Milestones For the Record Book

You know.. I've been thinking a lot on milestones lately. WoW is just pretty much full of them.

• Each level of course is a Milestone.
• Each class has certain level Milestones.. I know I was excited for Ghostwolf at 20.
• Level 40 (soon to be 30) for the mount.
• Level 60 for epic riding mount
• Level 70 for a bunch of reasons.

There are also some really good guild milestones that for me were special..

• First guild Karazhan run (My first ever as well).
• First T4 passed out (down with Curator!).
• First Prince kill.
• First Nightbane kill.
• First 25 man run.
• First Gruul/Mags etc., kills.

I guess since we have recently formed our new guild, there have been many particularly special to me, since I was very involved in the structure and formation of said guild. We also had a really important one just last night, so this has really been on my brain. I am really excited about it, but I will get to that in a minute.

First I want to talk about some of the Milestones in the new guild, and what has made them special for me.

The first was, obviously, the formation of our guild. As stated above, I had a lot of say, and was able to be a huge driving force in the realm of making it happen. I feel like (and I am sure everyone feels this way about their own guild) I have been a major part in creating a guild that is truely unique. A progression guild that has no DKP, no EP/GP system, and is pretty much based completely on free mainspec roll, then free offspec roll. It's fair, and I believe it shows our guild that we believe largely in consideration, and encourage everyone to make that choice for themselves. I pride myself on how many considerate raiders we have.

The next few are obvious.. Our first raid was special because...well it was our first raid. We went in and one-shot Gruul (not HK though - dang), and we did it in a fairly timely manner, and we did it in 9 grows. Along with this is our first Mag kill, and our first Lurker kill. We one-shot them both in our second week of raiding.

Last night was one of the most important for me, even if it doesn't seem that great. This is the one that has me thinkin'. Last night on 6/30/08, we downed Morogrim Tidewalker. Yeah, not a big deal, but for me it really was. Forget that we got him within our first month of raiding (6/2/08 was our very first raid), and forget that we got him in our 13th (spread across three separate raids) attempt. This one was big for me because it was our first truely "All us" progression.

I am not talking about PuG's though. I am referring to the fact that before we had ever done Gruul, We had (we being the raid/guild leaders) been there before. Same with Mag. Same with Lurker. Unlike those, Tidewalker took hours of poring over strats, stats, and shats (sucky attempts), to come up with a solution that fit our player set. Numerous healing setups and murloc-tank permutations abounded, and we were able to really figure it out, and we did it by ourselves. Obviously we had knowledge of giants to lean on, but it really brought a huge sense of accomplishment to myself (and our whole guild). For them it may not be as special as it was for me, but listening to the cheers and whoops and hollars on vent made me feel really proud.

These are the milestones that really thank you for a thankless job. It makes all the mediating, and recruiting rigamarole really worthwhile. It makes the countless hours administrating the website and moderating forums worthwhile. It makes the sometimes-painful gearing runs all worthwhile. It even makes the extra money spent for the website, vent, and domain hosting worthwhile.

In short, it was super-rad, and it will be hard to beat, but there's a lot more game where that came from, and I am sure the first pieces of T5 that get handed out will be so sweet in their own respect, as well as the first bosskill we get in TK, and beyond!

And even if they never read it, I would like to thank all those in our guild. You work hard, you play hard, and you get the job done. I appreciate all that you do to better your play, to help each other, and to simply rock the house.

-Snos

Two weeks of work..

So, two weeks of being an official raid-guild will be here on 6/12/08. Overall, I'd like to say that I think that things have gone extremely well. There are a few bumps and bruises, but it is all a part of trying to set up a guild. One thing I've learned well as a GM of a guild, is that you cannot keep everyone happy, including yourself. Yes, you are the GM, and yes you have all the power, but the folks in your guild are those that empower you. So in essence, as a GM you are there to fascilitate their needs as much as you can on a raiding basis, and you will have to make a compromise or two.

The tricky part about being a GM is you have to be a good example. We have a group of players in our guild that throw kara runs together on a regular basis, and they all have alts that they bring. That's fine by me, but when it's a group of nine, and half their alts are in other guilds, it starts to look really bad. It gives off the impression that those involved are unwilling to run with anyone else in the guild, thus creating a "Boy's Club." Yeah I know we don't want to run with everyone all the time, but it certainly helps bring the guild together if more people get included.

As a GM I have taken it upon myself to set the example. I put together a weekly kara run for those that are trying to achieve raid status, and that need to get more gear and practice. I advertise it throughout the week and end up running it on a Saturday. Unfortunately, though I usually end up picking up all the people that got left out, and if I ever have to ask someone to step out, I feel extra bad. Sometimes these runs can be painful if we can't bring in any of our overpowered people.

So why would I put myself through this? Yeah, I don't need anything from Kara, and yeah, I don't even need any badge loot, but it sets a precedent within my guild that I think needs to be resonated througout - that everyone should be included. As a side bonus I also get to run with as many people as possible, and it helps me to get a feel for how they are as raiders, and as people, so I can more effectively be in a position to help them out, or bring them along as necessary.

Recruiting is always an interesting topic for me. I spend a lot of time on other guilds' websites looking into the recruiting process (or at least applications). I do this so I can get a better grasp of how I can go about this process. I am not in charge of recruiting, but I am the backup when our recruiting officer is unavailable (which he thankfully hasn't been yet..WHEW). I also have found that I actually really enjoy going through other guilds' applicants, if for no other reason than to try to get to know these players through their applications. I am not sure if this helps me at all, but I like it a lot. ChickGM has three really good posts on this process so far (applications, good bad and ugly of apps, interviewing -- post app). At any rate.. What is the point here? I guess my point is that when you come up with an application process, make sure everyone has to go through it, even 'shoe-ins' that you know will make it. It's all about fairness, and showing everyone that even you cannot subvert the rules.

There are a few other things I'd like to talk about, but this blog is already getting too long..
I will wrap up with a quick update to my travels, as well as the new guild's.

I have spec'd back to Elemental.. Enhancement was fun while it lasted, but Elemental is just so much better a spec for me. Incursion has downed Gruul twice, and got Magtheridon on its first shot. We already had many experienced in those instances though, so its not a huge accomplishment, but its pretty cool that on the first day of week 3 as a guild, we will be downing The Lurker Below, and maybe trying another boss or two in SSC.

Thanks for reading!!

A Requiem for Boom and Other Tales

Hello, and welcome to my Blog.

I feel cliche starting out like this, but hey..how else do you start a blog?

This is going to be my outlet for my World of Warcraft endeavors.

Allow me a quick introduction.
My name is Andrew, and I am a WoW player. I have played for almost a year now. I have a level 70 elemental shaman named Snostrebla. I rock restoration on occasion as well. Both specs I am geared completely through T5, and have little upgrades available up through T5..at least nothign significant. I have a level 32 Prot pally named Tigraine, and a couple others I haven't played enough to be worth mentioning. I am in the guild BOOM, and second-in-command to the Guild Leader only.

A quick description of the title of this particular blog and hopefully the general theme of this blog: BOOM is a guild that we have been rocking on Crushridge. The guild was started back on August 23, 2007. It was started as a guild to escape the clutches of a guild going hardcore, and having the ability to raid in a super casual setting with your closest buddies. I leveled from roughly level 50 and up, here in BOOM. We started rocking Karazhan back in Oct/Nov and we simply tore through it, thanks to a couple of super-experienced raid leaders, and we had a ton of fun and geared ourselves up really quickly since we were fully clearing it in three weeks.

Time passed, and we grew, inviting friends and family into the guild, and rocking Kara with all these folks as well, and then we reached a point where we didn't really have anything we could really do. We found ourselves in a position of not being able to really really hit anything hard after that. Zul'aman was a little too hard to bring just anyone in, and we have such a casual approach that we couldn't tell someone in all greens that they weren't good enough to run with us, and we didn't have enough for 25 mans and didn't want to recruit just anyone. We still had a good thing going, though. We had a group of around 20 really active players that were very considerate of others, and wanted to help everyone out, and then everything changed.

I blame myself a little, I blame the nature of the guild a little, and I blame the guild itself a little. The itch for 25-mans came upon us in force. All-of-the-sudden everyone wanted to do 25-mans. Well we were faced with a problem, because of our unique free-for-all guild structure, but at the same time all the players runing with integrity and mass amounts of skill, we wanted to avoid bringing in the loot whores. You have all probably played with one at one time or another. The person that talks in guild, or party constantly about X piece of gear, and usually works it into a conversation about as often as one would a newly ex-girlfiend or ex-boyfriend. We've all grouped with these people, and sometimes we tolerate them because they are our friends, but lets get real..we didn't want to deal with that anymore than we already did. Also we don't even want to delve into the realm of possible ninjas.

So we were faced largely with a recruiting issue, and it was particularly hard too because we have such a good reputation for tearing through stuff, and having really rock-solid players (gear aside). So we wanted more people, and had many clamoring to join up, but when you slip a little on your standards, and have to bring people in to fill spots on a 25-man raid, you are bound to start seeing some drama. "So and so died too early" "So and So drives me crazy, why don't we kick him?" "if so and so had done x, we would've killed y" All of these things may or may not be true, but what it ended up boiling down to was an overall lack of consideration for fellow raiders. To speed the 25-man jump we started rockin with another guild, and it worked well for a while, and then the scrubs started showing up. These are the guys that won't outdamage a tank, but get upset when healers aren't able to heal because they ran out of mana in a fight that was supposed to be half as long as it should be.

Long story short, things began to get ugly and many started to remember the success of the 10 mans and the old days. Many wanted to still raid, but we were in a cyclical loop. As a GM of a super casual guild, I cannot tell anyone to do anything really, and counting on others to be considerate at that point begins to just epic fail.

Things are at a standstill now for us. We can barely put a 10-man together. We've had people leave for bigger better things, and it looks like the GM's are just sitting on our hands and not doing anything. Partially its true, because we built and environment that was not conducive to fixing the problems we were having, and partially was due to lack of playing time, and many other things. Long and short of it is this: the glory days are going to be short, and a new era must dawn. Whatever the result is, I intend to keep playing.. no dramatic quit, no dramatic explosion. If things get worked out (as I am fully expecting they will as we plan and plan) great. If things fail, I can simply step down and continue my WoWing in some other capacity. As for now, I am done with listening to the whining and not being able to fix it.

The dawn of a new day, and a requiem for BOOM. I will be including my other adventures as well. Hope this is well enjoyed!

P.S. I realize that this sounds ultimately negative, but I really really really do love BOOM. It has seroiusly been the pinnacle of gaming enjoyment in a kid raised on nintendo and beyond. I have made super duper friends in there, and hope that I will be able to keep them, and keep playing with everyone! I am just sad to see its values and greatness passing.

If any from BOOM actually read this, hang tight. The horizon holds great great things, and its very very close.

Godspeed

-Andrew