My World of Raids

Life in Table for Ten is certainly different than Blade of Honor. It's smaller. I still know everyone and am friends with everyone. But there's no doubt it's smaller. We had a guild meeting and got the lay of the land. I now have friends all over the place. Many of these folks are in 25man raiding guilds. It's a little strange to think that I may know a lot of people in a guild that I've never done anything with.

We ran some stuff last night after the guild meeting. The Faction Champions continue to be a problem. I have to think it's because many people just don't have a PvP hat to slap on. Either that or we're missing something. And I can't dig through details because my auto-combat-logger addon wasn't configured to save for the 10man instance. I would like to see if we have enough purging, decursing, spell-stealing, etc. going on. I think some of it is just that some may not think about helping out others. The roles in PvP are a bit more overlapped and fluid than in PvE. We also seemed to lose dps off the bat a lot. For some reason in their canned mob logic, I rarely got CC'd and was usually the last alive. I'm not sure how many attempts we made, but it was about an 80g repair bill.

With an hour left to raid, we went into Ulduar and got a few achievements. Unbroken and Shutout was kinda nice. We'll do another one for towers up. I suppose we could have tried them together, but that probably should be a different stacked achievement. We also did Heartbreaker. Got it on our second try without reading strats, so I'm guessing it's pretty damn nerfed. The gun did not drop. The silly ring did.

Worst Excuses?

What's the worst excuse you've heard for leaving a group or raid? What's the worst you've used yourself?

I'll go first. Heard on vent an hour into a raid by a guildie: "I'm sorry guys, my internet seems to be down." When we sorted through that he wasn't joking he couldn't really explain himself. It was pretty funny though.

Guild Changes

About three out of every four active guildies in Blade of Honor had already left by last night. This is the guild that I've been an officer in for approximately three years. When logging in, I was receiving far far too many whispers to respond to adequately. It was the classic "tell-hell". I guess this is what happens when a guild scatters and "/g" and "/o" are no longer adequate. (We've since begun forming a channel.)

In amongst the tells, I received a few kind requests from friends and old friends to join their guilds. It was humbling.

By Tuesday I had decided that I wanted to lay low in terms of responsibilities. I didn't want the completely new. I also knew I didn't want the isolation of guild-less-ness. So last night, I joined Table for Ten, run by my friend [Chrysom]. As it's name indicates; an expressly ten man raid guild. We will be focusing on progression before Wrath ends.

I am still interested in 25man raids, but it is often too difficult for many reasons. 25man raiding guilds want a little more time than I'm willing to put in. The accomplishments can be great, but far fewer than I might like.

Interestingly enough, my top 25man raiding guild choice runs on days I will most likely not be running guild 10man raids. I don't know if they have a policy on out-of-guild substitutes. But it might be possible to scratch that itch every once in a while. I know a few of them. And it would be nicer than out-right pugging.

I'm feeling pretty free and resilient about all this. I've caught glimpses of many guilds here and there. Their guild forums, pugging in their groups and raids, listening to them on vent. I've only been in three guilds before this. One I co-GM'd for a couple years. One was only a few months. But the last was the best guild I've experienced. RIP Blades. RIP.

Excitement Can Be Sad

So, today my guild of the past three years imploded. I guess it's been imploding for a day or two already. I won't go into details. It's not from crazy drama. It's mostly from real life pressures. But it's very sad for it to come to an end. I'm wondering who will turn out the lights.

While I was in the whisper zone with remaining members, I was also in a pug trying the new VoA boss, Koralon. Got him on the second try. I think all that made me do was crack a frown though.

Gorilladin FTW

Nice job from Durante.