Warning; I apologize if more typos and misspellings than usual make it in. I am a tired, tired bear.

But I wanted to talk about the fallout from the Group 2 drama, and the progress that both Group 1 and Group 2 have made.

A quick note, to let you folks know that things in the Legatum guild are pretty good. I understand the very valid concerns that were expressed about trust issues, and how they can tear a guild apart. And they are very valid points, especially the ones about how it would feel to be one of the people ‘under a cloud’ of stryfe. Cloud… Stryfe. Get it? Sorry, tired.

The reality is, after doing background checks, Warcraft census comparisons, etc, we have developed no proof… but our only real suspect that had a major fight with guild officers a few weeks before the incident… /gquit with no warning shortly after jops spoke with the GM of Green Dragonflight.

Now, that doesn’t prove anything, but it does provide a safety pressure relaase valve of sorts. We are free to make our assumptions on why he /gquit, be cautious, and throw off our suspicions to someone that is now a self-chosen outsider… and move on with our lives.

That alone probably wouldn’t be enough to prevent drama llamas from grazing, but the fact is, the guild is Legacy of Laziness (or Legacy of Bums, however you want to interpret the latin). We’re bums… and the general tone of the guild is very laid back. As far as serious raiding, a bit too laid back maybe in some ways. Things are generally so mellow, with few scheduled events except Kara, and everyone free to do whatever they want when they want, quests or PvP or instances or heroics or whatever, that it often seems like no one cares if you’re late or don’t make it to a raid or something. The truth is, no one makes a big dealabout it or stresses… but people do notice, and if it happens enough to cause problems, then the raiding groups get reshuffled. You can easily think everyone is cool with you going afk in the middle of a raid for 20 minutes, or not showing up except for Tuesday nights… and then the next week see that you’re no longer part of the active line up, you’re now in the reserves for that group.

Does this kind of fuzzy approach cause drama? Yeah, sometimes, a little. There have been a few folks that hit level 70, tear through their attunement, and instantly began demanding when they were going to Karazhan. And when a few weeks pass with the pestering not getting them immediately on Group 1 or Group 2, they /gquit.

Eagerness is awesome, but I think everyone at this point playing the game is aware that you can’t just ding 70 and walk into Kara. You need to achieve a certain level of skill in your class and your role in a raid, as well as a certain level of gear, before you can contribute to a Karazhan raid. Blizzard has given us PvP, crafted epics, and Heroic isntance runs to give us plenty of choices… so there really should be no excuse for someone thinking they can bypass the steps that help encourage them to learn to play and work together. I love Heroics as pre-Kara preparation, because you WILL be critical to the runs success, and will have to learn how to function as a team. If someone dings 70, wants to go to karazhan right away, has the expectations explained to them and choose to sit on their ass for a few weeks without any effort to gear up or skill up… well, I’m personally not sorry to see them go.

Legatum has a ton of players, of all playstyles and levels of participation. We are NOT a ‘raiding guild’, we are a guild that also raids… and the only real drama we have is from newly invited members that instantly begin spamming chat channels for ‘run throughs’ of Scarlet Monastery, Deadmines or other instances. In all such cases, I simply think back to Egos’ awesome series of guild articles, (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) and shake my head.

Wow, when I’m tired I’m even more rambly than normal. Ick.

Anyway, the point I was wandering towards was, please do not fear for our guilds’ stability… the folks that were in Group 2 for the run taht was hacked, that are still in the guild, are all of them great folks, and the general feeling of everyone is that the culprit pretty much flushed himself from cover, broke and ran for it. Group 1 AND Group 2 ran Kara last night on the fresh start, and to my knowledge Group 2 enjoyed even STRONGER success than the week before.

In fact, let me congratulate Legatum Ignavis’ Group 2. Last week, they went into Kara several times over the week, making slow and steady progress. They downed Prince before server restart. They did great.

Last night, they went into Kara, and in one evening downed Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera event, and Curator.. and that’s just what I know of before I went to bed.

To me, that’s not exactly a sign of a group thats falling apart.

Wow, I’m so tired I’m dizzy. lol. What you poor folks don’t see, is my being called from my desk every other sentence to fix something on the floor… so I come back and try to remember what the heck I was thinking… and then give up and move on. Been three hours coming back to this post so far.

So Group 2 did well… and I assume made sure Chess was looted before they closed up shop for the night.

And, of course, since Jayboi was in Group 2 last week, there is a new Legatum catchphrase in Teamspeak that has replaced the classic “That’s it jayboi! Screw you! I’m deleting my character and quitting WoW!” Well, okay, nothing could REPLACE that. But it has temporarily overtaken it.

Yes, that’s right… our new catchphrase is “Hey Jay, what dropped in Chess the other night, anyway? Any good drops? Or didja have to shard it?”

Yeah, I know. We’re terrible.

So… why am I so tired? Aside from being old, and getting up at 4AM to go to work…

Mainly, I’m tired because my dumb butt keeps staying up until midnight each night.

Last night, Tuesday, of course Group 1 went in to Kara.

We started promptly at 7, went in and cleared Attumen, marched back and up the stairs and smacked Moroes around, slid along the walls and beat up Maiden, then trotted down the hall and taught Romeo and Juliet to get a room and chill out. Then, of course, it was outside and up the stairs to the back door, and a quick clear to down Curator. (nope, still no Druid gloves… the hilarious thing is, in all the times I’ve helped take down Curator, the druid gloves have NEVER dropped… you’d think a 33% chance would let it happen at SOME point. I’m starting to know how Occulus felt.

Okay, cleared Kara through Curator in one night. No wipes, no waiting… except on me. Sorry guys, but when a 4 year old calls, needs must. But I think I kept it to under 5 minutes.

But wait! There’s more! See, it was only 9:30 at this point… and we’re still going!

So on we go, clearing our way to Shade of Aran. We down Shade, look around, and then go beat up Illhoof too. A quick pause, look around… and say, screw it. time enough to sleep when you’re dead. We headed over to Chess… then took the high road and slapped Netherspite around. THEN we went and finished Chess.

Sadly, we wiped a couple times from lacking enough DPS on Netherspite, it ruined a perfect clear and ate up about 30 minutes. But we swapped out one person for a Mage, and Netherspite go boom!

Karazhan cleared except for Nightbane and Prince in one night…. about 4 hours.

And if we hadn’t wiped twice on Netherspite, Prince would’ve been down in that amount of time, too.

I’m finally seeing how a solid team can put an instance like this on farm, and clear it so fast.

Sometimes I think posts like this sound like nothing much except bragging… but I don’t feel like it’s bragging, when there are so many guilds that are regularly downing Gruuls and Serpentshrine Cavern and far, far beyond.

It feels more like everyone else is already way past where we are… but we’re starting to do good, and getting excited, and saying, “Mommy! Mommy! Look what we did!” And the more advanced guilds are all looking upon us with a gentle smile, and saying, “That’s nice, dear.”

You folks have a happy…. tonight, I’m getting me some sleep.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 11:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.