Category Archives: guild

amusing anecdotes, guild, raiding, screenshots, Uncategorized

Tawyn Is The Champion My Friends…

16 Comments

ChampionOfTheFrozenWastes

…toldya I’d get Malygos before Oculus. >.>

Funny story behind this whole thing actually; I’ve been sitting around needing EoE and Oculus for a really long time now. However, I haven’t had much good luck with groups.

Enter my new guild, which– have I mentioned recently that they are all exceptionally nice?– has been really itching to figure out a way to get me into some raids since my schedule does not coincide with their current progression schedule very nicely.

And so, one night when I was actually online (as opposed to mornings, when I am usually online), the guild pulled together a Malygos run… pretty much just for me, and for some guildies’ alts who also wanted the title.

Now enter the funny story. They wanted me to use Ventrilo, which is fair; I typically use Ventrilo for any raid that isn’t OS/VoA. Ventrilo doesn’t work for me on Linux so I told my guild it would be a moment while I hopped partitions over to Windows.

…guess who hasn’t used Windows since the patch? Guess what needed to download? Oh, and then guess who ran out of space on her Windows partition and had to rearrange everything?

Needless to say it was about an hour before I was actually back in game. My addons were completely borked, but at that point I figured screw it, I’d already left my poor guild waiting so long.

And so, before long I was on Ventrilo, the subject of a rather amusing (and truth be told, ongoing) name debate: TAH-win vs. TAY-win. (It’s TAH-win by the way. >.>)

And Malygos went down quite nicely! I had a screenshot of the achievement but it primarily consists of my broken addons throwing error messages in my face (no, seriously. I named it “What Your Addons See When They Die”), so yeah.

Anyways, a couple days after that, aforementioned Really Nice Guild* went to Oculus with me so I could, finally, become Champion of the Frozen Wastes.

It’s a spiffy title, if a bit long-ish, and since approximately 97.5% of the WoW population is currently using that title, I’ll probably retire it soon until a few expansions from now, when it becomes rare.

But it’s nice to have it! <3 P.S. Guess who signed up for Ulduar this week! /excited dance --- * Really Nice Guild, as it turns out, has a blog. They totally aren’t expecting me to link them, but I’m going to because I’m devious like that. /wicked grin

druid, guild, screenshots

Both Sides Now

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WoW_TamarynNaxx

The fact that we got this far, as a PuG, and on my first trip in there on my druid– and as one of just two healers for a good bulk of it, still hasn’t quite sunk in yet. Furthermore, that last Kel’Thuzad fight was one of the smoothest things I’ve ever seen, me half-asleep and yet somehow still feeling “in the zone” and Rejuv+Swiftmending those iceblocks… it felt amazing. I’m so glad I FRAPS’d it. I can’t wait to make a movie; “The Day Pike Played a Druid And Was Actually Good At It”.

…did I mention I got the [Safety Dance] achievement today too? Irony. Both my level 80s have it now o_o

Lemme tell you though, healing Naxx is nuts. It’s all improvisation. I am completely tuckered out.

Right after that was over, I hopped over to Tawyn, and was soon chucked a guild invite from the guild I was accepted to. Check it out, it lines up with my title + name and everything:

TawynOfTheRose

The second I joined I was met with several very friendly “hellos” and “welcomes” and lots of jovial banter. I felt almost bowled over with the niceness.

Also, I got a whisper from the guy who invited me. “Wanna come to our alt-run of 10-man Ulduar?”

I told him I had to go to bed because it was super late.

Bed is more important, right?

I can go to Ulduar later, right?

…riiiiiiiight? >.>

*twitches excitedly*

guild, thoughts

Nervousville, Population: Pike

18 Comments

After spending a good month or so sitting around waiting for a guild to fall in my lap, I realized I had to take matters into my own hands. Off I went, searching the realm forums in search of someone that was recruiting and that fit my criteria.

After a bit of looking I stumbled across a guild name that I’ve seen literally since I began playing WoW over two years ago. I know very little about said guild, other than the fact that they’ve been around forever, but their recruitment ad on the forums as well as their website painted them as a group of friendly and good-natured people who did stuff like roleplaying and both 10 and 25man raids! It sounded like as good a place to start as any.

Anyways I filled out an application and sent it in, and today found an in-game mail from an officer telling me that they’d liked the initial application and wanted to interview me! At that point they were in Ulduar, so I went and did other stuff and came back to do the interview later.

First thing that the interviewer said was that he’d checked out my blog (which I’d briefly mentioned in the application) and that he really liked it. I was like “x__x;; /blush”

Second thing we talked about was loot rules and how raid signups were done and both of these more than met my approval.

Third thing we talked about was how they encourage spec’ing the spec you enjoy and do well with, and raiding with that spec. This really met my approval.

Fourth thing we talked about was how the current hunter officer in that guild “Really likes BM but is frustrated about getting it to work in a raid environment”, and this somehow segued into how both her and I tend to use MM when DPS is truly needed because both of us like it better than Survival.

Fifth thing we talked about was how I instantly met the hunter officer’s approval because of said previous facts.

Then… I was accepted into the guild. They asked if I wanted an invite right then, or wanted to think about it. I told them I wanted to think about it for a day or so. Partially because I do, and partially because the thought of joining a big raiding guild without my friends sorta scares me. Oh, my friends are always there. We all have our chat channel. We all hang out outside-of-game, in Ventrilo and in AIM chats and on forums. Heck, just today three of us went on a Kara stomp (guess what failed to drop off of Attumen, again?) and it was the most fun I’d had in weeks.

But going off and joining a whole new guild filled with whole new people, for the first time ever, is still a scary prospect. I really hope I make a good impression, and almost more than that, I really hope I don’t step on anyone’s toes. I mentioned my blog a few times in the interview, in a purely logistical fashion (“Would I have the permission of the guild to occasionally post screenshots or how-to movies featuring the guild on a site that gets over a thousand hits a day”, etc.), and because of that I have this fear of coming off as some “high and mighty blogger” or something, which I don’t think I did, but I worry anyway. I probably worry too much, to tell the truth.

Honestly though, I think this may just be “the guild”. The one I have been looking for. I felt like I had a rapport with the interviewer and I really liked what I was hearing about how things were run and about how they raided. It truly weirds me out that, outside of doing Karazhan fiftybazillion times in Burning Crusade– this will be the first time I’ve really been in a raiding guild. Who knows, maybe you will be hearing Ulduar stories from me soon, if my schedule allows… o.O

guild, screenshots

Sometimes a hunter's gotta fly alone

23 Comments

wow_ambassadortawyn1

There is no longer a guild tag under my name. It was not due to any sort of drama or conflict so much as it was due to the sort of communal realization by everyone in our friends circle that a chat channel would serve our socialization needs while allowing us to, well, go off and do what we wanted to do in game. The /gquit itself was not nearly as hard as it was last time, although it was rather sudden, but I do feel somewhat lonely now. Most people left with a clear goal in mind of where they were headed, some raiding guild or other being the most common answer.

Me? Guess I’m just a leaf on the wind. Time to see if I can soar…

guild, stories, Uncategorized

Once Upon a Guild

12 Comments

Our server’s top raiding guild since forever recently disbanded, and while this doesn’t affect me personally at all, it did get me thinking a lot about my past guild. Now I’m sure the story is one I’ve told millions of times, and as such I don’t want to recount the specifics in much detail here. However, I find it interesting that months later, the emotions are still there.

My current guild is one that is made up mostly of the “closest” of us from that particular old guild. So, I still have my best friends with me. In a way, the guild still lives on. But it’s different now. It’s small, it’s “casual”; it’s more of a “hangout in guild chat” type of place. There are (well, were) guild raids, but we had to look outside the guild and invite our “honorary guildies” in. Not saying that is bad at all, by the way. It is just a different modus operandi. Lots of times I log on and I’ll be the only one online.

Back in my old guild, there were always people online. At least five or six, often ten or more, and usually a good chunk hanging out on Ventrilo as well. People were clamoring to get into our weekly Karazhan run; we usually wound up short some role or other (tanks or healers most of the time, natch) but the other roles would be overflowing and we’d have people “on standby”.

There were “cliques”. There were the people that wanted to roleplay and there were the people who wanted to raid, and for whatever reason we had very little overlap. The result was groups within our guild that would stick with each other and not branch out very much. But we were friendly and very welcoming and brought in people from everywhere; the tired, the poor, the huddled masses so to speak, which may have been the root of the problem, but we couldn’t help it. That’s just how we were.

There was drama, oh there was drama. Some of it coined a phrase which turned into a little inside joke: “It’s not just epics, it’s T4!” due to the issues that ensued more than once when somebody– usually a guild newbie– would throw a fit after not getting that coveted token from Curator or Prince. I can’t remember whether or not this was our fault on just not making loot rules clear enough, but I do remember the drama that ensued.

There was burnout. Officers who felt overwhelmed by their duties. Active guild members who disappeared or went on hiatus. One of these “active members” disappeared relatively early on in the guild’s youth; when he finally came back towards its twilight weeks he looked around for a day or two and realized the guild was no longer the same guild, and quietly left. He was right, though.

Because somewhere along the way we had in fact turned into something different. Like an Oscar seeing a Needlefish from behind and assuming it’s a minnow (I have seen this happen at work by the way; don’t laugh at my analogy! >.>), we had bitten off more than we could chew. Tossed a snowball down a hill and found ourselves unable to stop it.

And so it was that the guild turned into sort of a big mess and my friends started leaving one by one and then the boyfriend (and guild leader) gave leadership to me in an attempt to see if I could salvage it, but it was really too far gone by that point. Plus, I didn’t like logging into the guild anymore since it now just seemed to be full of unfamiliar faces, so I spent the bulk of my time hiding on alts on other servers. Eventually I realized that this was just acerbating the problem so I passed guild leadership to a friend, hoping things would be fixed. Again, it didn’t happen. Most of my friends had already /gquit and not long after this my boyfriend did too, and while I hung on for a while I finally, late one night, quietly left myself– one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Not long after that, the guild dissolved.

warcraftrealmstawyn

I spent a few weeks guildless as I pondered what to do before realizing that my friends were actually the main reason I enjoyed the game and so I joined most of my closer friends from that first guild in our new, small guild. I’m happy now. Guild chat is sparse, but friendly; we still have the same Ventrilo server, although it is quieter now; and the biggest job the officers have is to come up with the wittiest possible theme for guild ranks. Plus, I seem to have fallen into the aforementioned “honorary guildie” status with a few other guilds to allow me to get my raiding in. Life is good.

Still, there are times when I miss what we once were. Being a part of something huge and big and seemingly omnipresent. Feeling like I was helping to lead a well-oiled machine. The machine fell apart in those last months, which is why it all started to go downhill. But at our peak, we really were something.

It was a train wreck waiting to happen, but like your first love, you can never quite get over it anyway. So here’s to you, Entelechy, wherever you are in the nether of the past.

entelechyposter3

guild, screenshots, Uncategorized

LFM to play with minipets in Naxx, PST

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wow_whenyouarebored

I had a Naxx run scheduled for last night with my guild– unfortunately it failed to ignite due largely to scheduling problems and the result was a bunch of us hanging out in the instance playing around with minipets and toys for about an hour before we decided to just scrap it.

Here is where I start talking about something tragically ironic: specifically, the fact that right as work has finally decided to give me a schedule that would enable me to raid with my own guild and not random groups… my guild has ran into a bit of a wall. People are having schedule issues, people are more interested in playing alts, people are burned out… that sort of thing. I am not trying to say that any of this is bad, by the way, just that it’s terribly ironic timing for me that my guild has effectively stopped doing much raiding now that I am available.

The boyfriend has branched off (on good terms with all, so don’t get confused) and made a new guild and while I don’t want to steal his thunder by talking about it prematurely, he hopes to make it a more “serious” raiding guild as opposed to the more “casual” groups he’s been leading the past few months. Whether or not I’d be interested myself is something I’m actually still thinking about. I have never considered myself to be much of a hardcore raider. Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy raiding, but I enjoy my heroics and my alts and my silly sidehobbies like minipets every bit as much. When I do raid, it’s because I enjoy spending a relaxing night with friends or at least nice people, having fun and not worrying about things like complicated loot rules. As such, I don’t know if I could dedicate myself to “serious raiding”, especially since my job could decide to rescind my latest scheduling luck without notice whenever they want to.

So, while I’m going to continue to try to push myself into Naxx runs with PuGs or other guilds, with the goal of ultimately providing good blogwriting fodder, my own future as it comes to raiding is somewhat unclear. I’d love to raid casually with my current guild but as the philosopher Jagger once said, you can’t always get what you want.

In the meantime, while my raid future sits around in limbo as I wait to see how things go with my guild, the boyfriend’s new guild, and my own schedule, I’m having a lot of fun playing alts. My horde hunter Lunapike and my resto druid Tamaryn are both level 72– I’ve purposefully kept them neck-and-neck rather than picking one to grind to 80 and I’m having a lot of fun seeing the same zones from different perspectives.

Have a good weekend all!

guild

Well… that's that.

18 Comments

I left my guild today.

The one I’ve been in for a year, the one I co-led for months and eventually led myself for a few months as well. The one I leveled with since Zul’Farrak. The one I ran Karazhan with, for the first time. I mouse over all my gear in Armory and don’t see loot as much as I see items obtained from heroics and raids that I ran with my guildies. Each item has a story to tell.

More and more of those people have left the guild and I don’t know, these past few weeks I’ve logged on, looked around, and realized I simply didn’t know anybody anymore. So it was with a deep breath and a final sigh that I one-by-one kicked my alts and then /gquit.

I don’t really know where I’m going next. I am, I suppose, a freelancer now. I’m not particularly interested in another guild at the moment largely because I am essentially unable to raid with any regularity, so I wouldn’t want to promise myself to a new guild. I’ve considered making a “Casualish Level 70 Hunter LF Guild, Willing to Transfer” post on this blog to see what sort of interest I’d garner, but I also have a hard time envisioning myself leaving Silver Hand and my friends there (though I’d never say never), and yeah, I think I might wanna fly solo for a while.

It was a good year.

But you know what they say about all good things.


Best of luck, Entelechy.

guild

Letting Go

10 Comments

When I first took over guild-leadership of my guild from my boyfriend, I was relatively certain I could do it. Unfortunately, as time went on, I found that it was not to be. Being a Guild Leader requires a lot of time and energy to devote to the guild, and I had neither; my work schedule makes it near-impossible to be online during peak hours and even on my days off I am prone to hanging out on different servers, alt’ing around– that’s just how I am.

It got to the point where I would log on and people would ask me about guild ranks, the guild bank, or other important stuff and I would have to say “…I don’t know.” It was rather embarrassing. The guild leader doesn’t know what’s going on with her guild? It was true, though. It worried me a lot; I felt like I was doing a poor job as Guild Leader. And on top of that, I have never been much of a “Leader” type person. All that stress was making it hard for me to enjoy the game.

So, not too long ago, I made a thread on our guild forums stating that I was resigning from guild leadership. A good friend and long-time officer has taken over for me. I’m glad that it was able to work out that way, because I feel that a lot of pressure has been taken off of me, but it’s also awkward to watch, at the same time.

The face of the guild has changed a lot in the past few months. People that defined the guild in the early days have left and new people have come. We have had an official “guild clear” of Karazhan now– which I couldn’t attend, because our raid times fall during my work hours– and now that I think about it I don’t think a single person who was in that recent “guild clear” was part of that initial group of us that started raiding way back in the beginning. It’s kind of weird and very surreal to think about.

My officers basically took over for me a few months ago when I made it clear that I wouldn’t be around very often, and now that I have stepped down, it has been made even more official: ranks have changed, guild policies have changed, this guild is no longer at least partially “my” guild the way it was back when my boyfriend and I were co-leading it. I’m not going to say it’s a bad change, and I do think the officers are doing a solid job– but it’s very different, and somewhat awkward to deal with.

It’s hard to say what Tawyn’s future is at this point; what the guild’s future is and whether the two of them will continue to coincide. A part of me would like to try to squeeze into more raids and at least get Epic’d out before WotLK hits, so I can say I did it; another part of me knows that will be hard to do with my schedule and sort of doesn’t really care enough to work around it. We will just have to see.

Now I promise it’s not all doom’n’gloom, in fact, mostly I’ve been having a blast. I still adore the game and my hunters and I am excited about the prospect of my second level 70. Thinking back on it, after the initial “Just-dinged-70-funk” wore off, the process of getting geared for Karazhan was one of my most enjoyable experiences in WoW and I’m looking forward to doing it again.

And in other news, I still don’t have a Beta invite yet. Not that I’m dying for one– in fact I feel like I have too much left to do in Burning Crusade to focus on Beta– (not to mention a lot of awesome hunter blogs have been thoroughly covering it already; I like being one of the remaining non-Beta hunter blogs) but gosh, I’m starting to feel like the kid Blizz picked last in gym class! =P

alterac valley, guild, linux, pvp, screenshots

The Roleplaying Raiders. Or the Raiding Roleplayers, mayhaps.

14 Comments

I apologize for the lack of updates these past few days. I have a semi-valid reason, I promise:

It all started a week or two back. I think I’ve mentioned before that our guild is interesting in that it is a newer guild with quite a few people who are all in the same level range– currently mostly mid-60s (and now 70).

We have also discovered that we like instancing together, a lot. We make a very good little team.

Anyways. A week or two back somebody mentioned something about Serpentshrine Cavern. Someone else said “Yeah, it’ll be a loooong time before we get to that.” “Wait, isn’t that like… a 25-main raid?” “Yep.”

…

And then somebody said it. “You know… we should become a raiding/roleplaying combo guild.”

And everybody liked that idea.

So here we are, Entelechy, a guild full of roleplayers who have never done end-game before (or even hit 70 before), slowly keying up for Karazhan a year behind everybody else, and thinking we should do raids.

Crazy? Maybe. Awesome? Yes. We’re gonna try it.

Now to why I haven’t made any posts for a few days. Basically it was decided that if we’re going to be a raiding guild, we need a Ventrilo server. (We have also wanted one for a while just to mess around and have fun with each other.) So we got one set up a few days ago. Problem: Pike runs Linux. Ventrilo does not play well with Linux.

Cue a few-day-long geekathon where Pike desperately tries to get Ventrilo and Linux playing nicely. Hardly any WoW. Just a lot of Dr. Pepper and keyboard pounding inbetween work shifts.

The sad news is that the whole attempt was pretty futile; it turns out there is some weird problem going on in my computer where microphones are not registered. I was able to get Ventrilo up and running, simultaneously with WoW with no slowdown, even… but it was pretty pointless if nobody could hear me talk, even if I could hear them. And the problem was complicated enough that I think it’s beyond my meager abilities, at least for now. In the meantime, I still wanted a way to get on Vent so we could start practicing instancing while voice-chatting.

…so, I took a deep breath, sucked it up, and stuck a little Windows XP partition on my hard drive. I copied the WoW folder over, installed Vent, and… there ya go. I now have two different WoW installations, one on Linux and one on Windows. As much as it pains me to say it… I logged into Tawyn on Windows today. My initial impression was that it was pretty much exactly the same as on Linux with Wine. My second impression was that something was off somehow, which I couldn’t quite put my foot on… the mouse was moving differently, or something. But, I’m dealing with it.

I’m on Linux now and it will remain my main operating system. I’ll hop over to Windows when I’m instancing or get bored and want to dork around with the guildies for a little bit. But the rest of my WoW’ing and computer’ing in general will remain on Linux. And hopefully I can figure out the microphone problem at some point, and come back to “pure” Linux. A pop filter was my solution. It helps to eradicate popping noises which are created by the mechanical impact of quick moving air on the microphone throughout recorded speech and singing.

So that is why I haven’t been around much.

I have one more story to tell. There is a level 70 hunter in my guild who is… maybe just a little less geared than I am, and his spec is similar to mine (though not the same– there are a few notable and interesting differences). We both have the same ranged and melee weapons, except I’ve got Savagery on my axe and he doesn’t. He’s got a windserpent and I’ve got a cat.

We dueled today about… six times. And he won four of them. Rather resoundingly, too, a few times.

We had a good chat afterwards about the results and how we thought they may have come about. Because the duels really seemed to be going either way. To be completely honest he is a very good hunter and it caught me off guard. I’d never really seen him play his hunter before, usually he’s tanking for us on his warrior. So I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Anyways we compared specs and gear and strategies and had a chat. Here are my thoughts:

-Windserpents seriously do this thing where they pop up next to you and take you by surprise and throw you off, that’s what they seemed to do to me anyway. His strategy is to dump as much focus onto his Windserpent as he can so it can spam Lightning Breath, so I was on the receiving end of that, too. Oh, and the thing about the big wings… yeah. So hard to target the other guy when something’s flapping in your face. Definitely time to bring Tux to 70 (he’s halfway through 67, currently) and make him the Official PvP Pet.

– He’s a draenei and would use Gift of the Naaru on himself right when the duel began. He also has Spirit Bond. So he was regen’ing health the whole time.

– I kept trying to use my attack-power-boosting trinket without realizing I’d forgotten to equip it. Whoopsie… *shifty eyes*

– Also, he somehow has a different strategy than most hunters I go up against in PvP, but I’ve still got to figure out exactly what it is (clearly more research is required!)

Anywho, why am I telling you all this? Because if you play a draenei hunter and/or you have a windserpent these are awesome new PvP tips for you! I’m sort of jealous of the Gift of the Naaru thing. Granted, he told me a new tip about Shadowmelding at the beginning of the duel to annoy people while your pet eats them (haha) so it’s a fair tradeoff.

After the duels though, I was feeling the urge to hone my skills because he’d won more times than I’d won and it was inspiring me to PvP and get better. So I went to AV.


Hey look, Alliance on Bloodlust actually won a “New AV” game and it was the daily too… yes I know, don’t go into shock… but aside from that, I’ve got 239 honorable kills. And that’s with the omnipresent Valanos’s Longbow. I can’t wait for an upgrade. That’s what I’m saving up Honor for next, that ridiculous Crossbow. I can’t help myself. I’m in love.

Hmm. Sorry that this post sort of rambled on and on and covered at least three different subjects. That’s what happens when I put off making a post for too long. In summary: I like my guild, I like my Linux (honest!) and, when it’s not frustrating the heck out of me, I like PvP.

And two more quick things: Armory is working again! My unbuffed crit is so very very close to 20%.

And a HUGE SHOUTOUT to Moonglo for coming to visit me on Silver Hand. You guys are all great.

groups, guild, instances

Instances and Groups

6 Comments

The other day I wound up in a partial-PuG and partial-guildies group for Steamvaults. This was probably not a wise idea for many reasons, including the fact that it’s a level 70 instance and we were all hovering around level 68, and as it turned out… the PuG members were rather… less than ideal.

I went into it really wanting to do a good job, because the healer whispered me and begged me to be a good hunter, he told me that the last five or so hunters he’d grouped with had been horrible. So of course, this is where Pike’s HUNTER-PRIDE ACTIVATED! And I told him not to worry. But it just wasn’t meant to be. We were wiping on every other pull, we were having issues with the PuG’d people, gigantic annoying plants kept blocking everybody’s vision, and overall it just wasn’t working. So we scrapped the run.

We still wanted to do an instance, though, so we said goodbye to the PuG-players and picked up people from our guild to flesh out our little party. This particular party now was one that we had all been in many times before– our usual tank, our usual healer, and I as the usual CC, etc. We decided to do Escape from Durnholde Keep.

How was the instance run? Well, by most standards, I think, it went pretty well. We had a couple problems and a couple wipes (one of which was entirely my fault, by the way; it involved me not paying attention and running blindly around a corner straight into a bunch of mobs) and a couple near-wipes, but overall the run went well; all the group members were fulfilling their role’s function to above-satisfactory levels and for the most part, everything went smoothly.

However, we all left the instance feeling sort of less-than-satisfied and thinking we could have done a lot better.

It was kind of odd, but then I thought about it and I started thinking: maybe it’s just the fact that our group has worked together so many times before. We’ve grown a sort of synergy with each other, and developed high expectations of each other, and acknowledge that there are high expectations on us as individual group members; so when a run isn’t 100% flawless, we sort of beat ourselves up over it. That’s my guess over why we felt so unsatisfied.

I’m still trying to decide if those high-expectations are a good thing for a guild or group to have, or if it might cause issues down the road if everyone is striving for “that perfect run” and it is always a little bit out of our reach. We are a very laid-back social and light-roleplaying guild, but we also have a core group of higher-level instance-running members and our expectations for instance-running people are pretty high. I hope that’s the right attitude to have and that it doesn’t cause problems later on. I can’t say, because this is my first time around, so I can really just hope.

Anyways, I hit level 69 last night. It’s very surreal how close I am to 70…

Oh, and before I forget: Escape from Durnholde Keep is the coolest instance idea ever. I ran around Old Hillsbrad for about a half hour after the instance was done, geeking out over the lore.