Big decisions

Had some duo fun with Bishopgeorge last night with my Laiskajaakko: Disc Priest and Prot Warrior, both lv70 (stuck at BC cap) taking on Skettis missions. downing all lv71 elites in a breeze, but getting our butt handed to us on a platter by select few lv72 elites. How sad is that.

What we gained for the hours of work? Reputation for the Netherray mount, but not quite enough to get it. Some gold (which I gain more from AH). Some odd gear to disenchant. No real updates. Only one blue during the whole time, which was a disappointment.

However, we made a council decision: we decided to close down The Order of the Fist. Meaning that the guild we started as fun experiment and gathering place for ourselves is now exactly that: gathering place for us brothers and select few who have been invited in there. Invitation only, and that's all. (Solaire, you and alts are safe with us... :P)

I kind of feel sad about it. But then again, to run a guild, casual social and blah-blah, is a real job for one person. The players come into guilds looking for someone else to arrange things for them and are not willing to do anything by themselves. The good ones move on, which is great, but the ones who remain... I hate to say this, but Gevlon the Greedy Goblin is correct: Morons and Slackers. They just rule the average WoW-playing Joe/Jane category completely.

This doesn't mean I'm quitting, though: in fact, I've gotten a new direction and inspiration in the game, so I may even start posting more often in here, too.

Dang. That sounds like a promise...

Hellfire Citadel revisited

Call to Arms was voiced over the electronic void to join the Battle of Darrowshire. However, the impromptu responses resulted The Three Stooges reunion in Terokkar Forrest, after which the troupe impossible decided to enter the Hellfire Citadel: Ramparts.

As it happens, our earlier entry to the Ramparts was anything short of a disaster. We only cleared the first boss -Watchkeeper Gargolmar- and called it a night. Every mob was a struggle.

Not this time. After one bad pull we more or less cleared the Gargolmar in the corridor. At which time the Stooges' troupe got an unexpected guest: Solaire, the deathar... Death Knight of the Order of the Fist joined us and on we went. Omor the Unscarred -and everything preceding it- was cleared in a breeze. Even Vazruden was easy, but Nazan, Vazruden's Nether Drake proved to be too much in the run: wiped once due to tank's poor handling (shame on me) of the flame breath the drake uses against the grounded opponents... Somehow it just slipped, so sue me.

The second encounter was a breeze. Sadly the boss loot this time was all Shammy gear, so off to the disenchants they went.

As we were enjoying the company and the performance, we decided to take on the Blood Furnace after the repairs.

All well in the run, wiped three times, two of which were on the second boss, Broggog, whose poison AoE caught us by a surprise. Deaths were plenty, but considering the fact that I had done the instance only once, Bishop maybe twice, Förgelös never and Solaire a couple of times, we did great. Earned Förgelös the Achievement and some nice drops. Oh, and grats to Förgelös and Bishop for dinging in the instances!

Impromptu guild run wins random PUG anytime. It was a pleasure to run with people who wanted to do things right, together and in common pace.

Azariel, the player behind Solaire, posted a nice set of questions in his recent response to the "How about roleplaying?" post I posted yesterday. I will answer those questions in separate posts, as they are worth plunging deeper into. However, to answer properly may take some time, so I'm not promising the posts starting tomorrow: perhaps over next few weeks would be more appropriate. Thank you, friend!

What good are guilds anyway?

Really?

I've been thinking over this since the incident I blogged. Especially I paid attention to the situation as I was pruning the guild roster. Sure, The Order, has over 30 toons in it, but only about 10 are active and played regularily. And even some of those I have met only when I invited them to the guild.

So why would anyone want to be in a guild, if we take off the chit-chat of Guild Channel?

In EQ2 you feel you're contributing to the guild, as the guilds have levels as the players, and the guilds really give you the additional feeling of belonging in the game. The guild means something in there, it's not just a tag to drag along and hope that someone in the guild has done something so remarkable that the tag gets recognised.

Why has WoW failed so miserably in creating the similar situation? The guilds are a laughing stock if you think of the 'benefits' you get from them as player. This is exactly like Crucifer commented in my earlier post: "Guilds mostly have degenerated from focal points of the community with strong reputation links to other focal points to, well, just a chat channel."

And most players are thinking of just that: benefits for themselves. As the soloability of WoW increases, the self-gratification becomes the norm in the game: it becomes more and more a single player levelling game, where you can do whatever you please, regardless of anything. It's beginning to feel that the other player characters are as meaningless as the NPC's. 

At least that's what I felt when I logged in shortly yesterday: I got begged for buffs, cursed because I don't buff people begging for it and challenged to duel three times while I was grinding for a quest. This only shows to me, at least, that people are not playing the game as an RPG (or even the way they would play single player RPG, even), but are playing the game as min-maxing and winning the content.

To me it sucks.

Maybe I'm old, too much standing still in the pen and paper RPG world and too much interested in the real content, so I don't really appreciate the current way of playing the game.

Back to the topic: what good are guilds anyway? I've read a couple of blog posts already stating that people are leaving guilds even at level cap to be able to run heroics more. Raiding isn't anymore only for the co-operative effort of the guilds and honestly speakin, the leetness is gone. Especially in the way that this post describes. Great guest post in World of Matticus, which I agree completely: that is what guilds should seek to be, the springboard for leetness!

As the meaning of guilds has gone down the drain, so has the communication and respect between the guilds. Only a minority of the guilds on the servers have the decency to join the official server forum and state their information to the Guild Information thread. The communication is mostly on the level of "we're more 1337 than yoo" and derogatory in terms of communication. 

I wish every guildleader and officer would do as Megan from Out of Mana and make a resolution like this: 

Playing the game with friends and strangers alike equally is also important. Just because they aren't in your guild, aren't in your pool of gaming buddies, doesn't mean tact and sincerity go out the window. It's easy to remember that story of those crap PUGs with lewlDPS and bash on them in a forum, a post, a whisper.

That would make the game itself more enjoyable to all of us, and perhaps, maybe, the dumbtwat effect would reside a bit.

Blizzard, it's high time you did something for the social tools in the game and introduced the guild housing, guilding benefits and guild levels to the game!!! MAKE THE SOCIAL EFFORTS WORTH SOMETHING, darn it!

Guildhoppers, DIE!

There is something very wrong in the way that guilds and their benefits are viewed in WoW. In fact, it's almost sick already: as the game is getting more and more solo friendly, people -read: players- are looking only for their own short term benefits from every contact they make. Which in turn makes the much discussed community a very fragile at best.

We had our first guildbank rapist visiting us during the weekend. He joined, even signed to the forum which I find pretty remarkable, and took all he could from the guildbank. And left. As I noticed the 'theft' in 5 minutes, I found out he had joined another guild already. Well, contacted their officer, but as I checked, he's still in the guild. Zenazok, Dwarf Paladin, your name is to be known by all I contact in Thunderhorn EU. 

His gain was not that big, because I had kind of anticipated this kind of conduct on the Ally side. Sorry to say, but I haven't seen this many idiots in the Horde side during all the time I have been playing in there, compared to the few months in Ally. The main reason may be the fact that there are so many more players on Ally that there is more room for idiocy, but I doubt it. This miscreant was way too clever to be just the average 12-16 year old teen, and he clearly knew exactly what he was doing.

There has been some discussion in the Blogosphere already about how to make the guildspace and community to last longer. The ideas have ranged from the obvious Guildhousing (alongside with Player Housing) to toons getting special Guild loyalty bonuses or even loyalty gear/fluff. I vote for AYE to all the ideas and even the first implementation that would give the guilds the possibility to really REWARD the long term members.

Now as the situation has gone into such that the guilds are extremely easy to set up and there are new guilds popping up like there was no tomorrow, the value of guilds as whole has gone down considerably. At least in the levelling stage the benefits are negligible, and in raiding stage the support of the guild is mainly to artificially set up a team to tackle the end game bosses. I say artificially, because the same group could work without committing to a single guild. There is no real benefit in belonging to a guild, really. Except for fun and laughter. 

I have always hated the guildhoppers. And I always will. After all this even more so.

Die.

Busy Weekend of the Order

Yes. The Order is growing and hopefully gaining some reputation -other than the GM being dead drunk in 5 mans- on the server. To prove the point we have had some of our alt bearers to change their mains to The Order, which means that they either like our style, love our guild bank or they have lost their marbles. I prefer to think it's the first one, but am afraid that it may be the last...

Pupunen took part in a nice and organised trio through Uldaman, gaining the Achievement and nice chest piece for the future. 

Anyhow, as it happens, Three Stooges had a second encounter on Saturday, and we tackled the Sunken Temple. It was a great experience only because we had to figure the whole place out by ourselves. The instance wasn't a hard one, naturally, Laiskajaakko being 64, Bishop just dinged 63 and Förgelös made it to 55 before that.

But we had fun, one almost wipe due to my over confidence about the Jammal The Prophet's skills and loads of greens and blues for Bishopgeorge to disenchant. The fatefull incident was as simple as that we didn't clear the whole room in which Jammal was, so we had about 20 of his followers and mummies swamping on us. Laiskajaakko couldn't take all the aggro off of the two squishies and they fell under the wave of onslaught. But then again, the warrior survived and made it to the next day. Meaning bluntly that I cleared the way to the entrance for the others.

As it happens, I always launch the guild advertisement macro I made when I pass to a new zone. For some peculiar reason I have lately been mostly flying from Ironforge, and it shows in our guild roster: majority of the newcomers are either Dwarves or Gnomes. Also the Priests are very, very common among us... I wonder why?

We had two nice additions to our higher end, too. One lv78 Hunter and one new DK made it to our midst, latter of which is an old friend from another game.  This means that we have already enough material to start running Outlands 5 mans on our own, and we have already some more up and coming!

Great, even though we are not progression guild. I want to see us as casual, content driven, but the darn game is built in such a way that you get hungry for more and better gear.

Better chill down and gain the Classic Dungeon Achievements first.

By the way, I'm even more amazed by the fact that Laiskajaakko is being asked to tank in the Outlands dungeons. Has the DK wave passed and now there are extra healers levelling? Or is it just that I have been good enough?

I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm more prone to believe it's the first.

Am I too modest?

Priests against Shadowfangs

Friday's ex-tempore laughter run: priests against Shadowfangs. Actually, it was three priests against Shadowfang Keep and Archmage Arugal. The three were Bishopgeorge, Pupunen and Flimsy, for whom the run was a real boost in gear. Robes of Arugal serve a caster for a quite long time, and is currently extremely easy to acquire.

Which reminds me of one certain thing. Because of the fact that Shadowfang Keep is deep in Silverpine forest -and "Horde Territory" as Flimsy put it- it is pretty hard to reach at the correct level range and thus is much neglected by the Alliance. As is Wailing Caverns, which serves the Hunters and Rogues with similar love as Shadowfang Keep serves the caster classes.

This is a shame, and I think it's the most obvious sign that people are levelling just to get high and fast: sadly I have to admit that I have resorted to the similar thinking with Laiskajaakko recently. 

Now The Order of the Fist has a nice base from which to form the runs, so it would be easy enough to run these instances in a succession.

And it doesn't mean a thing if the Instance is in contested area: heck, people are running Ragefire Chasm by Alliance toons and Stockades by Horde toons! Ask them if it matters! 

Achievements don't make that separation.

Besides, it's fun.

Maraudon

Yeah, we got the Maraudon Achievement in one solid run. Thanks Dreathon, our guild-mascot Deathknight über-booster!

What I just realized is that I have to apologise our guild Deathknight, Hunter and Retribution Paladin for using derogatory names about their chosen classes. Let me make is understood, that none of our characters in these classes can be called by any of the derogatory names commonly used about them. These guys are worth their weight in gold, and I will do anything to protect their name.

I realised also a couple of things last night after the run. First of all, the Old World instances, though beautifull and intricate, are too long for a single run. When compared to the ones in The Burning Crusade, Maraudon is excruciatingly long one. I don't even want to think how long it takes to complete at the right level range.

Secondly, now I remember why I hate boosts: they are boring as hell. Nothing to do but run and collect loot, which in this case was not en par with the group's level.

And third: Blizzard should include a new "Persistent Adventurer" Achievement: you get the achievement by banging your toon against the instance entry 10.000 times, receiving "Another instance cannot be launched right now. Please try again later" error...

All in all, good show. Oh, and we also cleared Stocks for one member... with the help of Lendo's main. 

Ok, shoot me in the Guild Chat for announcing your affiliation with me.

I can take it.

Silent running

The holiday season has been pretty messed up thing in here: there have been one day off within a week, making both the working and spare time a drag to plan. However, the Order has been active enough to keep me returning to the game.

First of all, I have worked hard on AH with Pupunen to gain enough gold for the third Guild Bank tab. And now it's here! The cost is astronomical for a lv35, being 500g. That's almost the same as the second riding skill and mount at lv60, which really hurt my planning on getting a new mount for Laiskajaakko.

Secondly, I have been helping people to level with Pupunen. That has been fun, especially when the level gap hasn't been too wide. Next we'll have to start organising some pre-planned guild runs.

Because we had an impromptu one the other day. I had been helping some lower level members with their harder quests in Loch Modan for some time and was just about to logout for a dinner, when one of our Veteran's logged in and asked if anyone was up to Gnomeregan. Why, of course, because Pupunen had her questlog full of Gnomerquests. Within the next two minutes we had a group of four ready to go. A boost, as our highest member, lv80 Deathknight, had decided to join us for the Achievement!

So I ate with the family and logged in. The group was already at the entry, but the instances were so crowded -once again- that they couldn't get in! I got the invite, emptied my bags and ran to the instance, only to catch them right inside the door.

Needless to say, the run was smooth and solid, though we had one lv15 with us. He was pretty unaware of the threat his character generated, so I had to tell him after his first death to stick with us and not even breath! He died another time for running into a patrol, but that was... pure coincident and bad planning.

All in all, we all had fun, the lower of us had nice loot and I got several quests done on one run. As I returned the quests to Tinkertown, I noticed that I had still two quests undone in Gnomeregan... So Pupunen will have to go there again, this time with guildies who are a bit higher than on the first time. Maybe even without the boost?

Fast recruiting

Witnessed the fastest recruit in the game. It went like this (in short):

- I sent a recruiting ad to Darnassus General Channel and Trade.

- Received a whisper: "Can I join?"

- Responded: "Sure" and sent invitation

- The guy was guilded, so I told him about that

- "Invite me now" came the reply, so I did

- Welcomed the guy

- "Make me member" was his response, as everyone is entered as Initiate

- Told him our policy: join the forum, get promoted.

- He left

Total time in Guild: less than a minute.

Honestly, what a jerk. But a funny anecdote of guild hoppers and why I hate them.

Oh, what must have turned him off is the fact that Initiates don't have access to Guild Bank items or repairs. Must have bugged him out to see all the gear and stuff in there...

Too bad. Our gain.

Guild: growth pains

This is my whining post, so bear with me.

As I have stated, I started a guild with my brothers. The Order of the Fist.

First of all, the charter came up fast. Only one of the toons that signed it is still with the Order. Typical.

Secondly, the Guildlaunch site I used for the forum is blocked by my workplace's corporate filter, so I cannot access it daily. Which is a hindrance.

Thirdly, recruiting sucks. It's a full time job which means that everytime I login to scan the AH and do my business as usual, I'm spamming trade and general with ads, contacting guildless toons around the AH and doing my best to spread the word.

It doesn't work.

There are people who are looking for guild, constantly, but something in 'our way' is turning them off. Is the guild information too cold or harsh? There is something wrong in my approach, somewhere, as there are several guilds offering the same 'help and guidance' as we are...

There is another worry that I face. MOTD is stating that all members must register to the forum to gain promotion. The promotion would mean access to the guild bank, which is bursting with gear, trade skill resources and such. But no-one wants to do that. WTF? Then people just whine how they didn't know about this guild event or ask if there is anything planned when it all is in the forum. Too bad, I have had to cancel a couple of events because there haven't been anyone interested in them. Goodbye guild RFC runs, goodbye WC boosts. 

Not to be on the whining side, there are a couple of active guys -in addition to me- who have really amazed me. The other is a DK who came to the guild right at lv55. He's just the material we were looking for: helpfull, available and actively looking for ways to help others. In fact, he recruited our highest levelled member so far, lv78 DK the other day. Now that the holidays are coming, I'm promoting him to Officer, as he joined the forums before joining the Order!

It's the hickups and growing pains, I know. I've busted my AH for the second guild tab, and I got it with a couple of lucky deals. Now I'm well on the way to the third, so that the members would have two for themselves and one for the Officers and Council.

The Order of the Fist is here, alive and coming.

By definition

Jason commented to my post "Incoming: plans for a guild" very interestingly. I hadn't thought about this before, but this entry made me wonder a certain thing:

I would define what you described your guild as a "Casual Raiding Guild". I know
you said you are not a raiding guild, but you also say that you will do all the way up to 40 man instances to experience the content and learn your classes. If your intent is to move at your own pace then "Casual Raiding Guild" fits pretty well.

What this popped to my mind is the question: what is a raid? By definition it is:

A raid is a type of mission in a video game, where the objective is to use a very large number of people, relative to a normal team size set by the game, to defeat a boss.

Which in turn means that each and every dungeon and many of the group quests would be considered a raid by this definition. A group with single objective to defeat a vastly superior opponent.

I think this definition taken from Wikipedia isn't up to date. When I think of a raid, it brings to my mind a group which is locked to the completion of a larger, more demanding whole. Usually this definition is used in WoW to describe the 'end game instances', or the hardest dungeons available in the game. Not the ones preceding them, because the 5 man instances are deemed to be 'levelling instances', thus making them 'not raid instances'. They are like pop and run spots, meant to be run once. Or twice. Or as many times as you can endure them.

As it happens, currently the Classic Old World 'raid instances' are deemed to be similar to the Northrend 5 mans: fast nostalgia runs by people at higher level. The same is happening to the Burning Crusade content, and before long -when our guild ever reaches Outlands- we will be toiling the content on our own.

I'm not going to change the definition of The Order of the Fist -or the Boxers, as we lovingly have given a nickname to ourselves- as a guild. We are PvE focused Casual Explorative guild without raiding priorities. And playing to have fun.

I'm content with that. Thanks for commenting and giving me something to think about, Jason!