World of Warcraft Raid Leader of a very casual raid team talks and vents about life in World of Warcraft, and maybe a little bit of life outside of WoW.
Tuesday went well. Belevina has returned to the guild and he brought a ten man raid team with him. I will not be running with them but I look forward to the addition of people to the guild and hope they find a good home here. A couple of people from this group hopped into flex with us and we blew through 2nd wing of flex in the night. Once again the only place we stumbled was Nazgrim who took a couple of pulls to get down. All and all it was a good night and I'm happy with it.
Wednesday was pretty good as well. We went in and one shot Malkorok. After that we moved on and blew through Spoils of Pandaria. And by blew threw, we downed the fight on the second attempt and it's the first time we have downed it. We then moved on to Thok, whom we made a few attempts on with him stomping all over our faces. At the end, we had gotten him to fire phase once, and I believe he will go down well next week. Which means one thing.
Next week, we will be doing 3rd wing, then 4th wing. That's right.... Moving on a bit.
Just a couple of quick things this week. First of all, I am working on getting my Shaman geared and ready should I need her. Yes, I'm a masochist and constantly want to be working on getting another toon ready. By the time Warlords comes out I expect I will have a lot of toons happy and ready to go.
I also want to thank those who pushed their DPS up. It shows, it really does. Our Dps charts look a lot better then they did a month ago. While we still have a one or two that have been a little up and down they have hit the 125k mark and I hope they will continue to improve. I am debating doing some lighter runs on a Sunday or Saturday when I have time to see about getting gear for one or two people on the easier wing (Flex 1)
The other option is to rotate that first days run between flex wings one, two, and three so that people who are hopping in still might have a chance here and there for a piece of gear they may have missed or want. We will figure it out.
Anyway, that is short and sweet for this week. (Been busy) Will catch you all next week.
On Tuesday night we cleared all of Flex Siege of Ogrimmar in about an hour. Things fell quickly and we moved like a well oiled machine. We then conquered Siege on normal mode in the time we had left. Once again everything was a one shot and we smacked things down with brutal efficiency.
O.k., you got me. We didn't raid this week because someone decided to go on vacation and visit another state for his nieces wedding. It's my first trip to Arizona and i'm loving it here in Mesa. The scenery here is beautiful and it's nice and warm at about 80+ degrees daily. The kid's are going swimming each day and I'm getting lot's of reading done. (I finished Brandon Sanderson's "The Way of Kings" again, and I'm half way through "Word's of Radiance" the second book in that series. Might sound like a little reading, but each book is 1,000+ pages.) In a different world I could live here. I would happily trade the snows of Utah for 115 degree summer days.
Here is the big thing, I have internet on vacation. Decent connection etc... but I still haven't been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. Why? Because I'm on vacation. I'm in a space with my family, and my mother and father in law and I'm spending time torturing kid's and family as a good man should. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of times where we are off doing out own thing. But it means that my priority is to be available to go out and take the kid's swimming, or run to the store again for the 15th thing we need for dinner tonight.
I get the feeling this will be my last vacation for a long while too, so I'm trying to enjoy it. Due to job switching I don't have a lot of excess time or money. As a matter of fact, if we hadn't already planned this trip I would have probably opted to sit it out and stay home working, rather then taking a week off and stretching finances a little.
So what does this post have to do with world of Warcraft?
The fact it's all about priorities.
In and out of game we have a lot of priorities putting pressure on us. I have known several people who have left game because they didn't have jobs or had strained finances. I applaud those folks for taking care of what's important before game time. I have also known several people who have played without holding a job, running up credit cards etc... that should have put their focus elsewhere. While I think it's important to keep some sort of entertainment budget even in tight circumstances, I also acknowledge that Wow is a time sink that can eat up time that people could be using to job hunt or otherwise better their situation. It's not the fifteen bucks a month that seems wasteful to me for these people. It's the time they spend online, often several hours at a time, that could be better spent elsewhere.
Even more Wow related is the time spent in game. When asked about whether or not you prepared for raid, the question should not just be, do you have your flasks, food, etc.... The question also allows for, have you worked to improve you ability to DPS, Tank, or Heal? If there are still upgrades in LFR have you run it? Have you looked up the boss fights so you know what is going on when you step in? Have you looked at your rotation, reforges, and gems recently? There is several things you can do to prepare for a raid, and it's not just the obvious things.
Same goes for PVP or any other part of the game. As far as preparation do you know the battlegrounds/arenas? Have you looked up strategies, or learned them yet. Have you studied your class? Most people just step in and learn here, and that means the moment you are in the BG or arena, you often become a liability for your team. Please give people the respect to at least have an idea of what you are doing.
This of course is not an all inclusive list, and there are always shifting and changing priorities for people. Our lives change as we get older and we find our selves stretched in new ways every day. The game we play is almost ten years old now, meaning that if you have been in from the beginning your life probably looks different from the day you sat down and rolled your first character. As a person this means you need to occasionally step back and look at how you have arranged the priorities in your life.
Edited, but might still be offensive to a couple of peeps
So I guess the question is, How do you prioritize things?
I really try not to be a stingy person, really I do! But this is something that irritates me.
But let's review the raids this week first. Tuesday we did well other then having our faces smacked off by Nazgrim. Repeatedly. We one shot every boss in the second wing, however Nazgrim is now being pushed just right by increased dps etc.. where he drops his 10% adds at bad times. Even tying to change things up for this we didn't manage to get him down this night.
Wednesday was an hour of getting smacked down by Nazgrim as well. (Really hate that guy, I no longer feel guilty for killing him.) We finally decided to move on and we downed Makorak. When he went down we were out of time and we threw up or hands until next time. Which we are taking a week off so that will be 2 weeks hence. I may post something during that time, I may not. We will see.
Now the thing that irritates me.
Warlords of Draenor, which i'm going to buy despite my complaining here, has been released for pre-purchase for 49.99. That's right folks, it is going to cost us ten more dollars then the last expansion. Not that ten dollars is a big deal to me. Let's be honest we spend that much (most of us) on soda pop while running around, or coffee, or on a couple runs to the fast food joint a month. For most of us this won't stop us from buying the next expansion. But should it?
In Blizzards favor they have kept their monthly fee at $15 dollars a month despite inflation etc... They could have hiked that up easily a few bucks and probably not lost a bunch of subscribers, however they would have lost some. That would cost all of us more then ten bucks in the long run, and they would technically be in their rights to do it. At the same time I'm certain the price point has stayed the same because Blizzard doesn't want to run off subscribers with a monthly price hike.
The big question then becomes, will they lose subscribers over this? When most people see they are charging more on this expansion will those players on the wall finally throw in their towel and walk away? Or will most people even notice? Honestly I looked at the price, but I didn't really look at the price until I read an article on Wow Insider. There is a chance I might have not noticed until I did the pre-order for me and my wife in a couple of months. Normally I have figured on $80 dollars for the both of us when expansion time rolls around. Not I'm looking at $100, and that $20 just seems a lot higher then normal. I know it's mostly mental, but there it is. Like a big ugly gorilla in the room.
I would argue that Blizzard is going to get enough money from the online store, now featuring that boosted level 90 character for $60 dollars, to make up for the inflation on this expansion. I want Blizzard to do well and succeed as a business because that brings me cool games. However, at some point you have to raise your eyebrow and question, was this really the time for this?
So how do you feel? Is $10 more bucks to be expected? Am I off my Rocker? Did Doc ever stop traveling through time?
This week Tuesday was very good. We managed to get through the second wing of SoO in one night for the first time. The bonus to this is that we one shot every boss with the exception of Shamans. Shamans took two shots. But we huffed, and puffed and blew that house down in a way we haven't achieved before tonight. I was very happy with our performance.
Wednesday night was a little more rough. I almost didn't make raid and was close to having to stay and close at work. I managed to still get off, but was about ten minutes late. Magilla and Gwyn had managed to get things started though, and we were in and raiding shortly. Malkorak took us a few attempts, but we got him down and moved on to Spoils of Pandaria. Spoils beat us but it also showcased the problem I have been hitting the raid team with. We Need More Deeps!
I threw down and Ultimatum. I want everybody to be at a minimum of 125k dps by the end of two weeks. If a dps shows up and can't pull that 125k floor, or close to it, they will be asked not to raid with us until they can hit it.
We are more then a year into this expansion. People have been hitting these numbers since Mogu'shan vaults in many cases and we are a lot of gear levels above that point. There are too many resources in this game to not be able to make such numbers. I put the effort into my hunter to get to 200k average dps on my hunter as my goal. I have made that. On fights where I just pew, pew, and I don't have a lot of swapping, moving, and dps stops I hit that 200k consistently. As a matter of fact I am setting a new goal of 225k. To do this I am actually going to start working on some key binds/macros I can use to up my deeps. I wan to make sure I'm not getting complacent in what I'm doing.
Now you may say "Lag? Why do we need to be able to hit 125k dps?" And I will say, "Because you owe it to everyone else who shows up for raid to come in and not expect to be carried." Let's be honest here. If you are not working to improve, if you are showing up every week pulling substandard dps and dying constantly they your are not part of the team. You are a detriment.
That't right. If you are not pulling the dps to justify being along in raid you are just one more boss that we have to beat. Not only that, you are a boss we have to beat on top of the regular bosses every time we walk into a fight. You can look at yourself and know that you are one of the reasons we have to fight so hard to clear every single boss. You are one of the enemy. I happily invite you along to help destroy the raid.
No more. I want to see improvement, and I want to see it consistently. I know that our tanks and heals all work hard to keep things going. Hell, my wife just started playing again 2 weeks ago after a 6+ month hiatus and she has fought tooth and nail to get her heals up to a point where she is feeling competitive again. She was the one when she quit that dominated the heals charts the majority of the time. I can tell you right now, she won't stop until she hits that point again. Why? Because she wants to do her best. She doesn't want to be dead weight. She wants to compete on a level that shows that she gives a damn about how our raid team is doing.
I may not even live religiously to that 125k minimum and I admit that now. If you have been pulling 60-70k dps for 2 months now, not naming names, and you show up in two weeks pulling 100k. I may say, "I see you have been working to improve. Come next week." Because this isn't about the numbers at the end of the day.
It's about doing your part to support and build the team. You are either building the team, or you are tearing it down. Piece by piece. I am already loosing one good raider because of this. I am determined not to lose anymore.
Tuesday night we were short a few regular raiders including both main tanks. This meant I was tanking on Lag and Mynk was kind enough to pitch hit and come in as the second tank. Despite her greenness and my noobishness we managed to down the first flex wing for SoO. All in all it wasn't a bad night, we managed to get some experience and a couple pieces of gear for folks.
Wednesday night was alright. We got in, and after several pulls we downed Malkorak. Not a spectacular kill but we got the job done! We didn't have time to venture forth to spoils of Pandaria but we ended the raid on a happy note. No complaints here.
Now, this week we have had some news from Blizzard regarding Warlords of Draenor. It is news I am still processing and debating internally. For when it comes to Warlords of Draenor, we are getting another gate.
I am not talking about the 516 reputation grinds you had to go through to get gear for raiding in Pandaria, this may be better. Or so much worse depending on how you look at it. In order to queue for a random Heroic Dungeon you are going to have to finish the proving grounds for the spec that you use with a silver rating.
I know, I know. Not a big deal, just an hour or so and your done right? Well we don't know yet. Blizzard has indicated that they are reworking the whole proving ground experience so it make be as easy as it is now, or it may be a bit of work. At this point it's up in the air and we will have to see how things shake out.
Now Blizzard has said that the silver medal will not effect LFR. You can still hop in and do LFR without doing proving grounds and nothing will stop you. This also means that gear ilevel may go; Regular Dungeons< LFR< Heroic Dungeons<Regular Raid< Heroic Raid< Mythic. This means that in order to raid and get the gear for entry level raid, you may have to do your silver medal for any characters you wish to bring. I don't think this will be a big barrier, but it's an annoying one.
Right now I have 9 level 90 characters. That means if getting a silver for a spec takes 1 hour of game time, it will take me an extra 9 hours just to go through and pick which character will be raiding with us. If I want to run each character that is not straight dps through heroics on a second spec, then it will cost me an extra hour per character that does multiple roles. So, add another 3-5 hours.
I am not saying that gating this is a bad thing, but it seems to me we are punishing people who have been raiding/working with groups for several expansions with a gate that will not likely fix any player problems. I'm sorry, I don't think people do stupid things or waste my times in heroics because they are unable to grasp a class or roll. I think they just are lazy and not paying attention. Or they don't prepare by knowing the fights or what they are supposed to do. This will not cure anything. I am calling it now, before people start prepping for the next expansion, or we see how the experience earning the silver medal goes. Nothing will be fixed by this, and by 6.1 they will take the feature out. I will bet on this and people can look back here where I have it posted in writing if i'm wrong and call me on it.
Well, on to next week. May your raids run downhill.
Lay/Dizzty/Lazyeye.
So, Wow Insider posed a good question today, How would you change/fix professions in WoW?
And that is a wonderful question. I presently have every profession in the game maxed with the exception of Leather working/skinning. That will be fixed when my Monk finally gets to max level however. (As a side not, leveling leather working so far has been the worst profession grind in my opinion.) With Warlords of Draenor, professions will get another 75 point kick, if they stay consistent. That means if you start a new character that is 675 points of professions to work through to max any given profession. That is a little daunting.
So first I would suggest adding in profession quests. Cooking has one of these, so does fishing. Imagine however if you had a daily/weekly quest you could take based around your profession to gain +5 or +10 points for completing it. Only one or two points if it's a daily. I know we have a monthly +5 we can get from the Darkmoon fair, but with that being just once a month it doesn't feel like that big of a kick up.
Second I would add more meaningful/fun items. I have two engineers. I wouldn't mind having more. Why? Engineers are like freaking Batman! You get belt rockets that help you to run on water, a glider attached to your cloak and other fun toys like rocket boots etc.. that you can play with that gives your character a nice flavor. It however has the save disadvantage a lot of the other professions have.
There are gaps where it feels useless....
With each profession you get to make raid entry level gear. Then you have to wait for the next raid to come out, for new gear that is insanely expensive to make. This gear's only advantage is that it brings you up to the gear level of whatever the current raid level of gear is. Normally by the time you can make it, you've been running the raid for a few weeks and in all likely hood a hard core raider is going to have something comparable all ready, and any one who isn't pushing hard against the raid is unlikely to care to drop tons of gold on a one gear piece boost.
So first I think we should be able to get some simpler to make pieces with each new raid tier. I know that Blizzard wants to gate things, but you can make equipment difficult to make without making people need to buy whatever item is dropping from the new raid to complete the items. Daily cool downs, rarely found/picked items all this can be used to gate new equipment.
I think there should also be more gear made purely for transmog. Since this has become a well know used and loved feature, there should be gear that can only be used/mogged by members of said profession, and other items with some flare that can be used by everyone who would normally be able to use such armor type (Mail, Plate etc...)
Then we come to gathering professions.
I think player should, for a fee or quest, be able to get assistants who farm stuff for them. I like the farms in Panderia at Sunsong Ranch, but the problem is that eventually it just feels grindy. Give me a companion in my garrison who I can send to gather mats, knowing that sometimes he will come back with a very low yield, and occasionally he will come back with some cool stuff. I know farming mats is part of the game, and you could still do that while using this feature to speed up your gathering ability. You could also gain rep with different farmers you send on quests to get better yields and possible pets/mounts.
Anyway, I would love more stuff to keep professions interesting and profitable. Obviously some gates have to exist to keep the gear from all falling to dirt cheap prices right away, or making the professions meaningful. I do believe however, that some of these gates could creak open a little more, or even if your looking at past Xpack gear that a way to speed through non-current/useful patterns/items could be nice.
The real question is, how would you fix professions?
Tuesday was an O.K. day. We were short a couple of major players and hopped into second wing anyway. Galakras and Iron Juggernaut went down quickly as normal. As I was tanking this night however, we had to pick a third tank who hadn't tanked the fight before to help finish Dark Shamans. We got close but never got them down.
Wednesday was not a great Raid night. Once again a few people didn't make it leaving use with just ten peeps. We decided to push third wing anyway and never got past Malkorak. The biggest problem is the other times we have fought him we have had 14-15 people, and with just ten we didn't have the coverage on the room we were used to. Mechanics just killed us when people missed the purple circles or we didn't move quickly enough. I look forward to shrugging this week off and moving forward.
Now, World of Warcraft is about the dramatic. We follow story lines, and immersed in the lore whether we pay attention to it or not, and everything we do has a consequence somewhere down the line withing the the story arc. All the characters we run into seem to be having minor emergencies which means the characters we interact with tend to be very dramatic as well.
But you, yes you, the player.... you are not that dramatic. Most of the scenes with your characters show them calmly watching what is going on around you. Your not overly verbal, and you don't tend to jump around and freak out just because an angry dragon is smashing through a wall.
So why would you fill guild chat with drama?
The easy answer is that we are not our characters. Guild chat is the one place where we get to be actual people who can talk to our guild mates and connect on a level that goes above a video game if we so choose to. The obvious exception of course is a RP guild. (RP realms don't actually equal RP all that often.) The problem with this is sometimes people over share, or try to over connect, or flat out decide to troll everyone in sight. This creates drama.
Before you start talking in guild, or even in trade for that matter you should consider the impact of your words when you allow people into your life. Are you saying something that is not going to project the image of you that you want people to see? Is what your saying meant to stir up a fight? Is it lewd, sweary, or in any way offensive? When all people get of you is some typing and a virtual figure this matters.
The best way to build guild drama is to not care about any of these things. When you come off as abrupt or mean it can bring a guild down. People do not want to hang out in a cesspool of negativity with a few notable exceptions. When you create guild drama it effects everyone in the guild to at least a small degree. I can be in how they feel to be part of the guild, to how other people treat them when they see our guild tag above their heads. If the realm has a negative view of your guild from what one or two yahoos say in guild chat, then it effects every single person.
People also say things to get a specific re-action in guild. If you enter guild chat talking about causing physical harm to yourself or others sometimes people don't know how to react. I would wager normally when someone does this it's because they want attention and for some people negative attention is better then no attention. In this case no one is sure whether to take the speaker seriously or not, and in a MMO we are very limited on our ability to react to such things from our side of the keyboard. If we don't know anything other then an avatar and fake name, there is no recourse your guild mates can take if they do thing you are serious. At best we can put in a ticket to Blizzard and hope that they are willing to call people like the cops etc... to check things out. I'm not sure Blizzard would be likely to do this as well, because they take legal responsibility for releasing someones contact information for what might just be someone crying for attention.
In short if you having a rough time in your life or situation, don't pull the guild into it. If it becomes a problem we will have to cut you loose, and I would hate to cut off the sense of community from someone who may benefit from it in a positive manner. I would love to have a happy place for you to come, chat and interact if you life otherwise sucks, so you can have some happiness in your life.
The guild is a place that should be kept drama free... please do your part to help make it so.
