And Just Like That...

 ...the Monday raid came to an end.

After last night's raid, where they failed to down Kalecgos, there was an announcement in Team Loki's chat that the raid leadership had made the difficult decision to shutter the Monday raid. It was becoming too difficult to recruit given that Alliance players were abandoning Myzrael-US in droves, and while there was an option floated about moving the Monday raid entirely to Atiesh-US for next week, apparently enough people didn't want to move that it would be difficult to replace them on the fly. 

I know that things were difficult in keeping a single day/week raid going --I mean, I was in the Monday raid up through Phase 2, so I know this personally-- but I also know that the grind as well as the perception that the Monday raid team was somehow "less than" hardcore enough that it became mentally taxing to a lot of people. 

***

Yes, I was aware of how mentally taxing the perception that the Monday raid was a bunch of "casuals" was. I kept my mouth shut about it in general, both here and in guild, because it wasn't my place to say anything as I was no longer progression raiding*, but I knew it really became a thing when we were unable to get people to come to our Saturday afternoon/evening Zul'Aman runs.

That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course. If you avoid running with people because they're "not hardcore enough" then they have to backfill with undergeared alts who can't clear content quickly enough, so the perception is reinforced that "they're too casual" or "they're not good enough". Rinse and repeat.

Sure, there were other issues with the Saturday ZA raids, such as other raids happening that would suck away personnel and we were caught in the crossfire, but perceptions are hard to shake.

***

Now that the Monday raid is well and truly dead, I guess I'll have to come to grips with the small(ish) fantasy I had that somehow I could get back into progression raiding before Wrath Classic dropped. 

I mean, I now have the time on Monday nights to be able to raid again, but I am so far behind --both in gear and more importantly in understanding the fights-- that there's little chance of me catching up in time. As my questing buddy put it the other day, by the time the Shamans were really needed in progression raiding (in Mount Hyjal), there were so few left of the original group of leveling shamans that it was essentially worthless to make them run through the gauntlet at the beginning of TBC Classic. All it did was burn them out and cause them to quit.

Gear drops --or a lack thereof-- also hurt the Monday raid. For most of Phase 2, we got so few decent drops out of SSC and TK that it really hurt our DPS and Tank output. When your Pally tanks and Warlocks are both competing for the same tier gear, and both need the same drops off of Vashj and Kael'Thas, then that's going to hurt your raiding quite a bit. Chasing the BiS gear --and not getting it-- was mentally taxing on my questing buddy too. I did my best to try to support her and the others with the Friday Karazhan raids (badges, you know), but I was pretty limited in what I could do without burning her out further.

***

At times like this, I just wish I could have done more to help out and keep the raid running. Even though I know intellectually that you can only do so much, that doesn't stop those feelings from coming. You never really stop caring, and when you say you've stopped caring that's probably when you actually care the most.

Yes, there's a selfish element to all this, because I'd love to be able to stick it to the doubters, and even more than that I'd love to finish my personal goals in TBC Classic. But part of being an adult is that while I can keep my dreams, I can also acknowledge reality. 

*It was brought up with raid leadership as well.

A Collection of Guild Names

While I've been roaming around Atiesh-US --and on the Horde side of Myzrael-US-- I've come across, well, a lot of creative guild names. While I was out questing, I was inspired by Njessi's Hawtpants of the Old Republic and her periodic posts on Bad Fashion and her Hall of Shame to take screenshots of some of these guilds.

Yes, a lot of them are walking Dad Jokes...

I always wondered what a group
of Karens was called.

And others skirt the edge of PG-13...

I guess I know what wands their casters use...

I think I found the guild the people in those
Viagra commercials are members of...

There are those that shrug off any whiff of cynicism with their positivity...

"And top o' the mornin' to ye!"

Uh... thanks?

"...because I learned it from you, Dad!!"

But there are those that provide a bit of entertainment simply by being a fictional part of the game...

I can get behind this.

And finally there are those guilds that bring up their status in game...

Boy, do I. Thanks a LOT for reminding me.

What if you're TWO tiers behind?

At least it's well identified.

"I think I can... I think I can..."

I've met plenty of happy or crazy
or loopy gnomes, but sad ones?

Shinies for everyone!!

EtA: Corrected a grammatical error.

Cardwyn vs. Nevelanthana

Given that I have a pair of Mages --okay, more than a pair, but I count Deuce as merely an extension of Cardwyn 1.0-- I'm at that point in their respective careers that I'd like to do something that I call...

Who wore it better?

After a certain point, my Mages run through the same gear because, well, you're not always going to get BiS gear all the time while leveling. I mean, if you wanted to you could try to run Shadowfang Keep a lot, but there's absolutely no guarantee you won't outlevel the place by the time you do get into enough runs to pick the keep clean of Mage gear. The same goes for Scarlet Monastery's Library and Cathedral wings; the original Cardwyn needed well over a half dozen runs of SM:Cath to finally obtain the often sought after Whitemane's Chapeau, and since Blizz tweaked leveling in the TBC Classic prepatch to speed up the L30s through to the L50s, you'll shoot right on past the Scarlet Monastery wings before you know it.

I have a definite preference for Frost Mages, especially when questing out in the field, so both Neve and Card have sewed together clothing with spellpower --and frost bonuses-- built in. The frost bonuses tend to show up in crafted gear in the Mageweave and Runecloth clothing, but the Azure Silk pieces do provide a lot of bang for the buck in terms of spellpower.

The first thing that pops into my head
is "Halloween Sexy Pirate costume"...

...and the second thing is
"that sunburn would suck."

Given that the ideal levels for wearing this gear would put you right in the middle of in more temperate and tropical areas, such as Stranglethorn Vale, Hillsbrad Foothills, Thousand Needles, and Arathi Highlands, it kind of makes sense to wear something suited for the weather. And without the robes, a potential enemy could quite easily underestimate who they're dealing with. 

Fiction wise, a clever Mage (or two) could take advantage of that to blend in with the crowd at Menethil Harbor, Booty Bay, or other seaports. While a Warlock could as well, their reliance on demons would kind of make them stand out unless they go to great lengths to hide their "pets".

Does the Warchief need someone to investigate the fire at Shady Rest Inn without causing a stir among the Tauren clans? Send a "traveler" capable of blending in with the surrounding swamp. 

Would the few Alliance soldiers who rebelled against Colonel Kurzan's insane ramblings send a fully armored Paladin to infiltrate Kurzan's camp? Oh HELL no; they'd send someone clothed for the jungle and looks like a "companion" of one of the troops. Someone who'd call down fire and ice in a pinch.

Admittedly, a Rogue or a feral Druid would do the job as well for either situation, but if you want a wielder of the arcane who can blink their way out of trouble or turn an enemy into a block of ice, you send someone who looks. like. this.

***

The other piece of gear Deuce and Neve share at the moment is what I'd describe as a "flex" piece, the Robe of Power. 

It takes some effort to amass the material for the Robe, typically spending an evening farming elementals in Arathi Highlands for the additional materials, but you're rewarded with a robe that is better than that found in Shadowfang Keep or Scarlet Monastery's Library wing, and is the equal of anything found in Uldaman. As it's a bind on pickup piece, you have to be a Tailor to make it for yourself.

The look is totally worth it as well.

The difference in attitude between the two
are pretty striking, even though they're
wearing the same robe. Card has that
earnest look...

...while Neve's is more haughty. 
It's kind of safe to say that most
Queldorei and Sindorei give off that
slightly arrogant look, but that's
strictly outward appearances.

If a Mage or Warlock ever needed a piece of formal wear before presenting themselves before Society, this would be it. While the Robe of Power is, well, a very powerful piece that holds up well until Runecloth gear comes into play, it emanates that "I don't get my hands dirty dealing with the peons" 80s Yuppie attitude. You could look at this robe and think that the wearer is a part of upper class society and not be that far off in your observation. 

You don't have to be from Dalaran or Quel'Thalas to be thought of as a mover and shaker while wearing the Robe of Power. 

***

So... Who really did wear it better?

Eh... Six of one, half dozen of the other. 

Neve's attitude fits more effortlessly into both outfits, but Card just has that Everywoman look about her that you can't help but like. As a Sindorei, Neve has what I'd call a "runner's build", but her attitude does make her stand out in a crowd. She is very much a leader, and it shows. Cardwyn, on the other hand, is someone who is, well, "normal", but also somewhat naive in her outlook. That naivete can be endearing as well.

When I created both toons I had these ideas in my head for what I wanted out of them, and as time has gone on I've been surprised at how well they've been borne out. The one thing I will say is that you can't judge a book by its cover, and certainly these two do fit that in spades.

I'm actually quite curious how these two will compare in higher level gear going forward.

EtA: corrected a grammatical error.

WTF, Atiesh?

I've been putzing around with Deuce a bit on the Atiesh-US TBC Classic server, getting a feel for the place, when I saw this the other day:

Oh yes. You read that right.

Here, let me highlight it for you:

I can confidently say that I never saw ANYTHING like that on Myzrael-US. I saw some shit there, but NOTHING like this. 

At least some people called it out, but I hoped for a bit more condemnation than what I saw.

Stay classy, Atiesh-US.

A Quick Pressing of the Pause Button

I wanted to get this out there, so no matter what happens going forward, there was this little bit of serendipity:

Cardwyn is 778584 / 779700...

...and Nevelanthana is 776327 / 779700.

They've both been sitting at these numbers for over a week now, and I have been strangely reluctant to finish it.* I suppose that's mainly due to Card and the knowledge that the Guild Roster Manager add-on will trigger an alert among the dozen or two people in guild who have it installed when she makes it to L70, and in my usual way of not wanting to garner any attention I know it will generate some interest. 

Just as I'm heading out the door, naturally.

But you know, I'm kind of happy about this achievement on both factions. Neve can start doing some more Tailoring, just because she can, and I'll finally see what the hell this whole Spellcloth and Soulcloth (and whatever) crap that people were going gaga a year ago is all about. At this point I'd just like to know how she looks in any Tailored gear, just because she needs that stylish look, and Card is already set for a trip to Northrend.

*It does feel kind of weird seeing a Holy Pally that Neve grouped with about 3-4 weeks ago passing her while Neve kind of putzed around, but that's fine. I knew she wanted to get into some raids before Wrath dropped.

What Goes on in My Head, Part Whatever

Yesterday I passed a milestone of sorts.

Oh, it's not that I had my birthday --that was a bit ago-- or that I passed my six month mark since my brush with the hereafter* --again, that was a while ago-- but that I finally got down to only one of these left in my possession:

The names have been changed
to protect the innocent.

As you may have surmised, my wife went to Kinko's --they're called FedEx Office now-- and had a lot of these printed out. She conspired with one of my co-workers to chop these up into small cards and distribute them at my work** for... Well, it's pretty obvious, right?

My wife discovered that instead of printing up, say, 25 or 50, she could only get these printed in stacks of 500. So she bit the bullet, had a stack of 500 printed up, and then gave about 30 or so to my coworker, who cut them up and distributed them to the people on our development team as well as people I knew on other teams. All told, she distributed about 100 or more cards to people.

I, of course, was kept in the dark about all of this, and all I knew was that my parents were going to be over while we celebrated my birthday. My wife, however, had briefed my parents and that they should expect that a lot of people would be calling in to wish me a happy birthday.

***

Well, the big day arrived, and my parents came over, and I started grilling as usual.***

About an hour later, I got a call from a coworker and friend --whom I'd gone up with to the Dayton Hamvention the day before-- and he mentioned that he might have left his keys in my car. Sure enough, they were there, and he wished me a happy birthday.

"Oh, thanks," I replied, and told him I'd give him his keys tomorrow at work, which was fine with him.

A half an hour later, I got another call from another friend and co-worker, wishing me a happy birthday, and he added "I guess the phone's been ringing off the hook, huh?"

"Uh, no," I replied. "Just you and Rob, and he'd left his keys in my car by accident."

"Oh," my friend said in response, and he quickly finished the call.

By then, my wife had been looking kind of crestfallen but had perked up at the second call. I suspected she'd done something, but I wasn't going to say anything just yet.

But after another hour or two, including dinner, and no phone calls, she finally confessed what she'd hoped to do, and how it became instead a huge disaster. And this happened in front of my parents no less, who'd hoped to see this outpouring of affection for me from my coworkers.

I can't figure out to this day what was worse: that it hurt my wife who'd come up with this grand plan, or that I found out just what my coworkers thought of me the hard way.

And there were all of these fucking sheets still around, over 400 of them.

Given that they had my name and phone number --and my birthday-- on them, I'd have to shred them all if I wanted to be secure about it. That wasn't exactly going to be a fun afternoon, being reminded for an hour or two how shitty my 30th birthday turned out to be.

I decided to shove them into our desk at home and deal with it later.

Fast forward a decade and a move into our current house later, I stumbled on those cards while hunting for some scratch paper to use. "Well," I decided, "I might as well go ahead and use them for scratch paper and shred them when I'm done."

So for the past 13 years or so I've been steadily going through these as scratch paper. It was from a time --and a company-- I wished to forget, and I've long since put that time in the rear view mirror. But the thing is, you never quite forget something so humiliating like that, and the constant stream of these sheets has been a reminder for me to never do this to someone else. 

***

The thing is, it still hurts after all these years, because it wasn't the first time this sort of thing happened.

Back in college, my friends and I had agreed to put together a series of dinners for each other as a fun thing to do. Several of my friends lived in the Dayton and Cincinnati area, so it was relatively easy to set these up. Back then, I didn't have a car on campus, so I was reliant upon those who did to get to these dinners, but it never seemed a problem. 

However, on an upcoming dinner at a friends' house I didn't have a ride to get there, and I asked several of my friends if there was a dinner that we'd be going to, and they all kind of stayed mum on the subject, so I let it drop. 

I found out later from my friend who hosted the dinner what had happened.

They all arrived --and we're talking something about 6-10 people-- and the host looked around and asked "Where's Red?"

"Oh no," they exclaimed. "We didn't think he was invited."

"Of course he was invited! We were all invited to each other's houses!"

Did they go back and get me? Nope. They ate the dinner, and the one person from the group who said "Hey, we should check to make sure Red was invited before we leave" kept needling everybody else who was there. 

Some hours later, they all showed up at the door to my dorm room, but I kind of politely told them to get lost. And I rather quickly and efficiently began putting some distance between myself and them.

***

When the kids would have a shitty time of it in middle school, I knew exactly where they were coming from. I mean, I've lived that before.

And the memories of these sort of humiliations has also influenced my MMO playing, where I want to help out people who feel alone or ostracized from the group. I was reminded of that the other day, when one of my guildies found out that I was not planning on moving to Atiesh and she was not a happy camper. She whispered to me on Discord that I was the first person to reach out and befriend her in the guild (and raid), and she'll always be appreciative of that.

I just wish I could explain that I have these trust issues, and that no matter how hard I try I'll likely continue to have them for the rest of my life. It doesn't matter how good of a time I had in a video game, or playing board games, or in a face to face RPG session, some time later the whispers begin again in my head: you're no good, nobody likes you, and they're all leaving you behind to do things without you because you're not good enough. They all know you're a lousy player or a lousy person, so why try? You should go hide and do something else.

The best I can do is beat those whispers back for a little while, and I hope that's enough.

Maybe shredding that last sheet will help.

 

*I finally looked up the data write-ups found from my hospital stay, courtesy of an online application that the hospital and health network uses, and I discovered that I was in much worse condition than the nurses and doctors let on. They probably did that so I wouldn't freak out or anything, but it was a very sobering read.

**This was back when I worked as a QA Software Engineer.

***Yes, grilling during the summer is pretty much a thing for me.

EtA: Corrected a grammar error.

But It Was A Beginning

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose above the great mountainous island of Tremalking. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.”

--Robert Jordan, The Path of Daggers

 

Last Monday, on June 27th, there was to be a proverbial "big announcement" about the future of our guild moving forward into Wrath Classic.

I already had a clue as to what was likely to happen, but when the news did drop there were actually two big announcements:

• The guild was moving to Atiesh-US.
• The guild was merging with another raiding guild.

While I believed that Atiesh was the likely landing spot, the merger took me by surprise.

I'm still not exactly sure why the merger happened, because if guild leadership felt that they were going to have trouble recruiting, I thought that's why the move to Atiesh was needed. I suppose that leadership felt that since there was some decent overlap between the two guilds/raids already they might as well make it official, but to my mind that's a pretty poor reason to actually merge guilds.

But more on that later.

There was also another announcement --of a sort-- in the Monday raid: the remaining members of the Monday raid's lead team will be stepping down from raid leading in Wrath Classic. 

Now this I knew was coming, because I'd seen the discussions in the Monday raid lead Discord, and I knew how beaten down the main raid lead had gotten over the course of TBC Classic. But there were also other factors involved that I'm not at liberty to discuss, but I will say that there was a breach of trust involved that left a sour taste in the Monday raid leadership.

***

So.... What to make of this?

The moment I read the announcement, I exhaled with relief.

I'd been wondering how to just go and leave the guild without a lot of drama, and suddenly the solution was presented to me gift wrapped with a bow. 

I would simply leave the guild by standing still.

Now, the announcement included information that the raid teams' mains would remain on Myzrael-US until the pre-patch for Wrath is announced, then the progression raiding will stop and those toons will migrate to Atiesh-US. That means that alts would be free to migrate to Atiesh-US, which conveniently was during the big mid-Summer sale by Blizzard.

All those players who'd amassed a lot of gold on Myz were going to have to find a way to move that gold over, and the guild had set up a channel to allow people who didn't have a lot of gold to volunteer to be mules to migrate those players' gold over.

Sure, since I have very little gold compared to people who'd been doing dailies diligently*, I could be a mule, but I decided that if I was going to migrate any toons over, it'd be on my terms and when I felt I was ready. I already have Cardwyn 2.0 over on Atiesh, so Card wasn't going to land there anyway. And since most of my other toons are tied to her in one form or another, I didn't see a reason to move them over either. 

***

This whole turn of events brought a sudden halt to my Friday Night Karazhan runs, because with one or two exceptions (such as Briganaa) all of the toons in there were alts. I never got a chance to execute Pallyzhan, and I'm not going to migrate Linnawyn over to Atiesh just so I could do it there. There are people in guild who are aware I have Deuce** already on Atiesh, but I've already begun blocking guild invites, so I have no qualms about her going forward.

I remembered Larisa of The Pink Pigtail Inn, and the drama and agony she went through when she got "the talk" about her lack of raid performance that led to her brief departure from her guild, and I was determined to not deal with that. When I left, I wasn't going to have that drama follow me around. 

The more I've heard from my questing buddy about what the "new" raiding rules would be, the more I'm confident in the knowledge that I made the right decision. I'm sorry, but having the "bench" clear trash until the "real raiders" show up to replace them in the raid smacks of something out of Animal Farm: all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. The "you'd better perform or we'll replace you immediately" vibe that they're projecting means that they've swallowed the kool-aid whole and are going full hardcore. 

And to me, that's completely and totally stupid, because they then become no better than any of the other 40-50 hardcore raiding guilds on Atiesh-US, without any other distinguishing characteristics. 

The one thing that Valhalla had that other guilds didn't was that they acknowledged that people had families and real life and that came first, no matter what. That was why the raiding times were later than other guilds' raids, because families came first. Well, that entire modus operandii --along with the associated guild culture-- seems to have been thrown right out the window in pursuit of.... what, exactly? Is leadership so myopic that they truly believe they could be the top guild --or one of the top five guilds-- on Atiesh? The only reason why the Tuesday/Thursday raid was in the Top 6 in Sunwell Pleateau was because of all the other guilds that left Myzrael. To be a Top Five guild on Atiesh, they have to throw away the soul of their guild in pursuit of something that --at best-- they'll have only a year to a year and a half to enjoy before Cataclysm Classic appears.

There are other things I know of that I'm not liberty to discuss that I believe could fracture the merged guild before it even gets off the ground, but we'll see how that plays out. I'm staying out of it, because my time with Valhalla is at an end. 

My opinion on this merger can be summed up with a quote from Rebecca West that my fellow blogger Spinks used deep in the darkest days of Gamergate: "Women, listening to anti-suffrage speeches, for the first time knew what many men really thought of them."

*As I alluded to in a previous post, one of those same people who was diligently getting all the gold + mats so they could speed level their professions on their new Death Knight was the one who'd informed me in guild chat that doing the dailies may be boring and repetitive but "the gold you get means you never have an excuse to not have gold in game." I presume he meant that to me because I was the only other guildie online at the time, so that was his way to tell me "don't bitch about a lack of gold".

Narrator: Briganaa never bothered to accumulate gold.

Of course, now that he has to migrate all of his gold and mats over to Atiesh-US, I kind of chuckled at his predicament.

**That's what I've taken to calling Cardwyn 2.0.