Fresh blood

Our guild has always been small. Since the start people prefered a small guild where everybody knew each other and could playing in good company. Keeping a friendly and nice atmosphere was the key.
This also was the guild's weakest point. Replacing people who stopped playing or moved to other more active guilds was always hard. And when we thought we had some good people they either got tired of the game or worse: once they got enough epics hopped to other guilds, where they wouldn't be accepted unless they had that gear. So tired of being a trampoline for guild-hoppers we decided to shut down recruiting.
Also allying ourselves with other guilds didn't went well. Our alliance with Sempher Fi was good, but once they did a very active recruit campaign no longer needed our help (and also most of the active raiders moved there too. Even I was wondering to move at least one char there at the begining of Wrath). We tried with other guilds during TBC and things were horrible. First runs were great, then suddenly started sending unprepared people, alts lacking gear... so relation was cut.
All of this made us shun the idea of recruiting openly, but the guild was really dying. When you don't even have enough people online to make a full-guild dungeon run, you're in trouble. Action was needed, action that required to take risks and face again possible guild-hoppers or getting troublesome members. With the implantation of the Looking For Guild tool we decided to give it a shoot and test our luck.
I wasn't expecting much from this. First because our reputation as a solid raiding guild was gone and I didn't know if the reputation of a nice guild to stay was still up, since old players in Hellscream are longer gone or already settled in their guilds. We had a decent guild level (15 when we started the LFG experience, 16 right now and soon 17) so this was a good point for us, but I also thought it could bring more bad experiences than good ones, since all unguilded people would be looking for the highest level guild possible just for the perks. So I was expecting to get a lot of low level chars petitions, just for the perks.
So far I'm surprised the exprience has been very positive. Yes, most of the people requesting an invitation are low-mid level. But we've had several requests from 70+ and 80+ players. And the best thing is that people invited is behaving well (so far!). A good portion of them are either alts of experienced players, who are trying a new class or old time players that have returned to WoW and felt lost in a world that has changed completely, not only physically, but also the char specs, the guilds they knew... everything. While most of them are very silent (usually they say hi when logging in and few words more), others have started being very active, talking to old guild members, bringing other alts, running battlegrounds and dungeons. The Guild breathes again, with new blood pumping through its veins, and it's very refreshing to log in and see more than the 3 or 4 habitual players you could find before. It's very nice to see now more than 10 people online at the same time, even if only 3 or 4 are 85s. It's just a matter of time to get enough people ready for high-end instances... and who knows, even raids again.
So thumbs up for the LFG tool. But it still needs several improvements imho. Some of them may be achieved right now by using a plugin called Recruitment Enhancement, but they should be implemented by Blizz:
- Show if the petitioner is online or not. This is very important. I'm tired of going through the list of requesters, clicking the Invite button just to get the message "char not found".
- Add checkboxes to perform mass invitations. Select the desired players and click Invite. Voilà!
- Add a button to send a mail to the character. The Send a Message only sends a whisper, and if the player isn't online (something you don't know unless you check it previously) it's useless.
- Add filters to recruitment, like minimum level, specific achievements, minimum gear level, specific spec (i.e: you need a disco healer, a blood dk, a survival hunter, etc), minimum resilience or honor points, etc. This will help hardcore guilds who look for specfic and experienced players.
I'm sure we'll see some improvements like these soon.

And I tanked

It's been a while since my last entry. Not much to comment, most of the important WoW news happened outside my game. I've been mainly raising the alts and leveling reputation (got 8 85s at the moment, missing only warlock at 83 and rogue at 81), which is kind of boring, but given the actual PUG status, even going as dps has been a pain and I've shunned pugging heroics. The worst of all is the guild status, with very few people active at the moment and they're also raising alts. A vicious circle, but sometimes we get the chance to break it. Like yesterday.
Finally we got some 85s and decided to try doing an heroic guild run. Our best tank had been AFK for a long time and decided to tank if the run was an all-guildies party. First because I don't have experience tanking heroics (I think I've tanked only BRC normal) so I needed to learn who to cc and the boss strats, so having puggeers whinning and kicking me out. And second because the healer also felt it lacked enough power to keep us alive, so same history. I got my prot pally, the druid went resto and we got an elemental shaman and two hunters ( no idea about the spec :D).
Lady RNG flipped the bird at us with Lost City of the Tol'vir, a place I've done maybe 3 times, one as normal and two as heroic, always as dps. Things started chaotically as we zoned in I informed I got a phone call and one of the hunters pulled the first pack, so as I returned to my chair I got into panic mode directly. Luckily I managed to grab all the mobs. After this start things went pretty smooth and we downed General Husam on first try without much problems.
The first wipe came on the pygmies near the corridor to Lockmaw/Augh, when suddenly a flamebreather appeared of seemingly nowhere and torched the healer. And I was pulling them carefully because I knew it was easy to get extra mobs in that place, but to no avail. At least it was soemthing easily fixable and next time we dealt with the pygmies easily.
Then came the big problem. Lockmaw proved to be very hard for our group. First it was the healer not confident in his role (he compalined about his gear, but I didn't feel he was underpowered), second the low dps, specially from one of the hunters who was pulling very low numbers for an heroic. And the third problem was the crockolisks munching the rest of the party, despite me using all taunts and bubbles to keep them alive and grab the crocs. I felt like a healer watching the party bars, finding who was being attacked and using Righteous Defense, Hand of Reckoning, whatever... even using Word of Glory on who was low on hps.
So we wiped and wiped and wiped, with Lockmaw at 18 or 15%. Finally the shaman decided to go resto and the druid went cat and after a pair more of wipes we managed to kill that damned beast. Unluckily it got late so we didn't have much time left. We reached High Prophet Barim, probably the boss I hate more in this instance and only had a try, that ended after reaching phase two when the healer died.
So even what it seems a poor performance (and by today' standards probably is) at least it gave us some fun (until the repetitive wipes on Lockmaw) and a great dose of experience, at least for me in the tanking business. Even the low dps hunter got a new shiny polearm to help him improve.
Now I hope we get more guild runs so we can keep improving and not having to depend on pugs, even if the first runs are a wipefest.

Regaining some SANity

Lately my beloved *urnaks have been placed on a sort of holidays. I'm tired of the daily routine and since we've had several raids cancelled in a row that means nothing new or exciting to do, just grind heroics endlessly. And after three runs one also gets tired of this, specially when pugging. I still have several chars who need tons of emblems for either main spec's gear or secondary also. But unless I'm lucky to join an all or almost-all guild run, joining the Dungeon Finder it's a pain to me. First because unless I'm bringing a tank or a healer I have to wait a ridiculous amount of time doing nothing more than grinding mats or twiddling my thumbs. But the second reason is still more important: I have zero patience for dickheads nowadays. After waiting 18 minutes to get my dps on an heroic run where unless it's one of the new dungeons I won't get anything useful but emblems, the last thing I need it's a failpug run. Thanks but no.
Under these circumstances I'd surely retire from WoW until Cataclysm, but luckily that won't happen. And all thanks to Single Abstract Noun, the bloggers' guild created by Tamarind. A place to relax, level your char at your own pace without any pressure, enjoying the social atmosphere of a guild full of helpful people. People from all Europe (SAN has also US and Oceanic versions if you're interested in joining and don't belong to the EU region), always ready to talk about anything, be it game related or not.
Also since the european SAN guild belongs to the Horde I have the chance to see places where before I could only get near for a second and then run away with a pvp flag on my head and several angry guards and players on my heels. "The Explorer" was the first title I ever got on WoW, but now I can explore Horde areas in a more relaxed way. Quests are also new to me, since after leveling 10 Alliance characters to 80 you already know the drill. The server is also a RP server, but that's something I haven't sunk my fingers on.
So if you have a blog or are just a reader you'll be welcome to join Single Abstract Noun on any of the regions. Your SANity will thank you.

A great place to be

If you read my blog then surely you're a reader of Righteous Orbs. If not, then you shall go and read it, it's an order! Tam and Chas really catch you with their posts and it's impossible to resist the urge to jump in and drop some lines. Ok, if you're a Righteous Orbs reader then you probably know about the incident Tamarind had with his guild and how this lead him to gquit. But Tam is a special person and this incident brought a good idea to his mind: to create a guild where bloggers and readers could meet, play together, discuss, whatever they felt like. Go to Tam's post about the Single Abstract Noun guild and read it, he's much better than me at writing down words :)

So I've decided to join too the Single Abstract Noun. Currently I'm playing a belf mage called Seredar, but I'm planning to bring a belf paladin tank too, since there's a shortage of them in the guild, named Verech.
Since I always liked leveling chars it's a breath of fresh air since playing at level 80 has become a tad bit boring: randoms, dailies, more randoms... only some ICC raiding really motivates me, but we keep hitting the Festergut and Rotface brickwalls, even with the new buff. So SAN is a place where I feel free of these game frustrations and also have the joy of leveling with people I've been reading and sharing thoughts.
Meet you there!

PS: Verech is already in, competing with the one and only, Tamarind himself, to be the sexiest belf tank of SAN. He has advantage though, he wears heirlooms! But at least I got a little revenge: he mocked my pants... but he's now wearing the same, the copycat! Seems I'm leading on this season' style! Yeah! Pretty Points for Verech!

Happy guild raid

The Guild hasn't been raiding lately. Always we lacked enough people to put up a raid and pug the missing spots. Plus people was tired of going always to Naxxramas. So yesterday (friday, the usual raid day) we were 10 or 11 online and someone asked if we were going to raid. As usual my answer was: if we get enough people. That means not only getting 10 players willing to raid but getting the right classes.
After some minutes a raid starts to form and we manage to get 8 guildies plus one tank from Sempher Fi, a friendly guild we've raided with since the times of Molten Core. People is fed up with Naxx and also few items would be useful since all of us are covered in good gear thanks to badges and ToC hc runs, so they want to try Ulduar. Only me, the tank from SF and maybe two other players knows the place or at least have a slight idea of tactics. The only two times we tried an Ulduar run was an utter disaster (epic fail!), with everybody running around scattered and pulling everything that moved, so I was afraid this would end in the same way. At least we had a maintank who could run the place blindfolded and single-handed. Still there's a spot that could be covered by any class since I was willing to tank, heal or dps. Finally our tank friend (an imba tank, with whom I did Trial of the Crusader 10man) brings another tank from another top guild and I switched my pally to healer.

Everybody hops on their vehicles (I choose siege gunner since it's the one I know best) and the run starts. First beacons go down smoothly, big giants are tanked correctly. Wow, this works! There was a moment of panic when we got two mecha tanks firing at us, but we could manage it and headed to the Flame Leviathan (aka Golf Caddy) place. And down it went at first try! People cheered and danced over the Leviathan remains. My confidence grows, but the Leviathan isn't a complicated fight, now is when serious business starts. All to Razorscale, who also was killed at first try without anybody dying for standing on fire (hey! seems we turned pro finally!). Next one was XT-002 Deconstructor, where we got the first "oh shit!" moment of the night, since somebody pulled XT while we were still finishing some trash. Doors closed before people could run out and reset and we wiped. Ok, don't panic, was just a mistake with the trash. We ress everybody, clean the scrapyard and engage the giant robot with Michael Jackson's voice on helium. Maintank mistakenly assigned to clean the trash from one side to our guildleader who was playing his shaman. He didn't check he was enhancement, not elemental. Hello shaman, let me introduce you Mr. Boombot. BOOM! Ouch. This is what I call an explosive salutation. Anyway, XT was downed without much fuss (nobody died due to light and gravity bombs, hooray!) and we headed to Ignis. We had the second wipe with the trash since the flame cyclones decided to play ping-pong with us. Anyway we came back on our feet and engaged Ignis, who was tanked the safe way (maintank in the water) and killed for the joy of the entire raid, who got the Siege of Ulduar achievement.

I was happy things were going so smooth, but happier because people was seeing new content and getting some gear (although several items ended disenchanted!). The next fight was Kologarn. I always liked that fight, it gives you a great feeling of bravery when the colossus goes down. We even got an unexpected achievement, Disarmed, since the left arm (which nobody was dpsing) was also destroyed due to aoe fire when right arm and body were killed at the same time. So deeper we went into the antechamber to face the crazy cat lady, Auriaya, a frantic fight with that damn fear scattering the whole raid and kittens everywhere. Tank explained tactics and the plan was executed in a clockwork style (even nobody got damage from the void explosion) and she died doing what women know to do better than men: screaming.
It was a bit late and maintank announced he had time for only one try at the Assembly of Iron. Again tactics were briefed  and there we went. I wasn't confident enough since this fight can turn very messy if people doesn't pay attention. Brundir's the most dangerous with the Overload and Lighning Whirl attacks, followed by Steelbreaker and his Fusion Punch that must be dispeled asap. Fight started and we had the second "oh shit" moment of the night when a combination of Overload and Fusion Punch left the maintank at 1%. But from the deeps of the chamber a shining flash of light struck the tank restoring his life enough to survive. A brave paladin called Turnak (*wink* *wink*) had saved the fight with his Holy Shock. We kept pressing on and we lost our restoration shaman, putting more pressure on me and the restoration druid, but thank goodness he had reincarnation ready and again joined the fray. One by one the Assembly of Iron went down, awarding us two new achievements. We had cleared the siege and the antechamber and I couldn't be happier.