Blog change

If anyone is reading this, I decided to start a new blog, so my posts will now be at www.whimzicalwow.wordpress.com.

Post Raid Blues

Every once in a while, after a raid, I get really depressed, like I just want to sit in a corner and cry. I don’t know why and it doesn’t happen all the time. It can happen whether we do well or we do poorly. There’s no rhyme or reason for it. I wonder if I’m the only one that experiences it.

This weekend, for example, my guild did really well, better than we have in ages. We got into ICC and managed to get Marrowgar down and made good progress on Lady Deathwhisper. We also restarted our 25 mans with a guild we have an alliance with and did 25 man ToC and got to Faction Champs before we called it (god, I hate that fight!). The 25 man raids are mainly our two guilds with a couple other guilds filling up the spots, so it looks like a pug but a lot of us have been raiding together for over 2 years.

My guild is fairly casual. We don’t even call ourselves a raiding guild, barely have a raiding schedule, and we do a lot of Care Bear raiding just so that we’ll have people to fill our seats. A lot of our members (including myself) will pug with other guilds to get gear as well and sometimes they leave our guild to go raid regularly with those other guilds, which is somewhat disappointing because it alway seems to happen when we’re making progress, but we don’t begrudge them leaving for something more to their liking, and frequently they come back to us anyway, plus a lot of them leave alts in our guild. They’ll say that we’re like home and family, but sometimes they need to leave the nest to grow.

Recently a guild that had poached several of our members broke up.  It was getting to be a point of contention with my guild master because he felt like they were actively recruiting our talent, and they day before they broke up, he had asked me who their guild leader was so that he could talk to him about it.  I had run with them several times in order to see content I wasn’t able to see with my guild and I know I could have gotten a spot with them in a heartbeat if I’d been so inclined.  However, I’m pretty loyal to my guild, seeing as I was a founding member, among other reasons, so even though I want to raid more seriously, I don’t feel that it would be right to leave, especially as I’m our main healer.  Plus, they’d screwed me over a few times because I was a pug healer rather than a guild healer, so I really had no desire to join them.  Anyway, to get back to my point, they broke up and we got several of our old members back plus a few new ones, including their gm (and not any of their members that screwed me over, thank god).  So now we’re back to raiding regularly, with experienced raid leaders, although it’s tough to mix our inexperienced members with their experience, but they’ve said they’re willing to teach. 

Our Wednesday night raid was a bit of a disaster, because a lot of the geared people gave up their spots so that we could start gearing up some of our other players and we didn’t players have enough for 2 groups so that we could mix it up a bit.  I was one of the ones to give up my spot, but I told the raid leader I would stick around because I had a feeling one of our healers would “have to go” after a few wipes…and she did, so I went in and we were able to down the Northrend beasts.  I think they had wiped a half dozen times before I got in there.  Then we had a few tries at Lord Jaraxxus, but it wasn’t happening and everyone was getting tired and I think the raid leaders were banging their heads against their desks.  However the entire raid was only about an hour and a half.

Compare that to last night, where we had several of our core raiders and a few of the less experienced and we went into ICC and downed Lord Marrowgar (finally) and we got the Boned achievement.  Granted we must’ve wiped at least a dozen times on that fight and trash was starting to respawn before we finished, but we were able to persevere and get the job done.  I think the difference was that each attempt we were getting a little bit better, even if it was only 2% at a time.  We were learning and having a good time and after we lost one of our healers because “9 wipes was too many” and we pulled in that other guild’s gm who’s offspec was healing, and yet he way outhealed the guy who left by a long shot, we were able to do it after a few more tries.  I love how it’s usually the weakest link that gets pissed off at all the wipes, but whatever.  He lost brownie points and may not be asked back again.  Or he may, but I don’t think he’ll be a first choice, that’s for sure.

Anyway, to get back to the topic at hand, I didn’t feel down after Wednesday night’s raid, nor last night’s raid, but tonight I did.  This happened a lot in BC, and I can’t figure out why. 

Today it may have had something to do with the Black Temple pug I was in before our 25 man.  I ended up being really angry about that one and it ended about 15 minutes before the 25 man started so I didn’t really get a chance to get it out of my system before I had to be “on”. 

The second I signed on this afternoon, a member of our alliance guild asked me if I wanted to go to BT, and having never finished it, I said sure.  I knew a few people in the raid but not the raid leader.  We moved along nicely, no deaths until we got to the bosses before Illidan, because there weren’t really any mechanics that we couldn’t just bully our way through.  That fight, though, caused the group to pause, after we wiped.  We lost several people, including a tank (who had to go in 5 minutes anyway) and a healer (which left 1 tank & 2 healers and a few dps), because apparently no one wants to learn the old fights, so I got a few members of my guild to join up, including another healer.  They just started inviting people without worrying about whether or not we had any other tanks or healers and decided to go.  After working out a strategy, we managed to get those bosses down, although it wasn’t a smooth fight.  

Then we moved on to Illidan.  No one wanted to listen to the person that had actually been there and assign rolls, so of course we wiped (cause priests don’t make very good tanks against fire elementals, let me tell you).  Then they realized they only had 1 tank, so the guy who actually knew what he was doing logged off the rogue he was on to bring in his dk tank.  Strat was worked out, we started the fight.  Was doing well, half the raid didn’t move out of the fire, people started dying, we wiped. 

Ok, 3rd try, just about to start and my computer freezes.  I restart, log onto vent, where I was with my guildies because the rest of the group didn’t want to use vent.  I tell them I’m logging back on but it takes a few minutes for my computer to get going.  They tell the raid but everyone gets impatient, so they start the pull before I’m even to the login screen.  I finally get to the log in screen and they’re just past the elemental phase and the boss is at 60%.  I log in and the bar moves slowly.  They’re at 50%, 30%, 20%, 15%…I’m in, but back at the beginning of the instance.  I’m rushing to try to get back, but of course I can’t port in there in the middle of the fight, so they down the boss, and I don’t get the achievement.  I was upset but not mad at that point.  Then I find out that they started because someone in the raid said I wasn’t that important anyway (as one of 3 healers and the only priest), and that just made me livid.  I had spent over 2 hours with this group, healing their asses off, rezzing them, buffing them, finding people to fill their spots, and I guess I just wasn’t important enough to their group for them to wait a measly 5 minutes for me to log on.  And maybe I wasn’t that important, since they managed to down him without me.  And, quite honestly, I don’t care about the achievement or the 25 gold repair bill.  I’ll get the achievement at some point, and I don’t really need the money.  But I can’t get that time back, when I could have been doing some…

ARGH!!!! My computer crashed on Sunday night, when I was writing this & I lost about 20 minutes of writing, so I’m just going to post this as is, without much editing…sorry for the rambling, but I can’t face doing this over again.

Adventures in the Random Dungeon Finder

Today I decided to take my baby priest out of hiding. I had the day off work and it was pouring rain outside so I had no desire to do anything but take a shower, put on a fresh pair of pajamas, throw my snuggie over it and play WoW.

But I wasn’t really in the mood to be “on”, which I sometimes feel I have to do when I’m in guild, and none of the people I usually play with were gonna be on anyway. I’m getting burned out on Loremaster, now that I’m working my way through Outlands and keep getting stuck on bugged quests. So, I decided to go to my horde realm. I currently have 3 toons there, a level 11 mage, a level 16 pally and, when I started today, a level 23 priest, that I use to get away sometimes, but I haven’t really played them in months, probably since the beginning of Summer.

I decided to try the new dungeon finder on the priest, since I’m most comfortable playing that class anyway. I queue up and right away I’m put into a group for BFD. They’ve already started pulling mobs before I’ve even zoned in, so by the time I buff everyone and heal the tank, I’m outta mana. God, mana regen at that level is excruciating. The druid tank is pretty good, though, so I just keep a renew & shield on him and grab a drink whenever I can because he’s not stopping. 

I love BFD.  I have great memories of that place and it’s fun.  I’m having a blast trying to heal with my limited arsenal of spells and manage my mana, plus I got the belt off of the big Turtle.  This group is moving along smoothly, we pick up a quest, kill a lot of mobs.  I ding 24 somewhere along the way.  Then we get to the part near the end, and I’m taking a drink and the tank takes off.  I stand up to follow him and it looks like he’s running in place and everyone else is standing by me and not moving.  So, uh oh, I dc’d…but it turns out it wasn’t me, it was the server that went down (for quite a while, too). 

So, I go back to my main server and farm frost lotus for a while on my druid…didn’t find any, but got 6 stacks of flowers to mill…which I don’t need, but oh well.  Then I take a break to eat and it’s near the time I usually log on, so I signed on Whimzee and did my random for my emblem.  I didn’t really want to do anything else, but I stuck around for a while and worked on some Loremaster quests (woot!  Terokkar is done!), but I kept feeling the pull of the baby priest.   I wanted to go heal more low level dungeons. 

So I logged off early and went back to the other server and hit the random dungeon finder.  About a minute later, I was in RFK.  I think I’ve only been in RFK maybe two times in the 4 years I’ve been playing, so it’s very unfamiliar to me.  The tank takes off right away, before buffs and the hunter keeps pulling mobs and I’m out of mana before you know it.  Then the tanks says “Let me know when you need to stop for mana”, so I say “mana” and sit down to drink.  And he quits the group.  So we queue for another tank.  While we wait, we clear some trash with the hunter’s pet & warlock’s pet tanking and we’re actually doing ok.  After about 10 minutes, we finally get a tank and he’s not very good, but I’m keeping everyone up and we’re moving along.  The ‘lock decided to soul stone me after one particularly bad pull where I almost died, so at least we had that cushion.  We downed a boss with no problem.  Then, as we’re moving along, my computer freezes and I have to reboot, so of course, I was kicked from that group by the time I was able to log back on.

Geez, 2 strikes already today…I really wanted to finish one, though, so I queued up again.  This time it took a while, maybe 5 minutes.  But, let me tell you, it was worth it.  One of the best groups I’ve had with the finder, and that’s including all the ones I’ve run with Whimzee (and she has had her pug pet for a while). 

We got BFD, the tank would stop for mana every once in a while, but kept it going at a good pace.  He asked us if we wanted to kill optional mobs.  He told us we were all doing well, and he was too.  Everyone was friendly, everyone dinged, I got a nice new staff.  It was pure heaven as far as PUGs go. 

After we finished that one, we decided to do another, since the group was so great, and we got Stockades.  Everyone was pretty excited about that because they’re horde (well I guess I am too, haha.  Just not used to that.) but could get the achievement without having to sneak into Stormwind.  We had a great run in there, even getting a rare boss, and most everyone dinging again.  It was pretty quick, so we decide to go again and got Stocks again.  That ended up being the last run of the evening because it was late (yeah, I should be in bed now, but I wanted to write this down).  After we finished there, I turned in my BFD quest and leveled for the 3rd time today, so now my baby priest is level 26.  Not bad for a few hours.

The one thing we all lamented on is that we wouldn’t be able to group together again, since we’re all on different realms.  It would be a wonderful feature if Blizzard could add some way to do that.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who has thought about that.  Hopefully I’ll see them again some day in a random.  I know after this experience, I’ll be spending some of my off time there for a while…at least until I get obsessed about something on my main server again.

Starting again

Ok, I haven’t written anything in over a month. I think it’s because once I start writing, I find it hard to stop, so I never feel like I have enough time to write. And I feel like I need to include a graphic and it takes time to find one and get it right for the post.  I know, excuses, excuses.

So, I’m going to start slow. Tonight I added a bunch of links to blogs & websites that I enjoy and/or want to get to know better. There were a lot (mostly WoW related) and I’m sure I’ve missed some. But it’s a start.

I’m also debating whether or not to start a blog for my mindless ramblings and keep this one solely WoW related or just do both here. I’m thinking I’m going to separate them at some point, but for right now, I’m starting small. And when I’m ready, this one will go back to the purpose for which I created it. But for now, I just need a place to dump my brain. It’s not like anyone’s reading it anyway…but it’s a start.

Who am I?

When I started this blog, it was going to be from the perspective of my main character in WoW, Whimzee.  But as I was walking home today from getting my coffee, I started thinking about this – where does Whimzee end and Tami begin or vice versa.  She’s been so much a part of me for the last 3+ years that it’s hard to separate them.  Sure, I’m not nearly as physically beautiful as she is, but I created her to look like an angel since she was going to be a healer.  And, I can’t channel the holy light and make people better no matter how much I would like to.  But, really, we are pretty much one and the same. 

Maybe this week’s The Guild episode (Season 3 finale) had something to do with that thinking, but I’ve thought about it before with my theories about WoW just being a microcosm of real world society and I know I’m not the only one that’s thought about it, considering all the research that’s being done in the educational, psychological, philosopical, economic, etc. arenas.  Plus I’ve been reading the World of Warcraft & Philosophy book (which, if you are even remotely interested in theoretical thinking, I’d highly recommend – it’s fascinating and will make you think.  I’ll probably be writing on some of those topics when I get around to it).

Anyway, the point of this is that I’m finding it difficult to separate my written thoughts between my real self and my virtual self, so I’ll leave it to the reader to decipher my perspective.  But really, we’re one and the same.

Socializing in WoW

Tonight was a strange night in Azeroth. 

Every Tuesday night, I have a “date” with a couple of friends that I actually know in the real world (although which world is real and which is virtual is a topic for another day) and we do whatever, group quests, instances, achievements, etc.  They usually rely on me to figure out what adventures we’re going to go on and to fill up the group if needed and some nights it’s frustrating because they are very limited in their capabilities gamewise.  I love them to death, but they are horrible at playing their toons.  I’ve tried to point them to resources where they can learn and people in game they can talk to for advice, but none of it seems to get through to them.  And they know they aren’t that good, but they don’t try to get better and that’s what drives me crazy.  But they have to get out of the game what they want to get out of it, since it’s their $30/mo (for the 2 of them) and if they’re not willing to put in the effort, it’s not really my problem except that we’re limited because we can’t run anything more difficult that heroic gundrak, which is what we did last week and it took all night.  Fortunately, I have several good friends that don’t mind running with them and we usually have a great time, so that’s what really counts.  But to get back to tonight…

I was hanging out waiting for my friends to be ready this eve.  I had our event planned since it’s the Pilgrim’s Bounty Holiday event and my friend had been hinting all week that he wanted to work on an achievement that required us to go into the enemy’s home cities and sit at their tables while dressed in Pilgrim attire.  Since they weren’t ready yet, I was doing some easy quests for my eventual Loremaster Title and chatting with some guild mates when I got a whisper from someone I knew back in my old guild.  He had switched servers and was looking to maybe come back to ours and was checking out to see if any of his old friends were around.  He asked me about some of our mutual friends, most of whom are still around and members of my current guild, so I tried to fill him in the best that I could, but at the time, I was really the only one available from the people he was looking for.

So then I went on my adventure with my friends after we grabbed a few more folks from the guild.  I hate anything that has to do with pvp so I wasn’t looking forward to getting flagged and potentially killed, but I wanted to get the achievement, so off we went.  Fortunately one of my group mates had already scouted out the locations so it ended up being pretty easy and we really only had one encounter with the opposite faction in UC and we actually won.  Afterwards, my friends & I decided to do another Pilgrim’s Bounty achievement that required us to do an instance in OL.  I was going to do it in heroic to make things interesting but my friends didn’t have the key, so we went through it in regular after grabbing a couple different people from the guild other than the one’s that went with us for other achievement since they had already done the instance.  That actually was pretty easy…I could have probably soloed it myself anyway, but it was more fun to do it with a group.

So, then my “date” was over so I decided to go work on my Loremaster again…I’ll be working on that for a LONG time, as I only have 200 out of the 700 quests that I need done for Kalimdor.  I did get the Eastern Kingdoms one done a few days ago though! 

While I was questing, I got asked to heal a heroic by another friend that I met in my old guild and was briefly in my current guild but who’s now in a different guild mainly because he wanted to raid later than our raids were scheduled.  Anyway, we’ve been grouping up a lot lately for some PUGs and he wanted to do today’s daily, which was Gundrak, and possibly get some achievements which we tried for last week and didn’t get.  However, before the group finished getting put together, he had to go, so that ended up being a no go.  During this time, I also got a whisper from a low level druid that I had helped last night while working on my Loremaster quests in Teladrassil.  She wanted to know how to get to SW from Darnassus, so I told her about the boats. 

After I finished the last of my quests in Teladrassil, I was cleaning out my packs in Darnassus and chatting with one of my good guild friends who’s also working on the Loremaster but is way ahead of me, having finished Kalimdor last night and is now cleaning up the Outland portion.  I was just about to log off for the night because I stayed up late last night to be able to gratz him when he got the achievement, but then I got another whisper from a random stranger asking for gold, to which I said no…Like I’m just going to hand a strange level 44 hunter some of my hard earned cash for no reason. 

And then I got another whisper from a random person saying that they didn’t know me but he needed to pass on a message from someone claiming to be a friend who had stopped playing several months ago.  This friend wanted me to add him to my friend’s list so that I could speak to him.  This was a new one to me, but I also loaned a lot of gold to this person before he stopped playing (about 5k gold) so that he could level his enchanting.  I doubted I’d ever see the money back anyway before I even agreed to lend it to him, so it’s not that big of a deal to me (although it would be nice to get it back), but I wanted to find out what happened.  So I whispered this level 6 night elf hunter who said he’d been trying to find me in Teladrassil for quite a while but apparently he couldn’t get my attention.  I established that it was him but he didn’t have the money for a game card, so he was on a trial account and that’s why he couldn’t whisper me without being on my friend’s list.  We caught up a bit, but I didn’t ask him about my gold. He said he was going to try to get a game card so he could play his regular toons again, although he was afraid his gf might get mad about the time he’d spend in the game, although she plays a lot of Zelda, so he thought he could play this while she played Zelda if she wasn’t willing to play WoW with him.  His other rl friend who got him into the game is currently in boot camp, so he wouldn’t be around for a while, but he said he missed the social aspect of the game and Zelda wasn’t quite cutting it for him.

So this long narrative brings me to the point of my post.  For me, it’s the socialization aspect of WoW that brings me back every day for hours on end.  I enjoy the questing and running instances and raiding and working on achievements, etc., but the draw is really the people I hang out with because I can get a lot of that other stuff from standalone games.  In WoW, though, it’s like I get to party with all my friends every night but I don’t have to dress up and put on a facade.  I can just be me and people respond favorably for the most part.  I’ve made a lot of friends and acquaintances over the last (almost) 4 years and even when they go away or disappear, they usually come back, if only to say hi every once in a while.  And then there’s the anticipation when I log in most of the time (unless it’s a scheduled raid or event)…I don’t know who I might see, who’s going to show up on my friend’s list that evening, what adventures await and with who.

Every once in a while, I’ll toy with the idea of changing servers or trying to find a guild that will help me to grow as a healer and get me a more consistant raiding schedule, but then I’d have to start over and I like the people I play with currently, so why would I want to?  I am currently a big fish in a little pond, so why should I go be a little fish in a big pond?  I have a good reputation, I’m an above average healer, and people seem to enjoy grouping with me or even just hanging around chatting and that’s fine with me.  I do have my days where I wish I could just be invisible and focus on whatever I had decided to work on that day without being interrupted, but for the most part, I am content and if I really don’t want to be disturbed, I can go hide on my horde server where I don’t know anyone, although I supposedly have some real life friends who play horde on that server…I just don’t know their names there and, quite frankly, I don’t really care if I ever find out.  But I’m sure one day I will and then it will no longer be a place for me to hide.  And, knowing me, if I spent enough time there, I would have a circle of friends on that server as well and then I’d be torn about where to spend my time.  But for now, it’s nice to know I can get away if I want to…I just usually don’t want to.

Reality

Ok, I think it’s time for me to face my reality.  I’m not going to be able to put out meaningful posts every day.  That’s just not the way my brain operates and my job just takes too much out of me during the week to where I am just too drained to write after working all day, especially since I usually start to write about the time I should be going to bed…but I need my WoW time to unwind from my stresses, although sometimes, I must admit, it adds to my stress, especially if there’s guild drama.  Fortunately, we don’t have too much of that. 

Sometimes, though, I just wish I could sign on anonymously and play without interacting with others and I do have toons that I hide on, but I also feel like I have an obligation to at least make a guild appearance, too.  And now that I’m working on the Loremaster achievements, I don’t really want to play on any other toon except Whimzee because I want to finish those achievements (at least the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor ones) before Cataclysm comes out.  I’m currently at 625/700 for Eastern Kingdoms, but only at 155/700 for Kalimdor, so that’s going to take me some time to complete. 

The problem with playing on Whimzee is that she’s one of the “popular” kids, so I’m always getting whispers or people are asking me to heal an instance or fill in on a raid and since I love doing that, I usually say yes, when in reality, I just want to quietly work on my lowbie quests and finish my goals.  So, tonight, for example, I started off doing some quests in Swamp of Sorrows and one of my favoritest people to play with asked me to run some heroics with him because he’s trying to gear up his Paladin to tank and he needs emblems.  He is one of the best natural tanks I know (on his warrior and his dk) – actually he’s one of the best all around players that I know on most any class or spec - so of course I said yes.  We got some dps from the guild and ran a couple heroics and it was good, if a little slow, since our dps was low and his gear isn’t good enough yet to blow through them.  After that, I was able to work on a few quests, but I was only able to complete about 5 quests for the achievement and now I’m tired and should be going to bed. 

I wanted to write about teamwork, like I mentioned yesterday, but I think that might have to wait for the weekend, after I’ve had a good night’s sleep and can focus on the topic and what I want to say.  In the meantime, I’ll just post tidbits here and there and ramble on about whatever, just to get in the practice of writing again.  But, for now, I’m out.  Good night!

Trust

So there I am yesterday, sitting at the Deep Run Tram Station, waiting for the train to go to Stormwind from Ironforge.  I had a little time to think about what I wanted to write about and I remembered a conversation I had a few days before with a fellow healer during a raid where he said that I had to learn to trust the other healers, since my job was to main tank heal, but I was healing the raid along with the tank and it wasn’t working.  He expected me to get upset with him, but he had a point.  It’s very hard for me to trust other people to do a job I know I can do well.

Now I’ve been raid healing with him since the beginning days of Kara (see my previous post), and he’s one of the few healers I would trust to heal my group when I wasn’t healing.  He’s usually a paladin healer, and we’ve 2-man healed a lot of things we shouldn’t have been able to without a 3rd healer because we work well together.  But on this night he was on his Shaman.  He is the best Paladin healer I’ve ever run with, however he’s recently taken to tanking on the pally and healing on the shaman when we need a healer rather than a tank.  I think if he’d been healing on the paladin, this may not have come up, although he’s a great healer on the shaman as well.  But to me, it’s like when I’m healing on my druid instead of  Whimzee.  I’m pretty good on the druid, but I don’t feel as confident as I do on the priest, so I make more mistakes.  So I feel he’s pretty good on the shaman, but not as good as when he’s healing on his paladin, if that makes sense.

I had another person tell me that I’m too hard on other healers.  I don’t think I am, or if I am, I feel that I’ve earned the right to do so and I would never deliberately go out of my way to hurt their feelings or tell them what they’re doing wrong, but I am constantly looking at how other healers heal and comparing my performance, and I have whispered a suggestion or two when something is clearly not working.  And sometimes other healers ask me for advice, which I encourage from priests, but can’t really answer well for other classes.  It kills me when I see healers (especially priests) that have way better gear than I do underperform or who spam flash heal, instead of using their other spells, especially when they should use prayer of healing or binding heal for efficiency’s sake.  It amazes me how many priests don’t use binding heal or watch their own health, yet there was a time when that was me and I realize it’s all part of the learning process.  When I was first learning how to heal, binding heal wasn’t even an option, so it did take me some time to get used to using it, but I can’t tell you how many times it’s saved my life. 

The other thing, though, is that I do my research.  I read forums and articles and blogs about healing because it’s what interests me.  I experiment with ways to do things better, and use what works for my style of healing and throw out what doesn’t work for me.  But I have to remember that’s me.  A lot of people who heal got into it because they saw a need for healers rather than having a passion for it, so they can do the work adequately, but they will never excel; however, I can say that about a lot of things in life.  And originally, that’s how I got into healing.  There was a need, I decided to try it.  The difference is, I fell in love with it, and I suck at dps and I’m afraid to even try tanking.  I’m good at healing, I like being important and in demand, and since I mostly hung out with a prot warrior, while I was leveling and first raiding, it was a synergistic relationship, since there’s always a need for a tank and a healer.  What I need to remember is that there are other healers out there who love it and excel at it as well and I need to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But to get back to the issue of trust, it’s definitely something I need to work on in all aspects of my life, not just healing.  I just don’t know how to get there because it seems like every time I do trust someone or something, I get burned.  So there’s always a little piece of me that holds back and is waiting for the other shoe to drop and when it does, because invariably it does, I feel like going, yup, I knew that was going to happen.  But does it happen because I’m waiting for it or would it have even happened if I’d just let go and trusted things to go right in the first place?  Cart/horse or horse/cart?  Anyone know?

I’m sure this is a topic I will re-explore at a later date because I think it’s central to my self-growth at this time.  My next topic I wanted to write about was teamwork.  I was going to write about it tonight, but it’s already way past my bedtime, so it’ll have to wait.

Today

Nighttime in the Wetlands

 

I had a really long hard day at work today, so I’m finding it difficult to have the energy to write anything today, especially since it’s almost 1am.  I have asked some of my guildmates to email me some pictures, so I’ll hopefully have something for tomorrow.  I will try to do two posts to make up for not doing one today, but no promises since tomorrow’s going to be a long day at work again.  I should have a little more time after tomorrow, though.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karazhan

Legion of the Valkyrie in Karazhan

Yesterday I mentioned that my current guild, Legion of the Valkyrie, spun out of my previous guild.  When I started off on my priestly adventures, I was invited to join a guild called The Bad Blood Clan (BBC) because my good friend, Ishkabibbel, invited me to hang with her friends.  I made many friends in this guild and eventually moved up the ranks and became an officer.  This was a large guild that catered to many different styles of playing: questing, instances, pvp, etc.   There were also several people in the guild who wanted to raid, and there were some forays to Zul’Gurub, but I was too young to be allowed to go. 

We also had a sister guild called the Bad Blood Kin (BBK).  The idea was that when you were first leveling up, you would start in the BBK and when you hit level 40 and was able to ride a mount, you were promoted to the BBC.  That was how our guild leader wanted to separate us so that we would be able to adventure with people around our own levels.  We had weekly meetings and we would hold promotion ceremonies at those meetings.  After Outland was discovered and people had leveled as far as they could, there came a time when there were enough people that wanted to seriously raid, so our guild leader started a third guild called the Bad Blood Elite (BBE).  

Theoretically, this was a good idea, however in practice, it turned out to be a huge mistake.  The leaders of the BBE hadn’t been in the BBC very long and the way they ran their guild didn’t fit in well with the BBC/BBK culture.  Many of us who wanted to raid refused to go to the BBE because of that and we were left out.  This caused a lot of, pardon the term, bad blood, and led to many officer’s meetings and shouting matches between the leaders of the different guilds and it didn’t help that our guild leader decided to take a sabattical around that same time, so he left it all up to his officers to work things out.  The break occurred when one of the officers of the BBE told one of the officers in the BBC that we would never be serious raiders if we didn’t go over to the BBE.  This didn’t sit well with many of us so we decided to form our own guild and run things the way we wanted it to run.

When we left, a lot of our friends and guildmates who had been in the BBC decided to join us, plus we picked up some new folks who seemed to like our style.  We were close to having enough people to start to raid but we had to get through the attunement quests first so that we could get into Karazhan.  We worked really hard to get our members attuned and a little less than 2 months after our guild started, we had the right mix of characters to be able to make our first attempt.  The minute the last of us were attuned, we made the journey to Karazhan and entered to see what it was like.  That was such a thrill to have 10 people working together for a common goal.

That first night, we just played around with the trash mobs because it was late and we really hadn’t planned on being there, we were just excited that we could.  We went back the next evening and made it to the first boss.  Most of us had never actually raided before, although we had worked together in smaller groups, so there was a lot of getting used to each other’s play styles, learning how to work together, and figuring out the fights.  A couple days later, we went back and we prevailed on the first boss.  It was a bit of a rough start that night, we made a lot of mistakes heading to the boss; however, once we got there, it was a picture perfect fight, and Attumen went down.  And the best part was that we got to that point earlier than the BBE did when they started raiding Karazhan.