Today feels.... Weird.
And no, I don't mean April Fool's Day sort of weird.
This is the first time in over 20 years that I no longer work at my old job.
Oh, I work for the same employer overall, but from 2001 to yesterday I worked in pretty much the same job for the same company. Admittedly most of that time was spent as a contractor, but still it feels weird to not have that anchor to my life.
At the same time, I'm completing my 2nd full week at my new job location, so at least I've got some continuity.
I'm not used to having my work day start later than 7:30 AM. Or that some of the meetings I'm in last an hour when in the old job they'd last half that. Or that I no longer have access to servers, so I can't just hop on to find things out myself.
***
Which brings me to recurring urge to discover what I'd find if I were to hop on one of my old toons. Just because, I suppose.
I can't go back in time to see what I did at jobs in the 1990s, but I can see what I was doing in Retail when I unsubbed back in 2014.
I had a brief discussion with Shintar today about somehow playing together, and she'd mentioned that she'd created a free account on the Americas servers, so I thought "Maybe I should do that for the EU servers." That morphed into "Maybe I should reconnect with my old toons and see about what I can do with them." And so I hopped onto several toons.
Well, that was the idea, anyway, but the second or third toon I logged into was the original Balthan, and I discovered that the old bloggers' guild that Rades had created --Puggers Anonymous-- was still active with Balthan as GM.
 |
| Yep, Ironforge. Wait.... |
Then I saw it.
Yes. Those were Rades' toons.
Back in the days when Vidyala's guild, Business Time, was a top guild on Strict 10s progression*, Rades had created Puggers Anonymous on Moonrunner-US just so several of us bloggers could hang out together. Alas that almost all of those bloggers are gone from the game now, and the only toons left in the guild are Rades' and my own.
And Rades will never login again.
After staring at the screen for a few minutes, my curiosity evaporated and I quickly logged off.
I'm the GM of a dead guild started by a dead friend for friends that no longer play a game that is no longer recognizable to me.
It's hard to describe my feelings better than that statement, although "profoundly sad" does come to mind.
***
But.
There is a balancing out of things in MMOs.
Last Friday, one of the regulars that would attend our alt runs in Classic and is now part of the Monday raid joined the guild. I asked her what happened, and after Karazhan finished she pulled me into a private conversation and we talked. I can't divulge what was said, but let's just say she was given a raw deal.
But, she told me, she's much happier to be in a place with friends.
I definitely agreed with that one.
Then she said that people come to the Friday Karazhan raid because they love me and the way I run things.
"Uh...."
"You don't feel it? You're really well loved within the guild."
And here I was mostly feeling sorry for myself.
So... Maybe that's a hint that I should shut up a bit about some things.
*For those interested, what was meant by "Strict 10s" was that you raided only 10 person raids and equipped gear only from 10 person raids. Nothing from 25 person raids was allowed, and a raider from a Strict 10s raid team couldn't even venture into a 25 person raid at all. This meant that Business Time was really good at progression within the strict confines of 10 person raids. I still remember the time when, back in Mists, my Rogue --the original Azshandra-- was progressing through Pandaria and needed an assist on a pair of mini-bosses. Vid happened to be on, so we grouped up and she wiped the floor with those bosses. Az, in her green questing leather gear at L88 or so, had only half of the health of Vid's Mage, Millya, who was tricked out in full raid gear (I think 5.2 patch's raids at the time). If you ever wondered whether raid drops from Strict 10s was good enough to be a top progression guild, that should answer your question.
My wife and I were also raiding in a "Strict 10" guild back in Wrath. I remember really loving that raid team and that time -- and I still think that "Strict 10" was actually the hardest difficulty in the game, as each member had the most responsibility while not having the "leg up" that 25-man gear would bring to a 10 man raid.\
ReplyDeleteFun times -- glad to be reminded of them.
Oh, I agree. I was reading a Wrath raiding discussion between two guildies and they were talking about raiding both 25s and 10s, and I kept thinking how easy that was gonna be on 10s, having that extra boost in gear from 25s.
DeleteI'm pretty sure we didn't actually call it that way but we didn't have anyone doing 25s in our guild (with only one lockout you'd only do the one thing anyway) so I guess we were that in all but name. I don't remember people making a strong fuss about it though, because the separation was so ingrained that unless you were in a big guild that also did 25s (or had friends where to tag along) the possibility hardly showed up. That's why we probably didn't have any rules in place for this, so maybe at some point, someone slipped in with a 1-2 25man pieces.
ReplyDeleteThe big problem I saw was that because not many people were doing both versions there was an endless back and forth of which version was harder - 10man or 25man. Of course we thought 10 man was harder because there was less room for error, but I guess the 25man raiders also had some form of argument for their case ;)
That said, I'm not missing it one bit. Flex raiding is so awesome. I love not having to split the raid in two or cancelling because we're only 15 that day. Sure, we got tuning issues now (Denathrius Heroic with 10 was brutal) but still a lot better how I experience it. So much less guild drama is worth it.
DeleteFlex raiding is one of the best things that Retail has ever done. Full stop. Just the drama alone going from 40 down to 25, never mind the guild nightmares/drama that came from trying to down Arthas in ICC, would have made flex raiding worth it. If there was one thing I wish they would have implemented in TBC Classic it would have been to find a way to go into either keeping 40 person raids viable in TBC raids or making flex raiding possible. That would have saved a lot of guilds from eventually blowing up from the drama of trying to drop raid sizes down or create multiple new raid teams.
DeleteAnd just think about how the drama involved in the race to max level (and attunements) would have changed in TBC Classic if flex raiding was a thing: people who were slower in leveling wouldn't have felt the pressure quite as much, because the raid size could handle a couple of people not being there.