Archive for the “raids” Category

Ah drama. How we loathe it. Well we like watching it as long as no one we know is involved, including ourselves. But once it touches us, it’s kinda hard to get rid of it. Once upon a time ago, I was a guild leader in another game. It was formed to be casual friendly and full of people that were drama free. We had a couple of people that might go for some drama, but as a whole, they were kept in check. Within the guild we rarely had fights over loot (actually I can’t even remember one instance of loot fighting), and almost all of the “drama” was directed towards external influences, like people who trained mobs onto others for fun. Yep, in a pre-WoW world, that’s how some people got their non-PvP kicks (morons). No we weren’t perfect: we had spats with each other, names were occasionally called, but over all, we were a pretty good group of friends.

Cut to today’s WoW: yes, I read WoW Insider and yes, I read the weekly guild drama recaps. Some of the time I giggle cos it’s so silly, and sometimes I just sigh cos it’s so pointless. But for the most part, I read them with a sigh of relief that “it’s not me”. But then I have a brush with the drama llama and I’m reminded to not get cocky. That it happens to everyone and when you least expect it.

The problem with raiding with another guild as a guest is that sometimes drama over loot happens. We’re all human. We all want that “omg shiny!” item. Hey, I admit it: I’ve had my moments of avarice and loot whoring over the smallest thing. Hell, I have the Baron’s Cloak from Strath still in my bank as a “war trophy” (god I hated him). The group The Boyfriend and I are running with is doing okay in SSC and TK. The whole time I’ve run with them, I’ve never seen anything that made me stand up and put my name in for loot when they’ve called for loot council. Wednesday night that changed when I got the Rift Stalker Gauntlets. Last night, Bands of the Celestial Archer dropped off of TK trash. As I was still wearing Stalker’s War Bands, once again, I figured wth and tossed my name in. I was given them, but apparently that caused drama with some people in the guild. At this point, there’s little that I can do. I put my name in, they checked my gear. But, to make peace, I now have an alt in their guild, as well as The Boyfriend. It’s light drama, and something that’s handled, but it’s still drama. ::sigh::

So how do you handle inter-guild raiding loot drama? Avoid it and not take anything? But then you gimp yourself and not help the raid which means there’s no point to you taking a spot in their raid. Ignore any snarking that occurs? Never been fond of the hide the head in the sand approach (even if I occasionally practice it). Confront it headon? Well then that’s where fights can break out. Yeah so not happening.

I will say this: I’ve deliberately not taken loot before if someone else rolling on it needed it more. I’ve waited and checked others’ gear before putting my name in. I try to be a good guest when I’m not in a group with my guild. So I toe a fine line: being a good guest, getting geared up, not gimping myself but trying to not step on toes. ::sigh::

Tonight? I get interviewed by Breana and Fimlys for a podcast after hopefully doing Kara. Tomorrow, I’m off with friends for an evening of Real Life fun. Sunday, Mount Hyjal! Monday, … I pass out. >.>

Tuesday night’s raid, we were all over the place. Attempts were taken at Al’ar and while we did great on Phase 1, Phase 2 was… well… not so great. After 2 hours at it, with everyone getting more and more frustrated, we pulled out and went to go kick Void Reaver’s butt nicely before we called it an evening.

Last night, we waterwalked over to the Leo trash in SSC, skipping Hydross and Lurker. Once we got to Leo, we had the same thing happen there that had happened at Al’ar: messy, all over the place, and once we got Phase 1 over with, complete chaos. But that last attempt at him, something happened to the raid. You could feel it. Everyone was ticked, since the previous week they had one shot him. He was mocking the raid. This was WAR. Everyone snapped into focus, and we had a great kill with just seconds left on the enrage timer.

For loot, this guild runs something I had not come into contact with before running with them: Loot Council. To me, it’s not better or worse than other distribution methods. It’s just a different method. Every method has the chance to be abused, so you just shrug and go with it as long as it’s being handled fairly. Last night, for the first time since I started raiding with them, I saw something I wanted. There were 3 others there who wanted it and I figured they’d get it before me, but I tossed my name in and linked my gear it would replace as requested. I think I just about fell over when I got it.

So now, Siana’s the proud owner of Rift Stalker Gauntlets. I’ve already regemmed to bring my hitcap back down to max instead of way over max, and gained quite a bit doing so. I just have to get them enchanted tonight before raid and I’ll be all set.

Here’s hoping I get everything done tonight before raid that I want to. ::crosses fingers::

I hurt. No, really. I’m covered in footprints, sneakerprints, heelprints, you name it. Why? Cos I got trampled by teachers all yelping in glee that my store was opened. The funny part? I was only out on the floor for part of the chaos. The two ladies working for me were in the thick of it and are still recovering. I was in the back office, frantically trying to order more stuff for them. Oh and for all those that had questions about the store, please see the previous post. I finally replied to them all.

But enough of that. What about WoW?!

Last week, I took off gaming except for a ZA run with friends. Why? Well there’s that whole store thing that was going on. And honestly, I wanted to have my focus be on that instead of trying to be all things all the time. This week, my schedule’s packed: Tuesday-Thursday 25-mans, possible Friday Kara, and a Sunday 25-man. Oh, and on Friday, I’ll be recording some podcast run by a couple of nutcases I know. /dies

And in all of that, I’m still reading and trying to absorb the changes that will/might be coming when Wrath is released. I mean, I’m thrilled about more stable slots. Some of the tree talents look to be droolworthy changes and are making me purr. But not of it’s really sinking in, since I’m not involved with the beta (at least not right now, I’m holding out hope for a beta invite tho /prays to random gods). My first thought when I see new stuff come in is “ooo!” then “oh yeah, raid tonight, and I need more money for repairs.”

See, I still have a lot to do in the current game. As Big Bear Butt has said over on his blog, there’s still a lot of content in the current game. Not everyone’s killed everything in the game. Not all the bosses have been downed by everyone. Me? I’d like to stick my nose into Black Temple at least once before the next expansion. Yeah that’s right, I said it. I haven’t been to BT. So nyah.

The group I’m raiding with now is Tier 5 and flirting with Mount Hyjal. Am I enjoying the raiding? Yeah, but it feels like everyone’s lost focus on the bosses in front of them. Don’t get me wrong, I have my off-nights too, where it doesn’t seem like I can focus to save my life. Last night for some reason I was terrified I was going to have a mob targeted while everyone was buffing and accidentally shoot/send pet after the mob, thus wiping the raid. And last night, that wouldn’t have been good. Things were too fractured and disjointed.

So tonight, we go into SSC and hopefully kick much butt. I’m hoping that everyone’s had their off night for the week and we really go in there and just own the place. Even more, I hope I have fun. Cos if it’s not fun, then I know of some PS3 games I could be playing instead.

A little story time. I swear it relates to the rest of this post, or at least it does in my head. Bear with me.

Back when I was in high school, I was in marching band (yes I was a band geek, feel free to mock. I was also an art geek and math geek, triply damned). Through a bizarre series of events, I ended up having to be a substitute marcher in 11th grade, and got moved around week to week, depending on who was sick. I learned the routines anew every week, half the time on the fly. As a result, I ended up being a student trainer my senior year, because of all the moving around, fast learning, and quietly doing what was my “job”: marching and not screwing up while being directed by a excellent but demanding director who actually scared the hell out of most of the university band directors in the southeast. It made me a better marcher and I got to see a side of certain sections of the band I hadn’t before, since instruments tend to clique together (at least in high school they did). Yey for pointless experience! (”Why yes, sir, if you need something marched to a jazz version of ‘My Favorite Things’ with 5 instant tempo and time changes, while keeping up with 249 other people and wearing a wool uniform in 90 degree weather, I’m yer woman!” “Um, we just need these ads made.” “Damn, there goes my big chance! /sob”)

In WoW, lately, I’ve been raiding as a guest on another guild’s raids. Why don’t I join their guild? Kinda attached to mine, and really, don’t wanna switch guilds. Right now, I’m getting my raid fix in and having fun. I have other friends that are also guest raiding with other guilds on other servers. It’s the summer slowdown/pre-expansion ennui that’s hitting so many guilds right now, so there’s spots open for more and more people on other guilds’ raids.

But there’s something that I’ve noticed, something that once again is pretty common with “casual” raiding guilds. Most of the things that I’ve muttered over with over in my “When raids go bad” post crop up again and again. But this time, it’s different. This time, it’s another guild, one that does things differently from the way you’ve done it with your guild or other groups you’ve been with. Even “better”, it’s a group of people that all know each other (whether they like each other or not), and are used to the way they all work together. And here you come, into a raid with a different setup and mindset than what you’re used to. What’s a guest to do?

Well first, actually be prepared. Being a guest is a weird situation: sometimes, you feel you almost have to be better than everyone else in the raid so you don’t have that “why the hell did we bring THEM?!” feeling (Hey, this may be my own paranoia talking, YMMV ). And while you might not have to be “better” than everyone else, you at least owe it to these strangers to show up on time, prepped, repaired, having read all the strats/watch the movies for any new bosses, with consumables ready and ammo to spare. Did I mention on time? Oh raid leaders loooove that.

Learn who the raid leaders and/or class leaders are. Ask if you need to be in a special channel, like a healer channel if you’re there to heal.

Be polite. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with who’s an alt of who, even in your own guild. When dealing with other guilds, it gets even dicier. That ‘lock you just called a “noob” could actually be the usual healing lead stepping out for some DPS action.

Keep any bitching and whining to other channels. The other guild doesn’t care that you’d waited for months for that upgrade and some “scrub” from their guild just got the Shiny Pony Idol of Uberness. Guess what? They’re there to gear their guildies. The good raids will actually consider those guests that come regularly and really assist the group in their gearing decisions, but don’t count on it. Bottom line: being a whiny loot whore doesn’t win you friends, or spots in the next raid with them.

Finger-pointing isn’t your job. It’s the raid leader/guildmaster of the other guild’s job, unless you’ve been asked to specifically do that. See: “being polite”.

Do your job. Don’t try to tell everyone else theirs. If you think something could be done another way, offer suggestions in /tells to class leads or the raid leader. That’s suggestions, not orders or demands.

Be situationally aware, awake, and ready to switch what you’re doing at a moment’s notice. You’re a hunter that’s being cruising along DPSing away while the other hunter MD’s everything, but they suddenly get disconnected? Be ready to MD in their place. The nature resist tank for Hydross has a sudden family emergency and you’re on your rogue instead of your awesome tank? Be ready to switch characters. In short, be ready for anything that might happen.

So be polite, friendly, prepared, on time, read up on new bosses, and ready to turn on a dime mentally. Sounds like a lot, but it’s really not.

But what about the other guild? Don’t they have any responsibilities to you? Me, I’d say yes, but keep in mind this is just me talking, after listening to friends vent at me on their experiences.

1. Don’t air your guild’s dirty laundry in raid chat or on Vent. Nothing like having your guests feel uncomfortable and not want to come back, or even better, warn others from guesting with you.

2. State the loot policies up front and follow them. If you make any changes on the fly, explain why.

3. If a guest offers, politely, a suggestion on a situation that the raid is having trouble with, either listen politely or ask them (again, politely) to post it on any website/message board you may have or discuss it after raid. It may be worthless advice, but it might also be something you can use to help everyone get more phat lewtz at a faster pace.

4. Treat the guests as you’d like to be treated if you were guesting with their guild. I’m not saying suck up to them. Just treat them with some respect, especially after they’ve been with you on a couple of runs and prove themselves to have a braincell or two. If they’re not up to where you think they should be, then fine, tell them you don’t think they’re a good fit for your raids, but don’t be a jackass about it. Word does get out when you’re an asshole and it can taint an entire guild’s reputation.

It’s amazing how much all of this boils down to politeness. No, you don’t have to be sitting around a table, drinking tea (mm tea), and inquiring after each other’s family between pulls. No, no heartwarming stories need to be shared, no bonding needs to be performed. But a simple “Hey, thanks for coming!” and a “thanks for having me!”, neither delivered with a snarky attitude to each other, along with some trust that the person you brought just -might- know what they’re doing, goes a long way into building better guest/raid relationships.

And I tested it out the other day. I can still SO do that one-beat 180 degree spin-turn I had to learn in marching band. That’s gonna get me far in life! I just know it!

Okay, not a REAL truck, but that’s about what it felt like. -.-

This past week, I took off of WoW. I had a good reason: the store that I’m going to be managing as soon as it’s finished, stocked, properly licensed, and has one more employee other than the one I hired last week. Right now, it’s in yet another critical phase, with upteen boxes of merchandise all sitting in a (conveniently empty) store next to mine. All of those have to be opened, checked, priced and put out onto the floor. The floor that still needs some guys in here to move some stuff around, since I can’t move huge fricken metal shelving units. Strong? I have my moments, but they’re more nice spurts of “POWER WOMAN!”, not sustained “excuse me, I need to move this house I’m carrying and you’re standing in the way” kinda moments. And when I say umpteen boxes, I’m not kidding. Friday, a semi showed up. Thankfully, it wasn’t all for us. Just the 5 pallets, 42″x42″ square and 6 to 7 feet tall each, stacked high with art supplies and held together with wonderful heavy duty cling wrap. Guess what didn’t fit through a standard size door? You guessed it! So Mom (down visiting and helping get everything set up), The Boyfriend and I frantically unloaded the pallets to get the sidewalk they were on free and clear again.

Oh yeah, the store isn’t in a mall. It’s in the middle of the downtown area on a street, in one of the renovated buildings. Lovely place. Parking’s not great. But damn, the deli 3 stores down is amazing!

So this past week was getting computer systems set up, stock unloaded from trucks, training from the company that sold us the systems, interviewing another prospective employee, having Employee #1 fill out her forms and get started on setting up the teacher supplies section (holy crap teachers have a lot of stuff to buy these days), and close on my house back in Georgia. Yep, house finally got sold. Thank god.

After ALL of that, I’d have to be insane to play WoW, right? Apparently, I’m insane, cos Saturday I walked into ZA after the longest damned time away with a group of guildies. It didn’t start well. We wiped on the last group before the bear boss twice before we got it down and tackled him. We lost out on the timer chests, but we did clear out all of the animal bosses, which was as good a job as we’d ever done when we were serious about it. Then someone said “Hey it’s kinda early, anyone up for a speed Kara run?”

Not only am I insane, I’m a dumbass, too. I heard myself saying “Sure! Count me in on Siana!” Next thing I know, we’re in Kara and cruising along. 3.5 hours later, I left with my badges, tossed them into the bank, then saw I had 100 badges. Wait, wasn’t there something I wanted? Oh hells yes! So Siana is now the proud wearer of Leggings of the Pursuit, gemmed and patched (even if it’s not the patch I wanted, at least it’s something).

The next day, I was in bed most of the day with a headache. That’ll learn me. ::sigh::

Tonight I went into TK and helped slap down Void Reaver. That was fun. What was even more fun, but totally on a personal level, was seeing this:

Aww yeahhhh…

Once we got done with VR, the guild leaders did some chatting and decided that since they didn’t have the raid makeup they wanted, we’d go on and beat up Gruul instead. Beatings did occur, and while the High King and Gruul did drop lewts for their guild, I had my humbling moment early on in the High King fight.

See, back when my guild was doing the 25 man stuff, I was one of two hunters that Nature resist tanked the shaman. It got to the point that the Class Lead and I were doing it in our sleep, and on good nights we could get him almost dead with just the two of us before the raid came to kill him. This guild we’re running with now asked me if I could help NR tank, I said sure, watched where they were going to tank him, put on my gear, buffed, ran in… and died in 10 seconds.

I sat there with my jaw on the floor, blinking, then started swearing at the computer. The Boyfriend glanced over to see what was going on while he was tanking something else and said “oh, I think your healer got feared.” Oh joy. So for 4 minutes, I chatted in another channel while the rest of the raid went and killed the High King. End result of the evening? #3 on DPS and Damage Done. Still a good evening.

Ah WoW: you know how to humble us right when we start to feel good about ourselves, don’t you?

Real Life has been a mess. We’re still trying to get my house sale done, the store is slowly coming together, my Mom bummed up her knee, thus necessitating scope surgery on it, etc. It’s just been one thing after another. So what so I do to take off some stress?

PLAY WOW!

I couldn’t join the raid last night, because after 11 hours of going over art materials and ordering them from a vendor (even if he was a very nice man) fried my brains. So I came home and collapsed, sighing somewhat over the fact I couldn’t get into raid right before I fell asleep.

But today… mmm RAID! TK Raid too! But instead of running to Loot, erm, Void Reaver, the Powers That Be said “Hai guyz! Go read up on Solarian and Al’ar!” Gah. One hour of frantic reading later, off we went to TK.

Al’ar? Owie. Mucho pain. Fire bad. But we now have food for thought on the fight. Solarian? Well we only got one shot at her before the repops started to hit for us. Ah well. But ah man it was nice. #4 on overall DPS and #3 on Total Damage. :;happy purrs::

Tomorrow night? More TK. The rest of this week? Who the hell knows. I have more Real Life stuff trying to chew on me, so we’ll see what happens.

Okay so the title’s cheesy. Give me a break, it’s early in the morning and I went to bed way too damned late.

Yesterday I was humming and smiling for most of the day. The Diablo 3 announcement made me squee to little fangirl pieces, the info released on it (finally! Pick a class AND sex! TY!), and while the two classes that have been released are lovely, dammit I want my ranged bow shooter. That’s what I played in Diablo 1 and 2, and I want her back, dang it!

I didn’t want to pull up Diablo 2 and play with it (tempted! So tempted!), so I hopped into WoW and started mucking about with my priest. She’s pretty low level at this point, and I spent some time in Darkshire clearing out old quests for her, ones that were grey and green. I have NO idea why I did that tho, since I really want to get her a kitty mount instead of the elephant. So I should have been wandering around in elflands instead. But at least I got a ton of quests killed off, lots of xp, a few upgrades, and dinged 2 levels. ::happy purr::

We tried to get a Heroic Ramparts run going, since I’m -this- close to being exalted on Siana, but alas, it was not to be. That’s okay, cos I needed to eat supper, then log into my mage for Kara fun. And oh my god was it ever fun. Several people that have been off in ::gasp:: another MMO ::gah!:: wandered back last night for a Kara run. A couple of friends of ours in another guild came as well. And Aerye got to go for her second full Kara clear and once again get phat lewts. And me? I was still humming and bouncing.

See, a couple of days ago, I managed to finish the last of the Frozen Shadowweave set. So there I was, all decked out, gemmed, and happy to be going pewpew with friends. My mage is finally getting to the point that I don’t think of her as being -too- much of a gimp. Granted, the green-level pants have GOT to go, but she’s still tons better now! So in we run, slaughter tons of mobs, tell even more bad/naughty jokes (had to stop the raid a couple of times cos the Hunter Class Lead and I were being baaaaaad in tells to each other), and manage to down mobs that eat mana and are immune to magic damage with two pally tanks, only a Hunter that was non-magic damage. And to my delight, the Curator smiled on me last night. My mage walked off with the Staff of Infinite Mysteries. The Boyfriend was there on his boomkin enchanter and had me immediately hand it over to him to enchant Major Spellpower onto it. Yey better pewpew! ::pets new shiny staff::

Somewhere after all of the staff stroking jokes (oh yeah we were baaaaaad last night) and before we killed Prince, Grasp of the Dead dropped. Yeah, it’s not great, but it’s still better than the gloves I’d worn before that. After that, we got Prince down, and Aerye walked off with his axe and the Tier 4 helm piece. She was asking if I wanted it, since she already got the axe, then was informed by the Hunter Class Lead and myself that we would both drive cross country out to California to beat the crap out of her if she didn’t take the helm NOW. A quiet “yes ma’ams” later and Aerye got the token. ::grin:: I was the only other person that could have used the token last night, and since I have Uni-Mind Headdress on my mage at the moment, I’m okay.

So Aerye got loot, my mage got loot, a friend of ours that hadn’t been to Kara before (was his first raid after being gone from WoW for over a year) got lots of loot, others got loot they’d been waiting to have drop for a while and I lost count of the number of times I fell over laughing (or lost the ability to breathe). All in all, I consider it an excellent run, even if it wasn’t the fastest run ever. ::grin::

After I logged, I finally did fire up Diablo 2 and ran around in there. Once I got to the point I was falling over at the keyboard, I shut it off and went to bed. Now I’m up and watching the Diablo 3 Denizens live feed from WWI. ::sigh:: Man I hope they have a bow-wielder. /drool

I got an invite to SSC fun last night with the guild that The Boyfriend and I had run TK with Wednesday night. They were up to Leo, which they haven’t managed to get down as of yet. Sadly, last night they weren’t able to get him down last night either, even with some insanely close calls. The last attempt was with him at 3k health left. That one just made everyone cry. After we were done, the other hunter in the group and I hung out for a while talking hunter macros. I showed her what I had and I think she has some plots now for some of her own.

A couple of days previously, I’d talked to some of my friends in WoW and asked if I could use their shadowcloth cooldowns. They were gracious enough to say sure, and I sent off the mats. My mage is still frost spec (and happily so), and in desperate need of the Frozen Shadowweave set. After I got their shadowweave back, I found I had enough cloth to make the last piece of the set: the robe. So as of last night (or early this morning, I kinda lost track), my mage is now decked out in all her Frozen Shadowweave goodness. /cheer

(Now if I can just get her a better weapon, get rid of the green pants, and get some new shiny trinkets…)

Today? Here’s hoping that I can get into some Heroic Ramparts or Heroic BLood Furnace runs on Sia. I need Exalted on her with Honor Hold and had some volunteers to help get it for her. ::grin:: The rest of the weekend? Who knows.

Tonight I did something that I haven’t done for a while: a 25-man raid. Oh god it felt good. The working with a large group of other people to take out part of an instance. The “oh crap!” moments follow by the “oh damn we’re good!” butt-out-of-the-fire moments. The silliness in chat and Ventrilo. The group the boyfriend and I went with is a group he was introduced to by some friends of ours. They raid with this other guild on occasion and they seemed to be amenable to having guests along for the ride. Seeing as how they’re about at the point (or slightly behind) our guild was at before all The Mess happened, this seemed like a good fit.

So I finally got a sign-in name for their raid calendar, signed up for Tempest Keep tonight, signed into WoW, then promptly went to Ironforge, closed my eyes, hit the “relearn talents” button an respec’d Beast Master. Why? Well my old guild was fine with me using a Markman spec. I did decent damage with it, knew my role, etc. But taking Siana out to a new raid group? Yeahhh I wanted to show to the best of my abilities on the damage charts as well as “okay yeah she knows where to step and where not to.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d be going, since there were more than 25 people signed up by the time that raid time came around. Eventually tho, I got a whisper asking if I was ready for a raid invite. 30 minutes later, I was up to my ankles in dying or dead Blood Elves and DAMN it felt good! Oh wow, have I missed this. Kara was good, don’t get me wrong. But those 25 man raids…. ::happy sigh::

At the end of the evening, The Boyfriend and I had helped the other guild get their first Void Reaver kill, and while he took the #2 spot on the tank lists, I took #3 on damage done and #5 on DPS. Not too bad for someone that had respec’d all of 3 hours previously and was holding back, trying to make sure I was following the raid correctly. ::pleased purr::

Did they do things differently than our guild did? Oh yeah. Some of it was good, some of it was just different. They’re enough like what I’m used to that I have no problems dealing with them. So tomorrow, it’s (hopefully) back to SSC for the first time in a while for me and seeing if we can help them get their first Leo kill. Whee!