Moving House

I've ported all the content from this site over to a Wordpress site. I have no idea if I'll stick there or not, but for now, please redirect yourself to:

Fleas on Rats

Can We Talk Hunters for a Minute?

Milo is acting out my hunter frustrations

Out of all my toons, the patch changes to hunters are my least favorite. Go figure. The very first thing I did, even before transmog, was switch Maruka over to beast master from marksman. As a hunter, I feel that being able to have pets out is one of the most, if not the most, important aspect of my class. What's a hunter without a pet?

I've raided with her as bm twice and I've run all the lfrs with her for the last two weeks. My numbers are fine. I'm first in our raid and usually #1 or #2 in LFR. Whatever. Who cares? What bugs me is the rotation. Take out the legendary ring, my trinket proc, and a couple cds, and I have three buttons to push. Kill command, dire beast, and cobra shot. It's BORING! And what's more!! It's ANNOYING!! All the whistling with dire beast is freaking annoying. Amiright?? On top of only having three main abilities to use, it seems like they're always on cool down or I'm waiting for my focus to regen. Granted, my gear is specced more towards marksman than bm and as such, I'm light on haste, but still.

Everyone keeps telling me to be patient and wait until I get my artifact weapon. And I am. I still consider Maruka to be my main and as of right now, I plan on raiding with her in Legion. I have to wonder though, is it more sentimentality that has to do with keeping her as my main or because I actually believe she'll be more fun with her artifact weapon? Time will tell I guess.

Download Update Message in WoW

I tried launching the game today and received the following message:

An updated version of World of Warcraft is available. Please launch the Battle.net app to download the update.

At first, it seemed like everything was normal because as soon as I okay'd that message, a download started. It finished up, said the game was ready, and I tried launching again. Same message. I completely closed down the app and tried launching again. No go. Then I turned to Google and found the following suggestions:

1. From a Reddit post:  Im assuming you are on US server, go into your WTF folder (C: > Program Files(86) > World of Warcraft > WTF) Then open Config.wtf with notepad. Look for "SET portal "EU"" should be at the top. Change EU to US, save it and make sure to restart battle.net or it will just change it back.

I am on a U.S. server, but when I tried this fix, I was already set to US. This didn't work for me. 

2. This suggestion was from a forum post and I wish I had saved the link, but I didn't. Go into your World of Warcraft folder and delete the WTF and Cache folders. 

I tried that and it didn't work either. 

3. This is another suggestion from the WoW forums:  Run a scan and repair. In case you don't know how to do this:

• Open the Battle.net app
• Select the icon you want to fix. This was the World of Warcraft icon for me.
• Click on the "options" icon. This is a little blue cog located underneath the World of Warcraft:  Legion logo to the right of all the game icons. It took me a minute to find this because I kept trying the Bnet drop down menu icon at the very top of the screen.
• In the "Options" drop down menu, select "Scan and Repair" and let it do its thing. It's not a fast process either.

After about 20 minutes of scanning, I got a message from my computer asking permission to allow the app to make changes to my computer. Then another download ensued. Then I got the message that the game was playable. This solution finally worked for me. Not sure what it found and fixed, but the game launched as if new, with the startup movie and everything. 

Maybe either of the first two options might work for anyone else having this problem since they seemed to work for quite a few others but only the third worked for me. Try all three before resorting to anything extreme like uninstalling and reinstalling. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have, but I'm not tech support and only know what I know from Googling it myself. ;) 

Frost Mage Transmog

As I said in my last post, I decided to switch my frost mage to a fire mage for Legion. Frost is underperforming since the patch so it made more sense. Also, much to my delight, fire mage is FUN.

I tried both fire and arcane a few months back and just could not seem to get the hang of the rotation. My timing was always off and practice didn't seem to make it any better. I switched to the supposedly lesser Frost spec and my numbers went up. Just like they're supposed to do. Also, quick sidenote, whatever happened to playing specs you have fun with versus the top performing and/or must haves? Whatever.

Back to my main topic...

For my frost mage spec, I put together the following transmog (click the pics to embiggen):

Full on screenshot

Selfie. And she's lamenting the fact that this pic cost her 489 gold to take.

There you have it. I was really feeling this transmog. I wish I had remembered to take out her weapons, but I was unwilling to pay another 489 gold to switch out my transmog to take another pic. Uh uh. 

Whaddya think? Fire, vs. frost vs. arcane? Thoughts?

Fire Mage Transmog

I started out thinking I would keep my mage as frost, post-patch but holy bones! Her deeps just weren't up to snuff. I had tried both fire and arcane a few months back and didn't like either one. However, knowing what I know about how hunters changed, I figured now would be the time to learn a new mage spec. And I was right. I like the rotation and it doesn't feel boggy or slow at all. Feeling the change, I also needed to come up with an appropriate transmog. This is what I have so far:



(click to embiggen)

I definitely like the shoulders and my offhand. I'd like to get a flame-ier belt though. That's the best match I could get to my robes. As for the robes, they're okay but I can do better. I also wouldn't mind getting a flame-y helm too, which is weird for me because I usually opt to go helm-less. Howver, I think her goblin hair detracts.

What do you think?

World of Warcraft: Post Pre-Patch Ponderings

The post title? I couldn't resist.

 So, new patch! I don't know about you all, but I felt like this patch was a doozy. I logged in and had absolutely no idea wtf to do with my hunter. All her talents and abilities were different. It was like starting over from scratch. Logging in with my mage, monk, and warlock all caused similar feelings.

Then I started in on the new transmog system. First of all, LOVING my new closet. I should've kept track of how many hundreds of gold I've spent on changing my various toons' outfits. I also discovered that I have a mismash of items. Lots of chest pieces that don't have matching pants, etc. etc.

My raid team decided to go ahead and attempt raiding the same night the patch came out (our regular night). We ran HFC on normal Tuesday night and then on heroic Wednesday night. It was ok. Everybody's numbers were lower than normal and we were a bit sloppy but we still got some bosses down. That was with virtually no practice with our new(ish) toons. I think this week will be better.

I'm loving healing on my monk though. So. Much. Fun!! I even had fun with my lock on destro.

On a side note, I created a page for my guild. We're looking to boost our numbers with some active, fun, friendly, people. If you're looking to raid with nice people in a slow progression environment, then we might have a spot for you. When Legion finally drops, we'll most likely be looking to fill raid team spots then too. Either way, until we chat, I make no promises as far as raiding is concerned. However, if you're looking for a friendly place to hang, a guild to grow with and help grow, and a place where you'd actually have some input, gimme a buzz. Check out The Guild Page for more info. Any feedback, either here or on the page, would be most welcome.

Cutting the Cord - How My Family Cancelled Cable

About six months ago, I decided it was time for my family to cut the cable TV cord. There were several factors that went into this decision.

One, my cable bill went up to over $200 a month. I called to ask wtf and was told that I was on some kind of graduated billing where my bill increased over three years to it's final $200+ that it was. This is for both cable and Internet. Considering how much TV we actual watch, this number was unacceptable.

Secondly, we'd had a little experiment with no cable for about three weeks when our house was struck by lightning and our cable wasn't working. This was my fault because I didn't feel like calling a tech out to the house. In that time, we streamed Netflix like it was cool. We had, at the time, 1 TB of data to use per month and almost hit that limit. And we didn't really miss the cable.

Thirdly, there are so many options out there that allow for you to customize what you want and what you watch. With Google Chromecast, Roku, Hulu, and Netflix (to name a few), there are so many subscriptions and packages to choose from that you can ensure that you're paying for what you want and not for what cable companies force on you.

So, we bought a Roku, cancelled the cable, and upped our Internet to 2 TB a month with a faster speed (not sure what that is). This is the biggest Internet package my cable company offers and it's $99.99 a month. Add in $11.99 for Netflix (that we were already paying so doesn't really count), $7.99 for Hulu, $22.46 for Sling, and $4.99 for FUBO and we're saving money. We're saving about $65.00 a month. What's more, is that the things we are choosing to pay for are things we actually watch. With cable, we were paying $200 for channels we were never watching.

I miss my subscriptions to STARZ, Showtime, and HBO but I can add those if I wish to. I don't at the moment.

Additionally, in anticipation of the 2016 Olympics, we bought a digital antenna and now we get all of our local broadcast channels like NBC, CBS, and ABC. We don't get FOX because we live too far and that's a bummer, but it's nice having those channels again and being able to watch the local news.

What I really like about our television watching subscriptions is that we can cancel them and resubscribe or add new stuff (Sling has add on packages plus HBO, etc.) any freaking time we want to. If you've been thinking about cutting the cord, DO IT!! I have absolutely no regrets.

Update: Guild Situation

Last time I discussed guild stuff, recruiting, and/or raid team stuff, I talked about guild drama and the bumps we've had with our raid team. I figure an update, seeing as how that was like a year ago, is in order.

Things have been quiet. Too quiet. My guild is down to 126 people and of those, only about ten individuals still log in (Individual players, not including all their many alts). Over the past few months, I've been kicking people out that have been inactive for 12+ months and demoting people to the lowest (and thus, the least access to guild stuff) rank for being inactive 6+ months. I wish I had numbers to give you here, but I can't login today cuz my computer is broke.

I, myself, have been less than actively active. I had a lot of stuff going on with grad school and then my dad passed away in March. Because of this, I didn't see the point in trying to get more people to join the guild. It seems like when I don't login every day, as the guild master, people leave the guild more often. It's as if, if people don't see the GM every day, they don't want to be in that guild. Maybe I'm imagining things or putting too much responsibility on my own head. I dunno. But I don't feel right bringing new people into the guild if I'm not there to interact with them and support them. Ya know?? As a result, my guild is really quiet.

As for the raid team...We can't seem to keep good, reliable healers. They come and go more than anything. It's frustrating. Is it because our team is too hard to heal? What is it? We have about 14, what I would call, regular team members. I like most of them for the most part. I think I've managed to rub a couple of them the wrong way, but that's life. My only complaint is that a couple of our people seem to refuse to learn and progress with their respective toons. We've been in HFC for over a year (is that right??) and these certain somebody's are still making the same mistakes. We've only gotten the 2nd boss down on heroic ONE time. ONCE! Usually, I'm okay with the speed of our progression, but that's just plain frustrating. My hunter main stands at an item level of 720 and there's absolutely no way to get her new/better gear on normal level. With Legion coming out next month, I really have no hope of furthering her along. This being my very first experience at raiding, I have to say that I'm somewhat disappointed with the end results. We've never even gotten Archi down on normal mode. We should've at the very least gotten that far.

Where to go from here?

Good question. Should I start trying to bump up my guild's numbers now? Wait until Legion comes out? Be happy with the people I have now because they're mostly awesome?

Should we kick the under-performers from the raid team for Legion? Wait and hope they improve with Legion? Like I said, this is my first experience raiding and it's my first experience running an open guild. Advice would be much appreciated.

Things That I Don't Geek Out On

Holy cow. It's been forever since I've updated this blog. I have no excuse. I'm lazy.

This post's topic was inspired by a similar post that I read today on Bio Break that tickled me and I couldn't resist writing my own post on the subject.

This about being a geek/nerd. This is an aspect of my personality that I fully embrace and acknowledge. Besides, I'm such a nerd, that denying it would be laughable. Despite being comfortable in my nerdiness, there are quintessential aspects of being a nerd/geek that just don't apply to me and/or I don't indulge in. It's not because they embarrass me or because I think I'm above them, but more that they've never interested me. Some of my list, I have in common with Syp, so maybe others will find things to relate to too. Let's begin.

1. Playing Dungeons and Dragons. I remember my brother playing D&D when we were both younger (maybe he still does, I don't know but wouldn't be surprised) and it seeming to be really boring to me. He said that I lacked an imagination, which is why I didn't like it. Maybe so. Still, it seems really silly to me (no offense) and aside from that, having to verbally participate in a game like D&D totally makes me nervous just thinking about it. I'm too shy.
2. Wearing geeky clothes. I've never had much of a personal style to being with but the older I get, the more I'm trying to wear more "adult" clothing. This means that I've cut my t-shirt collection down to just two:  a pink t-shirt that I got in the men's section of Ralph Lauren (go figure) and a black concert tee that I got at an Imagine Dragons concert. However, I long for some of the geeky t-shirts I've seen advertised online (mostly Facebook). So many of them apply to me and I can relate to them. In the same vein, I've never colored my hair pink or green or blue or whatever. I love how it looks on others, but I feel like I'm too old to do that for myself.
3. Watching other gamers play games. I've never even been to the Twitch website and don't watch YouTube vids either except the ones that show walk thrus. This confounds me. I have no idea what the appeal is in watching someone else play games online. I'd much rather play them myself.
4. Doctor Who. I've tried!!! I want to love this show because so many others do but I can't get into it at all. It's so fake and the acting is so forced. Please! Someone tell me the secret to Doctor Who so that I can love it too.
5. Watching and/or reading comics. The only movie I've ever liked based on a comic book character (that I know of) is the original Batman movie with Michael Keaton. I've tried watching Jessica Jones, Dare Devil and even more importantly, Arrow!! because of this promo poster (YUM!):
   
   But none of them held my attention. I don't even bother with movies anymore because I never like them. I also don't read comics in the traditional sense. I read graphic novels, which many say is the same, but I don't read anything with the traditional comic book characters. I like Saga, Grimm Fairy Tales, and Persepolis. My geek gene is mutated or something. 
6. I've never built my own computer. This is more of a fear thing than anything else. I buy computers. I'm afraid that if I built my own, it'd never work and then I'd be out all the money it took buy all the components and I'd have nobody to blame but myself. However, I'm not afraid to yank stuff out of my computer or go into the BIOS. Stuff like that. As a matter of fact, and why this is on my mind, my computer wouldn't start up yesterday. I Googled some stuff, found some things to try and busted open my computer to try them. As I was doing so, I was naming off all the components in my tower and my daughter was impressed that I knew what I was looking at, lol. I pulled my hard drive, swapped it out in my husband's comp, determined that my hard drive is fried, AND...ordered a new computer last night. It'll be here tomorrow.
7. Playing Chess. My husband is a big chess player. He's actually headed to a competition this weekend in Alabama. I tease him about how much he likes and plays chess. I know the basics of chess, meaning that I know the names of the pieces and how they move, but I can't grasp how to move the pieces or the why of it. Frankly, after watching/listening to my husband play for hours on end, figuring out the game appeals to me not at all. It appears to be boooorrring. I think this might be because I'm just not smart enough to play. In all seriousness and I'm not trying to be self-deprecating at all. 

So, that's my list of the geeky/nerdy things that I don't do. At least, these are the things I can think of. There are plenty of geeky/nerdy things that I do do and that list would probably be longer. Maybe that'll be my next post...

The Shipyard

I have been mostly satisfied with the way the garrison functions in the game. When I heard about shipyards, I was only mildly interested to mostly ambivalent about them. More missions. Woohoo. Initially, I found that I liked building ships and being able to upgrade and name them and the missions were sort of fun since I needed to level my new fleet.

Recently, my fleet is mostly topped out, only having to level ships that were replacements for ones lost on missions. Having the majority of my fleet being purple, missions have very little point to them anymore. The main bulk of available missions are experience missions. Then, the requirements for those missions are insane.

I took this screenshot today:

Would you look at the requirements for the mission I highlight?? And the reward is only XP. In order to even come close to being able to do this mission, you'd have to have your TWO ships max level so that they'd have the extra two trait slots filled. If your ships are max level, why do you need to do this mission at all???

Also, if you look at my available missions, the rewards for all but one are xp and one of the missions that I already have a ship on is for Baleful gear.

The shipyard is flawed and a virtual waste of time and resources. That's my opinion though. I'll entertain opposing arguments. ;)

Timewalking Dungeons in 6.2

I have a confession. I was supposed to wait to run the new Timewalking Dungeon weekend event until our scheduled guild event last night. I may have taken a little sneak preview with my monk, Bellepanda, yesterday afternoon a few hours before our event.

I started playing WoW right at the end of the Burning Crusade expac. Because I was new and afraid to try dungeons and raids, I never got to experience the BC dungeons until much later with alts. So, while I have been in the BC dungeons via the dungeon queue, this was almost like a first time experience for me.

I had so much fun! With my monk, I queued into the Slave Pens. That time, the dungeon seemed to be adequately difficult. I died twice. Admittedly, with 6.2, my monk dies ALL THE FREAKING TIME now. (I'm thinking of healing with her instead of dps'ing, but that's a whole other post.) She got a piece of gear that she could use, so it was both fun and useful.

Then, last night, we had our guild group for the Timewalkers. We blazed through them. We were pulling entire rooms of trash and wiping the floor with them. My hubs agrees with me that it seemed too easy. For the guild group, I took my hunter main, Maruka, and we had a monk heals, paladin tank, and a priest and another dps (I'm drawing a blank as to who this is). My hunter is awesomesauce squared, but even so, our toons didn't seem to be scaled to a level 70 instance. Anyone else think they were easy?

All in all, I still would rate this feature a 5 out of 5. It was so much fun to run this old content with guildies. For some of them, it brought back a lot of memories. I'm really looking forward to July's Timewalking event.

Bumps & Bruises: Guild Drama

From what I've read, seen, and experienced for myself, my guild has very little drama comparatively. We've been active, officially, for six months now and I've only had one user, one bank abuser, two rage quitters, and one booted to the door. I'll explain.

The User

This person joined the guild, acted all enthusiastic about my raid project, and was generally a nice person for several weeks. However, once they got a few pieces of gear and an iLvl increase, they jumped ship. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, EXCEPT for the fact that they misrepresented themselves and used fellow guildies for gear upgrades. This is bad behavior in my book. Not only that, but they left us high and dry with no notice, lacking a 2nd healer.

Bank Abuser

This one should be pretty obvious. This person withdrew stuff from the guild bank that they couldn't possibly use. Hello!!!! I can see what your professions are and what level your character is. Then, when I asked them what they needed all that stuff for, they left the guild. Good riddance!

Rage Quitter

This is one that actually makes me a little bit sad. This person was, for the most part, a great guildie. They had been with the guild for a really long time. The problem was that they made a habit of no call/no show on raid nights. One or two times, while annoying and disrespectful to the team, is one thing. Several nights with absolutely no apologies is another. At least own up to what you're doing and apologize. When I finally called them on their shit, they got butt hurt and left the guild. Way to be an adult. I'm sad because I genuinely enjoyed playing the game with this person and miss their company. Their drama, however, I don't miss.

The 2nd quitter left because they took something personally that wasn't personal at all. After several in game mails where I tried to convince this person that I wasn't singling them out for anything, they left anyway. Can't keep everyone happy I guess.

Booter

I think I tolerate a lot. Unless you're a GM, you really can't appreciate the behind the scenes stuff that happens in a guild. The Booter had been an ongoing problem for a few months. Inappropriate conversation and giving off a creeper vibe. Seeing as how I was the sole recipient of this behavior, I tried giving the person the benefit of the doubt. However, their bad behavior escalated into constant bitching and whining, bashing the raid team, bragging about how they were the end all, be all of raiders, and then sexually harassing another guildie. Time to go. I felt weird actually removing someone from the guild, but several lines had been crossed.

I don't think five problem members is all that bad in the grand scheme. That's not even one per month. I hate to say it, but other than the 2nd rage quitter, the others brought me a lot of drama and it was a relief to have it be over. At the end of the night with the Booter drama, I had a huge headache and my hands and feet were so swollen with stress and tension, they were painful. I wish people could realize the impact their words and actions have on others, even in an online game setting. I may be the GM, but I am still trying to have fun here. 

Casual vs Hard Core vs Free for All

Recruiting, as I said in my last post, is an ongoing endeavor. Once I started getting people to join the guild, I had to look forward to building a raid team. Once again, I had some pretty idealistic goals for what I wanted in my raid team. I wanted:

• Players who were new to raiding and anxious to learn.
• Players who were familiar with raiding, possessing of loads of patience, and willing to teach.
• Players who recognized that boss encounters require some preparation like gearing up and watching videos to learn mechanics.
• Players who wanted to progress through bosses but were willing to be patient through the learning and preparation process. 
• Players who didn't live and breathe numbers and statistics.
• Players who took responsibility for their mistakes and learned from them.
• Players who didn't point fingers and get bitchy when we wiped.

I was, and still am, asking for a lot. For the  most part, I found just the people I was looking for too. There's been some bumps in the road and progression is slower than I had anticipated, but we're moving along, bouncing around in High Maul and BRF as we like. When we can't get a boss down and get frustrated, we stop and try a different one. I'm sure there has been talk that has occurred outside of my hearing, so to speak, but I think most of my team are happy with the way things are going. I've actually had some tell me that they've been in hard core raiding guilds before and much prefer it the way we do things. They like the fun and friendly atmosphere versus raiding in a high stress environment.

I'm painting a pretty picture here, right? Well, there have been some bumps, like I said. As the weeks have progressed and we've been learning how to work as a raid team, I've had to reassess and make some adjustments. I'll tell you all about that in my next post.

Guild Recruiting: It NEVER Ends!!!!

Fast forward again to December 2014. The husband and I decided that we were finally ready to start inviting people to join the guild. Fleas on Rats was going live! Just a little FYI, side note here:  While I consider my husband to be co-owner of the guild, he is more of a sounding board for me than an actual manager. He prefers it that way and this is fine by me.

How to Begin the Recruiting Process

I had done the bare-bones minimum in research on how to recruit. I figured, how hard can it be??? Sometimes my naivete and complete dumbassery astounds me. Recruiting is H-A-R-D. I could have made it easier on myself by choosing a lemming-type, conformist-type, typical guild name like Fluffy Bunnies or Lemonade Kids (I should say, "no offense" here, but would I really mean it?), but I chose something that actually means something and, in the end, I think is representative of what it means to be a killer horde. What's more killer, harder to escape, creeps up on you with no notice, than the plague??? A PLAGUE ON YOUR HOUSE!!! Nobody wants to hear that. 

Anyway, back to recruiting. I chose the traditional route of spamming trade and general chat with recruiting messages. I say "spam" here because that's the general term for it, but I don't think what I did fit the definition. I didn't repeatedly post my message until I was locked out. I posted about once every ten minutes or so. And let's be honest here. What's more annoying, the occasional guild recruitment message or the anal spams or the blessed thunder fury spams or the general douchebaggery that is par for the course on trade chat??? Maybe your server chat is different than mine, but personally, I'd rather see guild recruitment posts. 

Besides, it worked. I started recruiting some great people to my guild, but it wasn't going as fast I would have liked. So, I posted a message to the guild recruitment forums. Over the months, I've gotten a handful of hits from these posts. Right now, I have three active posts on three different boards, on two different websites. Compared to the amount of people I got from in game posts, the forums are more work with fewer results, but still, a necessary evil.

Words of Wisdom

I wish I had a brilliant suggestion for recruitment. In the grand scheme, I haven't put in a lot of time recruiting. I've been at it steadily for four months now, but compared to some guilds, this time is nothing. It is, like I said, a lot of work. You have to find the right tone for your forum postings. I try to go with a more professional sounding tone with some sarcasm and more casual language. My goal is to recruit adults who have the same philosophy as I do about raiding (which I'll go into later). I'd prefer that they are social and friendly with a sense of humor. While I try to keep my posts on par with people who have at least an 8th grade reading level, I also try to keep a bit of levity so that prospects know I'm not a stick in the mud. This type of writing is difficult, believe it or not. Also, I continue to post in game, on trade, general, and now that it's back, looking for group. I absolutely never post on all three channels at the same time. I stagger my messages so that I'm posting about once every five minutes. This equals about once every 15 minutes per channel. This is not, by my definition, spam-like behavior. FYI, creating a macro for each channel is very handy. 

Aside from the above, I also would recommend:

• That you leave in game recruiting message posting to one guild member. If you have more than one person posting at a time, you risk overlaps and spam. 
• Change your message(s) up every once in a while. 
• Keep your forum postings up to date. If you've changed your recruiting goals, then post a new message. Try and delete the old ones if the forum allows it.
• Be diplomatic. Don't stoop to other player's level of immaturity when you get a negative response to one of your messages. 
• Be patient. Unless you're extremely lucky, be prepared for recruiting to be an ongoing GM activity. It takes time to find the right players. Even if you currently have your guild pop where you want it and your raid roles filled, players come and go all the time. It's almost a guarantee that you'll have to recruit again at some point. 

The Fear and Having Unrealistic Expectations

 The transition from the Quel'dorei server to Zul'jin was eye-opening. I had never had any toons on a high population server, always choosing a medium pop server so that I would never have to deal with login queues. (In retrospect, this is a completely dumb reason to choose a low-med pop server.) I remember my first visit to Orgrimmar and being dumbfounded at the amount of players hanging out there. 

This server change involved moving my main plus about two alts. My husband also made the transition with his main and I don't remember how many alts he had at the time. (This was a while ago and I'm old and my memory sucks.) The first order of business was to decide on a guild name and go through the process of starting a guild. We knew that, at the beginning, the purpose of the guild would be to use it as a way to support our leveling our alts. I didn't want to immediately begin inviting people to join. We had an empty bank and a very limited amount of gold. Who would join this guild and then stay once they saw that?

My vision for a guild was, and still is if I'm honest about it, idealistic. Let me bullet point it for you and you'll see what I mean.

My Must-Haves for a Guild

• Small community - no more than 150 players.
• People that behave like adults
• Limited to no drama
• Talkative, active, social, friendly players
• A guild bank that supports leveling up that people actually use
• Planned events that people actually want to attend

This is just what I wanted, in general, for a guild. This doesn't even being to cover raiding. So, the husband and I began stocking the guild bank. By this time, Cataclysm was out. We also worked on getting at least one toon each to max level. I figured, a GM should be at max level. Jump forward in time...

All through the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria expacs, we didn't put forth any real effort to start inviting people to the guild. Why? We made two cross country moves. We were both nearing the completion of our undergrad degrees so school work really ramped up. I had a snarly teenager on my hands. The husband deployed to Afghanistan. These, on paper, are all really good reasons to not have the time to devote to running a guild and putting together a raid team. I could get away with leaving it at that, but I'll be honest with you in the spirit of transparency. The ultimate reason was fear. I was afraid that I didn't have the follow through to make this successful. I didn't think I'd be able to find any other like-minded players out there that would want to join the guild. I go through times with the game where I don't login for a few weeks at a time. What would happen to the guild if I experienced one of those slumps? Yes. This is "just" a game, but in my mind, once you decide to become a GM, you have a certain responsibility to the players in your guild to be there and to make sure the guild is a place they want to be. If you don't believe that, what's the point of starting a guild at all? 

Talking with other GMs didn't help. They confirmed that I had unrealistic expectations. Most happened to like my vision for a guild but all had no faith at all that I'd be able to make it happen. They all told me that running a guild is a lot of work with little positive feedback. They said that you put in hours of behind the scene work on a guild that, unless you are or have been a GM, players won't appreciate. Basically, being a GM is a thankless job that sucks the fun out of playing. What in the holy hell was I thinking???

On Being a Guild Master

As if I didn't have enough in my life to drive me insane, I decided to open up one of my bank guilds and try to make it a casual raiding guild. I began this endeavor the first week of December, 2014. Now, four months later, I have two partial raid teams going on, on different days of the week. Sheesh. That sounds even crazier when I see it in black and white.

I want to take the next few blog posts and share my journey with you (whoever's still out there reading this blog). I don't know if this is going to be some helpful advice or cautionary tale of what not to do. We'll see what I say. I'll start with a little background info.

I had, over the years, tried out several guilds. I eventually found a guild that had nice people in it and minimal drama. You only have to read the trade chat in World of Warcraft one day to see that this game is fraught with teenage-like drama. Add in the trolls, and you have to wonder why anyone tries to be social at all. Anyway, this guild worked out well for quite some time. At least two years and it was a tremendously tough decision to leave it. However, I was looking to experience some of the end game content. I had never raided. All through Burning Crusade and WotLK. No raiding. I tried putting feelers out to my fellow guildmates to see if anyone would be interested in trying out some level appropriate raids. Aside from their focus being mainly pvp content, the GM was pretty adamant that this guild not become a raiding guild. I didn't want to step on toes, but I wasn't satisfied having a max level toon with nowhere to take her. It was time to move on. In addition to leaving the guild, I also did a server change. I thought starting out fresh on a higher population server would be the best way to go. This was a really great decision. Honestly. No sarcasm.

So, I was guildless and on a new server. Now what? 

Gaming History Meme

I found this off of Manalicious by Vidyala who found it on Cannot Be Tamed by Jasyla. I love these things so I figured I'd play along.

1. When did you start playing video games?
Elementary school in the 80s. I played The Oregon Trail on a Commodore 64 at school. We also had the black and white Pong so I'm not sure which game I played first but it would have been close to the same time. My dad had an Atari but I don't remember any of games that I played on that. My mom had an Intellivision. I remember playing the hell out of Snafu (I can still hear the music in my head when you got close to losing, lol) and Burger Time on that console, lol. Good times. Look how ugly Snafu was, lmao!!

Snafu

2. What is the first game that you remember playing?
See answer #1.

3. PC or Console?
As you can see from answer #1, I've pretty much always played on both. Nowadays, however, I mainly play on my PC or iPad.

4. XBox, PlayStation, or Wii?
We have a Wii U and a PS3. I've put my foot down against getting an XBox. We do not need all three consoles no matter what my husband and the kids say, lol. We've had every incarnation of the Nintendo except for the N64. We've also had every PlayStation, including the first one which would only spin the discs if you placed the console upside down. We'll probably end up getting a PS4 eventually but who knows. The older we get, the less of a priority it is to keep up with the new gaming systems.

5. What's the best game you've ever played?
This is a really hard question. FFVII maybe? Can I say The Sims to include all the expacs and versions since Vanilla? The Sims is the game that I've invested the most hours and money into playing. It's the game that's held my attention the most and the longest. Although, World of Warcraft is probably gaining on it, lol. I also absolutely loved playing the original Zelda. I have a lot of good memories wrapped up in that game.

6. What's the worst game you've ever played?
Another really hard question to come up with a definitive answer for. I can think of some chintzy, cheap games that I've bought over the years for the PC that were just terrible because they were so cheap, but I can't think of anything specific. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. It was Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii. Or was it the GameCube? Anyway, it had gotten such great hype so I preordered a copy of it. Then Nintendo delayed the release and we moved. I had to go through this whole crapton of crap to get the store to honor my preorder which I had already paid for and then when I finally got the game, it was a huge suckfest. There was so much cinematics, cut screens, and general drama that it took away from the actual game play. I gave it maybe an hour before giving up on it and being pissed off at the price I had paid.

7. Name a game that was popular/critically adored that you just didn't like.
Aside from Zelda? American McGee's Alice. I remember all the talk about this game and how you had to play it in the dark because it'd scare the crap out of you and blah blah. I thought it was slow, tedious, and boring.

8. Name a game that was poorly received that you really like.
I'm not sure on this one. My hubby and I really loved the game Dungeon Keeper. I never hear anyone talk about it and I don't remember hearing much talk about it when it came out. But I don't know. I'm probably wrong here.

9. What are your favorite game genres?
I really enjoy RPGs, platform games, racing games like Mario Kart, Little Big Planet Racing, those types of silly racing games. I also like sim games like Civilization, The Sims, Sim City, and Farming Sim.

10. Who is your favorite game protagonist? 
Geez. This isn't a fair question. This is one that requires a bit more critical thinking that the amount of sleep I got last night will allow. Mario? Hehehe. I'm going to say Ratchet. He's hilarious, inventive, can think on his feet, and he puts up with Clank's antagonism.

11. Describe your perfect video game.
Holy moly. I've always wanted to play a version of Star Trek where it was like immersing yourself in an episode of the show. You can realistically interact with your crew, explore your ship, investigate stellar phenomena, explore planets, make new friends with new species of peoples, have a drink in Ten Forward before logging some time in the holosuites. That sort of thing. Star Trek games always seem to be more about fighting than living. I'd also like to play a game set in Tudor England. It would be, again, a game where you could explore and interact with the world and the people in it as well as invading other countries as needed. I'd want it to be historically accurate though.

12. What video game character to you have a crush on?
I honestly can't think of a single character for whom I had a crush. I've never been one to have the hots for cartoonish characters.

13. What game has the best music?
I don't think I've played a wide enough variety of games to have an opinion on this topic. I've always liked The Sims because you can play your own MP3s through your Sims' stereos. Does that count?

14. Most memorable moment in a game:
Finally beating the original Super Mario Bros. All these years later and I still like to brag about it, lmao.

15. Scariest moment in a game:
In Diablo 2, there is that one witch or demon lady. Grrr! I can't remember her name. But every time she came out to kill me, her voice always gave me goosebumps. I hated her, lol.

16. Most heart-wrenching moment in a game:
I always get a little sad when one of my Sims dies of old age. I've never actually gotten teary-eyed over any game though. I don't immerse myself in a game's lore the way a lot of gamers do. I should, but I don't.

17. What are your favorite websites/blogs about games?
The only gaming blogs I read are WoW blogs. My favorite website is probably Wowhead, lol.

18. What's the last game you finished?
I have absolutely no idea. I lose interest in games before I finish them. After all, my favorite games are WoW and The Sims and neither one, especially The Sims, ends. I truly have no answer to this question.

19. What future releases are you most excited about?
The Sims 4!! Woot! I was excited about Mario Kart 8 but it's out now and we have it.

20. Do you identify as a gamer? 
If you had asked me that question 4 or 5 years ago, I would definitely have said yes. I'm finding that as time goes on, I play video games less and less and they become less of a focus. Or maybe I'm just managing my obsessions better as I get older, lol. Still, I call myself a girl gamer because there are fewer of us than male gamers, we get less respect as gamers, and there's more stigma attached to being a girl gamer. I like to thumb my nose at the judge-y asshats.

21. Why do you play video games?
There are a few reasons why I play. First and foremost, games are fun. Immersive games are a great way to de-stress and lose yourself in an alternate world where homework, house work, work work, cooking dinner, and other real world obligations don't exist. It's also a way for me to socialize. I know very few people in real life who play video games. It's been really hard for me to find people who share any of my interests. In the gaming world, I know I have at least one thing in common with the other players.

The Natural Rise and Fall??

I read over on Massively that Blizzard has lost another 100,000 subscribers to World of Warcraft over the course of the last three months. This brings the total number of subscribers down to a mere 7.6 million. Shameful, right? Numbers have been on a steady decline, down 4.4 million from the peak of about 12 million in 2010. While 100,000 doesn't sound like a lot, 4.4 million does. To me at least.

That being said, I'm not in a panic (yet) over these statistics. When you're at the top, you only have one place to go, right? World of Warcraft has long been the forerunner of MMOs. From all the MMOs that I've tried, before and since I started playing WoW, it's clear that game mechanics and even story progression have been based on and evolved from, at least in part, WoW's genius. WoW has staying power, in my opinion, but Blizzard also needs to beef up their game (Haha. Puns.).

7.6 million subscribers is nothing to sneeze at. That's almost $114 million in revenue from subscriptions alone. That doesn't even include the money Blizzard makes off of table top games bearing the World of Warcraft name, books, figurines, clothing, BlizzCon badges, in-game pets, etc., that players regularly buy, myself included.

Do I think that Blizzard has anything to worry about? Well, yeah, to an extent. If they continue on this steady downward trend in subscribers, eventually, it won't be worth the money to develop expansion packs and keep the game updated. It's one thing if the numbers fluctuate significantly, both up and down, but they don't. At least between expansion packs.

News of the next WoW expac is supposed to be released during the current BlizzCon so we should be hearing about it soon. I'm curious as to whether or not it will be innovative enough, in depth enough, and contain enough new content to drive subscriptions up in a meaningful way. Blizzard has a mind boggling problem in front of them:  How to both draw in new players and keep the veteran players that they currently have. More and more often, I'm reading around the blogosphere and the social media outlets about how players have become disenfranchised with the game and hang up their subscriptions. I truly hope Blizzard has an epic rabbit to pull out of their hat during this convention.

Over-Role-Playing

I saw this article on Massively today that totally intrigued me. It was about a study that was conducted that suggests that gamers take on aspects of the personalities of their game characters. Sheesh. That was a mouthful. Anyway, I saw another similar mention of this...somewhere. I don't remember where. It was more along the lines of certain people gravitating towards Horde while other gravitate towards Alliance (it being WoW specific). I would dismiss this all out of hand as being craycray, but Stanford conducted the aforementioned study and you can't ignore Stanford, right?

The study found that basically, women who represent themselves in a gaming world in provocative clothing see themselves more as objects versus women who don't. I suppose that this study would have to apply to role playing because I, for one, have both Alliance and Horde toons, one of which is male, and they all wear a variety of gear and I don't role play at all. I've never thought of myself as a sexy gnome rogue. Right?

The study goes on to talk about how only 45% of gamers are female and that "many" feel the gaming world is not welcoming to female gamers. I don't feel that I can speak to this from experience. I've never felt unwelcome in any game environment based solely on being a girl gamer. I've dealt with male/female stereotypes plenty. I even got a little bent out of shape on Goolge+ the other day when someone intimated that all women like the Lifetime network, which I hate, by the way. I've also been annoyed PLENTY in game by idiots that follow me around and constantly drop duel flags on me or by 12 year olds who talk politics in trade chat like they actually know what they're talking about. But my many annoyances have never been gender-based. 

A direct quote from the article says, "It used to be passive and you watched the characters. You now enter the media and become the protagonist. You become the characters." I just don't know if fully I agree with this. I also would like to know, of these people, how many of them also have gaming compulsions? It just seems to me that someone who has a hard time separating their real life selves from their game avatar would also have a gaming compulsion. Just a thought.

What's your opinion on this article? If you're a girl, have you experienced sexual stereotyping while playing an online game?

Account Wide = Lost Appeal??

I addressed this topic back when MoP was still in beta and it was new news. But I saw this topic surface on Google+ and thought it was a good time to revisit it. Account wide achievements and mounts. Are they good, bad, or something in between?

I can see both sides of the argument. On the one side of the issue, people say that they don't relish grinding rep for multiple toons. Additionally, they don't like having to earn the same achievements over and over for all their toons, especially holiday or world event achievements.

The other side says that making mounts (earned by rep) available for all toons takes away that sense of accomplishment. Same goes for achievements, but I think, to a lesser degree.

I stand, somewhat in the middle. Account-wide achievements, for example, don't really bother me that much. Being an altoholic, it gets very repetitive going after the same achievements over and over. Taking into account the ones that can only be earned at certain times of the year, it's even harder for those of use paying attention to 5+ (that's conservative in my case, heheh) toons.

As for mounts that are earned via reputation gains and boss drops, I lean more towards the other side of the argument. Mounts can be a pretty big deal, at least in my opinion. Mounts are an entirely visible way of displaying your prowess in the game. Seeing someone with a coveted mount that has less than a 1% drop rate off of Boss So-and-So is enviable to say the least. Consequently, I only have two boss drop mounts and I luuuurrve them the most. I also remember getting them both.

Then you have rep mounts that are obtained after weeks and weeks of mindless rep grinding. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone saying that they enjoy running the same quests week after week trying to get their reputation up with a certain faction. It's fun the first few times, but after that, it's a major UGH in my book. Still, if you're at max level and playing the latest content patch, it's really the only thing you have to do other than raiding.

What if your toon is questing in Northerend. There's a rep mount, Sons of Hodir that gets you the various mammoth mounts. We'll pick the Grand Ice Mammoth for the point of our story.

Grand Mammoth Mount

To get this mount, you have to be exalted with the Sons of Hodir. I happen to have this mount and it's another one I remember getting. I worked for it. I wanted it badly. When I finally got it, I did a long and proud happy dance in my computer chair. At the time, this zone and these quests were level appropriate for my toon. While it was a repetitive grind, it was still basically one of the few choices I had for game play while waiting for the next expac.

Fast forward to MoP times and it's hard to imagine taking the time it would take to grind that rep for a 70-something toon who you're trying to get up to level 90 so that you can go to Pandaria. You just don't want to take the time at this point. Ya know?

So, I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I believe that mounts should be a player achievement, a goal to work towards, rather than just handed out to all your toons as soon as they can ride their first mount. If we're to have everything handed to us, then what's the point of playing? As soon as you roll a new toon, it should start out at level 90, have every mount available in the game, and be wearing all top level legendary gear. See what I'm saying here?

On the other hand, as much as I think that mounts should be earned by each toon, I can't imagine going through the rep grind for ALLLLLLLL the different factions for mounts for ALLLLLLLL my different toons. I, personally, wouldn't do it. There should be some alternative. What that alternative is, I really have no idea. Maybe lower the reputation points required for each faction so that exalted is obtainable within the time it takes to level that zone?? And then still need the required gold to purchase those same mounts? Hmm.

I know for damn sure that I absolutely do not go out of my way to earn achievements on all my toons that one already has even though it drives me batty when I see the "not earned by this character" or whatever it says, on the achievement. Ever notice that? Maybe grinding rep and re-earning achievements will be something to do when I have absolutely nothing left, in game, to do. As if. And monkeys might fly out of my butt. (Bonus points if you get the quote.)

What's your opinion? Are you in the camp of "Give it to me. Give it to me now." Or "It's not grinding, it fun. I enjoy mindless game play." Or are you somewhere in between?