Guild Leadership Archives - Page 40 of 108

An Evening With Alternative Chat

December 5, 2014 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff Episode 3

This morning sees the release of the third episode of my experimental side podcast, Bel Folks Stuff. For those who have not followed this development, as the title graphic says I have conversations with interesting people about the stuff they are into. So far I’ve had such conversations with Gypsy Syl and Rowan Blaze and his wife Scooters. Both of those were really awesome conversations and I suggest you go back and listen to them at your convenience. This morning however I am releasing an episode that I have been looking forward to with another good friend the Godmother of Faff behind Alternative Chat. As a strict devotee of the Faff lifestyle, or at the very least an aspirant to the lifestyle… I always appreciate her bringing the term to public consciousness. The funny thing is… we really didn’t even talk about this during the podcast. I believe in letting the conversation go where the conversation goes and we filled up an hour of time chatting away about various bits, and probably could have filled up another hour doing the same.

Of note for this episode I also wanted to make sure that the podcast was available on both iTunes and Stitcher radio to help those folks out who prefer to listen to podcasts through those avenues. I admit I was nervous with this episode because Alt herself has such an amazing production quality for her own podcasts. I felt like there was no way I could live up to that standard. That said I feel like this episode is really solid, and that maybe just maybe I am starting to get a hang of what exactly this thing is going to be all about. I don’t really sit down with a fixed number of questions or anything of the sort, but instead just try and keep the conversation flowing as best I can. With Alt the conversation flowed naturally even though later in the cast she admitted to having notes of her own. I still feel like we maybe got more than a few moments of genuine spontaneity there nonetheless. Speaking of spontaneity, I am always trying to evolve as a person and as such would love to hear your comments on how this side project is working.

Rifftrax and Raiding

With the shit storm that happened Tuesday with the Argent Dawn server, we didn’t actually get to start raiding as a group until last night. Unfortunately I had other plans, and had to miss the raid. Some of my co-workers and I have started this tradition of sorts of going to the RiffTrax live shows whenever they happen. Granted they are not truly “live” for us as in performed in theater. Nonetheless each time I go I think to myself “I have never laughed this hard ever” and then the next one trumps it. This go around they were riffing on a show they did during the 5th season of MST3K, a strange version of Santa Claus that involves Santa, Merlin, and some Christmas Devils… you know the standard fare. It turns out that apparently the film originally hailed from Mexico where maybe it made more sense? The final product is this insane dubbed over feature with so many absolutely absurd moments that they had pretty much endless ammunition to make fun of it. If you are really curious you can check out the MST3K version that someone has dumped on youtube, but apparently it was edited down heavily… and they had all new jokes to make at the movies expense.

As far as the raid goes they apparently had a pretty great night of their own right. It seems as thought they managed to two shot Kargath, and then down The Butcher a well. The sounds like they made some good progress on Tectus as well, so they are hoping to easily down that next Tuesday and progress to the next boss. We apparently ran the raid on personal loot and the RNG gods were good to a lot of players. I know Rylacus walked away with three pieces of gear, which means he can officially no longer complain about “never getting drops” for the remainder of this expansion. Admittedly he has always had pretty shitty luck with getting drops he actually needs, but the moment a rare assed mount drops… his dice immediately improve. I can’t really complain because I too have a collection of rare mount drops, but most of those were diligently farmed… and the only one I actually won when it was relevant was the Fiery Warhorse Reins.

Less Communicative

Last night after my post yesterday, I had a friend check in on me to make sure I was doing okay. It made me realize that I am doing a pretty bad job of reaching out to say “hey” to people lately. This friend has been logged into WoW at the same time as me for many nights, but I have been stuck in my own little world quite a bit. Right now I have a batch of things that needs to be wrapped up at work before going on my holiday vacation after the 19th. Then there is the daily blogging, and the two podcasts that I am keeping going… one of which records weekly. After that it seems like I always have some OTHER side project to work on, like my upcoming post for Syl’s Bloggy Xmas. Someone started a conversation the other day with “I know you are busy but” and I thought… am I busy? It seems like I very much am, and as a result when I get busy I tend to encapsulate myself in a little bubble or just shift into “speak if spoken to” mode.

Mostly this morning I wanted to take a moment to say that essentially “its me not you”. I feel like I am failing miserably at keeping in contact with people during this holiday season. I promise I still care, and I promise I am still interested in what’s going on in your worlds… but at this point I feel painfully behind in everything. I’ve always taken the Stanley Spadowski “Drink from the Firehose” approach to information intake. The problem is I seem to be falling further and further behind as my blog reader consistently has hundreds upon hundreds of posts to read. Between that and trying to juggle playing World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV and entertain semi-focused raiding in both of them… my attention circuits are maxed out. I promise I am still out here and still caring… I am just not taking it upon myself to engage directly nearly as much as I previously did. All of that said… if you need help with something I will do my best to assist in any way I can. Hopefully after the holiday break things will calm down a bit and I can reach a point of equilibrium.

Honeymoon Over

December 4, 2014 by Belghast

Old Familiar Beast

It feels very much like the honeymoon is now over as far as my return to World of Warcraft. Each time I have come back there has been something that ultimately drove me back away. When I came back before the launch of Pandaria, it was the “failed state” feel of the guild and how the once shared guild ethics seemed to have vanished. When I left last April, it was in part due to the fact that two factions of the guild quite literally hated each other, and it caused this giant rift right down the middle. Last night it felt like a brand new yet very familiar Maelstrom was opening, and I essentially supported it. One of the ideological things I have fought for years was the creation of a “Raider” rank in the guild, that granted special access to the guild banks. I hate the concept of a rank that can in any way be used to say that “this person” is better than “that person”. The problem is as a former raid leader myself I can see that it is entirely logistically needed.

Last night I helped to set one of these ranks up, and immediately after doing it I started to question my sanity. This only served to be reinforced later as a new acquisition to the guild started asking questions about how to get into the raid. This is going to be something that comes up over and over, especially now that there is a very noticeable raid rank. The problem is don’t have any good answers to give them. There is no path to follow to get into raiding, because House Stalwart is not a raid guild. Maybe it is moot at this point but I keep saying that over and over. I never wanted it to become “just another raid guild” because it used to be more than just a group of folks who mutually benefited from one another. It used to be this awesome extended family, and while pockets of that still exist… it feels like that era is just gone.

Honeymoon Over

All of this was compounded by the fact that at the very same time there was an incident that happened over voice chat, about someone potentially being muted that reminded me all too clearly of why I have left in the past. I have always despised the concept of the haves and have nots. I’ve always been someone who cared more about attitude and personality than skill, but by the same token this is what has held me back in my own raiding endeavors. If you want to be successful you do have to erect some barriers saying you have to be this tall to ride this ride. I just can’t bring myself to be the person to do that. I’ve never been able to decide that this group of friends is more important to our success than this group of friends. I just want everyone to get along and treat each other with some basic human dignity, but that always seems to be impossible. So last night underscored for me with a big bold line that if House Stalwart is going to be successful moving forward, I need to make sure I never permanently take back the crown. If I do I will started trying to make the guild a much more egalitarian place again, and tie a boat anchor around what was successful last expansion.

That said things are not as dire as I might make them out to be. The same raiders that need to be super serious to break the raid, are the ones that were grabbing anyone and their brother trying to make sure they got heirloom weapons for leveling. So while the bar has to be set pretty high to make sure things are successful, I have a feeling that once the current tier of raid content gets on farm status… those same barriers will start to break down as we have folks that can carry the others to victory. I just know that the guild was more successful than it has probably ever been during Pandaria as far as raid content clearing, and I need to stay out of the way of whatever mojo is required to return us to that status. I know that is going to involve a lot of things that fundamentally make me uncomfortable as a human being. I do however have faith that the raid core knows what it is doing, but I also feel like our fearless raid leader is stressed beyond boundaries. We have some fundamental problems… like too many melee and tanks… and far too few ranged and healers… but I feel like that will all be sorted as things move forward.

Sit Down, Shut Up, Enjoy the Ride

If I am going to stay in World of Warcraft for this expansion I am going to have to make some fundamental changes in who I am as a player. Right now I feel too much responsibility for the happiness of others in the House Stalwart World of Warcraft guild. It has been my baby for years, and I have nurtured it as such during all of that time… constantly trying to keep an influx of new and awesome people flowing through its doors. The thing is… before the launch of Warlords of Draenor I freely gave up the crown, as I have done multiple times since Cataclysm. I need to realize this means I am no longer in charge, and also by the same token no longer responsible for whatever happens in guild. Last night Rylacus passed the crown to me, but also gave me a speech that he really thinks it is best if I give it right back. Ry doesn’t care a bout the power, he just wants to keep me in game and happy as long as he can, because he knows each time I start taking responsibility for the happenings of all of these people… I burn out and run away screaming into the night. I need to also allow myself to be absolved of the guilt that comes from giving up that crown.

There is a thing I do really well, and that thing is acting as the guild cheerleader and chief recruiter. I am always going to be trying to find awesome and interesting people to draft into my family, because ultimately that is precisely what a guild is to me… a big extended and sometimes contorted family. It is joked that I have a white panel van full of candy, and drive around abducting people into our guilds… and more or less that is precisely what I do. I have always done it for World of Warcraft, and I currently do it for Final Fantasy XIV… for a guild there that I have NEVER been the leader of. I feel like I never much cared about actually directing the people once I got them, my focus has always been on the acquisition of more of them… hoping that the rest would sort itself out in the meantime. The problem is… just because I am friends with two people… doesn’t mean that they will be friends. Basically at this point if I am going to be happy in World of Warcraft, I need to be the friendly voice in guild chat and let other people worry about the minutiae. I hope that House Stalwart can remain mostly the same place it has been since launch, but I expect we are going to go through some rough times until folks realize fully… that this is not a raid guild, and raid membership is not guaranteed.

Tower Diving Time

December 3, 2014 by Belghast

Server Go Boom

Last night was the launch of Highmaul in World of Warcraft, or at least it should have been. For the majority of the night we tried in vain to log into Argent Dawn. While a handful of us made it to the character select screen, even fewer of us made it in game. Those in game however could not actually play the game, as the world was just fundamentally broken… mobs un-lootable or not spawning at all. All of the problems seemed to be related to the Chicago data center, where the Ruin battle group that Argent Dawn is attached to is located. Lately there has been a lot of talk of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks going on against the various MMO providers, but this is a nebulous concept that most people struggle to really understand. Thankfully there is a site like IPViking that can visualize this traffic in a way that it makes sense. Watching their attack map is like watching missile launches in some war game simulation… both terrifying and mesmerizing at the same time. The above image sadly is not from last night, but just one they have as an example on their website.

During the launch of Warlords of Draenor, there were very clear attacks against Blizzard. Last night however I did not actually see attacks targeting blizzard, but instead attack after attack targeting the St Louis area. I could only assume that the attacks are associated in some way to the things surrounding Ferguson in the St Louis metro area. This however speaks to the way the internet actually works, instead of the way that we all assume it works. The hard facts are there are a limited number of pathways across the United States, and if an attack is blocking traffic from reaching the Chicago data center, it is effectively also blocking anyone from reaching those servers. I ran a traceroute last night and from Tulsa area my packets went to Dallas before going over to the AT&T network somewhere in the vicinity of Wichita before the packets just died. I can only assume that the packets kept getting lose in the maelstrom of attacks between me and the Chicago data center.

Tower Diving Time

After a point I gave up on trying to get into anything within World of Warcraft, and wandered between a couple of games. My original intent was to do some Syrcus Tower on my Bard job, but when I got into Final Fantasy XIV the dps queue for Syrcus was reporting 30 minutes… which is significantly longer than I have ever actually seen it. So I abandoned that notion and instead decided to play some Heroes of the Storm. My good friend Rae finally managed to get her invite from Blizzard and apparently spent the better part of last night playing it as well. I had a strong feeling that she would like the game, based on her seeming love of League of Legends. For me it is a much stronger game because I like its focus on the team win, and not so much on individual performance. That said Rae was still constantly checking the meters during the matches, which I can only hope will be something that fades over time as those League tendencies potentially fall away.

I had really not played it much since the game reset that happened awhile back, wiping out our progress. As such I had completed the tutorial but was still sitting at level 1, having not actually played any real matches to level up with. Thanks to the +50% xp friend bonus, I managed to level up last night to five, and unlock many of the features of the game. I’ve noticed that they have front loaded a lot of the stuff so that you get the interesting items sooner. At level 5 it feels like I have all of the tools needed to really play the character how I would want to. I am a huge fan of Muradin and in all the times playing the game, that has been the character that most fits what I want to play. That said I am also rather fond of Raynor and Tyrael… and if I am going to play a support you can’t beat Uther. I think the main reason why I like Muradin is his Avatar ability that causes him to grow in size and become extremely sturdy, allowing me to tower dive obstacles if I really need to, or survive team fights. With passive health regeneration he has some serious sustain, and most of the time I never actually needed to return to base.

Bloggy XMAS Countdown

I feel bad that I did not advertise this sooner, but there is an event that I am going to be part of that is happening in the blogosphere. The awesome Syl of MMO Gypsy had this idea of creating a virtual advent calendar of sorts within the blogging community. Apparently in her country it is custom to decorate the various shops and houses around town to represent a day of the advent. As such she has created this truly awesome Advent Calendar of gaming blogs. I am currently scheduled to be one of the posters for 12/9 and I will begin prepping for that soon. The problem is I am still not quite sure what I am going to talk about. I have a few ideas, but we will just have to see how that sorts out. In the meantime this is day three of the postings and I highly suggest you go back to the first and read your way forward. I thank Syl for coming up with the idea and making it happen, and once again there has been this massive outpouring of support which is truly awesome.

Dance Dance Deathwing

December 1, 2014 by Belghast

Return of the Dailies

One of the constants in World of Warcraft since I believe the Burning Crusade expansion… is the construct of the daily quest. It has taken many forms over the years, but the crux of all of them is that it is something that you will be greatly benefited by if you do it every single day. This expansion seems to have abandoned some of the more heinous faction grind dailies, but fear not the idea is alive and well. This time however it has taken up residence in your Garrison, with the buildings that you built dictating what kind of daily quests you get. Many of these are daily resource gathering, and as such I have started attempting to do these every morning before I blog. Right now with two characters it seems to take me about fifteen minutes to do all of the gathering and making sure the various work order queues are full. By the time you extend that over all eleven of my Alliance faction characters however you are still going to take up a pretty large chunk of the day doing nothing but fiddling with bits and bobs in your garrison.

The most lucrative and I feel likely the most important daily is the one gained from the scout in your town hall. This rewards between 800 and 1000 apexis crystals which are essentially this expansions version of “justice points”. They can be spent on various bits of gear, which then can be upgraded through several tiers that I believe tops out at 665. Thankfully most days there is someone asking in guild to form up a group and we go do it together. However yesterday my timing was off completely, and as such I resorted to the open party finder. The nice thing about the assaults on the various locations is that they can be completed in a raid, and as such this allows you to use the raid finder to get a group rather quickly. Yesterday from the moment I finally got a group to accept me (it took several before one did) to the moment I completed the quest was about fifteen minutes or running around in a large circle at the Iron Docks pits. Which in the grand scheme of things really is not too terrible for 1000 apexis crystals.

The Firelands

Yesterday I continued my tour of older raids, attempting to solo my way through all of the content. Firelands is a raid that I never actually set foot in before, largely because it happened while I was gone from the game. I quit World of Warcraft initially with the launch of Rift, and at that point my raid was working on Cho’gall in Bastion and had just downed Maloriak in Descent. So there were two raids I never actually got to see in Cataclysm, both of which I was a little apprehensive to try and solo. Black Temple for example I have run so many times, including when the content was legitimate… that I know the place like the back of my hand. These new raids I figured I would learn as I go. To be truthful there really wasn’t much of anything in the raid that gave me issues, and like often is the case… steamrolling it often rewards you several achievements. The most interesting of the fights was probably Beth’tilac.

I had no clue what I was doing, but apparently did things optimally as I got an achievement for never letting any of the spiders hit the ground before killing her. I have to say I am so thankful for spammable heroic throw. While under normal circumstances it does not deal that much damage, it does at least give me an option for ranged dps as a warrior, and I have been using it liberally while soloing this old content. This is definitely a raid I plan on soloing weekly because not only is there some cool transmoggy bits, but also a few mounts that can drop that look extremely sweet. Additionally killing anything in the zone gives Avengers of Hyjal rep… and Belghast has always been the character I was proudest of having some strange Exalted reps on.

The Dragon Soul

The other raid that I tackled yesterday was Dragon Soul, the end of the expansion raid and one littered with tons of lore and cinematics. Once again I went into this raid completely fresh with no prior knowledge of it, and as such I took a few deaths here and there to things I needed to deal with. Most of the content was really straight forward, but I hit an absolute roadblock on the Spine of Deathwing encounter. In fact I had to actually take a break and do some research on how to actually do that fight. I can see why this encounter was the bane of so many raid groups, in fact I know a handful that actually broke up as a result of not being able to finish it. That said ultimately I figured out a solid way to solo it. For those unfamiliar with the fight when you land on his back you are on a section where 4 corruptions, these giant fiery tentacle things have spawned. Two things happen when you take one down that are important. Firstly a Hideous Amalgamation spawns, which will be important later… then a fiery spot appears on the ground that you can stand in to root you to Deathwing’s back as corrupted blood spawn from each of the open wounds.

The key feature of the fight is that Deathwing will try and roll you off of his back. In order to keep this from happening you need to have a fiery tentacle buff that shows that you are tethered to his back. When he rolls all of the Hideous Amalgamations fly off, which for the first few times is something that you want to happen… after a bit however you are going to want to halt that process. Ultimately what I did was stand on one side of Deathwing in a fire spot rooting me to his back until 10 blood had spawned. You technically only need 9, but I found it worked smoother if I had a spare. When each blood dies it spawns a fire patch on the ground… and ultimately you need to drag a Hideous Amalgamation through 9 of these until he grows in size. So when I first land on his back I hill 3 Corruptions, leaving one up until I have gathered up the 10 bloods… I take them out in one shot and then kite the Amalgamation through the fire until it grows… kill it next to the back plate… which allows you to kill an exposed tendon holding it to Deathwing’s back and move on to the next section.

Dance Dance Deathwing

The challenge is to “dance” back and forth on his back so that he doesn’t actually roll all the while you are kiting and dpsing down the add. Because if he rolls it resets the entire process knocking the amalgamation off his back. So ultimately I would stand in the fire, collect 10 bloods… then kite over to the last corruption… hit thunderclap which is enough damage to take out all of the bloods and the corruption. This spawns the amalgamation and I move immediate to the other side allowing him to go through it… and keeping deathwing from rolling. Then finally kite back while killing the Amalgamtion, let it explode and knock the plate loose. At which point I stand in the fire again rooting me to his back, and dps down the tendon holding the plate onto the back. After you have taken down one section the next areas go faster because you have more holes in the back.. and therefore are generating a lot more corrupted blood each round.

This step in the fight literally took me a dozen or so deaths before I got the pattern down well enough to be able to make it through the entirety of the fight without either not getting knocked off, or not allowing a fully loaded amalgamation to get knocked off. I feel like now that I know the fight I can pretty much repeat it whenever I need to, but in any case it was an interesting thing to learn how to solo. For the entirety of the weekends raid running, the only fight that managed to get the best of me was Nefarian 2.0. Even then i am thinking I might be able to do something to mitigate the insane amounts of damage I was taking. So I have not given up on that one, because I really really want to farm up a Reclaimed Ashkandi. I did apparently manage to get an extremely rare flying mount Experiment 12-B when I took out Ultraxion. Given the comments from folks in guild, apparently I spent all of my good luck on getting that to drop. Most of them never saw it the entire time they ran Dragon Soul. In any case it was a fun weekend, I am likely going to start farming these various raids each week.