December 2013 - Page 6 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

The Rebirth

December 11, 2013 by Belghast

The Founding

Back in 2004 House Stalwart was born out of a bunch of friends getting together and planning a community for the launch of the newest up and coming MMO… the World of Warcraft. Over those years we’ve had a somewhat bumpy and often storied past, but at the core the guild remained based on a few core tenets and a shared sense of ethics. It was a set of values that spanned from game to game, and some of my proudest moments were when one of my random guild members would do something awesome out in the world… and news of it would get back to me. I had built a really awesome thing, and people were happy in it.

The problem was that at the time I was not really happy in the game any longer. The yoke of leadership was chafing, and towards the tail end of Wrath of the Lich King, the guild pretty much went on autopilot. With the release of Cataclysm we went through a lot of major changes, as the shift of focus went away from a non guild based raid, to actually raiding as a guild. In the process we gobbled up four or five different guilds that had been feeding the Duranub Raiding Company. As a result of this upheaval was a lot of social strife, as various groups that were not entirely used to sharing the same guild had to cohabitate.

The Fracture

As this happened I got more distant myself, because I simply was not enjoying the game anymore. When I got into the beta of a game called Rift I grabbed on with both hands, and tried my damnedest to recreate the magic of House Stalwart over there as well. There was a big leaving as folks flaked off to join me in Rift. It didn’t last of course, but it was enough to pull a good number of people away form the WoW guild. When Star Wars the Old Republic released another big chunk of players flaked away, and each time something new came out the cycle would happen again. I had set the events in motion and it had left the guild in a state of chaos.

In many ways House Stalwart was somewhat of a failed state when I returned for my brief stint during the launch of Mists of Pandaria. Guild chat was deathly quiet, there was a significant fracture in the guild forming that I talked about the other day, and as a whole the entire place was filled with people that did not know who I was. The number of things I would need to do to fix what was wrong with the guild just felt staggering. I did a few minor adjustments, but for the most part I assumed that since the guild was running itself, that this must be what the players had come to expect. The place no longer felt like home, so after a few months of personally getting bored with WoW again… I left.

The Hope

When I came back recently something had changed, either in me or in the guild itself. I saw a glimmer of the greatness we once had. Additionally I saw a lot of problems that I thought could be fixed. I was reluctant to take back the yoke of leadership, because quite simply I was not sure if I would be around for long. I expected this stint in the game to go much like the last, with me getting tired of it all and going elsewhere. I had daily conversations with Rylacus the steward I had placed over the guild after my return during Pandaria, and almost always they ended up with some discussion of me taking back the leadership. To be truthful when he handed back the highest rank on Monday I was still very reluctant to do so.

When Rylacus agreed to take over, it was to keep the lights on and things moving forward. We had an agreement that if any of the heavy lifting needed to be done, or any drama arose that it would be me that dealt with it. Over the year of him at the helm, he did a phenomenal job of maintaining the status quo and keeping the guild moving forward. I would honestly say that the guild itself experienced a bit of a renaissance with his hands off approach, and we are more active now than I have seen in years. However as a guild on autopilot for over two years, there has also been a lot of discord and resentment that had set in.

The Problem

The other night a long time guild member sent me a tell in game and wanted to talk to me, as the founder about the guild policies. He said that he wondered about the recruitment policy, and whether or not we ever looked back and reflected upon whether or not an invite was a good one. I spouted off the well rehearsed lines I have always said, but as I was saying them… I realized that no really we did not any more. Then he hit me with a statement that cut through to my heart like a razor. He wanted to talk to me about the “falling guild standards”, and I guess I had realized this was happening but until he came to me and talked to me about it… I was in a bit of a state of denial. Things were in fact far worse than I had let myself believe.

In particularly a lot of the recent strife has centered around a recent invite, the nephew of a long time member. Generally what happens in this case is that I bring up the issue with the sponsor, and if they cannot deal with it we remove the person from the guild. I had gotten lax to be honest, and without that guild master tag… I imagined that it is no longer my duty to police the guild. The reason why I took up the tag in the first place all those years ago, is because no one else was going to create the type of guild I wanted to exist in. As I sat there over the weekend, I realized that once again… no one was going to step in to fix the wrongs in the guild if I did not step up and do it myself.

The Solution

After much soul searching, I accepted the guild leadership of House Stalwart in World of Warcraft on Monday night. I had originally intended to ease my reforms into the guild, but last night things reached a crescendo ending with the quitting of a long time member. I managed to talk the member back from the brink and they rejoined… but as a result my first act was to lock down a few of the functions in the guild at least temporarily, and to remove the most negative of the influences from the guild. Over the coming weeks I will be identifying every single one of our 869 current members. I want to know who they are, where they came from, who they are connected to… and most importantly if they are a positive influence in the guild.

I had already been working hard with mixed results on trying to bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots, but I feel like there is a lot more work to be done on that front. I am trying to exist in both worlds and get the two sides talking and interacting regularly… and in some ways this is working, but in others… there is still a lot of resentment to work through. When I kicked the questionable member from the guild last night, I had a chorus of private messages thanking me. Many of the members simply thought that no one cared about that sort of thing anymore. No one had been complaining about anything to myself or Rylacus until that one brave member stood up and said “this is a problem” and shook me back to reality.

The Rebirth

My ultimate hope is that we can turn the tide and bring back House Stalwart to its glory days. The chapters in the various other games that I have founded have clung tightly to the original tenets, but the original guild strayed from the path. My biggest hope is that in writing this, and reaching out to the members… is that they now know that I do care, and I do want things to be better. I want players to interact and communicate regularly filling my screen with happy green spam. I think last night I took the first steps along a long path that will usher several positive changes. I hope that folks now realize that my door is always open, and if they have any issue… be it game related or otherwise that they can talk to me at any time.

We used to jokingly call ourselves the “Little Guild that Could”, and over the years that “Little” part changed drastically, but I feel that spirit remained in place. It felt like as a whole we were pulling towards some shared goal. This is the magic that I want to revitalize in the guild, the fact that we are not just a tag to wear over our heads but instead a large extended family. This tapestry is woven out of so many different personalities and play styles… but together we have always been something more. I am back, because I love these people and I have missed them. I want to be the leader I used to be, the leader they deserve. I played WoW for over 7 years without fail… and after two years of wandering around nomadic… I have simply gotten tired of all the jumping. I feel like I have come home, but there is going to be a lot of work to return the guild to the home I want it to be for us all.

The Messy Breakup

December 10, 2013 by Belghast

Winter Wonderland

Over the night we got another dusting of snow, and as a result I had to once again dig my jeep out before coming to work. Firstly… Cold is not one of those things that Belghasts do best… especially a 70 lb lighter Belghast. This morning as I was getting ready the weatherman said something to the effect that it has been over 150 hours since we had been above freezing. As I was clearing my vehicle it was 20* outside with a wind chill of significantly less. I realize this is nothing like the –27* that my Canadian friends have been experiencing this week, but still… it is in the realm of “effing cold”. I have been wearing a fleece jacket and then a big winter coat on top of that.

All of the car clearing caused me to get up and around significantly later than I had planned, and as a result I am getting this started significantly later. Supposedly we will experience some melt this afternoon as temperatures finally go above freezing. Thursday is supposed to be in the 40s… which seriously feels like short and t-shirt weather as compared to this. There is no way I could actually survive in a Winter climate. The irony is… as much as I dislike snow in real life, I tend to love zones that have a winter theme in games. I love Winterspring, Icecrown and Storm Peaks. I feel like I would enjoy snow if it were not for that whole cold thing.

The Messy Breakup

The other day I talked about how I may have been wrong to avoid the looking for group tool and pugging in general. From 71 to 80 I had a really great run of 26 dungeons without much issue at all. It was a clean and efficient way to level. However upon entering the Cataclysm dungeon queue system that all changed. The first group I got was Blackrock Caverns. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, and was more than geared enough for the content. As a result it went quickly and smoothly and I thought that maybe just maybe my luck would hold until I was able to level into the Pandaria content. This however was not the case, or at least not the case for very long.

My next queue was Throne of the Tides, and within moments of stepping through the doors we began a horrific wipe fest that ended with most of the party rage quitting after the tank failed miserably at the first boss encounter. As a rogue I ended up tanking most of the adds, and was able to pop cooldowns and all that wonderful stuff to at least down both of the casters. However the tank just seemed to lack the hitpoints and avoidance/mitigation to survive in the instance. It was not until the third, fourth and fifth bad queue of Throne of the Tides that I started to notice a pattern. They were all wearing the 1-80 Heirloom gear.

Public Service Announcement

Simply put… the heirloom gear that caps out at level 80 is simply not viable for tanking the cataclysm instances. The problem is that Heirloom gear is itemized for the previous expansion. At 80 it is itemized like it is a low ilevel Wrath of the Lich King blue, which is significantly worse than the lowest ilevel Cataclysm green. Essentially the quested gear you get early on will be better than anything but epic gear from Wrath, and even then on most of my characters I was changing put purples for greens left and right, especially for tanking where the stamina matters so much. The above image shows the Polished Breastplate of Valor as compared to Hardened Obsidium Breastplate.

Taking away the fact that the Valor breastplate contains zero tanking stats, it has 391 less armor and 100 less stamina than a Cataclysm tanking green. The tanks that I see rolling into the level 80 dungeons wearing full heirloom gear simply do not have enough hit points to survive the level of damage that is being dealt by the encounters. That is even with getting out of all the things they are supposed to be getting out of. Essentially if you are reading this blog and leveling an up and coming tank, please god do not queue as a tank until you have switched out your level 80 heirloom gear with green quest gear at a minimum. Granted I am generally more diligent than the average player, and I did not queue at all for ANY dungeons until I had swapped my heirlooms out for quested items.

Gear Changing

To be truthful I logged in my leatherworker and crafted a full set of gear, and logged in my smith and made two blue axes… but that is probably going above and beyond what anyone should be expected to do. However in each expansion, that first zone gives you a complete set of gear including weapons and trinkets within the first few quests. Over the course of the evening you can go from relatively crappy gear to greens that are better than most of the raid content gear from the previous expansion. You can maybe limp by as a dps, but especially as a tank, the Cataclysm content is brutal on anyone who has not shifted out their entire set of items.

I seriously doubt that any of the offending tanks I ran into will actually read my blog, but here is hoping that maybe I catch a few people who simply did not realize that heirlooms are not itemized as the new expansion until you ding 61/71/81/86 etc. This is the problem with the “mudflation” that has set into blizzards system, there is always a massive jump in stats between expansions, and in the case of Wrath to Cataclysm… it is simply not sustainable for dungeon running. Hopefully in the post “Item Squish” world the change between expansions will not be nearly as traumatic to the player base. I am hoping once I managed to get to the next tier of dungeons this problem will for the most part go away, and I can once again return to leveling through instances. However in the meantime… I am questing my way through Hyjal for what feels like the billionth time.

A Tale of Two Raids

December 9, 2013 by Belghast

Ending Hibernation

I had to vary up my morning routine today, as today is the first day back after snowmageddon. Until yesterday afternoon we had not left the house since Thursday evening. Mostly we got out yesterday just to see how the main roads were. If we based things on our neighborhood we would think the world was still under a solid sheet of ice. However as we got out and about we saw that the majority of the major roads were well travelled. That is not to say that I did not drive slightly under the speed limit on the way in, and not to say that I still did not slip and slide quite a bit. However I made it into the office without issue.

It is funny how quiet the office is. I expected to see more people here, however it is just me and one of the server techs. The irony is that while we are both in the office, we have been chatting over our in office instant messenger rather than face to face. I guess that is a sign of our lines of work, we are used to doing everything remotely. Had they not made a big deal about having “no remote work” policy, I would have simply worked remotely on Friday, and potentially this morning as well. However as to not give the impression that I was getting away with something untoward… I simply took a day of vacation on Friday. Not wanting to take a second one, I made the commute in this morning.

A Tale of Two Raids

Last night was a pretty interesting night. Since we had not really left the house since Thursday, I lost all touch with what day of the week it was. I had been living in a haze slowly poking away at leveling my rogue, which ended the long weekend almost 82. So when I was messaged by my raid leader to ask if I would be attending the raid, it was honestly a bit shocking. I had completely lost track of the fact that it was in fact Sunday, a night that we normally raid. Earlier in the week it was uncertain if we would even be able to make the raid happen, but we managed to pull in a friend of mine to dps for us. While a bit rusty she is improving with every single boss fight.

Stalwart has had something odd going on with raiding for some time. Essentially the guild has been a Tale of Two Raids. The non-guild-based raid group Duranub, had a pretty even mix of extremely high performing serious players, and not serious at all players that just wanted to raid for the sake of having fun. This lead to more than a few dramatic moments, so as 25 man raiding dissolved the groups fractured along those lines. During Cataclysm, we had no less than 5 ten mans that ranged from the super hardcore to the super casual. As attendance waned and folks left the game, myself included… the two groups that managed to hold together were that of the super hardcore, and the super casual.

When Pandaria released I quickly leveled Belgrave and Belgarou, and when it came time to raid I chose to bolster the super casual raid with my dps. The problem with that notion was the fact that the super casual raid lacked any form of reliable tanking. That unfortunately is one of those roles where you need your most talented players. Without a solid tank you get nowhere at all, and that is precisely what happened… they made little to no progression for a very long time. Seeing this floundering from a distance was a bit heartbreaking, but at that point I just did not have the patience to stick around and try and help out. I left wow once again, but this group persevered through sheer will of heart alone.

Warrior Returns

In the time I was away from the game, the Leftovers as they call themselves managed to recruit a stable tank Gamad, and the progress they have made was entirely thanks to her determination… and much drinking to manage to get through the struggles of working with the non-effective tank. Upon coming back I thought to myself… of all the groups that could use my help it was the Leftovers. So I have worked my little butt off to get geared enough to take a primary tanking slot. At this point I am sitting at 522 ilevel and for the most part can handle tanking almost anything out there right now. In the time I have been tanking with the group we have now cleared two new bosses, and are starting too work on a fourth. While we are still working our way through Throne of Thunder, it is nice to see steady movement forward again. At this point we are now done with the first wave of the dungeon and started work on the Tortos encounter last night.

This progress however might not have been. The under performing tank is back and available for raiding… and due to seniority and the fact that Gamad can out dps a good number of our dps… the Raid leader decided to put me with the under-performing tank for the night. Now I have to say, that the tank has some medical issues and is heavily medicated at all times. That said… it was still like trying to tank an instance with an easily distracted toddler. He was always off doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, and when it came time to do the first tank swap on the Troll Council fight… he was off dpsing something else. I have so much renewed appreciation for Gamad and what she has struggled with to this point. I have to say that if I have to co-tank with the other warrior very often, I will probably stop raiding. I knew it was bad, but I guess I had forgotten just how bad it was.

Slow But Steady

Thankfully the raid leader also saw how untenable the situation was, and quickly swapped the warrior to dps and Gamad back to tanking. From there we made a few attempts, each with their own adjustments and managed to kill the Troll Council. During this time sadly, the warrior had swapped specs but not gear… and ended up fury dpsing with a sword and shield. Basically when you are this inattentive it is time to just hang up your spurs and bow out of raiding for the good of the group. The leader whoever has struggled to make the group about family and friends, but there comes a point where keeping certain individuals hurts the overall spirit and morale of the whole. This is the sticky stuff that made me hate being a raid leader. There were many nights when I slotted people I didn’t really want to slot for the sake of social reason… not wanting to make a wife raid without her husband etc.

To be truthful this level of stress over variables you cannot quite control is much of the reason why I refuse to be a raid leader anymore. I got my fill of it over the three years I did it, and I commend the raid leader of Leftovers for his diligence to this point. That said the warriors return was a comedy of errors, and essentially if he is unable to pay enough attention to keep from charging headlong into the boss while we are clearing trash, it is probably time for him to stop raiding. That is not to say that I don’t think we should start doing something else that he CAN attend. I am thinking maybe a world boss night would fight the bill of letting the people who just do not have the ability to pay attention during raids, to feel like they are making progress along with family and friends. I don’t think we will ever be a progression based raid group, but without two stable tanks we might as well just do something else with our evenings.

A Positive Note

I feel like I have dwelled a lot on the bad during this post, but I want to end it on a positive note. Since my time in the raid we have completed two brand new encounters, and while we failed miserably at the fourth, we will do some adjusting next Friday and hopefully beat it in the face. Each of the wins has felt like it was sustainable. On the try we downed the council, no one actually died other than the hapless warrior. We completed it a man down, and everything felt very maintainable. This is a testament to just how good the high performing players in Leftovers are. I have no doubt that we will continue to progress our way through Throne of Thunder and hopefully complete the instance, gearing each of us to a state where we are ready to take on Seige of Orgrimmar before the expansion is released. I am personally pretty happy where we are, and how successful we have been.

Matter of Perspective

December 8, 2013 by Belghast

Unexpected Route

Yesterday I set out with the mission of running the rest of my characters through LFR, but after some frustrations with a couple of bad tanks… I decided to retreat into the comfort of leveling. The problem is… leveling through Wrath content feels extremely slow. The way they lay quests out just is not conducive to burning through them. I began the day at 71 and after a few hours I had finally dinged 72, so I figured I would take a break and run a dungeon. Apparently somewhere along the way I had forgotten just how good Wrath era dungeon experience was. I quickly shifted from questing my way across north rend to chain running dungeons.

I am generally the most anti-pug person you could imagine, but for whatever reason as I said the other day… if I am dpsing I have the patience of a saint generally. What I found surprising however was just how painless the whole event was. We had one tank rage quit because we did not clear the optimal number of mobs, and someone aggro’d one pack too many. After calling us all noobs and leaving we got another tank within seconds and completely the dungeon without issues. We had another tank that did not know which way he was going in Gundrak and after going swimming with the angry fishes for an extended period of time several of the people afk’d out of the dungeon, and I joined them. Other than those two instances… I had 26 instances of success.

At times the group was chatty, other times they were utterly silent. In all cases however we succeeded without much effort. It feels like they have nerfed the dungeons to the point at which anyone can run them without much thought. As a rogue I pretty much spammed Fan of Knives as we pulled huge packs of mobs. I found it surprising how quickly I hit 80. Thanks to the handy dandy statistics inside of World of Warcraft I know I ran exactly 26 dungeons to get from 72 to 80, which was the better part of a day. However this is definitely the express elevator through wrath content, and I feel like I will do this with pretty much all of my alts that have yet to clear that hurdle. In fact I am considering today once I have gotten a bit of gear, to do the same with the 80-85 climb.

Matter of Perspective

Maybe my fear and loathing of pugs is unfounded? Maybe it really is a simple and efficient way to level? Maybe chain running LFR has just given me a perspective on what I should expect from others? In any case it was not nearly the traumatic experience I had expected. I figured I could stomach anything for a single group, however I found the experience rather refreshing. It may simply be that at this point everyone knows the wrath instances like the back of their hand, and can pretty much run them on autopilot. In any case I might have to revise my opinion of pick-up groups. That’s one of my good traits however is that none of my opinions are so intractable that they cannot be changed. After all I had sworn off World of Warcraft for years, and now find myself enjoying the hell out of it again. Just like everything in life, I feel that it is all a matter of perspective.