Interesting article by Scott Andrew’s in Officers Quarters on WoW Insider last night. The email he quotes raised some issues I’ve been seeing on the WoW Forums lately.

The first part of the article simply indicates that a lot of progression-oriented guilds seem to be hemorraging players that are losing interest in hardcore raiding right now.

I’ve seen the effects of this on the WoW Forums, guilds that are either breaking up entirely, or are starting to really ratchet up recruiting efforts to get back on track. 

It’s the summer. I think most players… and it’s an assumption based on my own experiences, it’s true, but I think most players are in the 16 to 24 age group. And at least for me, summertime during those years… I didn’t spend a whole lot of time indoors. Fall, Winter, early Spring, indoors, but Summer?

Summer during those years for me was the time to get out and play volleyball, go surfing, play rugby, do some solo me-vs-wall speed racquetball (a good way to go for a heart attack at my age, btw), go rock climbing or simply kick back with friends around a bonfire in the desert as dusk falls and have some beer and BBQ.

It’s Summer! Am I supposed to be surprised progression guilds, Hell ANY guild, are going to lose some players for a little while?

A discussion topic related to this would be, and was brought up in the article, “Are hardcore raiders losing heart now that level 80 raids are coming closer?”

It’s a good question… but one I’m not going to talk about. Something else caught my eye. 

The email Scott got was from the leader of an old, established casual fun guild that has had a bunch of former members abandon their hardcore progression guilds and want to come back and have fun in a friendly environment… and the guild leader is worried these guys are going to leave again just as soon as the expansion comes out.

These people started playing in his guild, got geared up and ready, and then left to join a new guild and play with different people. And now they are tired of raiding and want to come back.

I’m curious what Chick GM would think of this subject, from any angle, but I want to talk about my opinion from the point of view of the GM of a guild of players dedicated to fun, family, friends and horsing around…

What we have in our guild is a special, precious, and unique thing. We don’t take new members based on progression goals, and we don’t make people put all their toons in Sidhe Devils.

I want to say that again. We don’t try to make people put all their characters in Sidhe Devils. 

But if someone parks an alt in our guild and then never, ever plays it while they spend tons of time on their main in a raiding guild… we know where you want to be, and we’ll eventually remove the alt. It’ll take several months of ‘has not logged in since xxxx’ and total silence while we see you spending every night in SSC or The Eye in another guild, or just being gone on your main on another server, but sooner or later we’ll get around to it.

We only want people in Sidhe Devils that want to be there. We only want to play with friends. Otherwise, whats the point? 

Once you’ve chosen to move on… don’t be looking to come back. You made your choice. 

You are the one that decided that you would rather play with other people than with us. Well, following that awareness of where we all stand, we decided that we’d rather move on and forget you too.

Kinda sounds like a 20-something relationship, doesn’t it?

“It’s been fun but I’m too young to be tied down. I think we should see other people.”

‘Well, if you decide you want to play around, don’t expect me to welcome you back into my bed.”

Hehehe.

I’m not talking about taking a break for a while from the game, either. Real Life comes first, remember?

If a guildie came on our forums and said, “Hey, summers here guys, so I’m probably not going to be playing all that much for the next several months…” Well, heck… my response to that is, “Awesome, we’ll all miss you, but drop into the forums once and a while and let us know what hijinks you’re getting up to! Pics please! Have fun and get a tan! Look forward to seeing you again soon!”

No, I am specifically talking about a player who makes the decision that they would rather spend all their play time playing with other people in another guild, for whatever reason. Normally, it’s to seek out progression and new lootz.

Well, guess what? Once you get tired of raiding all the time, or of doing whatever… when you finally remember that you actually used to have fun playing with ‘that other guild’, we will have long ago made the decision that we would rather play with our friends, and not with you. 

A few other points were raised in Scott’s article, about “But what if he has high-end gear now, and experience in the more advanced content, and could help our guild?”

My counter-question is… help your guild in what way? He’s not a friend you can trust, so the only help he could provide would be to help you advance your progression. 

That changes things, doesn’t it? Because if he left your progression guild to go somewhere else that’s more hardcore and succeed, and now he wants to come back, is it because he REALLY wants to play with you? Or is it because he couldn’t take the stress of playing with the big boys or their schedule, and now wants to come back and be the big fish in a pond full of minnows?

Any time you consider accepting a new member based on what he or she can do for your guild’s progression rather than on their merits as a person and potential new friend of the guild, you’re making an interesting choice, aren’t you?

If you seriously consider taking someone into your guild that you don’t really WANT to play with, because of their gear or knowledge or skill or class, then stop calling yourself a fun, friendly, casual guild.

You’re a progression guild. You might ALSO be fun, friendly, and casual, you might not have enjoyed much success in progression yet, or have a heavy raiding schedule, but you’re making recruitment choices based on progression goals. End of story. 

It’s something I think that is critical for every GM and officer to think about.

How do you truly, in your heart, make your decisions when you invite someone into your guild?

That question, in my mind, holds the key to whether or not you take someone back.

But enough about me… what do you folks think?

For the raiders out there, does the thought that your old, casual guild might not want your T6 wearing butt back bother you? Did it ever even occur to you that a guild wouldn’t want to play with you no matter what gear you wear? Or did you think that you were so l33t that any guild would love to take you in on bended knee?

“OMIGAWD, he raids Black Temple and Sunwell! And he wants to join our guild? We got to take him! He is uber! He could totally carry us through SSC!”

Seriously, you KNOW it’s been said, or thought, by some GMs and players.

I’m really curious…. 

If you moved to a hardcore raiding guild from a casual one, have you stayed friends and continued to play with and have fun with your old guildies? 

Or did you move on, and never look back?

This week we did another one night run into Karazhan, with essentially the same team as last week. Doodle had decided to sit out this round, although he did park his Warlock at the Deadwind pass summon stone in case we needed his help. Other guildies also offered their assistance during the course of the run, which is awesome, since you never know when an unexpected family emergency may occur.

Last week, we started with Attumen and carried on through until all bosses were down except for the two dragons. It was fun, it was smooth, but Cassie and I weren’t really happy over how long it took. It was a 6 and 1/2 hour run, which is just brutal to ask anyone to sit still for.

We talked it over, and one thing we agreed on was that, although I know all the fights fairly well, I could work on preparing notes ahead of time with specific tips for classes and time standards and names of effects, so that my initial instructions go faster. Less overall dithering, knowutImean?

So we went over the WoWwiki sections on the boss fights in advance and drew up notes applying their facts on encounters with what I know from first hand experience.

We basically have two choices for these Kara runs; one-night runs or two.

We have preferred one night runs, simply because that means there is only one night of the week that we are not playing with Alex and having fun. We do stuff with Alex all day taht one day, and by the time raid time comes, he is grateful for the chance to watch a weekly movie and chill out for a while. Last night he watched Star Wars: A New Hope again.

Other advantages to one night runs is, we don’t have to worry about trying to form a second group the next night of a weekend to complete the raid and inevitably have to find replacements, and we’re not expecting people to give up two nights of a weekend raiding instead of having a life. 

I hate having to find replacements, because most of ‘the good stuff’ comes in later boss encounters, plus neat battles, and I don’t feel it’s fair at all to have someone come half way and then have to miss out on a boss he or she might really have been looking forward to.

On the downside of a long one nighter… East Coast people on Kael’thas are up WAAAY late if the team is slow, it’s a long damn time to be sitting without real food or liquids, and by the time your team is coming up on the more challenging fights (assuming you are appropriately geared and not in Tier 5 and Tier 6) then everyone is getting dazed and loggy and numb right when they need to be at the peak of responsiveness.

The solution? Hell if I know. I’m thinking in Sidhe Devils that once we have enough for two teams, we may make one team the two-night run, and one just for a single all-nighter, so that people can CHOOSE how they want to play it.

There I go again with that whole ‘choose how YOU want to play’ thing.

Anyway, last night… we were fortunate enough to have the same basic team as last time. Since last week, Shrinnpoof and Falromord decided to come over and join our guild, which is flat out awesome, they are just tooo cool. We’re very stoked. Cassie really likes playing with Shrinn for one thing, and Falromord is a very smart, capable guy. We’re very lucky to have them. So it was 7 guildies, and the team we had from Disciples of Delusion, Morthog, Thunkon and Muchachita. They are all very fun as well, it’s a good group, everyone is a good fit together.

We went in, and I let everyone know in advance that one of my goals was to move as quickly as we could from one encounter to another, as long as we could do so and keep it fun. I wanted it to be smooth, quick, and fun but not rushed. And I wanted everyone to still feel perfectly comfortable asking for a break whenever they needed one.

I THINK that we accomplished those goals. I think the first half still felt a bit too rushed, a little less fun and loose than we are used to, but it was still good. And I wasted time explaining all three potential Opera fights instead of just running in and findout out which we had. Which was Romulo and Julianne, which we nailed.

In technical terms, while we did have frequent single deaths, mostly Windburn the distracted Shadow Priest, we never to my knowledge had a team wipe until Prince. We just went on through nice and smooth and took everything down the first shot, rezzed Wind, and moved on.

When we hit Curator, I believe we were at the 2.5 hour mark. When we reached Prince, I believe we were at the 4.5 hour mark. Started at 7, hit Prince at 11:30. I felt that was pretty good for a one night run.

On Prince, I was going to just assume I was bringing Windshadow to tank, but Cassie whispered me saying that she had seen either Morthog or Falromord had posted in the forums saying they wanted to tank Prince.

Ooops. I hadn’t seen that. So in mid-sentence of arrogantly saying I would change out for Windshadow to tank, I stopped to ask if either of our tanks wanted to take down Prince.

And Cassie was right, Fal wanted to take Prince down. Cool! I’m glad she stopped me. Coulda told me earlier, dangit.

We went on to Prince and got set up, and Fal went forward with Thunkon misdirecting onto him for the pull. The first time we had a slight oopsie, as I did not actually describe how we would do the fight, and that caused one of our ranged DPS to go all-out from the start rather than let Fal build up aggro. So, accidental over-threat, a pull, and a few key people went down in the first few minutes. It happens, and if I was paying attention, it needn’t have.

The second pull went very well. Fal built up strong threat, aided by Thunkon and Wulfa misdirecting onto him every time their cooldown was up, tons of ranged DPS, awesome heals, it was just kickass.

However… we had only two dedicated healers, plus our main tank Morthog the Paladin, helping with heals as he could. When we hit the middle of Phase Two, it just got a little too much, and Fal went down.

If we had a third dedicated healer, I don’t think it would have happened. But at that point we just agreed to bring Windshadow in this time, and finish up Prince, and the bell struck midnight signaling the end of the run.

Mission accomplished, we cut an hour and a half or so off last weeks run. Kick ass.

What better time to have me ask if anyone wanted to go take down Nightbane?

Heck, I figured the least I could do was ask. I asked people to just hit ‘Yes’ on a ready check if they wanted to take on Nightbane. It was unanimous, to my surprise. So, off we went.

When we set up for Nightbane, I was going to have Windshadow for the main tank. I would prefer Falromord take it, as he can stance dance through the Fear effects, and it would give us a second Priest for Fear Ward on top of it. But since this would be the first shot many folks would be taking at Flaming Dragon, we just went with me as main tank.

For the Rain of Bones, we had Morthog to come in and get them focused on him first. The hardest part was trying to heal through the directed flame breath from the air phase with two main healers.

On our first shot, we got him to 50%, but the flame breath did us in.

We regrouped for our second try, rebuffed, and kicked it off again.

On our second try, without any combat rezzes available, without a Warlock or Soulstones, with a Feral Druid main tank, a Prot Specced Warrior on melee, a combat swords Rogue, two Mages, two Hunters, a Prot Paladin doing offheals, a Resto Druid on main heals, and a Holy Priest on party heals, we took Nightbane down with zero deaths.

Zero freaking deaths.

I could not possibly be prouder of the folks I play with. I know Morthog was healing his guts out, but Nasirah and Muchachita did an awesome job healing on that one. My thanks and admiration go out to the whole team.

Oh wait, you want screenie? Yeah I can do that…

You would think, after the post I JUST did about running Kara for 6 hours Saturday night on Windburn and Windshadow, that I would be done with freaking Karazhan for a while.

Yeah, surprise!

I got a whisper Sunday evening, around 9ish, from our friends Unseen and Camila.

Yes, as I said in my earlier post, they had done an all guildie run the same time we were doing ours.

Now, we planned out run for 7 PM, and I am proud to say that we had 10 folks in the raid and ready to pull at 7:07.

Thank you very much, professional and prepared friends. I love you.

I know that as we were finishing Prince, they had just finished Shade of Aran. So I assumed they started a little later.

Well, it turns out they didn’t quite finish what they planned, with Illhoof, Prince, and the two dragons still to go for night two.

And Camila was asking if I had any characters unsaved, they wanted to down Prince.

Well, yes I do. I told him I had my Beastmaster Hunter that was unsaved, and nothing else. And I told him I was sorry I couldn’t help them out.

He told me he needed DPS, and asked me if my hunter was Kara geared.

Now, maybe he MEANT Kara geared the way I have totally munchkined my Druid and Shadow Priest.

I took it to mean, was my Hunter as prepared to perform his role as a Hunter should be inside Kara, and I said yes.

And he is. Technically.

I have Misdirect macros, Focus and Aggro and pull macros, and I have gemmed out gear and the rest. And I have a planned out shot rotation and the best gun and ammo I could get without raiding.

BUT… Windburn is my farming character, because no one really needs more DPS on runs, compared to Druids and Priests.

And Windburn is, literally, in all blues, one green, and a pair of epic gloves. That’s it.

But I followed BRK’s gearing up for Kara article and worked hard to get at least reasonable for 5 mans and be Kara ready… to go in for Attumen and work my way up.

So Windburn’s first introduction to Karazhan was Prince. Damnit. No pressure, right?

So I did the Misdirect pull to camila the tank, and sent my pet on in, and forgot to turn Growl off for about 30 seconds (damn noob), and took my time getting my ass up on that pole so Infernals won’t hit me.

And then I finally started whacking away.

Our first attempt, we got Prince down to 2%. I realized in the middle that;

• I had no buff food. (Except Kibler’s Bits)
• I had no scrolls.
• I had no pots.. at all.
• I still had my Riding Crop equipped instead of my Bladefists’ Breath. 

Soo… God, I suck, right? BRK is never gonna talk to me again. And in all blues and a green. Just… I’m a waste of a slot, right?

Well, I asked if I could hearth and get a summon back so I could get the neglected stuffs. And I scurried off, tail between my legs, hoping to do better on try two.

I grabbed a Healing Potion Injector, some Scrolls of Protection and Agility, some Hit Rating food, and realized I didn’t have any Major Agility pots… but heck with it, they are waiting on me. And it’s not like I’m not going to suck anyway, pots or no pots.

I get a summon back, and we get set for try two.

And this time I take even longer getting my ass back up on that pole near the door, where the Infernals can’t zap ranged. Wulfa, seriously.. it’s not just you, I was trying and trying and TRYING to get on that thing for 30 seconds.

But I DPS my heart out with my shot rotations, and Kill Commands, and Rapid Shots, and Trinkets as soon as they are off cooldown, and Mending Pet.

In the group are our good friends Camila on his Prot paladin, and Unseenfiend on Camila’s healing Paladin alt Muralimohan. They are both kick ass, ran with them plenty of times before.

However… and keep in mind that the Hunter survived but I didn’t… this is what the Recount looked like after Prince went down;

That other Hunter, Rannan? Almost all epics, but specced with Trueshot Aura.

And I out DPSed the Warlock. Don’t know what that means about him, it’s the hunter that tripped me out.

I don’t care how good I think I am as a player, there is no way I should out DPS a Warlock and an all epicced out Hunter on a straight ranged DPS fight with my gear.

Unless… reading Big Red Kitty, working on my shot rotations, understanding how my spec is supposed to work, and trying my best actually does trump a better geared player with an inferior spec?

Inferior?

Well, I call out DPSing an all epicced out 0/40/21 Marksman Hunter a sign that SOMETHING is wrong, either with the player or the spec.

I did a compare on WoW Heroes between Rannan and Windstar. You go ahead and do the same, and tell me that something isn’t seriously wrong there.

I can’t help but feel sorry for Camila and Unseen. They are two great people, but the folks they got on that pug… ugh. NOT poised for success.

This weekend, we got off our butts and did lots of fun group runs, and yet, for some strange reason, it feels like I haven’t done anything at all. The runs were all stress free, instances and raids are supposed to be painful, right?

  (more…)

I’ve thought that I’d seen some asinine behavior before, but I was just reading a post on Aspect of the Girl, and now I know I haven’t seen anything yet.

And thanks to her I have learned just how bad a Kara pug COULD have gone.

Am I thanking my great good fortune not to have ever met a Thunderelf?

Yes. Yes I am. Oh, heck yes.

And I think the story has special significance, since it is a skilled Hunter talking about painful drama from a huntard.

Clearly, as Pike has said, if you want to play a Hunter, ask yourself; are you prepared to accept the challenge of rising above the reputation others have earned with their asshattery? And when faced with it… how much more will it hurt?

If you enjoy a well-told Kara recap, along with lessons learned and ending with a horror story of epic proportions, please go read her tale.

I like her use of WWS, by the way. I need to look into that, but I love Recount, it seems to do just what I need for personal performance analysis.