Changes, changes, changes...

Some of this post is venting, some of it is explaining and some of it is soundboarding. Read or don't read, contribute or don't contribute, as you see fit.

As you may have noted, of late my warlock blog has become a little less warlock themed and a little more alt-themed, with my posts ranging from random game minutia to paladins to shaman to priest to warlock to bear to quests to trivia to etc.

As such, I'm contemplating changing the title of my blog. Still at kdots since, why not, but a different title page than 'More dots!'.

I just don't know what I'd change it to! More alts! More alts! just doesn't have the same ring to it, imnsho.

Other changes that may be in the air is I'm contemplating retiring as an officer in my guild. Right now, I'm basically just a guild-invite program. And that doesn't seem fair to the other officers. I have given to my guild, ideas, time, effort, and I'm contemplating taking some time to just be me and play the game, without worrying about leveling this character for the guild, but instead leveling my character for me.

I already feel very guilty that my retribution paladin is level 79 and my next highest is my restoration shaman at 73. My tank(s) hasn't(haven't) been touched. My 'main stream' DPS classes haven't really been touched either. Yet I can't find it in myself to level them right now. And I hate feeling guilty for it. I'm not the only officer, nor am I the only officer leveling a DPS as opposed to a tank or healer, but me being me... being raised Roman Catholic with a heavy dose of Italian Grandma... I can't help but wince and wonder when people are going to pounce on me and say, "Why are you leveling THAT? You're going to go prot/holy with her, right? You surely aren't staying RET, right?!" and that is exactly what I am going to do - stay retribution with my paladin.

I'm having too much fun enjoying the game with Kvasira, and then I feel guilty for it. That isn't how I want to play, y'know? My paladin started ret. Has been ret. And will stay ret.

And I want to stop feeling guilty about who I play and who I take to instances and who I sign up to go on raids with.

I started Guild Event Days for the guild and organized several of them, but then people stopped showing up and I lost interest in trying to organize something for people who didn't show up. Another officer has taken over running GED's, and I'm glad because they are an awesome idea for a friend-oriented guild and I'd hate for my apathy for anything officer-related to kill a great idea.

I used to help organize raids, but I stopped that a while back, for a variety of reasons, and haven't started it yet again. Granted, the only raids we could do would be the old 10-mans in BC and Classic, but I still have no interest in trying to organize it. Figuring out who to take, why to take them, why to have someone go as someone else, trying to balance raid utility and classes and this and that and blah blah blah. I don't want to do it anymore.

I tend to be a bossy person, especially in something I feel I do well. I think I have a good handle on people and their abilities and I put out an expectation and I find that usually people live up to that expectation. And I feel that given those things, how well I do things, the effort I put into things, that my opinion should count for something.

The downside to my personality is that when I have my face rubbed in the fact that I'm a bossy person, I get horrified. I wasn't raised to be a bossy person. I was raised to be a good little Catholic Italian girl and wash the dishes and do the laundry and keep my mouth shut when other people are talking so I don't hurt their feelings with my own inconsequential thoughts. Now, I say that and I tell you that my parents did not realize they were raising me that way, and undoubtedly would be horrified if they realized that I equated my upbringing with that outcome, and then they'd laugh at the mere thought that I came out that way (because I didn't), but I still know that's the way I should be.

So I get horrified, my opinion made to be less than I thought it was worth, and I go crawl into a hole made of my own shattered self-esteem, pride and emotions. It's a vicious cycle. And instead of scaling back my behavior, I go 180 to what I was, so instead of being bossy and authoritative about what I'm doing, I go to not participating much at all.

Such is me.

Such happened to me not too long ago. I did what my bossy opinion told me was the right thing to do, based on what I knew about the game, the mechanics involved, etc, etc, and it blew up in my face.

So poof, I go to not organizing anything.

So, I don't organize, I don't participate except to say 'I'll go as whatever' and I do nothing except feel guilty about shirking my self-imposed leveling duties.

So I ask myself, "Why am I an officer? Is it a rank thing? So I can say 'I'm an officer!'"

What is power without responsibility? I'm not abusing my power, but I'm not doing anything with it either. Is it still then appropriate for me to be an officer? Or worse, am I an officer for no other reason than time spent in the guild and the sheer amount of alts that I have?

I'm not saying anyone did this, but my paranoia can't help but say...

"Make K an officer, so this way we can tap any of her alts we want to have come, rather than waiting for her to offer it herself."

In other news, my warlock has not moved much in the last little bit, and I've fallen far behind the raiding guild requirement of level 80 by December 1st. I don't think they CARE that she isn't level 80, but I don't feel comfortable keeping her in a raiding guild if I'm not planning on raiding with her anytime really soon. Yet more of the 'if I'm sitting in there taking up a spot (not that a virtual spot takes much room anyway), I should be doing what is expected. So if I'm not doing what is expected, maybe I should not be there.'

We're going on vacation for the holidays starting the 22nd until New Years Eve. Honestly, I can't wait for the break. Not that I'm not enjoying the heck out of the expac, but I think I need to take some time and evaluate where I want to go with the game, where I find myself going and what I want to do next.

And damnit, I need an epic flying mount on my paladin. Boon spends most of our in-flight time zooming circles around me and making train noises.

Lawn Darts and Trivia

Yesterday Knights of Utopia played Lawn Darts and Trivia!

I guess Lawn Darts doesn't quite convey what it was. We were on Aldor Rise. One of our officers earlier volunteered to go first and left his corpse there, unrezzed, while he alted to someone else.

Then the rest of us, up on Aldor Rise, tried to hit his corpse with our own. Neshura used her volley-overlay as a dart board. The closer you were to the center (her and the corpse), the more points you earned!

This was quite amusing as a bunch of 70+ naked people jumped multiple times off of the Aldor Rise. We had a few people ask if we were trying for the Going Down achievement. To which we replied, "Nope, we're lawn darts."

Afterwards was trivia. This was also fun! It consisted of WoW Trivia mostly, some guild trivia, some real life trivia, and then was open to everyone to toss out trivia questions.

Amusingly enough, I was the answer to one of the 'guild trivia' questions. "Who is our only guildy to have 10 characters over level 60?"

I answered first! :)

There were others, such as raid quotes and trivia. You had to name the raid and the boss that said it.
Dungeon quotes and trivia.
Lore trivia.
There was a whole group of questions where the theme was, 'The answer is Neshura!'.

Is it sad that I knew most of the raid quotes, all of the dungeon quotes and a good portion of the lore trivia?

We weren't allowed to use atlas loot or the others, and once you buzzed in, you had just a few seconds to answer.

Some of the questions, you wonder? See if you can answer them off the top of your head! No cheating now. These are out of order, because I don't have perfect recall. :P The ones in quotations are... quotes. The ones that are questions are... questions. For the quotes, name the instance and boss, for the questions, answer them.

I won't include the ones that are guild only, nor the real world ones.

1. "The Menagerie is for guests only."
2. "Time for fun!"
3. "Come closer, come closer and burn!"
4. "I'll turn your world upside-down!"
5. "I'll show you this beaten dog still has some teeth!"
6. "I... hate... you."
7. "You call on da beast, you gonna get more dan you bargain for!"
8. Who is Medivh's mother?
9. What is the name of Cairne Bloodhoof's son?
10. "Arise my champion."
11. "Fools... kill the one in the dress!"
12. Who is the last boss in Molten Core?
13. What is Whitemane's first name and where can you find her as a little girl?
14. Where does Stitches patrol?
15. What did Stormwind used to be known as?
16. What instance would it be useful to go into with a 'snufflenose command stick' and a gopher?
17. What zone did Dalaran used to be located in?

And that's all I can remember from last night. :)

Creating Guild Bonds

One of the big reasons someone leaves a guild is that they feel no connection to the people they are guilded with. One of the big reasons someone stays with a guild that may otherwise not be happy with are the people who are also in that guild with them.

Your personal connections to the guild isn't with the GUILD. It's with the people who are in that guild. A guild is just a name and a tabard. Sometimes an ugly tabard. Sometimes a stupid name. ("the knights of assassination" spring to mind... no, I am not kidding. There is a guild on my server named "the knights of assassination".)

With Knights of Utopia having the issues and troubles it has had recently, the guild leader looked at Boon and myself for some suggestions. Boon and myself had a small, family guild that we 1: never had anyone leave to go to a different guild (one exception and that was because he wanted to raid and we didn't raid.) and 2: people who were apart of it still refer to themselves as GK's (Guardian Knights) and still keep in touch with Boon and myself when they see us.

The reason it disbanded was that it was very small and that most of our members fell off the game and into real life, or during the Alleria queue-hell, went to different servers to play while Boon and I sat through 45 minute to an hour queue lines to get onto our server.

But the Guardian Knights was a quasi-Roleplaying guild and we did guild events. We held celebrations. We did games. We did events. And we were a close bunch of friends.

Now, it's something of a fact that the bigger the guild, the more you'll have people who aren't part of the leadership-clique. There are only so many instances that my character can be in, for example. And chances are, several of those spots will be taken up by the people who are already my friends (or my husband). This leaves very little chance for some new people or even some veterans that I don't get to play with... to get to know me. To get to hang out with me and do stuff with me.

And that destroys guild bonds. If you're in a guild and you want to instance with me, but I'm always in an instance with someone else... well, you get tired of waiting to instance with me and you do it with a PuG. And if you're instancing with a PuG... why are you even in a guild? And people leave.

There's no way around it. I can't be in ten instances at once. I just don't have the time! (And in this instance, I'm not being ... me. That 'I' is a symbolic 'I' to represent all the guild leaders and 'in' people in a guild. The awesome healer. The kickass tank. The funny guy that makes any run a lesson in hilarity.)

One of the things that the GK did that we're moving to KoU are things I call Guild Event Days. There are others, but I'm going to talk about Guild Event Days now.

It's a day when everyone gets together at some predetermined spot to do some predetermined thing. It can be anything your little imagination comes up with! The goal is to have fun and get people talking and doing things with guild members.

There are two types of Guild Events.
1. Benefit the Guild
2. Just for Fun

Type 1 is what I call Bank Events. You do still try to make it fun and exciting and rewarding for your guild members, but the primary goal is to fill your guild bank with gold, items, etc. It can be a competition. The rationale behind this is that unless you're the type of person who is just really generous or whom hates doing any sort of Auction Housing and so gives the guild bank any item that isn't crap... most people don't donate to the guild bank. They don't give it money (why should you give the guild money... when you need it!), or items or mats.

But the guild bank is there for them too. We offer people 1/2 price AH on all items, crafting materials, gems, primals, etc. But we can't do that if we don't have the items or the recipes or the whatever!

So, our first bank day was a killing spree in Blades Edge Mountains. EVERYTHING gets turned in. Scraps of leather, potions, scrolls, herbs, nodes, gold, cloth, items. Everything. The person who turned in the most cloth got 10% of the gold intake.

(And so you guys know the scope of what I'm talking about... we had 10 people. 1 hour. 300g in just gold turned in. That is not counting cloth, items, etc. Just gold. The winner, for an hour of work, got 30g. And while, yes... you can spend that hour and get much more doing dailies and the like... this method helps out the guild, too. And doesn't that feel good?)

The officer in charge of the bank then takes those items and decides: what the item is, is it worth keeping or selling? Is it a crafting material? Is it a blue BoE item? Is it a disenchantable green or an AHing green? And ALL that money that he makes from those items goes into the guild bank as well.

And don't you feel good?

(Our next bank event is going to involve two teams. Team Netherstorm and Team Shadowmoon Valley. Keep in mind if you have a lot of lowbies in you guild, you may need to make this event in a location that they can handle. Turn-ins don't always have to be cloth. It can be the number of Squashed Rabbit Carcasses you turn in!)

Guild Event type 2 is a for fun, shits, giggles, you don't donate anything other than the time for the event. We recently (as of yesterday) had one of these.

It was Hide and Seek-Tag in Darnassus. If you were on Alleria and noticed a whole bunch of naked-except-for-guild-tabard people running around... in bright orange tabards. That was us.

The rules? Hide and Seek. Stay within the boundaries of Darnassus. One person started out as the tagger. If you got tagged, you had to go tag someone else. (No tag-backs!) (We played with 3 tags and you're out, but we're going to lower that number... waaaaay too many people were waaaay too good at hiding! That or start out with a hunter as the primary tagger. A paladin just can't find people well enough!) The last person standing, so to speak, won. We had THREE winners. We could NOT find them. (They cheated, that's the only possible explanation!) Eventually we had everyone EXCEPT the three of them looking for them. We just could not find them!)

Lots of trash talk happened on ventrilo and in guild chat. But no one would take my bet about the first person to be tagged out. Which is sad, because I would have lost and someone could have made an easy 5g.

The winners got pets. Nothing fancy or special. A Great Horned Owl, a Hawk Owl and a Siamese Cat were the winning pets.

But it was fun. We had 11 or 12 people playing. General chat was full of: WTB Location of Teppou. PST. and other such things. (By the way, ratting out your fellow guildy if you spotted them ... perfectly acceptable!!)

It needs a little tweaking. But it was great anyway. 12 or so people in ventrilo, doing something that doesn't involve dying (unless you fell off the waterfall...) or stress or anything other than going 'Damnit! You found me!'

By the way, Darnassus is probably the best city for hide'n'seek. The other cities are too crowded, too laggy, too many people and places to hide. Darnassus is nice and open, with plenty of hiding places, but not so many as to make it impossible.

Anyway... guild bonds. Create them!