me busy until my Christmas holidays, but no more of the ‘out of town, living in a bush camp, working 12 hour days for 20 days straight’ that I have been doing since April. And thank God for that. I am so relieved to be done, so happy to know that I can spend some quality time here at home with my family and of course my critters. It’s a beautiful thing.

Oh, and I can raid again!

I’ve missed being with my guild. I’ve missed out on every major boss kill this summer. I was absent for Lurker, for Tidewalker and Leo, for Rage, for A’lar and Solarian. Some of those I haven’t even seen the fights for yet, let alone the boss kills. I’ve missed out on so much of the day-to-day stuff with my guild too. Folks leaving, folks joining, people’s lives changing as time passes. The family type stuff that creates the sense of community that we have and that means so much to me. I’ve been able to be present on my time off from the mine, but its been like looking at a photo album. I see a snapshot of the guild, then I leave for the better part of a month, and I see another snapshot. It’s a very saltatory connection with with flow of guild life and it’s not very fulfilling. I get news feeds from the website, and sometimes after work when I’m not too tired, but I’m disconnected now. I’ve been out of the main stream of events in the guild for so long that I’m just an addendum now, a footnote.

And it hurts. I hurts to know that my guild continued to kill bosses and have fun and make new friends and do all the wonderful things that we do, and did it all just fine without me. I feel a little like I’m a figurehead, superfluous. Someone to maybe think about from time to time, but certainly not someone who makes any sort of difference to the living, changing, growing organism that is the guild.

It’s not a heck of a lot different at home. I have been so disconnected from the things going on here that I fed the cats dog food, forgetting we had moved the food containers. My better half is so used to sleeping alone that he takes up the whole bed by habit now, and my sister has lost an incredible 25lbs since I last saw her. 25lbs! She’s a shadow of the woman she was! When I saw her it was a very graphic reminder of how much has gone on here in the city while I was up playing in the tar. It’s saddening, too. I feel almost transparent sometimes, a little like I am haunting my former life, my family, my guild.

I am making very concerted efforts to reconnect with my life here in the city. I am scheduling time away from WoW, from work, from everything just to see my family and friends and show the people that I love I didn’t stop loving them while I was away. I am trying to do the same thing with my guild, but it’s difficult. Life changes a little faster in the Warcraft world.

I am working away behind the scenes to get us ready for Lich King by cleaning out the Guild Vault and stocking up herbs. I am making lists of Achievements that I want to see our new recruits have. I am partnering people up so they can instance their way to 80 together and perhaps create some new dynamics and new friendships in our lvl 80 raids. I am trying. I am getting in as much face time as I can so folks remember me, or even get to know me all over again and realize that in a great many ways I live for this guild. I’m trying to be subtle, I’m trying to go about stepping back into leadership with a gentle touch. There’s no use me yelling and screaming and demanding that folks obey me. I need to earn that respect back and I think it will be a long road.

I know it will. I lost my temper in my first raid back because folks were jabbering over vent while my raid leader was giving orders. I yelled at someone who was not new to the guild, but had joined while I was away. And when I told him to shut up, I got told right back “No you shut up. And lick my b**** too!” Which was a sobering experience, to be sure. I’m known as the Bad Cop raid leader, and shouting at folks who step out of line, especially doing something like that is not unheard of from me. Or at least it wasn’t. It only ever worked because my raids understood I wanted my raiders to focus, do their best, and respect each other, including the raid leader. And I would not deal with anyone who was out of line. But it will take me time to re-establish that respect, that trust that my raiders have. I will need to work dilligently to ensure that they see I am a competant and dedicated raid leader and Guild Leader.

My co-guild leader and I had a big love-in when I logged back on for my first raid and that was encouraging. My officers are happy to see me back and my core team of raiders has grown, but the old familiar faces are for the most part there. I am encouraged by their support and I am optimistic that I can take this guild to 80 with their help.

As long as I can just stay put for a while!

2 Comments

Lich me!

September 18, 2008 at 7:32 am (Meanderings)
Tags: , , , , , ,

So, I have some unhappy warlocks. One of them is wearing sackcloth, moaning and pouring ashes on his head and one I’m pretty sure has gone mafioso on me. He told me that with the new expansion, he would be “looking after his boys” and “making sure they get what they want” and if not he “would be cracking some heads and capping some knees.” Now, I’m used to a little strangeness from our Shadowflame Coven. Last time I went over there to visit, they wouldn’t let me past the front door. I don’t know what they had in there but it smelled like brimstone and roses. And it was giggling …

Regardless, I dedcided it was time to figure out what exactly was causing all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I eventually got them to stop chanting in demontongue and finally worked it out that they were upset about this:

All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant “increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.

Source

Now I’ve been around the block a few times and I know full well that warlocks are not truly happy unless they’re watching things runing around, screaming and preferrably on fire. But they do get a lot of delight from complaining, and I’m pretty good at just nodding and smiling and pointing them in the direction of some helpless critter they can torment for a while.

But I think they have a point here.

I know that the changes to caster gear aren’t exactly “news” at this point, but with the announcement of a firm release date, it’s time to really start being prepared for the changes that are inevitably coming. And while I think our warlocks are overreacting a bit (typical, but what can you do?), for myself I need to be prepared as a guild leader and a raid leader for the dreaded ‘loot dramaz.’

We typically run with the EPGP loot system and while that was initially an incredible pain in the butt to implement, it works really well for us. I’m not going to brag that we don’t ever have any issues over loot, we certainly have our fair share, but EPGP seems to be the fairest system out there. Like with the dreaded dkp or even open rolls, the biggest issue we have is that folks will roll or attempt to spend their earned points on items they don’t need. We usually get around that by giving the officers the power to veto any roll. Which works …. mostly.

What I’m concerned about is how we’re going to keep loot distribution from descending into fistfights. I know for myself that at least when I tell someone I’m not going to count their roll, I can point to the stats and make a pretty good case for why. When an item is a ‘spellpower’ upgrade for everyone from shadow priests to arcane mages, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to impose that extra little bit of subjective ‘fairness’ that our vetoing lets us do. I’m wary of just slavishly applying the EPGP system and telling folks to just deal with it. Myself and my officers pride ourselves on caring very much about each guildie as an individual and showing that we were looking at more than just a number spit out from a mod was one way we showed that.

So am I being a chicken little here? Is anyone else concerned about how they’re going to deal with the new gear stats? If you’re a raid leader or a guild leader or even just a raid member, leave me a note and let me know your thoughts. I’ll be back in a bit, I can hear some odd thumping noises and I smell burning furniture, so I think our warlocks are at it again. I hope they got their summon spell right this time. Last time it took me three days and a very large bag of gold to hire a druid able to get our guild office properly exorcised, and the place smelled like burnt mistletoe for a week …

5 Comments