Just how many guilds I am in and why.

Guilds, guilds, guilds!!   (Am I even spelling that correctly?)

Back in '08 while running around the human starting area on my then human Paladin, Annamia (she's a Dwarf now), I was asked by a stranger to sign a guild charter for a whooping five gold.  I had no idea what I was being asked to do, and I feared that said stranger was some kind of reprobate that was after my private information, or some kind of sickie that would expect me to compromise my morals....wait....I had morals back then?

Regardless of the fact that she and I became friends and I have since met her and her family, as of right now I am part of five different guilds.  (ITS JUST SO SAD!!!)  Two are mine.  One is one of the three largest guilds in WOW, and its not AIE!  Its Taint on Proudmore.....cuz I am proud gay wow playing dude and I loved the idea of joining a huge guild where we discuss some of the most amazing things in guild chat! Not that AIE is not fantastic, but I just didn't feel very welcome there, no offense, just not a good fit.

Taint is a lot of fun, but as I am not on those toons with any degree of frequency, the few people I met there have gone off to do there own things, but the good thing is that there are almost always people on who want to do the same thing I want to do...talking trash in guild chat is one of them!!!!

The other mass guild is The Clan of Darkness on Earthen Ring.  Something of an off shoot of AIE, but created and run by Ctrl-Alt-Wow, is a podcast fan guild with a lot of people who love to play wow, and goof around in in large groups usually on friday nights!!   So many wonderful people in that guild, alas, this is not where I spend a majority of my time either, which is TOTALLY my loss.

The last two are my own creations!!  Rabid Kittens....a name that came up as a joke, and has been me and my long time friends' guild.  A very nice level 25 guild we leveled up all on our own...(all seven of us at the time), and my little level 2 Horde guild on Ysondre called Living Dead Gurls...so um...if anyone is up for leveling a guild....FEMALE TOONS ONLY!!!

Peace...and thank you for listening!  XOXOX

Flex raids

Here we have more of an admission then any kind of commentary or anything like that.

Raiding has always scared the BLEEP out of me...and frankly still does.

There are several different reasons for this.

First: I should stop listening to podcasts like Convert to Raid, My Epic Heals.  Not that these are bad podcasts, in fact they are both very good, informative, and entertaining shows, but if you are someone that has any self doubt OR worry about falling prey to mechanics OR worry about putting out as much as you can, these shows and others like them can be a little daunting.  Listening to these wonderfully intelligent folks go on about...well...math, and maximum this and that can, for me, suck the joy out of Christmas.

Second: When I'm the first to die on the fourth pull, the issue is mine and mine alone.

Third:  Its a little scary when you and everyone else knows the wipe was totally your fault.

Fourth:  Um, I don't always watch the fights on you tube, read up on them, OR look at the dungeon journal.  OKAY I SAID IT!  JEEZ.

There seems to be no easy slide into raiding.  LFR, is not all that hard...and if you do fuck up, who cares.  Not that I am suggesting you go into an LFR not caring about it, but learning curve errors that we ALL experience can be hidden in all the LFR trolling that go on when a wipe does happen, or you can blame the dude next to you who is probably going to drop anyway.   The jump in difficulity level gets to me more because I fear failure, letting down the folks who have been waiting a week to raid down, and making me wonder if I am actually a good player, and should I be raiding at all...sniff.

Its on me, I know this, I understand this, and I hope that I am able to grow from this...isnt this kind of what a blog be for?

Thanks for hearing my confession.

COME ON.....LIKE YOU NEVER FUCKED UP!!

:-)

Peace all and thanks for listening.

Kurly

Some PVP Rage

Anyone who knows me knows that one of my favorite features of WOW is PVP.   From my first shaking tour of Warsong Gultch and Arathi Basin, all the way up to whatever was/is the max level BG's, there I shall be.  And there shall I be, getting my ass handed to me over and over again.

Now, to be fair, I am not the best PVP'er.  I don't min/max, I don't always fully gem or enchant my gear, and there are many times when I loose sight of any kind of strat and just want to kill, kill, kill.

So, here is what I have noticed, and here is what I think: I think Blizzard stacks the deck in favor of one side.  In part so that the loosing side's resolve to come back burns ever brighter with each loss.  Does this sound like the theory of a ranting crazy person?  Sure!  Could I be totally wrong?  Totally!

However, take into consideration the following pieces of info!

Over last week I did I total of 30 BG's, 15 on the Horde, and 15 on Alliance.  Out of that 30 I won 9, five on the Horde, four on Alliance.  During each BG I checked the number of toons from the same server on each team, how much health team members had and my observation of team work or cooperation.  I played on toons of all levels.

Whenever I won we simply mowed over the other team, each time it was a shut out and on three occasions were able to pen up the opposing team.  (which I think sucks even when I am the pen-ner).  There were no close calls, no 2/3 type losses at all.  We either won totally or were used to mop the floor.  The winning team almost always had 50 to 75k more heath then the loosing team, and teams with no one in a party were pit against groups of people CLEARLY working together in a party.

There I said it!!

My intention here is not to troll.  If I am correct, it is a valid and working way to rope me in and keep me coming back.  Obviously I don't hate what happening as BG's are near and dear to my soul, but I do wish we could all go into a fair fight is all.

Best......Kurly,

Some things to come:

So along with some personal yuck yuck coinciding with Blizzcon I laid off for a week or so, but now I am getting back into the swing of things and are hoping to pump out some blogs on the following topics over the next few weeks!

PVP Woes
Flex raids
Tanking/Healing
Leveling
Just how many guilds I am in and why?
Melee V Ranged
Another Orc expans...um er, Warlords or Draenor.

Light be with you!

K

Some things I have learned....kind of.

Over my six plus years playing WOW here is some of what I have learned:

Its the tanks fault.
Announcing to the random BG group that you are listening to "Little Girls" from Annie is bad.
What the difference is between a nerd and a geek. (at least I think I have)
The rogue is going to kill you, over and over and over.
Female gamers find time to get some sun...why cant the dudes?
Is the healers fault.
The secretary spread can happen to you, too!
Its the DPS fault.
Ja makin me crazy 'mon!
Announcing to your LFR group that you are listening to the theme song from Grease can get you kicked.
There is no such thing as a Peacebloom pipe, but there should be!!
BG's in the early AM, on the Alliance equals utter gankage!
What utter gankage is.
Do Tauren have a utter?
RNG= Really, No Gear.
Its the tanks fault
The rogue is going to sap you, then kill you.
Jaina Proudmore has become a very angry woman.
The bosses we have to kill will just watch you while you stand in front of them plotting to kill them.
Fishing sucks.
Pet Battles...PSH..no way..um. well, they are kinda...NO NO WAY.
Its the healers fault.
Female Humans like to fart in the tub.
Female Worgen are nasty nasty ladies.
Its the tanks fault.
FRACKING ROGUES.
Rogues don't wear rouge, but they still kill you.
Goblin and Gnome tanks???....okay if you say so.
I'm a wigwam, i'm a tee-pee, i'm a wigwam, i'm a tee-pee....man I am 2 tense.
That warrior wants to put his sword where?
You actually want people to bring flasks to the party.

Oh the fun!!  Peace....K

Wimping over wiping.

I want to say that I'm a born "support" player.  My underlying goal in WOW (and in the rest of my life for that matter) is to provide assistance.  As long as there is a defined goal and someone else taking the lead I am happy as hell to do what ever I can to assist in the completion of the purpose at hand.

So why is it these days the idea of tanking a raid has me running off in a corner "Yipe, yipeing" like the proverbial bitch?

Tanking these days in five man heroics is kind of a joke.  You always have at least one DPS pulling over 100k in damage and one other poor schmuck doing just over 40k.  Heroics play more like scenarios as it is as.  All the healers have some kind of "Drop it and forget it" heal that leaves them free to add their own DPS to the mix, ending any heroic in about five minutes with barely any fuss and, as per usual, barley any conversation by the participants.

Any tank with a taunt can manage a five man herioc, even with the huge amounts of DPS going out.  By the time the target turns around to face its attacker its likely to be dead.

For some reason I tremble in my little combat boots at the thought of taking the latest raids.  I have read strats, over and over but still, all of this concern is there.

Maybe I'm over thinking, maybe I should try to not care like all the other folk in LFR.

Jeez!!

Ill keep you posted.

Thanks for coming!!

Kurly

Timeless and already forgotten?

Ah the Timeless Isle.  Let it be known that the first few weeks after the patch I was not at all quiet about my thoughts about the TI , and frankly I thought it sucked!  What possible fun could there be in running around getting pounced on by four or five kitties a time, one shot by pythons, gang ganked by spectral mistweavers, or face melted by some very irritable Yangoul. (but wouldn't you be irritated if you were attacked all the time, every day, over and over with no end in sight?)

There was, however, gear.  High level gear.  Lots and lots of high level gear.  In some cases said gear was a 75 point slot level increase.  This kind of upgrade is enough to force a change of opinion in my not so easily swayed mind.

What once sucked, started to get easy, and death was happening less and less.  There was a unusual sense of community when it came to downing the Celestial Guardians (what was with all that positive reinforcement whilst nuking them?!), finding rares, and treasure chest whereabouts.

How long did we expect all of that to last?  I ask this because I realized the other night that I had not spent any significant amount of time on the Isle for nearly two weeks, and when I went there there was nowhere near the population of folks there as had been before.

As I have been hearing on the net and various podcasts, people who play only one toon (something personally I will never understand.) the isle is only good for a short time as the upgraded gear comes fairly quickly and there is no real reason to keep going back.  Then there is also the "been there, done that." factor.    Having done the Isle on one tank, two dps and three heals (yes, I did it on three healers), I have to say that variety was sorely lacking and that maybe I was just getting bored with it, maybe, kind of, a little.

I will say again that over all I think the Timeless Isle was a good idea.  There is a lot of fun to had there as well as dandy upgrades, and some great WOWing with folks on your server.  Hopefully Blizzard is able to take what they have learned from it and use that information to craft an experience that endures a little longer.

All the best!!
Kurly

Thoughts on LFR

Raiding!  There was a super fantastic discussion on the WOW insider show about LFR, and I wanted to throw out some thoughts.

I remember back when I first started playing wow something like 8% of the overall WOW population actually participated in raids.

The number was low for a lot of reasons:  

1.  They were hard.

2. It was rumored that people who raided were, um, difficult, and expected a lot.

3. They were hard.

4. It was not always easy to figure out and learn strats.

I was asked to help a friends guild get past the first bug boss in Naxx., during the Lich King Expansion.  Being I was a fill in there was not a lot expected of me...essentially just point and shoot.  The boss mechanic was not very complicated but the politics I observed while I was there was pretty much a turn off, and the repetitive nature of raids has me bored senseless after the fourth or fifth attempt. Not to mention that I was told I was not allowed to roll on any gear. 

I know that I am not the picture of a good raider.  I don't really focus on getting any one toon up to optimum output, more often that not I rely on a friends explanation of the fight, and I really do start to zone out after each attempt. 

My experience with LFR has not been entirely positive.  I may not be the best participant but I am certainly not the worst.  There have been groups that did create an odd degree of camaraderie, and were actually fun, but on the whole they tend to be tiresome and bring out the worst in some folks.

Improving my overall contribution to LFR is something of a personal goal.  I like being a participant that knows whats going on.

Is it me or does LFR seem like five man heroics used to be?

All the best!!
Kurly