Casual Raiding: Zul'Aman

Yet more in my 'casual raiding' line of posts.

To rehash: Knights of Utopia -- small casual raiding guild.
Raiding highlights to date: Almost full Kara clear in 3.5 hours (minus the dragons.)
Individual raiding highlights: A good portion of our active raiders have participated in some way or another in Magtheridon and Gruuls and a small portion of our active raiders have been in SSC, TK and ZA.

The plan: Start progression in Zul'Aman this last Sunday.
The people: Posolutely the warrior tank, Owaru the paladin tank, Boon the paladin healer, Orzag and Kiljara the priest healers, Neshura and Wolfinme the hunters, Ravensfire the rogue, Harikin the mage and try to find one more DPS (preferably a warlock.)

And... we know what happens to the best made plans, right? Posolutely went into ZA, thinking that the reset timer would allow him to go with us on Sunday. Not...

So, Posolutely the warrior tank came as Absitively the warlock. Kiljara the priest came as Kathe the bear tank. And we pulled in a friend of Abs, another paladin healer.

Our plan: 2 hours. 2 bosses.

We almost did it!

We had a few trash pull mishaps, namely on the stairway up to the bear boss, Nalorakk. But we were able to one-shot Nalorakk. (The fact that he's considered the 'easiest' boss of ZA nonwithstanding... we one shotted Nalorakk.)

Kathe tanked the troll phase and Owaru tanked the bear phase. We had one hairy moment (get it, hairy?) when the troll resisted my taunt, but Owaru was able to do something (I dunno what, he's a paladin... it's a mystery to me) and I was able to eke ahead and get its attention.

I had to pop out of bear form and heal a time or two. I had to innervate one of our priests. But when all was said and done, we had a dead Bear Lord. Not a dead bear tank.

The Akil'zon gauntlet had us wipe I think three times before we got the maneuver down pat. (And by this time, the pug healer disconnected (before the gauntlet, but after the Bear Lord)without warning... and yes, the person knew this was a progression raid and wipes were inevitable, and yes, the person knew that regardless of how well we did, it would end at 9pm or after Akil'zon, whichever came first.... so we had Harikin the mage step out and come in as Yorkshire the priest healer, and we grabbed another rogue from our guild to come DPS for us, Gobblez. (Timmay! Gobblez! TIMMAY!))

Alas, we did not get Akil'zon down. Kathe slapped on healing gear and helped keep the raid alive. We were debating whether this dropped us too low on DPS. We were going to swap her out and bring in Kikidas (rawr! Kikidas eat Eagle Lord. *nomnom*.) but we wound up running out of time and had the gauntlet respawn.

On Azil'zon our biggest problem was coordination of the Electrical Storm collapse. Too early and we were getting eaten by Static Disruption. Once we called it too late and someone didn't collapse in time... and guess who the storm was centered over? We also had a bit of a difficult time with the birds. We had our warlock try to dot them up as they flew by. We didn't (and we thought of this afterwards) have the hunters also hit the birds a time or two. Next time...

We got him to about 50% though, and for a small guild that on the WHOLE hasn't ever fought him before... not too shabby, IMNSHO. I think if we hadn't had the gauntlet respawn right around 9pm, we'd have done it. Our best attempt at him was our last attempt at him and it was also the attempt where the collapse didn't happen quite right and the raid got wiped.

By the way -- when you're tossed up in the air, druids can catform once released from the storm and avoid taking any fall damage (even if you're a healer and not a feral druid pretending to be a healer, you get reduced fall damage, so still worth it to shift.)

Now, here's the problem with being a small guild trying this out. I'm going to name our top DPSers (by top DPS, I mean people who consistently come in the top 4 and 700+ DPS average) in the guild, and I want you to pick who you've discovered, by my posts, is actually one of our tank or healer alts!

Ravensfire, Dhark, Neshura, Tasogare, Absitively, Kikidas

That's right! Of those FIVE DPSers, only TWO of them are not usually otherwise occupied in a tank or healing role! Ravensfire and Neshura are the only two of KoU's top DPSers who isn't usually required to fill a healing or tanking role. What this means is that even though if you put all five of us in a run together, put in two tanks, two healers and one other decent DPS, we'd slaughter your world... what it really means is we have two 700+, and a bevy of up and comers who average 400-500.

So likely, we're going to be in Karazhan yet more, getting them the gear and experience. We also need to do Netherspite and Nightbane, since those are coordination-listen to the raid leader call instruction fights, and we need more of that experience for ZA and beyond. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for Kathe, since just about all of her upgrades will come from badges (or PvP)... but it can be frustrating! Especially since we ate the Bear Lord. He's nothing more than a juicy bear burger to us now. (And yes, I had to put a wowhead link in here. Because I can, damnit.)

Off to more fun Alliance PvP with Kathe the Resto/Balance druid! WOoooo... *cry*

Curse of the Little Guild - Cherry Picking

Cherry Picking is defined as 'selecting the best or most desirable'.

In terms of WoW, and I did look, it isn't listed anywhere as being done by or to guilds. Yet everyone knows what I mean when I say 'a guild is cherrypicking'.

By this I mean that a guild, be it that they know of a good player, or know of a good guild, will target the top level players of that guild and try to recruit them to their guild.

There are a few ways of doing this. Most commonly, it's done when a well known guild has a breakup or drama. This happened to Tranquility. When Tranquility/Innovation broke up, you'd log in and start getting sympathetic /tells from people, 'Oh, I heard the bad news. So sorry about your guild. Need a new home?'.

The other way of doing it is when a few people leave Guild A to go to Guild B. Then some unspecified time later, ex-Guild A people start to give /tells to their friends in Guild A.
'Oh, we're having a great time raiding! What are you guys still doing? Oh. You're still doing Kara. Well, we downed Vashj the other day and we had to shard the awesome piece that dropped. Too bad you weren't there.'

And so on and so on and so on. Maybe Guild B will let GuildieA into one of their raids, so that they can see how awesome they are! 'Wow, you're a really good player, GuildieA. Your gear is so neat too! ... You're still doing Kara? That's a shame.'

Eventually, said person from Guild A may defect to Guild B, wanting what has been teased before them. Which, as I've said repeatedly.. is fine. It's their 15 bucks a month. It's their game too. They can go forward if they want to go forward with bigger and better things.

And keep in mind, one of the hardships of getting through Kara and moving onto ZA or other raids is this very hemorrhage that is occurring by cherry picking. If our best players keep getting sniped... we wind up back in Kara s'more.

The guild being cherry-picked will ask, "Why are you leaving us?" and how can we respond to the accusation of 'I want to see more end-game stuff!'. We aren't there. (We can't get there if everyone keeps leaving, either.) We aren't doing mass-invites, because we have something special with the atmosphere of our guild and we don't want to lose that by simply inviting every tom-dick-and-harry that needs a casual-raiding guild.

What hurts most to the little guilds is that we play together and have what we believe to be friendships. Now. It's a game. I understand that. You understand that. And sometimes the game takes us away from our friends for various things. I did it with Kikidas. She's in a raiding guild. True, I only raid with her on Saturdays and it's always Mags and Gruuls, but there she is. I've seen SSC. I've seen TK. I haven't seen BT. I haven't seen the Sunwell. But I'm still friends with KoU (c'mon, I'm one of their officers.). I don't try to get our top raiders to join Resolve. I don't really ever bring it up. If someone ASKED me if they could get into Resolve, maybe that would be different. But I don't volunteer. I don't say 'Wow, I'm decked out in MADPHATEPIX, why aren't you? You should come play with Resolve!'

I was originally cherry-picked from KoU as Kikidas by Tranquility. At the time, I didn't realize that's what it was. I'm a wiser person today. Would I still have gone? Possibly... I got experience I wouldn't have otherwise gotten. I also realized how much of a drain a high end raiding guild can be on your time and your life. Will I still go if Resolve says 'Hey, Kik, this Saturday we're going to hit a few TK bosses, wanna come?'... YES. But I'm happy with Resolve. I can go on raids if I want to go on raids. They know my name. I can bring other people if spots are available. And they didn't cherry-pick me. I chose them.

As you all know from the previous drama about KoU, we lost a few people to two raiding guilds on our server. And since then, we've had a very slow bleed of people who leave the guild to go elsewhere. Curiously enough, even new people we've recruited and who didn't know the people who left for the two raiding guilds... when they leave... guess where they wind up? Curiously enough, occasionally we'll see our ex-guildies on our ventrilo server, talking to people. Just saying hi? We were friends, after all... or is it something else?

Maybe it's my warlock-paranoia spiking, but I don't think it's mere coincidence that we keep losing players to these guilds. And for people who say that they're our friends, it hurts. Not that people are leaving to go to bigger and better things, or that they say 'I want to see bigger and better things, let me see if the guild where a lot of my friends are in has room.'. It's that they just LEAVE. No words. No 'hey guys, I'm going.'. You just log in and they're gone. And that hurts.

My only hope is that it isn't a deliberate act of cherry picking. Because that would hurt worse.

However, our recent loss of a player that used to say they'd never leave, especially to go to THAT guild... and then they leave without a word to anyone and wind up in THAT guild... ? And then said person gives us one story when we press him by saying, 'Hey, what's up, man? You okay?', and then when repercussions of this latest sniping are felt (by the kicking of all ex-guildies alts from our guild) and we start getting /tells from them along the lines of 'what's going on?'... and we get a whole different story from them than we got from our recent ex-patriate?

The thing is.. if we were a huge guild where people are shuffling in and out all the time... the loss of one or two players wouldn't be a huge deal. However, we're a small, tight-knit guild. When one of our members ups and leaves without a WORD... it hurts. It doesn't merely hurt us as a GUILD, but it hurts us as people. We knew this man. We knew his name, we know that he has kids, that he has dogs, that he has a new puppy, that he has a wife who cooks so awesomely that when he describes the food on ventrilo people start drooling and we had to enact a law that he can't talk about his wife's cooking during raids. And he leaves without a word. And it hurts.

If it's a matter of our raid times are inconvenient... okay, no worries, have fun. But say something. And don't go to a guild that two weeks ago you were saying you'd never join because of how they've cherry-picked people from us in the past. Insult to injury. Salt on the wound. And a dagger to the heart.

Maybe it's melodramatic of me to put it in those terms... but that's what it feels like. All it would have taken ... is a simple, 'Hey guys...'. And it isn't a matter of 'well, no one was on when I left.', people were 1: on, and 2: we have forums where it can be posted privately or publically. The last time this person left to go to a raiding guild, he posted it on the forums so there would be no doubt. No drama. No misunderstandings.

I suppose this is more of a griping/venting blog rather than a blog about the joys of cherry-picking. But it's my blog. I can bitch if I want to.

Casual Raiding: Progression!

Thank you, Frijona, for giving me the proverbial smack upside the head and saying "Quit whining, you're a warlock. Start acting like it!". Okay, that isn't really what she said. But thank you.

(It really involved Unstable Affliction, Deathcoil and her Succubus.)

(And the Black Mageweave set.)

(And the Admiral's Hat.)

(Don't ask.)

Last month I regaled you all with the drama that was Knights of Utopia and our big blowup regarding being a casual guild that wanted to raid.

But then I digressed wildly and only tossed a post here and there about how we were doing. And for those of you who hang on my every word the torment of not knowing how KoU is doing must have been torture.

(Maybe I shouldn't finish this post...)

I talked last time about instigating a set of strict rules. You must have this, this, this and this or you just don't go. And we've stuck to it, though at times it was hard. I think we're the only guild ever that always has tanks and healers, but cannot find DPS. We typically PuG at least two members and if you haven't ever tried to wade through the substandard DPS that tries to get into Karazhan... I hope you never have to. It's a hideous hassle of finding someone, looking at their armory, then trying to explain politely that they don't meet your guild's minimum stats. Especially when the answer is 'w/e'.

But, the short of it is that every single week since the guild blow up, we have hit Kara running. We clear from Attumen to Prince in about 3 to 4 hours. (only twice has it gone over 4 hours, and only once did we have to two-day it.)

(And I know that Prince isn't supposed to be a stationary fight. But we usually do it that way. There's an interesting discussion on strategies that various people use in BBB's blog recently. Considering that this last run we had THREE hideous placements of infernals (they bracketed the tank all three times), we were discussing possibly trying something different (scary! change is bad.) next time... namely the way the fight is supposed to work. Mobile.)

We do not do Nightbane and Netherspite but we are interested in attempting it. Basically we don't due to time issues. As I've said before, we have people in our guild who have babies and jobs and other things that prevent us from raiding more than maybe one day a week.

But we're hitting that stage where with a few exceptions and a few specific items, we're considering Kara as a farm status place. We go in. We come out with 18 badges and some void crystals.

(And this last run Ritssyn's Lost Pendant dropped but I was the only warlock (and I have it) and our holy priest was the only priest (and he didn't want it!). I refused to DE it. As I was the loot master, I just handed it to the holy priest, over his protests. You can't DE that! You just can't! It makes shadow priests and warlocks everywhere make the sound of ultimate suffering.)

Our next goal, as requested by our 'regulars', and as dictated by the interest of not burning out our raiders, is to start hitting ZA.

Now... here's where I expect trouble. You have a group of people that, with few exceptions, one-shots Karazhan on a weekly basis. Suddenly you go into progression mode. Even with people who have been there before, suddenly it's all new. Harder trash. Harder bosses. More strategy. And wipes. Wipe wipe wipe. I expect it. The raid leader expects it. The guild leader expects it. And theorhetically, the raid will expect it too (because we'll make sure they know this is progression. And progression = death.). Suddenly we're wiping on trash. We can't get a single boss down. We suck, OMG! /gquit!

(I don't expect any of our regulars to /gquit. I'm being an exaggerating overreacting blogger!)

Our way of combating this?
Allowing repairs from the guild bank on progression nights (to an extent). (Who minds wiping when your repair bill will be covered?)
Limiting our ZA experience, regardless of success or failure, to 2 hours only. (This way, we don't start getting sloppy and frustrated, which usually leads to more death.)
Making sure all people who sign up from our guild to go read a posted-linked strategy guide and meet our minimum requirements.

We won't be able to PuG anyone for this, likely. (Would YOU join a ZA Progression run? Where you aren't guaranteed to even down a single boss?) So we have to pull in all our people if possible, or find a few very nice and understanding people from our fiends list who are willing to help us progress.

In terms of that, we have gotten three very nice invitee's in the last week. One is a lowish (mid50's now!) paladin tank (Veliuona) that I met while in ZF with my arcane-mage. Two are people we pugged for this last Saturday's Kara run. Gobblez the rogue (and the South Park jokes were rampant.) and Siiro the hunter. Both of them dropped their guild and joined ours. Isn't that sweet? Both of them were informed that Kara is just a once a week thing and we're a casual guild, with minimal raiding. Both seemed fine with that.

But again, digression is inevitable. I mean progression is inevitable! We're moving on. We have the DPS. We have the healers. We have the tanks. Now we just need to get all 10 of them on at the same time!

In terms of Gruul and Magtheridon... Kikidas is in a guild that does those two 25-mans every Saturday. They PuG (in terms of friends lists and their parent guild) over half of the run. My intention is to eventually start bringing some of KoU's people into those runs (if Resolve is okay with that!) Their only stipulation is that the people who come don't suck entirely and that they fit in the roles that are still open. Naturally, guilded and friends come before the new-guildies alt-guild friends.

On an aside... you'd be surprised how in an otherwise well run raid, you can carry one or two sucks along and still do really well. Of course, this is because a certain number of people who are there are so overgeared for the place it's laughable, but still... impressive.

So, to recap: KoU has been doing smashingly. We are looking for a guild with similar experience (Most of Kara, starting ZA, interested in Gruul/Mag but don't have the numbers.) and similar goals (casual raiding, once or maybe twice a week.) to what our experience and goals are and who may be interested in an alliance. It's easier to get going when you don't have to wade through LFG to find those last few people. And with more people to pick from, an allied tank or healer, it allows us to start bringing in a few of our alts we don't normally get to! Bonus.

Casual raiding is WORKING for us. We finally found a core group of people who are on the same page. Casual is great, but when we raid, we're RAIDING. RAWR.

(And damn you, Hellfire Ramparts. I WANT MY BELT.)

(And since you've been confused the last ten times I've been in there, I'm not talking about the Lion's Heart Girdle, I'm talking about the Tree-Mender's Belt. One is plate. The other is leather. Get it straight already! I've been in there so often, that with 3 badges per run I'm almost ready to get the badge-reward belt at 60 badges! Which I'd really rather use to upgrade some other piece of gear rather than something I can upgrade through a heroic.)

Under New Management

Knights of Utopia is now under new management.

The other day, we had our big guild hemorrhage and lost scads of our raiders. The previous guild leader, who is an awesome guy, admitted that it was a choice to him to either quit WoW or stay guild leader (which doesn't sound like it makes sense, but I'm sure you know what I mean). Everyone encouraged him to do what he needed to do to have fun, because after all, this is a GAME.

So guild leadership was handed over to none other than me.

Well, it was handed over to Owaru the paladin's alt, Byouki the warlock, but we all know where the real power lies.

And Owaru has taken off like a race-horse given its head. And he's doing awesome with what he's doing. And if he isn't careful, he's going to burn himself out and wind up saying 'it's either quit or stay guild leader'. *waggles admonitory finger at Owaru* Delegate, my friend. You have a good group of support staff in your high council. We are here to use and abuse, and in some cases, abuse is what we want *cough Absitively cough*. If he denies that he wants abuse, he's lying.

So, if you're on Alleria and you see a Knights of Utopia member, don't judge us by what has been done in the past, hopefully that isn't too harsh anyway. We're under new management.

The only reason we didn't disband and rejoin under a different name is ... damn, we have 3 or 4 bank tabs.

We are getting a new tabard *squee* and having a contest to see what tabard design wins. Too bad we can't also change our guild name without disbanding (if someone sees this and says 'yes, you can', please tell me how.).

Casual Raiding: Guild Breakers

There are posts aplenty out there about raiding guilds, raiding, casual raiding and all that it entails. Some guilds can make it work for them. They have the players, the gear and the ability to partition time appropriately.

Knights of Utopia, a casual-guild on Alleria, has been my home now for a while. Since I've joined, it's gone through a lot of changes.

When I joined, way back when Kava the rogue was my main character, they were just starting Karazhan (again). Story is, that they used to run Karazhan and then the guild split into the 'hard core raiders' and the 'casual raiders'. Knights of Utopia were the remnants of the casual raider part of it.

So, I join the group and they need a warlock. Kikidas becomes my main. And we're doing Karazhan. They have a karma system that is additive. Meaning that I never won anything because I wasn't in there as often as the other casters in the guild, so they'd roll with 170 added to their roll and I'd roll with 20 added to mine. Not very satisfactory! Since I wasn't getting gear out of Karazhan, I became a heroic hog and went after badges and heroic gear like a madwoman. I became the raid leader and we eked our way up to the Curator, with all the associated problems that a small guild trying a 10-man raid entailed. Unfortunately, being new to raid leading, I did the 'warm body' policy. Can you get into Kara? Then let's go!

How naive I was.

I eventually left KoU with my warlock because I was tired of wiping on Attumen and being unable to motivate some members to do more.

We (KoU) went through two more raid leaders before our 'current' set of raid leaders. And we went from barely hitting Curator to hitting Prince and Netherspite. I shouldn't say 'we'. THEY. They did awesome! They had a core group of people. They knew the strats. They had the gear. Most of them had the playability. (some did not)

Then we lost two of those core people to bigger-better guilds. They were tired of doing Kara and they wanted into SSC and TK. Which is FINE. Let me say that again: that's FINE. They stuck around in Kara, training the new people who filtered in and out of the last few spots of tank and healer and DPS that always seem to be changing, and doing it over and over again. They wanted to see bigger and better things. It's their 15 bucks a month. I hope they do well in their new guild and I hope they see SSC and TK and all the other things that they want to see. They have more time to raid than I did, so I'm sure they'll go further than I ever did with Kikidas.

With one of KoU's main DPS and healers out of the game, suddenly we backslid in Karazhan. And then it happened. Whether it's cherry-picking by other guilds (it has happened before, our more geared players get stolen by the glory of epix) or the 'grass is greener on the other side' syndrome or the 'Hey guys, I'm having a BLAST in SSC and TK! Wish you could be here!' or some other thing... but last night we lost 8 people. The partings were, for the most part, sincere and regretful on both sides. 'We want to move on. We're tired of doing Kara'.

See previous response about Kara that I just made. Good luck to you guys.

Now, onto my title.

Casual raiding causes guild breakups. Because in your 'casual' group, you're going to have a range of people from the truly casual "What's a macro?" to the casual-hardcore "Let's DO THIS THING! RAWR!"

The resulting gradient is where the problem comes in. The casual-hardcore people get tired of the truly casual. The truly casual hold back the ones who can do the casual raiding well. The hardcore people can't get the casual ones to actually do things in a hardcore way. And then the hardcore people move on because they want to progress. The casual people still can't figure out where Karazhan is.

Which, considering it's a casual guild, is somewhat understandable.

Last night, KoU officers (before the mass exodus) held a meeting and decided to re-vamp our 'casual raiding' style. We're still a casual guild, but if you want to raid with us, you have to meet some stricter criteria to be on the list of our raiders. We were going to get down and dirty and streamline our Karazhan so that we can down it in a night or two. We talked about re-opening and strengthening our ties with Angel's Wrath, an allied guild, so we can do joint Gruuls and Mags. We discussed heroics and stopping the 'warm body' policy. Instead of filling in our spots with anyone who is on, if we don't have enough 'Kara ready' people -- and by that we mean pots, flasks, food, strat, gear on and ready to go 15-30 minutes before START TIME (by start time we mean the time the first mob gets pulled) -- then we'd split up the people who were there and do heroics and instances and group quests, as a guild. Strengthen ties, learn each other styles, get better badge gear, etc.

We've been casual for a long time and I don't want to see that change. We have people with babies in the guild who can't do hardcore raiding and wouldn't last in a true raiding guild because of their schedule and unplanned 'Oops, baby woke up!' moments. We have people who have variable work schedules and sometimes can't show up as planned. We have people who are there to play the game and have fun and that shouldn't change.

But if we're going to be a casual raiding guild, some things do need to change about our raiding style. We've unfortunately enabled people to get into Kara and get the gear and the things that they 'don't deserve'. What I mean by that is that they don't learn the stats or their class or any of the things they need to know for us to progress, because we've been so gung-ho about 'getting through' that we don't make sure people know the whys and hows. We're enablers and that's the reason we have people leaving. We can't continue 'warm body' policy anymore. It's killing us.

We're so scared of hurting someone's feelings that we keep with the 'warm body' strategy and take people we'd really rather not raid with... and we fail. We keep throwing ourselves at the doors of Karazhan without being ready for it (by having 10 people ready to go). Now, I understand that some people will be learning as they go and getting gear as they go and I can't expect everyone to show up at the doors of Karazhan and go through it like they're geared out like Kikidas, Boon, Absitively and Owaru. And some of our inability to get through Karazhan in one or two nights is how slow we've historically pulled trash and how long it took to discuss the strategy. Part of our new streamlined policy is that we are no longer going to do that. You know your strats. You know your marks. No more 'this is how we're going to do this'. We get in and we pull the way it should be pulled. We hold people accountable for their mistakes. If you always kill us in Shade because you're always the one moving during flame wreath? Guess what? Get better. If you don't know the strategy for Attumen, why not? You should read up on what you're going to do before you go and do it. If you're playing the game, you have access to the internet.

But I digress, as I always do.

Casual raiding breaks guilds because you have people like me in the guild. I'm a hardcore casual raider. Absitively is a hardcore casual raider. Look at our gear. Look at what we can do. Look at what we want to do. We're always bettering our gear towards a goal. We don't just go 'ooh, purple, drool' and expect that it'll open the door to us. We don't just go 'ooh, black temple, let's PuG it!' because it has no more attunement. We work our tails off and we want to see more, do more, be more. We push our envelope because that's our nature. We exist in a casual guild because we also enjoy things that aren't raiding, because our envelopes are more than Kara, ZA, TK, BT, SSC...

But I worry how many more people in our guild will leave shortly because they're also casual hardcore raiders. What they don't understand is that KoU will never progress because we have this slow bleed. We lose our best players just when KoU is ready to make the transition to ZA or start looking at our allies for a joint Gruuls or Mag. The reason they leave is because the warm body/casual attitude we've historically taken. There's no way that as we were... we'd survive in ZA or Gruuls or Mags, even if we were grouped with our allies. It's probably why our allies don't party with us, either. We have people who just don't do their homework, who just aren't doing what they should be doing, and either don't care or don't bother to learn more. Some of it may be that they just aren't told -- after all, we don't want to make them feel bad. Some of it is the enabling that we've done in the past. Why should they... when we do it for them?

I do think that KoU still has what we need to hit Karazhan even though we lost 8 people. Our problem is making sure that we're not counting our alts!

Healers: Terrex, Boon, Shougeki, Orzag, Kiljara
Tanks: Ferenal, Annuubis, Kathe, Keyami, Owaru
DPS: Dhark, Kiya, Absitively, Kikidas, Ravensfire, Werenal, Tasogare
-- these people are Kara ready definately. I didn't list some that I am not sure are still in the guild or not as they're associated with people who recently went onto those bigger better pastures and others who aren't on regularly enough to be listed as definates.

Alts: Boon/Dhark; Kikidas/Kiya/Keyami/Kathe/Kiljara; Werenal/Ferenal; Owaru/Shougeki/Tasogare

KoU has floundered in the past. It's lost it's leaders before. It's still around. I hope it will stay around. We may have a membership turnover and people may leave... but we'll still be friends. And we will still play together. We may not raid together... but who cares about that?

(On an aside, I apologize for the way my posts have been lately. I'm having an issue with words and putting words together in a sentence that makes sense to people other than me. I go off on tangents and digress here and there and I start out typing one thing and wind up somewhere completely different. I hope this post made sense to people who are reading my blog. I realize that my blog has digressed a lot from where it started, as well. I was hoping to not have my blog turn into 'this is what I ate today' type of blog and I worry that's where it's heading.)

New Guild and Karazhan Updates

As you may (or may not) know, Kikidas is the Jonah of guilds. The last three guilds she was in self-destructed (or mini-destructed). As such, she was guildless for a little while there.

And may I say, when you are guildless, the game makes SURE YOU KNOW IT! You log in to 10 lines of 'You are not in a guild.'. And it repeats periodically. Like, gee, I didn't know. Thanks for reminding me! Let me go get in a guild, thanks to you!

Anyway, the guild that I was the PuG member of before I left for Florida accepted my application. Yay! So I'm now a member of Resolve. Which I like the name of... resolve. You resolve problems, you resolve difficulties... you resolve the boss with a well timed shadowbolt.

So, we had another Kara run Thursday night (they seem to like to do midnight Kara runs, which I can't do very often) and I convinced (okay, annoyed them into it!) them to let Dhark (my husbands rogue) join in.

It was gorgeous, yet again. Dhark was drooling. We had one tank (paladin) for the entire thing. When "two" tanks were needed, the shaman or healadin would get aggro temporarily while the rest of the group downed the primary target.

Then yesterday, I went into Kara with my hunter, Kiya. Now, Kiya isn't very well geared, mixed greens/blues. Kiya is a beast master with an lynx cub from the beginning of the Blades Edge Mountains (by Sylvanaar), named Bumper.

I was in there with three mages and one warlock for competition in damage. While my overall DPS wasn't the highest, it was consistently in the 400+ range. (One mage was 500, one was 450s, one was on par with me, warlock was 300) And for overall DAMAGE DONE, I was at the top (not counting pet).

We one shotted Attumen. We three shotted Moroes (only one priest and one ice-trap. Bumper did us all proud by being the tank on the adds and I did hunters proud by kiting and trapping my add until it was ready to be killed). We three shotted Maiden (we had a few 'cleanse' issues). We one shotted BBW. All this between the hours of 7pm (we got off to a slightly late start at 7:15) and 10:30pm.

Now, this was a KoU group. This was a SECOND TIER KoU group. Everyone in blues, maybe a few greens and a few purples. Our tanks were well geared and our healers were well geared, which gave us the time the low DPS needed to down the bosses. So, considering that ... WE DID AWESOME. Go Knights of Utopia: Annuu's Group!!

The Jonah of Guilds

I think I'm bad luck. For guilds.

Tranquility. I join. A few weeks later, away it goes.

Innovation. I join. A few weeks later, away it goes.

No Drama. I join. A week or two later, the guild leaders, out of the blue, clean out the guild bank and quit the guild.

My theory -- they realize they aren't me, get depressed, and decide to end it all.

What do you think?

(Alternatively, I'm not a Jonah. It's just bad timing. Especially since in all guilds, I was just a 'probationary' member and only raiding 2 nights a week.)

Raids, Guilds and Ever Quest.

Sorry I haven't posted in the last ... oh gosh, almost a month. I know you missed me. You know you missed me. A month without K is like a month without amusing sunshine.

I have a lot on my plate and I don't mean just what's for dinner. Real Life is always a fun hurdle but nothing anyone here needs to know about! Not that I don't love you and not that you aren't just wanting and waiting to find out all sorts of neat RL things about me so you can stalk me, but I'm just not that public of a person. I'm rather private and shy, you know. And humble. Let's not forget humble.

Anyway, I've been raiding with my guild usually Monday evening and Friday evening. At least I was. Alleria has had a queue issue lately and I think a bunch of people in the guild changed servers. At least, I assume that's what they did, rather than simply delete their characters, because I don't know why I wouldn't be able to send them in-game mail otherwise.

So, what happened is this: My husband, Boon, got EQII because he's a sucker for punishment. He made me do the free-trial that comes with EQII. And every day, when I get home, it's EQII. Which, I will give it the credit it's due: it has it's moments. Character creation is more detailed. There are more classes. There are more races. There are skill-chain-like-things. There are shiny things on the ground you can pick up. Crafting is more intricate (is this a pro, or a con? I can't decide).

The downside is the amount of running around you have to do. The animation on my computer is a bit choppy. I lag in every town and city. Anytime something pops up in my background, my computer crashes because EQII doesn't like when things pop up in the background. And since when does an even match have a greater than 50% chance of killing me? (Okay, slight exaggeration, I don't die often, and when I do it's because I do something really stupid, rather than because I'm fighting a single mob that's yellow or white. That's pie. But still.)

So, I left WoW for less than five days. I stopped in last Friday and there was a mini-raid scheduled. There were people in the guild. Yay, all's well. I log back out since the mini-raid was Karazhan and I don't need Kara on my 'lock. On Monday, I log back in for my regularly scheduled raid evening and BAM. There are 26 people in the guild. Mass exodus. A guild message that says 'This is the end!'.

And I think... damn, I didn't know I was THAT popular. I go away for three days and look what happens!

But here's the clicker. The guild leader, a good paladin named Fragh, is away until the 16th. But we don't have a guild left. If people left for other guilds or just transferred servers. I don't know. I don't know if he's going to try to rebuild or just call it. Some of my favorite people in the guild are no longer on Alleria for one reason or another.

Word of what was happening to my guild must have spread, because 5 minutes later I get a headhunter tell. Before I realize that Fragh is on vacation and is away until the 16th, I say 'sure', and I fill out an application to another guild. Surprise surprise, they say 'Yes, you can join us!'. After that happens, someone logs on and says 'WTF!', erases the guild message and says 'That wasn't Fragh putting that up. Fragh is gone on vacation! We'll see what's going on with the guild when he gets back.'.

So my dilemma. Do I wait until the 16th to go to this new guild, to see if Fragh will rebuild again? Do I tell Fragh that my limited raid time makes me a liability to a guild that's going for end-game? Do I even bother to raid anymore?

What do I do? I'm in a quandry.

WWRD? (What would Richard do?) .... (other than kill everyone, that is.)