Mauling Your Computer: Not a Good Rage Dump

World of Warcraft is a game. An escape from reality. A way to let the stresses of real life disappear as you enter a fantasy world where you can vanquish anything that so much as poses a small annoyance to you. But WoW can also be a source of frustration, resentment, and anger at times, especially when dealing with other players. Bad PuGs can make you miserable. Bad experiences with guildies can make you wish you never logged in. And 6 hour wipefests when trying to learn that new raid boss can just plain make you want to gouge your eyes out with a spork!

So what do we do when the game we play causes more of the very same stresses we were hoping to get away from when we sat down at the keyboard? Well, today I present to you a list of 5 techniques I use to relieve my WoW-related rage, as well as a sixth that I have yet to use in WoW just yet. I list them here in order of stress levels, with the first relieving the most minor of stresses, and number 6 being a last-ditch move.

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1: Commiserate. Sometimes, when I'm in a bad group, or stuck doing something I really don't want to do, all that I need is someone to bitch about it to. For example, this past Saturday, I was in a really, REALLY crappy mood. I logged in to attend Prophecy's first night of attempts on Leotheras the Blind, after making a quick stop at Tidewalker, who for some reason just would not die for them on Friday, and whom I was told I would be tanking that day. And while I did not expect to get to tank on Leo (despite sharing with my guild the words of Karthis, who says that is one fight you want a druid to tank), I was looking forward to tanking an add, and then showing my guildies how meleeing on him is done!

Well, not only did I not get to tank Leotheras, I got the wonderful opportunity to respec to tree form for the fight. Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy healing, and have often offered to respec tree when we're a bit light on the healers (ironically, I usually get a response of "NO, we need our SuraBear!" from one or more of my fellow guild leaders). But after having been asked to tank Tidewalker, I had my hopes set on main tanking at least one raid boss (and admittedly I was secretly wishing for two), and so going tree that day was a huge letdown.

In order to make it through the 6 hour raid without completely losing my mind, I turned to my fellow feral druidess and pretty much just bitched about the situation all night. She's generally willing to lend a furry ear, and that day I needed to chew it off. So I spent much of the night complaining about how "I could have picked him up that time no problem", or "I wouldn't be having any problem whatsoever killing MY inner demons". And I made it through the night with a grimace on my face, and the bittersweet realization that my sacrifice (and the similar sacrifice made by our guild's ret paladin) made it possible for the raid to even happen, and because of it we have another notch in the raiding belt (Yep, we downed him, first night of attempts.) And just in case my guildies read this (I know a few of you do), I have nothing against that, or any of our prot warriors, he did a great job, especially for his first time main tanking on a 25-man boss.

Oh, and for the record, I was able to completely OBLITERATE my inner demons when they popped up. Of course, I did spec 19 points into balance specifically for the fight *grin*.

2: Play an Alt. Often times, just going and doing something completely different can be just what the doctor ordered. If your steamvault run ended prematurely because the DPS just couldn't be arsed to kill Thermaplugg's repairmen, maybe you need to switch to your level 35 arms warrior for a bit and smash some faces (Though you might not want to do it in Gnomeregan, in that particular case). Playing the same character your problems popped up on can simply serve as a reminder of the stresses, and if the problem was with guildies, playing on an unguilded alt can be the only way (shy of not playing WoW, of course) of distancing yourself from the situation.

3: Write about it. Sometimes writing about bad things that happen to us helps us get them out of our heads. Of course, that's easy for me to say, I have a blog that I can fill with my rants and ravings. But even if you cant publish what you write (and to be honest, sometimes I write things here and DON'T publish them because I don't actually want them to be seen by others), just writing stuff down (or typing it out) can be a great stress reliever. Of course, you'll probably have to wait until AFTER whatever you're doing to write about it, but at least that way you wont ruminate about it for days.

So, remember that Leo raid Saturday? Well, I left out one thing before. As it turned out, we didn't have any Prot paladins available for the raid. We probably could have asked one of our other pallies to tank it, but we were tight on healers as well, and Tidewalker is sketchy even with perfect raid balance for us. Now, we DID have one Prot paladin online, in fact our best geared one. But he was raiding Karazhan. With another guild. On a raid night. Which is completely AGAINST OUR GUILD'S RULES (you can raid Karazhan with whoever you wish, but if you're raiding on a progression raid night, you're raiding with us). So even if I WASN'T a tree at the time, I wouldn't have gotten to tank the fight I was asked to tank, because someone just had to spend a progression day farming badges. In the excitement of our guild first, we all kinda forgot about that paladin, and so the situation hasn't, to my knowledge, been dealt with just yet, but it will be.

And yes, in a way, this post is just an excuse to bitch a little bit about Saturday. But hey, if me disseminating useful information to the masses gives me some psychotherapy, so be it!

4: Just walk away. I've been known, once or twice, to simply walk away from a group or discussion in WoW if its really starting to piss me off. Generally, if I'm bailing on a group, I'll try to make up some excuse to leave, or will fake a disconnect, but occasionally, I play it straight and tell the offending group/guild exactly why I'm signing out. If continuing to play the game in any capacity is going to just keep stressing you out, this is probably your best option.

One time when I did this, I really did it HARDCORE. Some of you may remember me mentioning in my second blog post ever how I left one guild, Patronus Veritas, in the middle of a Molten Core run. Even back then, I was a bear-specced druid (and yes, unlike now, bear and cat specs used to be quite separated). I was THE druid tank in PV. And for the most part, I was accepted as such, allowed to bid on most druid tanking gear (against the rogues, of course), and even occasionally getting thrown a bone and allowed to tank something minor (ZG, corehounds on the packs, Garr. . . ). Keep in mind, at the time bears were rather suboptimal tanks, and popular WoW culture deemed all healing classes used only their heal buttons, especially on raids.

Well, this one MC raid REALLY pissed me off. I had been kind of down about druids being pigeonholed as healers, and once we got to Garr, I quite happily switched into my tanking set (actually, I had it on for the trash too, one of PV's tanks was rather unable to build aggro, so I often built threat on his Giants "just in case"). And. . . the raid leader told me to DPS, and one of the fury warriors to put on their tanking set! WTF? I pointed out the stupidity of that decision to my class lead and he brought up my concern to the officers, but to no avail. It made no difference that the fury warrior was not tanking specced, and I was not DPS specced (and had tanked Garr's adds just fine many times before), he was going to tank it, and I was going to DPS. Alright, fine, whatever.

Fast forward to Sulfuron Harbinger, another boss with a bunch of adds to tank. Once again, the raid leader puts the fury warrior on tanking duty, and has me go catform. That was it, the straw that broke the grizzly's back. As if I had practiced it a thousand times before, my hands glided over my keyboard. Not to curse at the raid leader. Not to berate the guild. Just seven simple keystrokes: /gquit[Enter]. Actually, I think I left the raid group and clicked my hearthstone before typing, so it kinda came out as a one-two-three punch of "Hey, Surania left the group. . . no wait, she left the instance. . . no wait, she left the GUILD." And while the way I went about things absolutely reeked of Drama Llama, I honestly never resented my decision, and ultimately feel that leaving the guild really was the best thing for me.

5: Take a WoW vacation. Yep, sometimes things get so bad you just want to leave it all behind. But don't go and close your WoW account just yet. Make a conscious decision to not play Warcraft AT ALL for a while. A day, three days, a week, maybe even a month (in which case you may actually want to cancel your account just to save a little money). And stick to whatever period of time you decide on, even when the WoW bug eventually bites you again. Time heals all wounds, distance makes the heart grow fonder, and all that crap (hey, just 'cause its crap doesn't mean its not true!)

I can think of two such vacations I've taken. And to avoid delving into guild drama crap, suffice it to say both times were due to constant and escalating guild drama. And both times, I was GM of Prophecy. I don't know if something deep inside of me thought that my disappearing due to the drama would help solve it, but I figure when someone who was as quiet and laid back of a leader as I said something to the effect of "You guys are all just starting to piss me off, so I'll be back in a week", it might at least highlight the ridiculous, unproductive nature of petty arguments and squabbles. And yes, I know that I was in effect adding to said drama, but ultimately I needed the breaks anyhow, and both times I came back with a new found desire to play.

*: Delete your characters and cancel your account. Can I have your stuff? No, but seriously, even if you do get to the point where you just don't see yourself wanting to play ever again, don't be a tool and sell all of your gear and delete your characters. If you do change your mind later on, you'll just kick yourself for it, and really what does doing that accomplish? The only possible reason I would even come CLOSE to accepting for deleting your characters is if you're leaving the game in an attempt to break yourself from WoW addiction. But if you don't have the willpower to stay away after making a conscious decision to, perhaps you need to see a professional.

Continue reading 'Mauling Your Computer: Not a Good Rage Dump'

Somebody Set Up Us the QQ Bomb

So, obviously there was no interface post this weekend. Turns out the missus had the weekend off from babysitting, so I was playing with her most of the weekend. Lesson learned: no more announcing posts ahead of time. Lets just say the UI post will be coming "soon".

Anyhow, today I want to expand on a post Matticus made recently on Leaving Your Guild the Right Way. While he looked at it from the angle of somebody who wants to leave the guild on good terms, or at the very least someone who doesn't want to burn all the Bridges of Madison County, I want to discuss a very different type of departed guildmate. Someone I have come to refer to as the /Gquit Bomber.

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A /Gquit Bomber is a person who has a score to settle, either with individual guild members, or the guild as a whole. More often than not, the target of their anger is one or more of the guild officers, but it may also be someone who benefitted from what they see as a great injustice. Such injustices range from loot disputes to raid invite favoritism to feeling slighted by guildmates, to pretty much anything you can think of. Sometimes the concern is a valid one, other times it is merely the perception of the Bomber. The only unifying factor is that, whatever the injustice, it is something important to the Bomber. In fact, sometimes people who the guild kicks out turn into the worst Bombers of them all, your turning them away being the biggest testament to your unfairness EVER!

Now, not everybody who feels they're being opressed in some way will become a /Gquit Bomber. Some may stay and work out their problems. Others will at least show some degree of maturity and simply quit the guild. Bombers, however, decide to make their leaving personal. Its not enough to simply leave the situation behind them and start fresh elsewhere, they have to make their former guild suffer for the criminal way they were treated.

The most effective way for a Bomber to hurt your guild is by getting other members, especially active raiders (if you're in a raiding guild) to leave, or to at least hinder the recruitment of new members. The former is often done by direct contact with those they left behind. New members, fringe members, and those who have experienced similar treatment (but perhaps not considered it unfair at the time) are the most likely targets. Often times, this can go on unbeknownst to the guild's leadership, at least for a while. Eventually, word usually gets out that somebody has been trying to get people to leave the guild, either due to someone ratting the person out, or sometimes due to another member following in the footsteps of the first.

Hindering new recruitment, however, is something most often carried out on the wonderful morass known as the Blizzard Realm Forums, though in-game smear campaigns have also been known to occur, especially in the equally murky swamp of the trade channel. If you have a recruitment thread, expect to see it bombarded with haterade. Either way, you're likely to also get a few new forum threads dedicated to how horribly your guild treats its members, written either by the member themself, or their favorite level 3 troll alt.

Now, if you're a member of a fairly small guild, you may never have to deal with people like this. As your guild gets bigger, however, these folks tend to get more frequent, and the fecal matter they stir up tends to get more and more. . . fragrant. The reason for this is twofold: smaller groups tend to be more tight knit, and thus people are more likely to work out their problems with their close friends, and bigger groups usually have bigger reputations, and for a Bomber to smear a guild's reputation, there needs to be one there TO smear.

Now, lets just say that you currently have a mad Bomber or two on the loose, like Prophecy does at the moment. What do you do? Well, while a guild's response has to be tailored to the person you're dealing with, as well as the guild's philosophies and reputation, the first thing you need to do is to treat this person like any other forum troll. . .

DO NOT FEED THE TROLL!

This first step is crucial, just don't respond to them at all, at least initially. This is because the bomber can't do much, if any, damage to your guild on his own. He, like any other forum troll, relies on a tactic of baiting you into responding, and then making you look bad via your own response to them. A troll that nobody responds to is about as effective as a missile without a warhead.

Now, the problem is, in a guild large enough to bother attacking like this, its very hard to keep all of your members from feeding the troll. And even if you do succeed at controlling your guild's members, SOMEBODY on the forum is going to bite on it. So while its good for the general guild membership to just leave the situation alone, guild leadership should generally be ready to combat the problem carefully (though completely ignoring the issue has been known to have some success with certain guilds).

One important thing to remember is that you're dealing with somebody who doesn't really have anything to lose. Your guild's reputation is on the line, but the Bomber isn't likely to have a reputation to speak of (or if they do have one, it is usually not a good one). Dont let them bring you down to their level, that'll just be a victory for them.

As for how to actually respond to the Bomber . . . the only hard and fast rule that comes to mind is to never fight a battle you dont know how to win, and dont ever try to lie your way out of it. Sometimes its better to ignore the troll, even when you're directly responding to them. For example, if their big argument is that there is loot favoritism, and member X has won 6 pieces of gear in the last two weeks, and member X really DID get those 6 pieces of gear, dont lie and say they only got 2 pieces, admit they got all 6, but explain why it wasn't due to favoritism. Maybe that person was the only one who needed any of the stuff. Maybe the people he was competing with on the loot got together, realized he needed all that stuff more than they did, and voluntarily stepped aside to get a guildie geared up. If you use a loot council, explain. . . well, honestly, if you're using a loot council, get used to these sorts of things *shrug*.

I guess the ultimate truth here is that you dont have to win any arguments to beat a hostile /Gquit Bomber. All you have to do is defuse their ammunition. Sometimes you can do so by pointing out the flaws in their perception. And honestly, sometimes your best bet can be to admit mistakes (if their concerns are legitimate). After all, what better publicity can there be for your guild than showing how guild leadership listens to the concerns of its (ex) members and addresses them. Just make sure you dont come off as giving in to terrorist deamands, though.

Oh, and if Prophecy's current /Gquit-Bombers-At-Large happen to read this, give it up, trolling a guild made up of forum trolls is just plain stupid. Continue reading 'Somebody Set Up Us the QQ Bomb'

Why I Wish I Couldn't DPS

WARNING: This is a long, whiny rant. The contents of said rant can easily be construed to be anti-prot-tank. I assure you, however, that I have great respect for my plate-wearing compatriots, and do not wish any of them ill will. I'm just jealous.

The relationship between Protection Warriors, Protection Paladins, and Feral Druids is an interesting dynamic. It seems that we all have our little, or not so little, reasons to be jealous of one another: Warriors tend to wish they had more of the AoE threat generation of Druids and Paladins, Druids tend to be jealous of the plate tanks' lack of a cap on their primary defense stats and ability to become crush immune, and Paladins tend to wish they had better mana regeneration while offtanking. But I personally am jealous about something very odd, something you wouldn't even think was a problem. Something that has irritated me for a while, and I'm sure is at least partially rooted in my own guild's culture, which I admittedly was a large part in the creation of.

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I'm jealous of the fact that Plate tanks' specs dont afford them the ability to deal good damage with a simple change of spec. Funny, especially considering all the flack we feral druids caught when the feral tree was "streamlined", and the division between a bear spec and a cat spec was basically reduced to . . . well, nothing at all.

Why in the world would the ability to do damage be considered a disadvantage? Well, essentially, its a watered down version of the Pre-Burning Crusade mindset of "If you have a heal button, you're a healer". Except these days, while feral druids aren't often expected to heal (At least in my guild), we ARE expected to switch to a DPS role whenever we aren't needed as a tank. And we're expected to be pretty good at it, too.

Now, don't misread this. I can do DPS. I can do pretty good DPS, as a matter of fact. I just dont particularly WANT to.

Now, I'm in an awkward position to be making this complaint. My guild loves my tanking. Many DPSers often tell me that, when I'm tanking a run for them, they get to basically ignore the threat meter and go balls-to-the-wall. And many healers have told me that I'm their favorite tank to heal, because its so easy (by which I assume they mean my personal stat balance makes me easy to heal, though I suppose it could also refer to my ability to keep the DPSers from being hit). And I know that, short of the few raid encounters out there that CANT be maintanked by a Druid (Reliquary of Souls, Illidan, etc), my guild wouldn't hesitate for a moment to put me in the main tank spot for any of our raids.

. . . unless our main tank is there. Now, we dont OFFICIALLY have a main tank, but everybody knows that 99% of the time, if this particular warrior is in a raid, he'll be the one on the named boss, and he'll be the one tanking Skull on trash. He's our best geared and best skilled warrior, and has tanked guild first after guild first after guild first for us. And by all means, he certainly deserves the credit he gets for what he does for our guild. But I really envy him, because I could never aspire to have that primo spot due to my class' mechanics.

The heart of the issue is this: Raids need multiple tanks. Two for 10-man raids, and 3-5 for the 25-mans. Bosses, on the other hand, tend to require one primary tank, and maybe a couple of additional tanks to handle odd jobs like picking up adds during Lurker's Submerge or eating Hateful Strikes on Gruul. Every once in a while, the "Extra" tanks get to do a slightly higher profile job, like tanking adds on Maulgar, or tanking Moroes when the main tank gets gouged. And even more rare are the occasions where you actually need two main tanks, like on Bear Boss or Netherspite.

So, because of this discrepancy between trash and bosses in terms of needed tanks, its natural that some will need to step aside and perform other roles on boss fights. And when it comes down to it, Prot Warriors are the worst option for who to pull. Not necessarily because they're the best tanks, but because they're the worst at filling in other roles. Relegating a Protection Warrior to a DPS role is like . . . well, I can't even come up with a good metaphor right now, but the general rule is Prot warriors do horrible DPS. Prot pallys aren't all that good at it, either.

So, the obvious choice becomes for the feral druids to strap on their kitty gear and shred the backside of the boss. After all, not only do bear tanks have a good talent selection for doing DPS, they also have the advantage of having the gear for it, since most druid tanking gear is actually hybrid tank/DPS stuff with strength and agility galore. Faced with the option of having a plate tank doing halfassed DPS while the feral druid tanks, or having the feral druid doing 80-90% of a full-on DPSer's DPS while the plate tank tanks, its pretty obvious which is better in terms of overall success of the encounter.

And even if you DO need the druid to tank on an encounter, often fights involve killing off adds which, once dead, allow the tanks for those adds to switch from a tanking role to a DPS role. Once again, the feral druid ends up relinquishing their tanking role soon, tanking the first or second add to die so that they can be freed up to switch to cat form and do DPS. After all, like I just noted, a feral druid's tanking gear is often 1/2 to 2/3 DPS gear as well, while a paladin or warrior is going to be stuck in tanking-focused gear trying to contribute damage. And again, you want a warrior to be on that last mob to die, because even paladins, while stuck in bad gear for it, can at least equip their healing weapon and shield and contribute that way if healing starts to wane.

So basically, what happens is that warriors, while no longer the only accepted tanking class, maintain the status quo of being the best tanks, but not necessarily because they ARE the best, instead getting the coveted main tank position because they lack the utility and flexibility to perform other roles.

And now, for the part where I futilely call for blizzard to change the mechanics of the game. First of all, make it possible for Prot warriors and Pallys to do decent DPS with their specs. For that matter, let ALL specs of all classes do reasonably good, though not top-notch, damage. And second, do what you did for the healers recently, and make defensive stats on plate gear also somehow boost the ability of the plate wearer to do damage. That way, maybe feral druids like me wont feel so bad about asking to get our share of the limelight every once in a while.

Yeah, go figure, I write a long article detailing how I envy warriors, and then I conclude it by wishing for BUFFS for them. Did I mention I'm insane?

Continue reading 'Why I Wish I Couldn't DPS'

Looking for Group == Looking for Repair Bills

To your right, you will see the makings of your average. . . or perhaps even ABOVE average, PuG run on Steamwheedle Cartel. I'm pretty sure the guy on the left is a 20/21/20 Druid, and the one on the right is a mage wearing a set of matched gray clothes. Toss in a Shaman who swears he can tank everything, A warlock who cant stop tossing Seed of Crowd-Control-Breaking, and just for the sake of headaches, I'll throw myself in there on my hunter. Oh, wait, actually, I think I had that exact group last thursday.

It amazes me how BAD people can be at playing their class, it really does. Yesterday I, on my trap-focused (Read: Not DPS optimized) hunter, Kibler, I ran a regular mechanaar and ended up doing over 48% of the total damage for the group. I wish I had taken a screenshot of the SWStats screen at the end. The TANK did nearly 20%. I think our other DPSers could be summed up in one brilliant comment by the warlock in the group: "I was wanding because I want to conserve my mana".

Dear Warlock,

It has recently come to the attention of the Shadow Council of Dalaran that you are in dire need of De-noobification. In order to rectify your current situation, we must now insist that you follow one of two pre-selected protocols:

1) Visit your local Warlock Training Officer (WTO) and attend the 5-second training course on Life Tap. Upon conclusion of this training, please place your new Life Tap button in a convenient place on your hotbar, and learn to love it.

2) Send the aforementioned WTO your Shadow Council membership card and badge in the mail (or, if desired, we also accept Imp Deliveries). Upon surrender of your membership paraphernalia, please log out, delete your character, and cancel your World of Warcraft account.

We apologize for this inconvenience, however, we cant afford to have incompetent warlocks representing us.


Twistedly Yours,
The DSC

Its more than just incompetence on the server, though (And dont get me wrong, there are also plenty of COMPETENT players on the server, but they're rare to find outside of guild runs). My biggest beef as of late is the insane lack of TANKS on our server. Any tanks, even the incompetent ones. I estimate I've sat on the LFG channel for 60 hours since Kibler hit 70. In that time, I've successfully run TWO instance runs. I've gotten probably 20 groups, but all of them end up the same:

[4. LookingForGroup] [Kibler]: LF1M Tank for _______, PST

Now, I blame this partially on Blizzard for changing class balance every time they change group size (20% tanks for 5-man and 10-man instances, but only 8-12% tanks in 25-man raids). But what really boggles my mind is that people dont try to fill in the need. Hell, even the other FERAL druids wont tank on this server, they all claim "Oh, I'm cat specced, I cant tank". Bull shit, cat spec hasn't existed since 1.12, I should know, I was there as a Bear-spec (11/33/7, or as I called it "1 1337 Bear Tank"). All of the paladins on the server are Holy, most of the druids are Resto (Amazingly, no shortage of healers for PuGs. . . just for Raids), and all of the warriors are Arms/Fury. But alas, as I already mentioned, PuGgers are idiots on this server, and thus probably cant wrap their brains around the idea of respeccing in order to gear up faster. So, we all sit in LFG, waiting to jump on some poor, unsuspecting tank that wanders in.

Actually, a couple days ago, I decided to be just that sucker on Surania, after giving up all hope of ever getting a group on Kibler. And doing so made me realize why I never noticed the poor PuG quality before: A good tank can cancel out a LOT of bad play by the rest of the group. My favorite moment from that day was at Warlord Kalithresh in The Steamvault (nonheroic). I had been tanking the instance in my DPS gear (In which I still have 25k armor, 12k health, and my dodge jumps up to about 50% unbuffed), but decided to switch to my tanking gear for the last fight. Turns out it was the best decision I ever made, the DPS failed to kill the first fishtank in time, causing the boss to enrage early in the fight. Which wouldnt have been a problem, except I guess the healer had gotten bored and decided to DPS the boss a bit. . . while he had his spellshield up. . . at the same time. Oh, look, a big red boss, and there's an angel in the corner over there.

Amazingly enough, I managed to keep myself vertical long enough for us to kill off the second fishtank and the boss. I owe my life to a combination of BearVasion,Frenzied Regeneration (One of the few times I think it actually made a difference), Improved LotP procs, and everybody's favorite toy from the 2.3 patch, my potion/CCF macro. I think I ended the fight with about 1.5k health, and about 4 amazed group members. That was a fight I wont forget for a long time, I think, ranks right up there with the time I tanked Magmadar in my MC healing set (After both warrior tanks went down) way back when.

The kicker? Despite the headaches they cause, I still recommend EVERYBODY, regardless of gear and experience level, go on a PuG run at least once a month. PuGs offer a unique challenge, especially the bad ones. They make you think about what you can do to survive, or at least minimize your losses, when faced with an unexpected challenge. The skills you learn in PuGs are the skills you use in fights like Prince Malchezaar, or High King Maulgar, how to deal with it when the shit hits the fan and your backs are up against a wall. And if you have these skills, you can pull off some incredible saves.
Continue reading 'Looking for Group == Looking for Repair Bills'

And to follow it up. . .

I dont expect to be having many two-post days, but its kinda silly to have a blog with only one, rather boring introduction post in it. So instead, there shall be TWO boring introduction posts, this one a bio-in-brief regarding my WoW Guild history. Be warned, this is a long one, as I've been playing for nearly 2 years now, and I'm not known for being short-winded. I promise, next time I'll post about something more interesting and less. . . journalish.

I started playing in. . . late March or early April, I guess, of 2006. I had finally gotten fed up with D&D Online and figured that any other game out there had to be better (Though, in retrospect, even DDO was better than Lineage II). So I picked up a copy of WoW, installed it on my machine, and hoped for the best.

Before even buying the game, I had done some research to try to figure out just what I wanted to play. Now, before WoW I only ever played casters. But I was toying with the idea of trying out this whole melee thing this time around, just for a change of pace. So, having come to the conclusion that I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do, I rolled a Druid, figuring a hybrid class would let me explore all the options. Why a female, and a Night elf? Well, I have a sort of stock RP family I carry from game to game, and Surania (The personification of my fiancee) was the closest fit for a druid (She's the reason we have most of our 8 pets). And since Surania is a high elf in her purest form, Night Elf was a much better fit than Tauren.

As with most games I've played, I quickly got addicted to WoW. And before long, I found myself in my first WoW guild, the . . . Twilight Congregation, I believe we were called. An RP religion, but they were recruiting (As most guilds were, since SwC was only 2 weeks old at the time), and I didn't know any better. It wasn't long before I encountered my first major guild drama, the guild's GM and second in command both deleting their characters, having not even bothered to transfer guild leadership, instead leaving a note to the members to "Make Surania the Guild Leader". . .

Now, first of all, I didn't WANT to be the head honcho. I was still exploring a new game. And my one experience with guild mastery in the past (reviving The Codex of Wisdom in an obscure game by the name of Ashen Empires, originally Dransik) failed horribly. I did what I could to salvage the guild (Starting with Petitioning the GMs to assign me leadership of the guild, as deleting a guild master character leaves the guild paralyzed), but after a few weeks, I gave up, and urged the remaining members to do likewise, as the guild was truly a sinking ship.

I had reached level 45 or so by that time, and had been shopping around for a raiding guild anyhow, so it wasn't long before I joined my second guild, and my first "Raiding Guild", The Phoenix Order. This is also where I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted, of all things, to be a tank, as I met my first dedicated Feral Tank, Charle. I never got to see him in action, unfortunately, but his mere existence gave me hope that it was possible even in a gaming culture that discouraged "offspecs". Actually, I never got to see TPO in action at all, as the guild was having a hard time recruiting raiders, and ended up being absorbed . . .

I think I was the last TPO member to actually join the guild that absorbed us, Patronus Veritas, but I did eventually follow the crowd. I dinged 60 while I was in PV, and did most of my Pre-expansion raiding with them. Mind you, the extent of my pre-expansion raiding experience was clearing most of ZG and AQ20, and reaching farm status on Ragnaros. And, while the guild let me collect feral tank gear, it was rare that I actually got to tank, especially in MC, since after all, Warriors were the only viable option for tanking (Despite the fact that I could tank circles around at least one of our warrior main tanks).

I was content with the guild for a while, understanding the culture that surrounded their decision to not let me tank much, and finding sneaky ways to flex my tanking muscles in unofficial capacity, but after getting told to DPS on both Garr and Sulfuron Harbinger in one MC run, while a DPS warrior was forced to offtank on those fights, I got pissed off and, in a fit of Emo, /gquit, hearthed, and logged off. . . right before Sulfuron was pulled. I still maintain friendships with many members of that guild (in fact, a few old members are now members of Prophecy), but I refused to raid with a guild who would put in a DPS spec warrior to tank while a tank spec druid did melee DPS (Remember, pre-1.12, cat and bear druid specs were rather different).

Anyhow, after a week or so, I decided to join the Blades of Oblivion, after an old paladin tank friend from the TPO days convinced me to join him. I figured if they let him tank, they'd let me tank too. And I was right. My first week there, I got to tank the Ossirian fight in AQ20 (A fight which PV still hadn't successfully done, despite having Ragnaros on farm). Mind you, I did it in my resto gear on accident, but we killed him anyhow. Alas, it was only another week before the guild was literally split in two, the split happening due to the Guildmaster's extremely harsh, militaristic leadership style. My paladin friend stayed loyal to the guild, but I personally had to side with the rebellion on this one, as I had already been contemplating leaving because of the GM (whose name escapes me, I guess I finally purged my mind of him completely).

The mass exodous led to the formation of a new splinter guild named. . . yep, you guessed it, Prophecy. We ended up with something like 15 members initially, but before long grew large enough to run the 20-man raids. Despite only having been with my guildmates for a week, I was elected druid class lead for the simple reason that I was the only druid in the original roster (That, and I tend to be a very likable guy I guess). We mostly ran ZG, and were known on the server for our half guild-half PuG runs. After a few months though, we started running into problems. People were getting burned out on ZG. Others were just not raiding because TBC was going to be released soon. And the biggest blow of all. . . in early December, 2006, our Guild Master mysteriously disappeared.

We all seemed to pretty much avoid the purple elephant in the middle of the room, and our membership slowly dwindled. By Christmas, we were down to maybe 15 members (off of a high of 35-40), and we were pretty much dead in the water. Not wanting to see the guild die of attrition, I stepped up to the plate and actively worked with the rest of the remaining guild membership to rebuild. The first step was to get the title of Guild Master into the hands of one of our members. . . and since I was spearheading this rebuild, and had prior experience in dealing with the GMs on such issues (From TC), I got stuck with the title of Guild Master. Not wanting to be the head honcho, but not wanting the guild to die either, I accepted the position, but under the condition that the guild's structure change to that of a Tribunal, with one of our warriors taking the second "GM" position, and a third to be filled later. We also changed over from having 8 class leads to having 4 "Role Leads", one for healers, one for tanks, one for melee, and one for ranged. Eventually we had one of our paladins take that third Guild master slot, and we gradually re-bolstered our numbers and ventured into Karazhan.

Around the middle of last year, we decided it was time for a restructuring of the guild, as most of our official positions had very vague responsibilities, and we tended to step over each other when getting things done. We ended up going with a 1 GM, 4 officer system, with each officer having a specific area of expertise (Raid Organization, Loot Rules, Recruitment, and Public Relations), and I gratefully stepped down as GM to become the guild's Loot Master, with the Paladin GM taking the helm.

I thought I was out of the GMing business for good. . . but I was wrong. A few months later, the Guildmaster left us, and the reins were dropped in my lap. But I went along with it, and led the guild up until last week, when I finally got to (well, was asked to, mostly due to my inability to be around during peak play hours) pass on the reins to another officer, retaining my duties as Loot Officer. Can't say it was a bad run, though, I got to take a lot of credit for the progression of a bunch of GREAT people who, while not the most progressed guild in the world, had as of the time of the transition downed two bosses in Serpentshrine cavern and ALL of the T4 instance bosses (Including Magtheridon).

In a way I miss being the GM, but at the same time I'm relieved to be rid of the pressure of holding the reigns. Never been much for being the boss, I prefer middle management. Which isn't to say I wouldn't do it again if my guild needed me. . . I just hope that day doesn't come.
Continue reading 'And to follow it up. . .'