Turns out I'm not a very good headhunter. Should have rolled a Troll.

Xeppe (author of the excellent blog An Ordinary Priest) and I have a strange history.

I actually found Xeppe’s blog through a link via another link from someone else’s blog. I was amazed to discover that she was not just a fellow Priest, or a fellow Oceanic Priest, or even a fellow Barthilas player – Barthilian?, or even another girl WoW player. No. Xeppe was all those things, but even more interestingly, she was a brand new recruit in my guild’s shady splinter guild: DeZire.

Talk about good gossip!

You see, back around the time my guild was first struggling with the new Icecrown Citadel hard modes two distinct, but major events occurred within our ranks. Firstly, we recruited a third Mage to join our two existing Mages (the existing pair of boys happened to be very good friends and had gamed together for years and I think, perhaps, even knew each other well outside the game). The third Mage, I’m sorry to say, was a piece of work. She was one of those people who help perpetuate the girls-are-trouble-and-don’t-belong-in-serious-raid-teams stereotypes.

In those days we made a fundamental mistake. One that your guild is probably making right now:

We put our pure caster DPS in Group 3.

Do not do this. For the love of god, do not do this. It was pure happenstance that one week I also found myself in Group 3 (perhaps I had logged on extremely early and sniped one of the first slots). And by the time we had killed Heroic Blood Princes party chat had dissolved into a pretty serious argument between New Mage and I over the Shadow Silk Spindle. New Mage made a snarky comment when one of our Restoration Druids (not Lathere, by the way) outbid everyone else and won the Heroic Shadow Silk Spindle. It was the first one our raid had seen, and yes, coveted by all the casters.

New Mage felt that the item should be for DPS casters only. Because any serious raider would know that there is a Spirit offhand waiting to be had from Heroic Sindragosa, and that is better for Restoration Druids, and the Resto Druid that won the Shadow Silk Spindle was outting themselves for being unprepared and ignorant of their class.

I think she was surprised that I was so angry with her. I think she was really just directing her complaint towards the other two Mages in the party, and both agreed with her, and never intended for me to see the conversation. I’d certainly never seen her say anything like that in Guild or Raid chat before.

I have no patience for players who claim to know what other classes should or shouldn’t be equipping (especially when it’s to argue that someone doesn’t deserve the item you want – talk about biased!). And furthermore our loot system is set up to be as open as possible and we make no concessions for best in slot or class by class comparisons. It’s not a Loot Council. Far from it. You bid on what you want. And if you want it that bad be prepared to spend a lot.

We got into another argument about a week later, also in Party Chat, but I can’t remember what it was about. By then I had mentally labeled her as a Troublemaker with a capital T. Over the next few weeks our other two Mages became more and more discontent with our raiding and were quite vocal about it. They were fast to post DPS meters when one of the Mages had hit the #1 spot, and very defensive of each-other if anyone dared point out a mistake that one of them had made.

At the same time one of the core founding members of the guild, a Rogue, was also becoming unhappy with our raiding. He was angry when we struggled to get numbers, angry when he felt the officers weren’t recruiting properly. He was angry at our raid leading, angry at our mistakes. He eventually left to join a more progressed guild and I, like most of the guild, was both sad and relieved.

Anyway, to make a long story short, our unhappy Rogue decided to come back and give our guild, and his old friends still in the guild, another go. He chafed under the rules even more than before. Throw that into the mix with our 3 discontent Mages and it was a pretty miserable time to be raiding with Vitare. I blogged about it here.

To make a very long story short, during a tough night wiping on Professor Putricide, our Raid Leader decided to penalise one of our Mages (who had been topping the DPS meters) for doing something silly: getting hit by Malleable Goo or something. Within a few minutes all three Mages had left the raid and left the guild. While it was completely expected, and in fact the officers had over-recruited caster DPS just for that reason, it was still a pretty uncomfortable moment for the guild. Probably the most drama we’d seen in two or three years.

Not long after, perhaps a week or two later, our unhappy Rogue also called it quits. This time he decided to head up a brand new 25 man raiding guild on Barthilas, clearing the same content, with the same hours, same start time, same everything as our guild. DeZire started with 1 Rogue and 3 Mages. They took raiding applicants that we declined. They welcomed raiders who decided they didn’t like us enough to stay after their trial period (we can’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I suppose). And they built themselves up to a formidable and successful raiding guild, eventually surpassing us on the server progression tables if not by content cleared, but by the speed that they were able to clear it.

So imagine my surprise when I started reading An Ordinary Priest and all the drama of their new 25 man raiding guild is there to see written in between the lines of a young Discipline Priest second guessing herself during her raiding trial. It starts here, and gets better, and even better here and ends here.

Xeppe and I got to talking both on her blog and also in game – after all, we were on the same server raiding the same content at the same time. We had many online friends in common, and I had met a few of her raid team in real life so I had my own impressions and stories to tell.

Unfortunately Xeppe didn’t have a very good time of it in her Barthilas guild. I started thinking of ways to get her into Vitare. I knew she would fit right in, and while her guild and mine were identical in raid times, gear and progression, the personalities and attitudes which drive both guilds are as different as night and day.

As much as I would have liked to sponsor an application to my guild from Xeppe the timing was all wrong. We had a full roster of Priests and our Raid Leader leader is a Discipline Priest. And she was of the opinion that Discipline Priests don’t stack well.  Tack on our two excellent and long term Holy Priests and there was just no reason, other than pure favoritism, to welcome another healing Priest to the team.

I was dismayed to hear that Xeppe had burned out and left Barthilas, forever associating hardcore raiding, 25 mans, and progression raiding with that bad experience in DeZire.

If you haven’t been reading An Ordinary Priest you might not know it but Xeppe has turned from a white bar into a dark blue one: these days she’s playing a Restoration Shaman. And it just so happens that my guild, Vitare, is being very open-minded about our roster for Cataclysm. And there’s definitely room for a Restoration Shaman.

There’s room for Xeppe. If only I could convince her!

Natassia, a Rogue in my guild, played with Xeppe when they were both in DeZire, Xeppe’s old Barthilas guild. She chimed in on Xeppe’s blog to add support to my Must Recruit Xeppe Plan of Attack. Our Raid Leader has been reading An Ordinary Priest on and off for almost a year. Our Recruitment Officer is keen for Xeppe to join too.

And if you need further proof of how much we want you to join, Xeppe, here it is!

Plan: How to Recruit Xeppe

My hopes for Vitare in Cataclysm are thus: to hash over our experiences in game online here at HoTs & DoTs (written by yours truly and if you’re lucky you might get some mad ramblings from Lathere), our guild’s anti-gnomes Warlock over at Emberstorm (written by Velidra) and our future guild’s Absolutely Unique Shaman (that would be Xeppe)!

ps. These days it is a firm rule in Vitare that Mages are never placed in the same party within a raid and are, instead, almost always separated among Groups 2-4.

Suzushiiro (Holy Priest) in the opening credits of Big Crits

Are you watching Big Crits too? (Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)

Big Crits is a newly formed 25 man World of Warcraft raiding guild. And everything that happens in the guild raids is recorded and edited back for us to watch as online episodes: an inside look into the running of a raiding guild.

I thought the show would be like watching a cross between an instructional how-to video with the occasional argument recorded over vent thrown in. Deep down I didn’t really think that a guild under that kind of pressure and exposure would be able to function as a hardcore raiding guild and be successful. Is the priority the show or the raiding?

Excellent raiding, in my experience, is rarely accompanied by guild drama. And wouldn’t the guild drama be the part that makes the show interesting?

To make a long story short, watching the very first episode answered a lot of those doubts. And it’s fascinating to watch. I love the raiders. I love the web-cam style confessions. I’m already attached to the main cast (not everyone in the raid group has their own “talking head” moment to talk directly to the camera and their audience).

I really respect what these guys are doing. Nothing captures what it’s like to be part of a raiding guild as well as this series does. The chatter on vent that kicks immediately after the opening credits make me feel right at home – it sounds and feels like every pre-raid chatter I’ve ever heard. And is, of course, totally forgettable. There’s the subtle, awkward conversations that we’ve all heard before:

I mean this in the nicest way possible. But… Whornnie could you do more threat?
– Episode 3

I’m tempted to send a link to this series to some of my friends – the friends of mine who theoretically understand that I play World of Warcraft, but don’t really understand what that entails.

I went out for dinner with a bunch of people I’d never met. Strangely enough it came out in conversation that one of the guys at the table was taking his new girlfriend to his mate’s place the next day. And the boys were planning to play Dungeons and Dragons. What really disappointed me (and my expectations were very, very low) was this response:

“Oh my god. Don’t you have to dress up like a wizard or something?”

It’s one thing to vilify a game for being geeky or nerdy, but there’s no need to turn it into something it’s not. If you’re into Dungeons and Dragons of course you’re into cosplay. And in turn you must be into roleplaying. And World of Warcraft is the same again, right?

What I’m trying to say is that so many people have a black mark next to the words “World of Warcraft”. And yet they have absolutely no idea what it is, and what it isn’t. And still they go around, convinced, that they have it all figured out.

Anyway, back to Big Crits.

Even if I wanted to apply, talk to my web cam and be part of the show, I can’t. Not just because they’re Horde (really, what were you thinking Stoneybaby?). Not just because they raid my time 10am Saturday and Sunday (believe it or not, I can’t play WoW all weekend). I can’t apply because they have a Shadow Priest already. And he’s pretty damn smart:

… it’s not just people geeking out in front of their computers. There’s more to it. I think people are afraid of what they don’t understand.
– Furioso, Shadow Priest

Smart guy, huh?

Big Crit’s Discipline Priest, another one of the main cast members with her name in the titles, is Jadeice. Jadeice seems to be struggling a little bit. She’s well spoken and I have this feeling that she comes from a guild in which she was one of the core members of the team – someone who everyone could count on. We actually don’t know much about her yet, she’s only had a few talking moments.

Unfortunately Jadeice was that person. The member of the raid who just couldn’t seem to pick up Sindragosa’s Frost Tomb mechanic and, instead of getting away from the raid and standing in the clear upon impact, managed to wipe the raid by entombing everyone around her (See Episode 2, 6.30 minute mark and then Episode 3, 7 minute mark). In Vitare that person is Citadel (but we forgive him because you can’t really expect much from a Ret Pally, right?). I’ll bet there’s a special person who has that label in your guild too.

Jadeice was swapped out. And they got their first Sindragosa kill as a guild. Ouch.

I mean, I know it probably wasn’t just me… but… they one shot it. I don’t know.
– Jadeice, Discipline Priest

There’s nothing worse than feeling like you are the only person in the team who can’t seem to cope. I’m still convinced I’m the absolute worst person in my guild at dealing with the Lich King’s Defile. I offer to sit out that fight pretty much every week.

But my favourite cast member by far is their Holy Priest, Suzushiiro. This guy makes me laugh absolutely every time. He’s determined to top healing meters and just gets that little bit crazy when he covets loot. He’s always hilarious. Here’s Suzushiiro’s explanation of Sindragosa:

…if they cast too many spells they blow themselves the fuck up. As someone who likes to whore healing meters it’s kind of annoying.

She’s not going to fucking touch me with it in Phase 1 but in Phase 2, when she starts really doling out the damage, and I’ve got to really push that shit out and more importantly, when Prayer of Healing becomes really good so I can really pull ahead of everyone else on the healing meters … then she’s gonna start fucking me with Unchained Magic.

– Suzushiiro, Holy Priest

And I’m not going to spoil it, but 6 minutes into Episode One I almost spit my drink onto my keyboard.

[youtube tuxFNf4-fog Big Crits on Youtube, Episode 1]

What really worries me about Big Crit is that it follows some of the tricks you see in reality TV. Part of the fun in watching Survivor is hearing the individual competitors confess to the camera – in total privacy – then turn around and behave completely differently in front of their team mates. The show doesn’t go to air until all the decisions and votes have been cast so by that stage what they’ve confessed to the camera and to the audience can’t really get them into trouble.

But in Big Crits… eventually the raiders are going to have to eat their words as episodes go to air. Things that they say to the camera, after raid, might upset their guild members weeks later.

I can’t help but worry that the raiders will find themselves self-censoring, or not being 100% truthful simply because they don’t want to upset anyone. Stoneybaby is taking a different approach, complaining when his officers and raiders do something that he doesn’t like, but then confronting them about it before the episode goes to air. Even so, it’s a hard line to toe.

I have lots of other “favourite” moments from the first five episodes. What are yours?

ps. If you’ve yet to start watching you can subscribe to episodes feed and watch them in your feed reader or watch them on their website.

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?

If my druid's eyes could glow red, they would be red right now

Most of the time it doesn’t really cross my mind that I’m a girl gamer. I’m just another person in my guild and in my raid. I think about our progression and I worry about standing in the fire just like any other raider. No different than anyone else, right?

I got to work this morning and (procrastinating doing actual work) went and checked out our guild website. In the last 24 hours there have been some fairly active application threads and I wanted to see how some of them were panning out.  I was thoroughly disgusted when I read some sexist comments on a new, public, applicant thread made by one of our newer raiders who only just got through his trial period. This comment makes me so mad I’m going to copy paste the text right over into this post… because frankly it speaks for itself.

ex Gravity player, not sure how far he got to… but from what i remember, the officers were not 100% satisfied. Not sure which one of you was playing, but dont think u played a vital role as a warlock in the guild. When eliria and patross.. u fall behind miles away. although patorss is very exp and geared lock.. eliria is a chick…and does better than you  O.O beside the point…. i would always see you in the top 10 or top 15. so yea. dont think you can match vitare locks to be honest… but yea
 laterz

Oh my god I wish this guy would go die in a fire or something.

Does this represent the mindset of the other raiders in Vitare? I don’t think so! If I had gotten a response like that when I applied I probably would have withdrawn my application. As we are sorely in need of good ranged DPS at the moment, can we really afford to convey the wrong message on the current application threads? Absolutely not.

Forum Applications – What to Do and What NOT to Do

I am absolutely in support of open forum applications. Officers generally only play 1 or 2 classes each, so it just makes sense to have applications out in the open for other guild members with more knowledge of the applicant’s class to review, comment and ask questions.

What to do

• Check out their raiding achievements
• Check out their gear/gems/enchants
• Check out their reputation – do they have Sons of Hodir rep?
• Do they have 2 professions @ 450?
• Do they appear to understand their class and spec?
• Have they put thought into their online app?
• Can they spell/write in proper sentences/refrain from leet speak?
• Check out other similarly progressed guilds recruitment forums to see where else they are applying
• Check out what other guilds they have been in and length of time – no one wants a guild hopper

What NOT to do

• Don’t make unsubstantiated comments that they are a shit player
• Don’t tell them they play worse than a girl
• Don’t whisper their old GM and then make that conversation public
• Don’t pick apart a players gear/gem choices if you know fuck all about that class
• Don’t start a completely off topic argument with fellow guildies

Ok, I’ll admit I absolutely failed that last one.

Firing back at him in a rage over a public forum is perhaps not very classy. But in my defence this guy has been an idiot on mulitple occassions now and I wanted to make it clear that we were not all anti-girl-gamers.

This is what I wrote back in reply. I wish I had started a new, private, thread, but hindsight is 20/20:

seriously you manage to (continuously) push all my buttons wrong…. wtf does it matter if a chick is playing? You know that the majority of our healing team is female yeah? Are you just asking to die over and over again?

I hope karma gives you female managers your entire life and your future wife keeps you on a ball and chain.

FFS it makes me want to disable my microphone forever and just pretend to be a guy – what a sad world we live in.

Later on in the afternoon I was feeling much calmer. Then I went back to the forums. It took about 2 seconds for me to see red. This was my reply:

lol?

i know most of our healers are female. They are great and i am happy to be part of the team.
what my point was…guys are usually better.. so dont QQ or /cry over it. Guys are better at games.. ITS A FACT.dont deny it. i am not being sexist or anything, i was just compering.

i run my own business so no female mangers for me..at least like urself. cuz you either got something against me or your attitude isnt right. obviously you have lots of soft spots.. or i am just good at getting them.

on the other hand. i love females. best thing to walk the earth. i was just pointing it in a games perspective.

dont hate.. <3 instead

Reading this reply still makes me angry. I don’t want to play with this guild member anymore. Where possible I’m not going to attend any 10 mans that have him in it. During 25 mans, for the sake of the overall raid, I’ll throw him a Swiftmend to stop him dying but that is it.

And if he complains I’ll just tell him I’m a girl and one of our male healers will have to heal him, because, well he’s obviously a better gamer than I.

And every time Cass beats him on the DPS metres now I’m going to be thinking “OMG he just got beat by a girl!” Now whether or not I should point that our to the entire raid, well I haven’t decided.

The glory of 10 mans

Cass and I have been raiding 10 mans a lot more than we usually do in the last couple of weeks. This is because some of our raiders have mysteriously vanished on progression nights and we’ve been left short of a full 25 man roster. There has been several nights when the raid has been called and we have split into two 10 man groups.

During our 10 man last week the conversation came up:
What do people prefer? 25 mans or 10 mans?

I’ve always preferred the thrill of downing bosses in 25 man. When there are so many more people to coordinate it seems so much more satisfying when you finally complete progression content with 24 other people.

Our tank who was raiding when level 60 was still end game, admitted he much preferred doing 10 mans. Considering this is someone who has always played pretty seriously and is definitely the type to want the best gear available for his class, I was surprised. Quite a few of the other raiders also piped up that they preferred the 10 Man environment as well because they felt they contributed more to the team and that the intimate environment was something they enjoyed.

So if many serious raiders prefer the 10 man environment, why the hell is everyone still raiding 25 mans?

I’ve been thinking quite hard about this since that night and, to be honest, with the difficulties we’re having in TOGC (heroic, or whatever you want to call it) 25, I’m starting to agree with them – I welcome the 10 mans. It’s quite a relief to scale down some nights.

So why the change in heart? Perhaps the main reason for this is I really like the majority of people that play in our 10 man crew. While we have played together in a 25 man setting for months, the current 10 man group has only been together for approximately 3 week. There’s about 13 or so that shuffle depending on who’s online. Most of us are fairly aware of each others strengths and weaknesses and we’re proving to be pretty successful – we cleared Heroic TOC 10 last night for the first time, got our rusty drakes last week.

I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way, Keeva from Tree Bark Jacket recently wrote a post on how much she is loving the 10 man atmosphere now that she has reformed her guild.

The most popular post I’ve written for this blog has been the gear guide for 10 Man/Casual raiders. I think I’ve gotten approximately 3 times as many hits on that page in comparison to my 25 Man raider page.

A fellow Barthilas blogger has also scaled back from 25 man raiding and actually created a separate branch in his long term guild specifically for 10 man raids. His aim was to create a group that only raided 10 mans a couple of times a week but with the efficiency and quality of hardcore players.

So is the only reason to enter 25 mans status, progression ranks and gear? I’m not completely convinced. When it’s put like that it sounds quite elitist and shallow. Mercenary even. These are not traits that come to mind when I think of the other members of our 25 man guild.

What do you guys think – why do you want to raid 25 mans? Remind me of all the good stuff please!

After disbanding I picked a new guild based on their website, charter & raiding rules. They seemed organised and had the same goals I wanted out of raiding and WoW…. Boy was that a terrible mistake! I spent 3 months in this guild bashing my head against the wall astounded at the big step backwards I had made.

I left this guild, and decided to take the plunge into what I considered a Hardcore guild – they raided 4 nights a week, started on time and didn’t mess around – if you were dcing in boss fights, you were benched. I was amazed at how little administrative organisation was put into this guild. Their DKP system, raiding rules & guild charter were quite simply non existent. But amazingly it worked and it appeared to work well. Things have been going really smoothly over the last 3 months, I feel I’ve proven my worth as a healer and raider. I also genuinely like a good portion of our raiding team and the guild officers. We cleared Yogg Saron for the first time a couple of weeks ago, everyone was happy….. however this is where things started to get tricky.

Hard Modes….

The Guild officers want to try them – and announce via Guild Message of the Day what we’re working on. Suddenly and mysteriously people don’t turn up. We’ve gone from having 25 people in raid and a couple on standby to last night having 20 people turn up! When we struggle with the tough stuff people are whinging over vent about it.

Frankly I just assumed that this was a hard core guild and of course we will be doing hard modes. It never occurred to me that this wasn’t necessarily what other people thought of our guild. The GM posted a forum thread the other day titled “Hard Modes… Yes or No?” to gauge the guild’s interest in continued progression. I think this is a big mistake. To me if you run a guild, you have a plan and you damn well stick to it. If people don’t like it, oh well guess what? They go and join another guild that fulfils their needs.

So far the majority of comments on the thread have been YES to hard modes, but it will be interesting to see how many turn up on Sunday…..

Stay Tuned

Lath