One thing that I have noticed through the time of WoW is guild loyalty has dropped to basically a non-existent state. During Vanilla raiding, if you raided with another guild you were pretty much kicked out of the guild if not just ignored within the guild. No matter the instance, unless you were in a Naxx level guild and running MC with a few alts then who cared. But prior to that point even most AQ40 guilds still farmed MC-AQ weekly. Once BC hit, the 10v25 separation came to fruition and loyalty started to slip a bit after guilds made the move into the 25 mans they didn’t really care about 10 mans. As a guild leader at the time we sold many items to outside raiders from 10 mans, made quite a bit of gold doing so, and even more enemies when they realized their main tank was saved to a raid already and couldn’t make the guild raid!  But even still, as an Illidan guild we ran alts through 10 mans and even some 25s almost daily.  This is unheard of now it would seem.

Wrath brought the raid jumping to a new level though. There is near 0 instance farming, there is near 0 guild loyalty, and that is just disappointing. Atany point in time I can log on and get into a raid, even one as new as RS. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing, but the elitism that these “raid leaders” feel running these raids is unheard of. If you invite someone, even if they “suck” as long as they are doing their job they are contributing. I will agree with kicking people that aren’t doing their job, that’s fine, be it a tank that can’t hold aggro or a dpser that’s 1/2 afk. But I don’t see a need for “pst GS” that is just absurd. And seeingthings like”VoA 10 GS 5500″ wtf are you even going to use from VoA 10? I mean honestly, I have a warrior in near full ICC10 man and crafted gear and my GS is barely above that. If someone knows how to play, they know how to play, if someone doesn’t then they don’t. More gear won’t change much, except how hard they hit when they decide to actually pay attention.

I have recently decided to finish leveling my level 75 mage, she is now level 77, almost 78, and has hardly done any quests, I believe I have finished one entire zone (Borean Tundra) and have skipped out on finishing the others due to a lack of XP gained as I’m too far ahead of the quests. Sadly, I have to find a new 2v2 and 3v3 team for my mage once I do finish her leveling grind. I used to run a joke 2v2 with another awesome mage, one frost, one haste fire. I was always the frost mage in full PVP gear while the other wore all BT level haste gear. We never pressed far with our rating, but we did press fast. Most of our games would be finished within a minute, and we would typically win about 60-70% of them. I highly doubt that would work anymore, but it was fun while it lasted. I wish I had the video of the Warrior/Druid team they died before they made it half way across the bridge in Blade’s Edge Arena. By the time the Druid came out of stealth the warrior had died. Good times, good times, all of this is totally irrelevant to anything too!

With the NDA finally being lifted, there is Cataclysm data and screenshots everywhere. If you have not seen them already, check out TankSpots fly through videos for the redesigned areas, very good redos on Org and Stormwind for sure. Org looks like a whole new area, SW is about the same, but some subtle yet great changes have been made.

3.3, have not stepped foot inside Ruby S yet but from the looks of the fight it’s like an Onyxia with Kalecgos, Sapph and Sarth thrown in with some floating purple lasers. I know it takes a lot to build a raid instance, I understand the work and effort, but on the other hand I am rather disappointed at the reuse of mechanics. Linked health has to be one of the most annoying things when it’s used like it is in the Halion fight. Then there is the loot… The distribtution of points has always been annoying to me for this expansion and this instance just further compounds it. If an item has a higher ilvl I don’t believe it should be 100% better, BUT when it comes to tanking gear, if an item has a higher ilvl it should, at the least, have more stamina than something of a lower ilvl. Case in point, crafted boots vs Halion 10 normal boots. It’s 1 stamina point, but it’s still 1 stamina point. Strength is different too, but that doesn’t seem to bug me as much. I understand that the points are put into hit, but hit is lackluster at this point in this game at this gear level. Personally I don’t miss, I ensure that, and I could do without the hit and have that bring the stamina above a 10 man drop on a 25 man crafted piece. BUT, enough with that. Different gear for different reasons, but I’m running out of bank space!

In other news, Midsummers completed, mount obtained!

All told I think the title will take about 4-6 months to complete, which isn’t too bad. It’s a bit grindy, but allows for a little variety, there are so many factions needed that you can swap them every couple of hours worth of grinding and make it feel new. I only wish I were smarter and hadn’t faction swapped away from my rogue before I picked up those 1400 heavy junk boxes, now I have to level ANOTHER rogue! (or pay again to swap and transfer him )

I do have to say, I believe this to be the most grind induced title available in the game. It’s only true rivals are original HWL (or GM but less so GM as Alliance PvP was very heavy back when PvP ranks were introduced) and Battlemaster, but even Battlemaster can be done quickly if you have a PvP farm team. I can’t think of 14-39 people I can get to farm me 1400 junk boxes, or 84 librams, or 200 Large Brilliant Shards! (Ok maybe the shards, but I doubt any rogues want to donate the 1400 junk boxes!)

I’m not too concerned about the DMF rep, as it’s fairly easy, farm some of the first turn in (have almost all the Thorium Widgets done), farm a few decks, make a few on a scribe, profit. Only one that really gets me in Shen’dralar, on our server there are 0 librams up, ever, for any price, so that means I have to personally farm DM for 84 librams + 1 class book, that doesn’t sound too fun to be honest. But it will all be worth it in the end, and along the way I might just hit “The Exalted” as well, we shall see, since I am still fitting in dailies and other rep farming as well.

It is crazy to think it’s been years since I’ve met some of the people that are still playing on my old server.  It’s crazy to think I’ve been playing the same game for multiple years, too.  But it’s been a good change so far.  I’m happy to be back.  Something about this server that is just… different from other servers I’ve played on.  And I missed it.

Now I just need my old PK guildmates to come to my server and be Alliance and the world would be in perfect harmony.  Or something like that. 

At the time I was only 18 in real life, and finishing my 2 year degree in college.  I had no real ambition to jump into a career, nor did I care to really continue on with college.  Irresponsible?  Possibly.  But that was me after spending my 11th and 12th grades of high school in college instead.  I had a jump start on life and I really didn’t care to take advantage of it.  Go figure.

Sometime after grinding through Molten Bore week after week with that first guild I found myself craving more in the raiding world.  I found my way into a hardcore raiding guild.  I was in awe at the amount of dedication and drive it took to succeed in this guild.   It wasn’t just about raiding, it was about all of the farming for raids.  The killing of bosses in smaller instances, such as ZG, in order to save an item that when turned in, gave the zone a buff… ultimately in order to stack multiple badass buffs on your raid. Only to quickly port back to an instance so that you could work on that last boss for 2 hours in hopes that every last buff would be enough to boost your raid just enough to get that server first Nefarian kill.

I was one of the hardest  of hardcore raiders once upon a time.

In BC I ran a guild with my fellow author to this blog.  That was the best experience I have ever had with WoW and raiding.  All of the people we came in contact with along the way who enjoyed the guild have told us more than once, the same thing.  I loved it.  It was a very dedicated job though.  And I say job because it was exactly like having a job.  We managed to be a faction first kill guild for a little while, even though we basically took in people who had never raided before and taught them how to raid.  I loved it though.  It was fun to show people that they could be a hardcore (I say that in easy-mode BC hardcore terms) raiders and enjoy the content just like any of the assholes who managed to find their way into grinding raiding guilds.

We were pretty dedicated and serious when we ran the guild.  Sometime after starting that though it became a chore dealing with server drama and a lot of the guild members found themselves conflicted.  Many had grown inflated egos after tasting real raiding and sought out other ‘hardcore’ raiding guilds, and after awhile it just became a drag to force things to work.  I didn’t want to drag my few loyal friends and raiders along, making them wait until I could hopefully fill in spots for raids every night, so I called it quits.  My reign as the token female guild and raid leader on the server was over and I gracefully stepped down and let everyone go.  I was good though, I basically took everything from the guild bank, including gold, and gave it out to guildmates as they asked for it or needed it.  There was nothing selfish about the move to step down, it just simply was time to move on.

It was a sad day.  But I was happy to have a break from leading for awhile… and the other guild leader had already begun his journey into our next adventure, Alliance raiding. (Prior to this, we were both always Horde raiders.)

So I took a break and disappeared from the Horde on my server.  I went from playing an Undead Lock to leveling a Gnome Lock.  It was a welcomed change.  And over the course of leading a guild on this server we had befriended MANY Alliance players.  It was only natural that I made a change for the better and rerolled. (Oh the things we did before faction swaps!).  Eventually it became clear that the guild all of my friends was in could use another lock.  I offered to level my Gnome in hopes that my experience as a raider would outshine my lack of gear as I wasn’t even 80 yet at the time.  They accepted me and I took on the challange to level as fast as possible.

So yea, long story short - I leveled up and got back into hardcore raiding, from the Ally side of things.  This lasted for awhile, but things grew tiring when the guild began to turn into a lot of bitching and moaning about this and that.  We were dedicated and successful and it was enjoyable, but eventually it was time to take a break.  And that we did.

I finally got on with a real life.  I got a job and started getting consistant hours.  I had to stop raiding all of the time in order to grow up and be an adult.   I never have found my way back into hardcore raiding since.  Not that it’s that hard anymore, things have changed so much since the Vanilla days that it’s easier than shit to raid all of the time and still keep up even if you have zero time to grind or otherwise outside of raiding.

I’ve been casual, I’ve been hardcore.  I’ve seen all the old and most of the new.  I’ve loved it and hated it, followed and lead.  Now the question is, what will I do next?

After faction swapping my healer I’m wondering how healing is from the other side.  I’m finding very difficult to come across a casual-semi-serious raiding guild that would fit my RL schedule.  It’s annoying and I am wondering if maybe we could try our hand at running a guild again, now that it’s so much easier to keep up with raiding.  At least then we could raid on our own times.

It’s rough though, being an adult and accepting that if I want any amount of time outside of WoW and work, that I can’t just sit and play WoW all of the time in hopes of raiding again.  Hehe.

Being grown up isn’t half as fun as growing up.

I miss raiding.  We shall see what happens!

Having the same character, but having it look totally different and actually play different is a great thing. It adds new life to your character, new aspects to the game, and I must say, if you have nothing tying you down to a faction and want to make a good bit of gold, swap and redo all the quests you’ve already done. I lost about 1k or so completed quests in all areas, so that is a lot of free and easy gold that I don’t need to do anything to get back. I must say it is rather funny to see in the Feats of Strength tab you earned a PvP title years after the system was removed too.

In the server downtime today, for WoW, I’m sure a lot of people are going to be bored. I’d recommend checking out Aion personally. It’s not the same as WoW, that’s for certain, but it’s a welcome change. Right now the game is in open beta, and having played most of the closed beta of Aion there are a lot of good things that have come about for the game. Not to mention the cool aspects of flying that are built into the game. It plays a lot like AoC in that it has a semi-reactive system, but it doesn’t require constant input like AoC does. It is a great game with a lot of fun, I just hope that it will continue and have some lasting power once the “end game” phase comes out, the Wintergrap-esk concept of a raiding instance is not really that much fun when it’s the only option; that type of system works fine in a Warcraft like game where there are multiple instances and raids to do so that you aren’t required to control a certain PvPvE zone just to enjoy the game. Also, the crafting system is truely involving in Aion, it grants you experience, has some neat animations, and has a ton of quests to focus around leveling your professions; though sadly they are a bit overwhelming at first once you catch on it’s not bad at all.

I’m having fun with it so far, though I have to adjust to the versions of some of the songs that they used in the game. They aren’t all the same versions that I’ve heard the most.

The ability to make your 360 Avi or Mii your rockstar is pretty badass. Though it reminds me of throwing Special Ed from Crank Yankers onto the stage because you look so out of place compared to the normal characters. Hahaha. But it’s pretty kickass to watch your avi rock out.

Fun times thus far. Totally suggest you try this one out. Rock Band: The Beatles is out on the 9th and I’m not really for certain how this one will go. I’m sure if you’re a Beatles fan, you’ll love it just because of what it is. But on the basis of game alone, I don’t really see Rock Band doing much of anything too original.

I am happy to see both games introduce the option to play any instrument combination, though. And the ability to jump in and out of the band while playing… without having to back out of what you’re currently doing.

Check it out!