Guild Leadership Archives - Page 44 of 108

Amon’s Pants

November 15, 2014November 14, 2014 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff Episode 2

Since I was sick yesterday I decided to go ahead and wrap up the last bits of editing needed to push the latest episode of Bel Folks Stuff out the door. While editing I had this strange trip into the past, as I had recorded the podcast a few weeks ago. We talked about news… in speculative terms that have long since been resolved. So my important lesson is that I really should not sit in a show as long as I have with this series. The end result feels a little strange, like we are looking into the past and seeing what our thoughts were like on a subject a couple of weeks ago. In any case it was an enjoyable episode to record, and I am fairly proud of this side project as a whole. However it is causing me to rethink my plans to record the next episode now… that I wouldn’t actually release until mid December.

In this episode I am joined by the illustrious Rowan Blaze of the I Have Touched the Sky blog and a frequent guest on the Beyond the Veil podcast covering The Secret World. In an interesting change to the format of the first show… we also had a second guest with us… thought due to some technical constraint she was not extremely chatty. Scooter is Rowan’s awesome wife and constant companion both in game and out. Since one of the more interesting tidbits of his blog is the fact that he is almost always chronicling their adventures together rather than apart. He suggested we include her in the discussion, and I think it turned out to be a fairly brilliant idea. Once again there was not a really strict format, and as I said before… some of the information is a bit dated now… but in any case I think it was a good effort well worth your time.

Amon’s Pants

In the weeks after the release of the 2.4 patch, I have been spending most of my time in Syrcus Tower. On the average night I have been running it between 2 and 5 times an evening. At this point I can literally run the place in my sleep… and on more than a few of the runs I am pretty sure I dozed off at some point around Sylla and finally woke up when we were taking down Amon. I’ve been running the raid for several reasons… but primarily to complete the ilevel 100 dragoon set. I started off with extremely good luck, gathering up most of a set within the first few nights. This all had a side benefit of also gathering up quite a few Sands and Oils and enough Unidentified Allagan Tomestones to outfit an army of alts. I reached a point where all that was left were the pants, and that had been the state I was in for the last three weeks. I managed to see them drop a few times, but in all three of those occasions… there was another dragoon and the RNG gods decided to smite me.

Normally speaking Syrcus Tower goes extremely smoothly, as most of the server has reached a point where they are using it as a way to farm oils and sands… and the occasional piece of alternate job gear. In truth most of these runs are actually rather friendly, with folks willing to lend a hand to those just learning. This particular run however was the exact opposite of the spirit I normally experience. For a moment I thought that maybe I was in another game, because I saw the same sort of petty name calling and infighting that I had experienced so many times in the World of Warcraft Looking for Raid tool. It took us no less than four times to finally be able to beat Amon… and when we did there sitting in the loot window were my pants. This time however there were no other dragoons in my party to ruin my day. Never again do I have to run Syrcus Tower as a Dragoon… but that just means I will likely start running it as a bard and working on that set of gear. I might have an issue with grinding things.

Garrisons are Great

I reached a point last night with my Garrison where I finally decided it was a pretty amazing thing. Not that you can really clearly make out what I am doing in the above screenshot… but this is Belghast my Warrior Engineer Enchanter… mining ore. For years I have struggled with my decision to level both enchanting and engineering on the same character. The lack of mining has always been something I have struggled with… but there is a long story behind how I ended up in this predicament. Primarily Belghast started his life as an Enchanter/Tailor because that was a combination of trade skills that I was missing. Then I got serious about raiding… and hit a drought when our raid was clearing Tier 5 content in Burning Crusade. I could not for the life of me get a helm upgrade… and there sitting on the crafting table was the insanity of engineering goggles. At that point they were Tier 6 equivalent… so I made the decision to gather up all the resources and in a single afternoon I dropped tailoring and leveled engineering to the then cap.

While the mine respawn seems extremely long… it still gives me access to gather ore and slowly progress my engineering a little bit while I level. Additionally I am finding the follower missions to be extremely enjoyable. Last night I managed to reach rank two with my town hall, which allowed for a larger selection of plots. As such I now have placed an Engineering plot, Enchanting Plot, replaced the Barracks with a Dwarven Bunker, and kept the Inn with the hopes of upgrading it to rank 2 and recruiting random followers. Essentially on Belghast I am pretty much trying to go with all the “killing stuff in the world has interesting effects” buildings. Since well… I like charging around the map killing things. My hope is that with things like the Dwarven Bunker giving me an increased chance of getting Rares and Epics… I will actually get some stuff I can use. I feel like I have a much larger post entirely devoted to Warlords of Draenor in me, so I will save further information for tomorrows post. Needless to say I am enjoying myself.

That Dad is Okay

I really did not talk much about this next thing, but today I am thankful that my father made it through surgery fine and seems to be improving. For the last several months my father has had a rather scary condition that they originally thought was causing his eyeball to swell up in size. After much investigation, and a slew of specialists it was determined that what was actually happening was that his eye was being pressed forward… giving it the appearance of growth. As it got worse however, he lost his ability to do most things like drive… as ultimately he was always trying to manually reconcile the two images he was seeing at all times. He tried not to let on that it bothered him, but as the months drug on you could tell he was absolutely miserable.

Finally this week a specialist provided a plan of attack, and he went from having a consultation on Tuesday to having full blown surgery on Thursday. Thankfully everything went as planned and to the best of anyone’s knowledge there were no complications. I talked to dad over text this morning and his vision continues to improve. In fact I was shocked that moments after the surgery he was able to see normally again and read signs. It has been a scary time for my family, not knowing quite what was going to happen. As such I am so thankful that things turned out well. One of my biggest fears is the loss of my sight, and I know my father shares that fear. While he never wanted to let on just how frightened he was… I am sure he must have been. I am also thankful that once again we get to share our love of books.

Collaborate Not Compete

November 13, 2014 by Belghast

For Azeroth

Last night while I slept Warlords of Draenor launched in the United States. Once again the launch time was based on Pacific Standard Time meaning that it occurred at 2 in the morning for me. I actually got to see some play last night from Qelric, due to the fact that this time it actually launched ahead of time for our European friends. I think it is pretty awesome that finally it launched for them at the same time it was slotted to launch in other territories, it just meant that they technically got a head start. In part I think this decision was influenced by the fact that with this expansion they have completely removed the concept of world and server firsts. So while folks are hustling around like mad, presently there are nine people online in guild for example… there really isn’t much of a broader point to it.

I think removing the world and server firsts was a good step, but I think it is so ingrained into the Warcraft culture to rush headlong towards the finish line. My hope is that this will at least cause some of the players to slow down and enjoy the journey. That said I realize I will probably level quickly… because I always seem to level quickly. This is more of a necessity this time around since I am actively juggling two different games and trying to be available for grouping in both. Unfortunately I will not really get to experience Draenor until after work, though I have popped in this morning to at least take a screenshot of the trio standing outside the Dark Portal. I must admit that while I played in Alpha… nothing I did actually felt real. This time around I will be actually working on things like Garrisons permanently, so I think a lot of the stickiness of this expansion will have more effect.

Awesome Communities

The other day I made a connection that I had failed to grasp until then, when a friend from twitter pointed something out to me. For weeks I have been talking about just how amazing the community has been playing Final Fantasy XIV. It is the little things, like the fact that the other morning I zoned into North Shroud looking for the B Rank Phecda. It has been common place for me to /shout in zone asking if anyone has seen the spawn. I had a pretty quick response from a player who not only gave me the location, but also hung out at the spawn point to help me kill it… even though she didn’t need the kill. Then a good ten minutes later, another person sent me a tell asking if I still needed it, because they just ran past the big bear. This little Vignette plays out over and over… and I have added so many random strangers to my friends list through casual interaction like this. There is this global sense that we are all in things together that I cherish.

If I had to rattle off the four best server communities I have been part of it would have to be Cactuar in Final Fantasy XIV, Landroval in Lord of the Rings Online, The Secret World (mega server), and Antonia Bayle in Everquest II. In each case there have been so many positive random encounters that make living in those worlds enjoyable. I’ve had completely random strangers run up to me in Bree on Landroval offering me crafted goods to help my leveling process. I’ve had folks offer me a group during the various Everquest II holiday events, that then turn into multiple hour long treks through the world. I’ve had random strangers stop me in the Secret World to tell me that they liked my outfit, and ask where I got various bits of it. These casual interactions remind me of the way servers used to feel back during the early days when the MMOs were a little less “massive”.

Collaborate Not Compete

It was around this time in our conversation that my friend pointed a thread of connection between all of these games that I had never really noticed myself. None of those games have real and meaningful faction rivalries. Sure in The Secret World and Everquest II you have certain alliances, but largely this work out to be personal choices. Being Templar versus being Illuminati is largely just a flavor choice, since from the moment you get out of London or New York you are grouping together and communicating freely. Games like Final Fantasy XIV and Lord of the Rings online don’t even have these artificial divisions. From the moment you start playing any of these games, you are instilled with this spirit that all of the players are ultimately battling something more sinister than they can imagine. So it makes perfect sense to lend another player a helping hand along the way, since you are not competing against each other in any meaningful way.

There might be a certain measure of self sorting going on when it comes to players of these games as well. Since none of the four really have a strong PVP aspect, that flavor of super competitive player is just not interested in playing them. That means you are left with a more collaborative “role-playing server crowd” type player. Ultimately this shared struggle, and spirit of cooperation has always been why I have self sorted myself onto Role-Playing servers, because in general this type of player is more prevalent there. Essentially what I am coming to realize is that the awesome communities that I have held out as paragons against normal online gaming horribleness… all exist for pretty similar reasons. They are all environments that teach the players to get along with each other, rather than compete.

Collaborative Environments

To tie into today’s post, I am thankful that games exist that teach players to work together rather than work against each other. So many games set up an artificial conflict between players, and try desperately to draw them into it. As I said in my “Sandboxes and Sheep” post, these artificial faction boundaries have no meaning to me personally. I have no real emotional ties to the Horde or the Alliance, other than the fact that I mostly chose Alliance because that is where the Dwarves were. However this decision did not immediately make me hate the horde, in fact I have 11 Alliance characters on Argent Dawn… and 11 Horde characters on The Scyers… the realm that is connected to Argent Dawn. Over years of playing on that server I made just as many friendships across the faction barrier as I did within my own pool of players. In fact one of my key problems with World of Warcraft has always been that it made us choose sides in a war that was largely meaningless to us.

All of this is the reason why I am thankful that there are games that have transcended faction. I was hugely impressed when Rift decided to abandon the artificial conflict with their “Faction as Fiction” patch removing the hard lines between Defiant and Guardian. I think as a whole that game has been greatly improved for doing so. More than that however I am thankful for the games that never put up those walls in the first place. Eorzea is this wonderful land where the races don’t always get along, but they are not openly warring either… because the writers have created a threat so great that in its face… squabbles seem petty. After talking this whole situation through, I feel like this sort of environment really does breed a player willing to help others freely. It is for that spirit, that I am thankful for. If you are actively making your community better, you are doing awesome work.

Carried through Garrosh

November 12, 2014 by Belghast

Strange Days

Of all of the things that I had planned to do yesterday, the events that unfolded were completely unforeseen. As it was Veterans day yesterday, I was off and took care of a few things around the house. Namely considering the extreme dip in temperature I wanted to get the heating and air guys out to do our winter check up. We have an air conditioning unit from 1980 the year our house was built, and it continues to limp along valiantly. At one point we had discussed getting a new unit, but the good folks from our heating and air company informed us that we were simply better off to just keep limping along with the one we had. Apparently they do not make units quite like the one we have any longer. So as a result we have paid for a yearly maintenance contract that mostly involves a winter and spring checkup. When things break, and they have in the past we get deep discounted parts and labor while under contract. The cool thing is that there have been a lot of little things that they simply did not charge us for, so I feel like overall it is a good plan.

Wow-64 2014-11-11 09-42-42-476 While waiting on the heating and air guy to show up, I spent a good deal of time running dungeons and raids in Final Fantasy XIV. Since Rae was off as well we managed to get her a Sunken Temple of Qarn run and would have gotten Snowcloak but she had still not done the Ramuh fight, so at last check was still catching up to the main storyline. Since I had been kicking around the notion of playing some World of Warcraft with the launch of Warlords of Draenor, I decided I should probably poke around in game and at the very least do the precursor quest out in the blasted lands. The quest chain itself was rather enjoyable, as you assist Murad in staving back the tide of Iron Horde that have come through the portal. I think Murad is going to be the character we get the closest to during the course of this expansion. Essentially I feel he is going to be this expansions Chen Stormstout as it were, and I am okay with this notion especially after seeing the motivation behind why he acts he way he does.

Carried through Garrosh

While fiddling around in game I bumped into so many people that were shocked to see me online. I joked that they were just seeing a shadow, and that I wasn’t really playing World of Warcraft. Mostly I don’t want people to think I am “back” because the last two times I have showed up in game… it didn’t last for terribly long. I was just there long enough for folks to get accustomed to relying on me for things again, and I really don’t want to disappoint them once more. Damai has done an awesome job of holding things together in the guild. In the time since the launch of Warlords of Draenor he has fallen into the role of General, keeping the raid group moving forward and organizing weekly flex raids to help pull up folks that didn’t quite have the gear to do larger things. He popped into the game while I was roaming about and said “you should really come get your Garrosh weapon tonight.” I of course protested, saying I was unprepared and undergeared… but he waved away all of this notions and said that I just needed to show up.

I figured what the hell did I have to lose. I knew the Siege of Orgrimmar raid at least somewhat form doing the LFR incarnation, and I had no firm plans for that evening. Last night was to be their final time running Garrosh, and one of the final times available to get the heirloom weapons from it. So after not having played WoW for at least six months I found myself getting pulled into the final raid of this current expansion. To make matters even more interesting, apparently we were doing Heroic Siege of Orgrimmar. In Damai’s words “Heroic is the new Normal” and as we got underway it certainly seemed as such… that is until I actually attempted to dps anything. Essentially it was through a combination of skill and gear that they were able to make everything look this easy, and clearly I had neither. In fact I brought Belghast, one of the last characters I had managed to push up to 90 organically and had not really geared much. He was sitting at 496 ilevel before walking into the instance, and through the course of the evening that improved to 540. I quite literally soaked up almost a full set of gear, and now he is in a far better place for the purpose of leveling in the expansion.

Rift Repaired

I’ve talked some about the Rift that existed when I returned to the game last time. I fought hard to try and mend it, but ultimately failed. What I did do apparently however was start to break down the walls between the factions within. It seems that once the two warring captains had moved on to other things… one of them to a mythic raid, and another to move on to his own guild… things seem to have repaired themselves. It seems as though there has been somewhat of a “Pax Stalwartia” as folks have flourished once the drama went away. I would like to think it was the forcing of sides to talk that helped this along, but really I think I was more of a hinderance than a help. I actively tried to keep the pieces of the puzzle together, when I should have surgically cut the damage limb from the guild. I have a problem with never quite wanting to give up on someone, that I keep seeing the best intentioned version of them buried deep under the bullshit.

Maybe if I had never shown back up, we would have reached a state of peace faster, or maybe the guild would have quite literally cleaved in two… I will never actually know. That is the fate that the guild seemed to be heading towards when I returned… two factions, one of which would win the guild, and the other would be exiled. Instead now we have the bulk of the guild cooperating together, and only a few ended up leaving. In any case I was extremely proud last night to see everything going so amazingly smoothly. It was a supremely odd sensation to be carried to victory on the backs of the guild that I founded ten years ago. I can’t take responsibility for last night, other than that long ago I set the wheels in motion and caused these people to meet each other. More or less I have been gone since the beginning of Cataclysm, and in that time they have really done amazing things as a team.

Pax Stalwartia

Maybe last night was what I needed to see. For some time Rylacus had told me that things had improved in the guild, but I didn’t want to believe it. I have talked many times about never being able to go back. If I could teleport to those days in Late Night Raiders, or Duranub Raiding Company… or even No Such Raid… I would have. Last night felt like a mix of all of these rolled together. Folks were jovial and happy, and not a single person got grumpy when we wiped. They enjoyed the presence of one another, and enjoyed what they were doing. There was so much excited talk about what was to come in the expansion, and tentative plans to raid come December 2nd when the raid opens. It did my soul good to see this happening. I feel like they deserve me going into this with an open mind, because maybe home does still exist after you leave it.

All of this said, my heart still belongs to Eorzea, and the amazing community that I have found on Cactuar. I have so many goals that I want to accomplish there, and we have this amazing mass of folks gathered. I am never going to play just one game, it isn’t in my nature. So while I am “playing” Rift, and by that I mean logging in every single day to run my minions on missions… I am not really “playing” the game. Nor am I really playing most of the games I log into periodically. For the time being I think I am going to be playing Final Fantasy XIV and allowing myself to also play some World of Warcraft at the same time. I find it comforting that both House Stalwart and Greysky Armada exist… and both are completely different guilds. I’ve left my mark permanently on both, and I think both are really amazing places to play. What I find the most comforting however is that in both cases I am not responsible for their destiny. That in both cases the guilds are taking care of themselves.

Old Friends

Last night was this strange trip down memory lane as I experienced folks in a way that I have not since the beginning of Cataclysm. So many of my friendships from World or Warcraft were forged in battle, and in a way it took battle once again for me to really remember why we were friends in the first place. I am thankful to have a group of friends that are still out there, keeping on without me. That seem to be willing to accept me for whatever I happen to be at the moment, and welcome me back time and time again with open arms. I am extremely lucky to have lots of pools of these kinds of friends scattered from game to game, that are happy to see me show up, and don’t hold a grudge against me when I ultimately leave. It is comforting to know that the universe is just fine in the absence of your presence.

I realize that might sound like a strange thing, that I am happy to not be needed. You have to realize however that all I ever wanted was for House Stalwart to give them a framework upon which to do awesome things. So much of my time in Vanilla, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King was spent being a catalyst, and enabling things that didn’t happen when I wasn’t around. The guild was absolutely a cult of personality, and when the personality went away… people didn’t interact at all. So to see this guild that functions entirely without me being around, makes me happier than anyone would really know. I am thankful to have all these awesome people step up and take over the mantle of leadership. I have never been happier to be obsolete in my life, and it is my hope that I can continue to be so for a very long time.

Great Time to Start

November 7, 2014 by Belghast

Good Time to Return

This weekend is going to be a huge hyped filled occasion, and twitter will be full of news trickling out of Blizzcon from the stable of Blizzard games. However if you are not enthralled by that I have something to entertain you as well. With not surprising timing, Square Enix has announced that this weekend that officially started at midnight PST all players who have ever played Final Fantasy XIV will be able to return and play for free until midnight PST on the 10th. This means if you have the client already you just have to patch it up, if you do not have the client however thankfully Square Enix makes that relatively easy to find as well. I literally just typed in “Final Fantasy XIV Client” and was taken directly to the easy to find download link. Additionally if you are a Steam user, you can download a “demo” of the game which should download the full client as well.

For the my own purposes and the purpose of linking to friends I have maintained a playlist on my youtube account that contains each of the major patch trailers. Square does an amazing job of highlighting all of the content that they add into the game during these trailers, and some of them are over ten minutes long showing off new features. It has been two weeks now since the release of the 2.4 patch that added in a round of new stuff including the brand new Rogue class and Ninja job. This admittedly has thrown the world out of whack a bit, and be warned that DPS queues in the duty finder are a bit longer than normal… however this appears to be coming down rapidly as folks finish leveling their rogues and start playing the endgame. The positive is that this has been a slow trickle and the server is still super active with FATEs actually viable in practically every zone. This is also booned a bit by the improved Atma drop rates, making folks willing to work on Atma weapons for alts. If you haven’t played in awhile… none of what I just said probably made much sense… but just know that these are good things.

Great Time To Start

If you have never played Final Fantasy XIV before, it is now the perfect time to start as well. For starters there has been a 14 day trial system in place for a few months now, allowing you to get in and play for free. If you prefer to go through steam I believe clicking the demo option will do the same thing… but I am not sure how the billing works through steam. In theory everything has to go through the Mogstation, which admittedly the worst part of playing any Square Enix game is dealing with their extremely confusing account management system. The reason why it is such a great time to start is that right now until November 12th, Steam has the complete Final Fantasy XIV game for half off. That means the normal version is only $12.49 and the Collectors Edition that comes with a bunch of spiffy stuff including the adorable Fat Chocobo mount among other things is only $22.49. This seems like an absolutely insane deal, and I may have ninja gifted the game to a few people yesterday as a result.

One thing of note, in the world gone mad with F2P games… this is a traditional subscription model. One interesting twist however is that there is something called an “Entry” subscription that is $12.99 a month and allows you to play a single character per server. In truth this tends to be the sweet spot for most people, as you really only need one character in the game period. The job system allows you to swap back and forth between many roles at will, allowing that one character to do damned near everything there is in the game. For example right now my character Belghast Sternblade is a 50 marauder, 50 gladiator, 50 archer, 50 lancer, 40 conjurer, 33 pugilist, 26 thaumaturge, 19 arcanist, 15 rogue and 35 miner. So for awhile I have considered dialing back to the one character account because the likelihood that I will ever care about another character on my server is supremely unlikely.

Better For Not Being Free To Play

Yesterday I had a bunch of folks say essentially the same thing. “I would be excited if this was free to play”, which frustrates me a little bit… but I can see saying it. There are some games that free to play would ruin, because in truth the “free” aspect of that name is generally a bold faced lie. Sure there is some stuff you can do for free, but at the end of the day everyone needs to make money to keep their doors open. As I have watched games go f2p, I have watched two things happen. Either they greatly slow down the pace of content releases, or they start erecting paid walls between you and that content. In truth ONE of the two has to happen or quite frankly the companies end up going out of business. The once lightning pace that content dropped for Rift players feels like it has slowed to a trickle. Then you have games like Star Wars the Old Republic where each and every thing in the game has some price tag associated with it.

The thing that has impressed me the most with Final Fantasy XIV is the pace at which they have released content over the last year, and more so than that the sheer volume of content that gets released. Roughly once a quarter they release a new major patch, and roughly once a month they release a minor patch… that is not just bug fixes but serious new system improvements. For example… these are the 2.35 patch notes… that are several pages long full of new systems and usability improvements. When they add content they add it not just for the highest end players, but they trickle it through all play styles. There are new max level dungeons, new raids, new crafting recipes and materials to go find, as well as a continuation of the really awesome storyline that is woven through the game. They seem to care about all of the different playstyles that make up their community, and are wanting to give each of them a reason to keep logging in and playing. Quite frankly… free to play and having to worry about getting enough money to survive would absolutely tarnish the spirit of this game and its community.

Cactuar Server Community

I figured this was a good bookend to the post I made above. Today I am going to talk about something probably strange to be thankful for, but I am going to anyways. I am extremely Thankful for the existence of the Cactuar Server community and how awesome the people there are. Once upon a time I was deeply connected to most of the server communities I was part of when I played games. I was a huge supporter of Gaheris in Dark Age of Camelot and Xegony in Everquest… so it was not strange when I landed in World of Warcraft to get involved with the Argent Dawn community as well. The problem is that Argent Dawn broke my heart, the longer I played on it. During those heady days after release we had a vibrant and thriving community, full of lots of interesting groups of people more than willing to work together towards larger goals. Argent Dawn was a hotbed of non-guild based raiding and it was awesome. Over time, especially with the release of Cataclysm… this all changed and the old guard of players that were community focused slowly drifted off into the nether.

It was hard to watch the Argent Dawn community fall apart, so as I played other games I really never took the time to dip my toes into the larger server. I stayed fairly insular and only really cared about my own guild and its well being. This changed this summer when I came back to Final Fantasy XIV. I think in part it is because when I first renewed my account, I was the only one to do so for a few weeks. This meant I no longer had my life support system of known good players to run dungeons with, and was forced to get out and meet people in the community. I am so thankful that I did because I have met some amazing people on this server and found it to be a throwback to a simpler time when people generally were nice to each other. I’ve embraced our community whole heartedly and while it is not terribly well used yet… I’ve built a nook for the community and will be trying to get folks using it over the coming weeks. So today I am thankful for finding the Cactuar community, because it has revitalized my faith that servers are a thing that can be super important to my game playing experience.

#FFXIV #Cactuar #MonthOfThankfulness