5 Hours Learning Curve.... 4 Hours Play Time!

Hots & Dots had its 1 Year Blogiversay on the 5th June 2010 so this post is a tad overdue, but I only managed to snaffle the above photo from Kiki’s Facebook yesterday. Cass and I celebrated this auspicious date in what I thought was a very appropriate manner; the 2 of us plus 4 other guildies met up in our hometown Brisbane and played the official World of Warcraft board game!

Now if you thought that playing WoW would help with playing the board game, think again. All the moves were from Vanilla WoW so some were now completely defunct (eg Starshards for Priests) and the rule book was massive. Even though we had Brute, one of the best people I’ve ever met at taking in written instructions/strategies and relaying this information in a simplified manner for people such as myself, it still took us a couple hours to really get the hang of what we were doing. Add into this an hour for actually setting up the board (lets not talk about the water glass fiasco), a cookie bake off and much chatting you can probably imagine how long it took us to finish a game!

After completing the set up, Brute mulled over the instructions, while the rest of us decided in the interest of fairness we would have a completely blind character pick and typically only one of us got a class that we actually had ever played at max level for.

For The Alliance

Lath, Healer Extraordinaire: Gnome Rogue, Melee DPS

Cass, Caster DPS, Master of DoTs: Dwarf Paladin, Tank/Melee DPS Hybrid

Brute, Tanking Bad Ass: Night Elf Priest, Healer/Caster DPS Hybrid

For The Horde

Cacophany, WotLK Mighty Warrior Tank: Troll Mage, Caster DPS

Nysander, Queen of the Bubbles: Tauren Druid, Caster DPS/Healer Hybrid

Kikikins, Circle of Healing Princess: Undead Warlock, Caster DPS

Now considering Cacophany had played a Mage in his Molten Core days and Nysander has a level 80 Restoration Druid at least they seemed to have some small line up with their chosen characters unlike us Alliance folk who were completely out of sync with our personal choices!

Let The Games Begin!

So unfortunately our Alliance team did not get off to the best start. This may have had something to do with a certain Gnome Rogue (me) not really understanding the combat system and choosing not to train Level 1 Stealth. Once I pestered the group to go back to town to learn my stealth ability and sell items, things got much better, because then my dice rolls actually did damage.

As we went around the board completing quests and picking up loot we got the hang of the game. Brute and Cass were determined to beat the Horde, regardless of whether we had the best gear or were at max level. Therefore team Alliance engaged the end boss before poor little me even got to hit max level – Level 5. With a level 5 tank, level 5 healer and level 4 dps we were ready to battle Nefarion. The battle was drawn out and close but in the end we won. The entire fight took about 15 minutes.

The Cookie Off

Cass, Nysander and Kikikins decided to have a cookie bake off and we nibbled on delicious ginger nut, chocolate chip and wagon wheel cookies throughout the day. Who was the winner? Well I don’t think we actually made a final decision on that one. I guess for me being completely queasy with morning sickness at the time, the ginger nuts were the default winner. Unfortunately I couldn’t sample the beautiful looking choc chip or wagon wheels because chocolate and me have been a real no no for the last 10 weeks!

Back to the Blog

Over the year Hots & Dots received 495,281 Page Views and 236,895 Visits. A very special thank you to Mike Schramm who gave us a massive hand only a couple of months after our launch by linking to one of our posts on www.wow.com. For a blog that was getting only 10 – 20 visits a day previously, coming into work and seeing a massive 13,459 hits shoot through overnight on Google Analytics was pretty exciting and overwhelming.

Top 5 Posts

Clearly show that Resto Druids like to research their gear – Go Trees!

1. Patch 3.2 Resto Druid Gear Guide: For the Casual/10 Man Raider
2. Patch 3.3 Resto Druid Gear for the Casual/10 Man Raider
3. The Evolution of My UI
4. Patch 3.3 Resto Druid Gear Guide For the 25 Man Raider
5. Patch 3.2 Resto Druid Gear Guide: For the 25 Man Raider

Top Google Key Words

More diligent trees – shadow priests where are you all hiding?

1. hots and dots
2. resto druid gear
3. resto druid gear guide
4. resto druid gear 3.3
5. resto druid bis

Thank You

To all the readers, commenters and fellow bloggers who have welcomed us into the community, thank you the last year has been a blast. We hope that the next 12 months will bring us as much lively input, debate and commentary as the last year has.

Lath & Cass xoxoxox

]]> http://www.hotsdots.com/2010/07/a-belated-1-year-blogiversay-post/feed/ 14 http://www.hotsdots.com/2010/06/going-casual-other-stuff/ http://www.hotsdots.com/2010/06/going-casual-other-stuff/#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:00:20 +0000 Lathere http://www.hotsdots.com/?p=4962

And you thought Children's Week had an end date.

Well it’s been awhile, over a month in fact since I last posted. It’s strange the longer it goes without writing, the harder it has been to start again. I haven’t quit playing or anything though RL has been incredibly demanding taking up all my time of late and I’m sorry in advance that this post is going to cover some of that stuff too.

So firstly, I started a new job which was incredibly exciting because my old job was stressful, miserable and no matter what you did you never felt that it was enough.  I’m still at the same company but in a position now that lets me be a little bit more creative and actually fix issues.  My first task was to set up an internal WordPress blog so, yes definitely much more fun!

A week after I started in my brand new position I found out I was pregnant, which while exciting happened much faster than expected and made me feel a tad guilty considering I had only just stepped into a new role. At least it explained why I was nearly falling asleep at my desk every afternoon.

So I’m 10 weeks pregnant now, the morning sickness has well and truly kicked in and I’m seriously not looking forward to another 2 weeks of not being able to keep any food down and having a life that consists of getting up, going to work and then coming back home to crash…. just to begin it all again the next day.  Where is this damn pregnant glow people are always talking about?

So I had been tossing up between getting demoted to raider or going the whole hog and becoming a casual.  I wasn’t really sure which way I wanted to go, I knew I couldn’t keep being an officer it’s too much extra thought and worry.  I also know that the only part of the game that I really enjoy is raiding.  I love tackling new content, I love it when it’s hard the idea of not having that… I’m not sure whether I would still have any urge to play at all.

The straw finally broke  when an officer re-invited a friend of his back into the guild as a casual.  This friend had been a previous raider who had gquit so many times that it is a common joke within in the guild.  I think the one that is most infamous was when he quit because he couldn’t get a summon to the raid instance. So this long term, known troublemaker decided to put in an application to raid with us.  His avatar was disgraceful and Xeppe has already talked about similar ones in her post here. Basically it’s a gif of a woman unzipping her top until her breasts jiggle out.  Seriously why someone would think that was a suitable avatar to use when applying to a guild I can’t fathom. On a side note what probably annoys me more is the same person who chooses to use that completely sexist avatar, thinks it’s appropriate to kick a person from their old guild for making a racist comment to another person.  Why is it ok to be sexist but not ok to be racist?  Surely they are both unacceptable and should be dealt with accordingly?

As a girl it can be really difficult to deal with situations like these.  You say something to the guy and you’re seen as overly sensitive.  You don’t say anything and you feel like your encouraging this sort of behavior to the guild in general.  The third option I considered was finding a picture of a really gross penis and fighting fire with fire.  I decided the chances of this backfiring were too high (and besides who wants to look at a penis avatar really?) and instead put in officer that it was offensive and could someone (I really didn’t care which of the guys) ask him to change it.  I completely snapped the next day when I went to respond to his application with some questions because I’m all for believing people have rehabilitated.  He changed his avatar to a little box that read:  Oh dear, sorry I offended you… NOT.

So that was it, the final straw, an officer “disagreement” was had over how the avatar change had been handled and I decided then and there to just go casual.

So what am I going to do now?

Well to be honest I expect that the next 2-3 weeks will continue to be a write off with no game time.  I’m hoping after that I can perhaps actually finish leveling Pixii or perhaps work on Loremaster before Cataclysm launches.

As much as I am really disappointed with the raiding changes on the horizon these will probably in the long run work in my favor and I’m half thinking that next year will see me on a US server raiding in a 10 man guild during the day while bub is asleep.  I’d be interested in hearing how other WoW mum’s handle raiding with newborns if we have any readers that fit the description. Advice would be much appreciated!

Ancient of War in Zangamarsh: The new Tree of Life?

OK it creeps me out a teeny bit when I write a post about how I personally envision things changing… and then I read a short paragraph from Blizzard that sounds eerily familiar.

Now all I need it my “Rampaging Tree Bash” spell and I’ll be a happy Elf.

ps. This is the third time (1 & 2) something we’ve suggested at HoTs and DoTs has become an official change – how freaky is that?!

How about this for the new Tree of Life artwork?

So I’ve calmed down a little bit since first reading that Blizzard intends to remove Tree of Life as a Druid shapeshift form. But a glimmer of hope still remains – there’s a small chance that the new version of Tree of Life might be even cooler than being a tree 100% of the time (ok, a very, very small hope glimmer).

Maybe Blizzard will manage to implement it in a totally cool and wonderful way that will make turning into a tree even more special than it is now. Perhaps there are ways to lose permanent Tree of Life form without totally sacrificing our identity as Restoration Druids.

I’m not the only one thinking about it either. As I was thinking about this topic Keeva, Beru and a veritable forest of trees have been writing on the same topic.

The Good

I’m not part of the Class Changes Department at Blizzard (or whatever it’s called) but I’ve come up with some ideas for the new Tree of Life. Pay attention Blizzard – here is some feedback from a Tree of Life devotee! The rules: must retain the essence of being a healer and a shapeshifting Druid.

By Chance

Tree of Life will be a visual effect – something to highlight a proc or event like Argent Defender or Eclipse. It would need to be tied to something that happens a lot during combat and something that’s not just a PVP or raid-only ability. Restoration Druids playing all different styles of gaming – PVP, Dungeons and Raids should get to experience the new Tree of Life.

A Bonus

When Tree of Life does kick in it needs to feel special and wonderful. In my mind I keep linking this to playing the Pokie Machines (I promise I’m not a gambler!). You know how exciting it feels when the machine starts ringing, the lights are flashing and the game screen pops up exclaiming: You’ve Won 10 Free Spins! Well that’s how Tree of Life should feel.

Perhaps even though the shapeshift is out of our control you’ll get a sudden increase in your healing output, haste or the like. How about the next five spells are guaranteed Critical Heals? I want the new Tree of Life form to feel exciting – like you’re winning a million 50 cent pieces at the Pokies. Whether it gives us extra healing, crit, haste I don’t care but I want it to feel special and FUN.

With Polish

The new improved art work for Tree of Life needs to be god damn awesome or as Barney Stinson would say…. LEGENDARY! I’ve been talking up for years the big cool trees hanging around Darnassus (see above). Perhaps we could shift into something more like that in Cataclysm?

Oh and Blizzard if you read this – I was very disappointed that you didn’t announce our new level 81 spell: “Tree Bash”

The Bad

The new Tree of Life will fail if Blizzard choose to implement it the way I’m expecting them to. And I’m putting it out there right now, if Blizzard choose to implement it like this, I’m switching my main in Cataclysm to either my Discipline Priest or my Mage. I’m that serious about it.

Tree of Life becomes a 5 minute cooldown spell that you, the Druid, choose to cast in anticipation of the “optimum” time to make best use of the buff/specialness it gives you.

If they do this, Tree of Life will simply be like Innervate – something you really love having but try not to ever rely on because, well it has a cooldown and you can’t trust it to be available just at that right moment. Before you know it the fights aren’t hard because you out-gear then by a couple of tiers and you never even consider clicking/press the button to activate it because, well why would you – you don’t need it.

If Blizzard do this then Tree of Life really deserves a funeral and a tombstone because it’s just a nice extra. It’s not really a defining part of what your class and spec is. Tree of Life has become no more than a glorified On Use trinket.

R.I.P
2006 – 2010

Tree of Life
(aka Wilted Broccoli)

Beloved Protector
Sadly Missed by the WoW Community

Tranquility and Cataclysm

Out of all the new spells released by the class previews, the one I’m most intrigued by is the Shaman level 83 spell – Healing Rain.

I can just envision its usefulness going off in the middle of Wintergrasp healing everyone of your faction within range. I can also see it being used to lightly top up not just 1 party in your 25 man raid team but your entireraid group.

I simply can’t believe that Blizzard would give this mechanic to just 1 type of healer in Cataclysm.

I’m taking a guess (read crossing my fingers and hoping) that Restoration Druids will have tranquility reworked into a similar style spell. A raid wide heal spell that has weaker throughput in exchange for hitting more targets? Yes please.

Useful for constant raid wide damage but the mana cost and heal throughput would obviously not as strong as current AOE healing spells Wild Growth and Circle of Healing which are limited to 5-6 raid members only.

A Bit of Marketing

I know that all these Class Previews have been released to drum up anticipation (and Sales) for Cataclysm. All the new abilities are meant to sound awesome and overpowered – that’s how they talk you into buying game copies! They won’t need to actually nerf everything down to scale until Patch 4.1 after all.

Let me just say that whoever is in charge of Shaman, Mage and Paladin marketing gets my thumbs up. Reading the class previews has definitely made me rethink what class I want to play in the next expansion. And considering that Paladins and Mages received a lot of attention and pats-on-the-back at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, too… well I think perhaps I might have more fun playing something else.

And whoever is in charge of Druid marketing? Not well done. Not well done at all. There’s still time. Read this article. Read what other die-hard Restoration Druid writers are blogging about and think carefully about how you approach Tree of Life.

R.I.P Tree of Life

When Blizzard asked last year for feedback on the Tree of Life form I was really surprised at the number of Trees who gave it scathing commentary. Turning into a tree is one of my favorite things about being a Restoration Druid – its an identifier, unique and special.

I can’t say I’m surprised, the feedback thread alone make me expect changes were on the way, but I still feel its a hard hit to take.

Tree of Life is changing from a passive talent to a cooldown-based talent, similar to Metamorphosis. Mechanically, it feels unfair for a druid to have to give up so much offense and utility in order to be just as good at healing as the other classes who are not asked to make that trade.

We are exploring the exact benefit the druid gets from Tree of Life. It could strictly be better healing, or it could be that each heal behaves slightly different. You also will not be able to be banished in Tree of Life form (this will probably be true of Metamorphosis as well).

Additionally, we would like to update the Tree of Life model so that it feels more exciting when you do decide to go into that form. Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.

Couple this with the fact that restoration druids are to receive no new spells makes me wish I’d never looked at the damned post in the first place.

So the rational part of me knows that being upset about it is silly -  Blizzard will make sure that us tree aficionados can adapt to this “hopping in and out of tree form” idea of theirs.

The irrational/emotional part of me feels as if they’ve chopped off my branches and I won’t be whole again. Just another squishy night elf who looks like everyone else.

For a full read of the Druid Class preview click here for the official forum post.

The Church of Lathology: You Don't Need A Cathedral to /pray

I’m pleased to report that the morale in my guild has skyrocketed over the last couple of weeks.  After rebuilding our raid team at the beginning of the year we now have a strong group that has been playing together long enough to understand each others strengths and weaknesses.  So while our progression took a nosedive at the beginning of Icecrown finally it’s taking off again and everyone’s spirits are high.

Our practically all new raid team has even started coming up with our very own in jokes.  You know those little things that no one outside your guild would understand but all your raiders can have a laugh about?

One of these “in jokes” for Vitare has been my discovery of Azerothian religion.  Religion was something I discovered while wiping pointlessly over and over again on my dear friend Professor Putricide.  I got into the habit of /pray- ing before every attempt in the hope that one of the Azeroth gods would look kindly at our raiders and help that person destined to hit Malleable Ooze over and over again, actually manage to move away.

So Professor finally died and bosses later, praying became an important ritual for me before each Icecrown boss fight.  Not only have I discovered my spiritual side, but I have converted the masses of my raid group and now have disciples who /pray with me before each boss attempt. We were actually giggling after raid tonight that the 10% buff was an act of the gods from all our praying night after night.

We have proclaimed it The Church of Lathology and what god does our guild worship? Well that’s a tricky one.  I’m inclined to say Yogg Saron. I feel that we have a special bond with him seeing we went into his mind and saw his memories only a few patches ago.  One of the tree’s in my raid covers his ears when we all start /praying because he has declared himself a diety and we’re giving him a headache with all the praying.

And like any good religion we even have comandments!

1. Thou shall not stack! (don’t get it? that’s OK its another in joke)

….and that’s pretty much all we’ve come up with so far – don’t worry more will be added in time.

I’m sure we’re not the only raiding group who has certain rituals and in jokes that are needed to keep your guild morale high and positive.  What does your raid team do to get into the groove?

The new Lathere and Cassandri: Pixii and Caesandra.

After nearly a year of blogging for Hots & Dots, Cass and I have made the difficult decision to close this blog. You may have noticed that over the past month we’ve been blogging less and less about Icecrown Citadel, Cassandri and Lathere and have instead been providing posts on dungeon leveling, new character gearing and more casual events.

We’re both a bit burned out on raiding and we’ve discovered that we have really been enjoying all our spare time playing alts – especially our littlies: Pixii and Caesandra (the Warlock and Mage pictured above). We’ve enjoyed this kick ass caster combo so much that we’re taking the plunge and over the next month or two these guys will be our main characters for the remainder of Wrath of the Lich King on onwards for Cataclysm.

However we’re not quite ready to stop blogging so we have decided to launch a new blog centered around our experiences playing a Mage and Warlock. We doubt that we’ll be raiding or blogging about that topic. The blog will be focused more on the leveling experience, pugging and coming to terms with Mage and Warlock spell abilities and talents.

It’s just wouldn’t be right to keep writing for a blog called “HoTs & DoTs” when neither of us will be playing a class that heals – let alone one that HoTs! We’ve already had a few ideas and have started working on a new design and new name for our blog. However we’ve decided it would be for the best if we don’t share this with you: our loyal readers.

We love being part of the blogging community but we both believe that it’s important to build our readership from the ground up. We still remember the thrill of getting our first comment and how overwhelmed and excited we were the very first time we got linked to wow.com and had the Hots & Dots name put out there. Those first successes felt fantastic because we started off knowing nothing about blogging whatsoever, had no readers – we hadn’t even told our guild!

I think it’s safe to say that most of our readers are Druids and Priests – and mostly healers – and while comments from you guys would be appreciated it would also feel like we were cheating a little bit. That you might be reading because it’s Lathere and Cassandri and not because you’re interested in Warlock and Mage topics at all. We want our new blog to stand on its own. Out of respect to the Mage and Warlock communities looking for good quality blogs and information we’re determine to start anew, rebuilding our credibility and reputation.

So again, on behalf of Cass and myself thank you all for reading us over the last year. It’s been a pleasure and we hope you all discover us again on our new adventure! And if you don’t, remember us as a Restoration Druid and Shadow Priest duo: Lathere and Cassandri.

xxx
Lathere

Teldrassil Sapling: Summon your brand new level 80 Restoration Druid and gear them!

I don’t talk about her very often but I have a sapling – a fresh level 80 Restoration Druid – called Restori. Yes, I have two Restoration Druids. Restori currently resides on Nagrand and she’s a big Tauren.

I’ve found myself starting to focus on how to best gear up Restori without raiding (well not much) so that when I’ve got the spare time in the future I’ll be able to PUG the occasional raid for pure fun.

Gearing as a Casual

The best way to gear her is by running heroics. While doing this research I couldn’t stop thinking that this is quite a time consuming and painful way to go about gearing.

I’m sure that joining a guild that runs 10 mans twice a week gearing up would actually be easier. If you have a playing schedule that allows you to join a 10 man raiding guild I strongly recommend you consider that path.

Saplings and Haste

When I first went back to Restori last week I had a grand total of 88 Haste. Those first couple of heroics were painful. While the haste cap isn’t a strict requirement for 5 man dungeons I’ve been spoiled playing Lathere. I’m working and gemming to reach at least 735 Haste and I’ll use a build that talents into Celestial Focus.

What to buy first?

While there are some nice items in heroics, the majority of really good pieces available to baby trees come from Emblems and crafted gear. Restori has very limited gold at her disposal so most of her gear is going to come from Emblems.

I’ve included a list of the best pieces available below so you can make up your own mind how to best gear your sapling but if you want to do the majority of gearing via Heroics this is the order of how I’m spending my Emblems of Triumph and Emblems of Frost.

Note: Don’t follow this as gospel – shuffle it around a little based on what you pick up while doing random heroics. There is no point upgrading the Shoulders first for instance if you have a good ilvl 200 Blue piece yet your wearing a terrible pair of green gloves.

If the average Heroic gives you 5 Emblems of Triumph you are looking at 66 heroics to get all those pieces.

To get the first 3 Frost pieces (the last 2 are just wishful upgrades) it will take 9 weeks if you stick to doing the daily heroic and weekly raid each week.

The Big Picture

The set I’m aiming for with Restori can be seen here along with my talents, gems and enchants: “Best in slot” Restoration Druid Gear without Raiding.

If you have plenty of cash available and want to inject this into your Sapling there are some great crafted and Bind on Equip epics you can pick up from the Auction House.  On Barthilas these items cost approximately 15000g each so unless you are at gold cap I would suggest making sure that a resto druid is what you like playing before splurging!  This list can be seen along with a different talent build and gems can be found here.

The Gear List

I’ve tried to keep the number of options limited. Basically if there are two ilevel 245 pieces that can both be bought for Emblems of Triumph I’ve only listed here the better itemised of the two. This is the same for crafted gear.

Sometimes the cloth pieces are better than the leather so while there is nothing wrong with choosing the leather piece, I am only listing the item that has the best itemisation for a tree.

* There are a couple of fantastic items in here that drop from easily pugged raids. Feel free to ignore them and go straight to better options. Or use this list to compare those items to others available in that slot.

Heard people talking about WoW in RL? The streets are no longer safe!

I’m a bit late to the party. This was the Shared Topic suggested by Oath from Dressed to Cuddle on Blog Azeroth from a couple of weeks ago. As I’ve only just caught up on my Feedreader today I got excited after reading a couple of posts and decided to write about my eavesdropping experiences too.

Have you ever been out and about and overheard someone talking about WoW, or someone overheard you and butted in?

I don’t know what it says about me but I seem to find this quite a bit! Perhaps there is just a large WoW community in Brisbane, Australia or maybe I just attract it because I play with so many people I know IRL. Whatever the reason I seem to stumble across WoWers and eavesdrop in on their conversations quite frequently. Ok, I admit it, I’m a bit of a snoop!

The Nerdy Bus Girls

The first time it happened I had only been playing for a few months and was still a complete noob. I was on a pretty empty bus and 3 girls were talking about Molten Core and priest healing at the top of their lungs. I remembered being so excited because I’m sure to the remaining passengers it sounded like these girls were speaking a strange new language – it was a language that actually made sense to me!

The Mac Guy

When Cass decided to take the plunge and move to a Mac laptop one of the most important questions she had to ask the salesman was “How will this run WoW?” It turned out the salesman played and even demonstrated how fast it loaded by logging into his level 70 druid who was sitting in Epic Bird Form in the middle of Shattrah city. I was in complete awe. Oh and yes the Mac impressed me too.

The Coffee Club Waiter

During BC when my old guild – Insanity Later had just decided to try doing 25 man Gruuls Lair (we were months behind the raiding curve). Cass, my partner, brother and I were all out for brunch and had started discussing strategies and how we could best get down HKM.

We were sitting quite close to the counter and when we went up to pay, the guy at the register asked us what server we played World of Warcraft on. He then went on to tell us about how he played on Frostmourne as Horde and was in this awesome guild who was about to start Reliquary of Souls in Black Temple. He was so excited to meet fellow WoW players, even if we were so fresh at raiding we had no clue who or what Reliquary of Souls was!

EB Games Launch of WotLK

This was just the start of 1 of 2 queues....!!!

So this one is a little more obvious because everyone in the queue was after their pre-ordered copy of WotLK. What I really loved about the midnight release was how clear it was that people of all different ages, backgrounds, sex and race play WoW. I spotted a couple of people I know from work who introduced me to some of their guildies and also had a good conversation with the random guys in front of us. Pizza, Red Bull and WoW was a great combination to get everyone relaxed and ready to break the ice!

Even though Cass was a tad tipsy by the time she joined me in queue (she had been out earlier that night) I couldn’t convince her to join into the dance competition. She did however go in the trivia comp and actually won a fairly ugly troll figurine.

The Thai Cross Over

My final and most recent WoW in RL cross over: Brute and I (I’m sure I’ve mentioned already that we work together) went out to have lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant. We were sitting there talking about raiding, the guild and all things WoW and after about 30 minutes I realised that the two guys sitting at the table right next to us were talking about Rogues and PVP! What are the chances that the people right next to you would also be out having a WoW catchup? Brute typically being a male missed it completely and didn’t realise until I told him – go figure.

World’s Colliding

So what about you guys – have you every had your in game and real life worlds collide?  Share the details!

We currently rely on the sale of BoE items to cover our expenses

Guild Banking has changed so much since the days in which I first starting playing. In vanilla and the early BC days one officer had a bank mule who looked after the guilds assets and gold! Cass was once even part of a guild that taxed its members – requiring them to mail a couple gold to the guild banker each week – in order to remain a member.

My guild recently overhauled its guild banking system. First we asked our members for feedback. It was very interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts. There were lots of good ideas on how we should spend the guild’s money, unfortunately there wasn’t really any good ideas on how the guild could make money.

I haven’t been in many guilds so I can’t really comment on what amount of gold a raiding guild should have. But it seems to me that Vitare has a pretty healthy bank balance. And its definitely a lot more gold than any of the other more casual guilds (that I’ve been part of) have had.

How We Spend It

In the end we decided to spend our gold on things that would benefit our entire raid team each night. We didn’t like the idea that our members would have to spend significant additional time outside their raiding commitments farming gold just to cover the costs of consumables and repairs for raiding. So now we pay for, per raider:

Repairs: 100g per Raid Night
Flasks: 1 Flask per Raid Night
Food: Fish Feasts will be provided throughout the night
Enchants: A number of popular enchants scrolls will be available to raiders when they win that brand new weapon (or chest etc)

Previously we had covered repairs and food, now we’ve extended that to help cover the cost of another raiding consumable: flasks. We’ve also decided to help our raiders pay for the cost of getting new gear – by giving the raider a suitable enchant so that they can start using their new item immediately.

We spend approximately 10 000 – 15 000 gold per week to cover these expenses.

How We Earn It

However, the only way we make money is by selling any Bind on Equip epics that we gather from raiding on the Auction House or at a reduced gold price to raiders (50% off Market Value).

I’m sure other guilds have alternate ways of making money but I simply can’t work out how.

I know that there numerous ways a single individual can go about earning gold and all the information out there seems to be directed at how a single player can play the Auction House for cash. But it wouldn’t be fair to ask our Guild Banker to play the Auction House and hand that income over to the guild – it’s income that they earned on their own from their own effort and should remain theirs.

I would be very interested to hear how other guilds run their guild banks and how they fill their coffers. In fact I would really like to get heaps of information and do a guide because frankly Google just didn’t cut it for me this time.

So please, if your guild bank runs well leave a comment explaining how it works!