So the ICC raid buff was released in today’s patch. Ugh. Too fast, too fast, too fast.

I HATE the new raid paradigm of making raids easier and pushing them out faster. It lessens the sense of accomplishment when you kill a new boss. I have written rants on this before, but WotLK has been all about messin’ with the middle-of-the-road guilds like mine. I can’t enjoy killing normal mode bosses, because it’s not “real”. And I can’t enjoy killing hard mode bosses, because we’ve already done 70% of the fight on normal mode, so it’s not “real” either. I bolded that because it really deserves emphasis. What exactly motivates me to keep raiding?

This system is just stressing out dedicated raiders, and most guild leaders I know are tearing out their hair. I feel under pressure to make us progress faster than ever before so we can “keep up”, and yet people are burning out and quitting faster than ever before because farming four versions of Jaraxxus each week (back when ToC was the top raid) is boring as hell.

Not to mention Blizz has completely screwed over guilds in so many ways in LK. I see so many posts that say, “Why should I bother getting a guild? I can pug raids and groups.” Even more so with this buff and the subsequent versions! (True, we can turn this buff off, but will most guildies approve? A quick straw poll this morning showed that most of my officers want to keep it, seeing as we’re “behind” and there’s no tangible benefit to removing the buff aside from some pride. Argh.)

Sorry, I know I’m ranting, but MAN this expansion has just made me really angry at WoW. Guilds are, I would argue, the number one source of player retention. How many people keep logging on for the people they play with, instead of logging on for the sheer joy of the game? I see folks say all the time that they would quit except for their friends online. And yet Blizzard seems pretty insistent on making running a moderate raiding guild as difficult and unpleasant as possible.

Stop rushing us, stop nerfing our team’s sense of accomplishment. Take your pity buff, Blizzard, and shove it up your collective bottoms.

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Guild Management, Raiding Ruminations, WotLK guildleading, raiding, rants

(Note: this is a rant. It is not meant to be a comprehensive look at an issue, or even-handed in the slightest. It is me feeling cranky and sorry for myself and venting.)

Dear Guild,

AUGH, where did you all go? Three weeks ago we had 35+ signups for Tuesday and Thursday raid nights, and this week we BARELY have 25, and that includes a totally excessive eight healers*. Here I was thinking that once the holidays were over we had at least four months of good solid raiding before the summer bullshit starts again, but I guess I was wrong.

Over the past five years I have had to just accept that occasionally a quarter of our core raid signups will disappear into the mist. And honestly, every time it becomes more and more difficult to be motivated to fill those spots. Why should I bother? People will just disappear again. And again. And again. It starts to feel a little infinite and depressing after a while.

This time it’s particularly painful because we were doing SO WELL. You are all pretty damn amazing players, when you’re actually THERE. At some point around the holidays we had a kickass raid group and we were .. not a world first guild, but we were going to be pretty dang competitive. It felt really good, like it was time for the casualcore nerds to shine! And now we’re back behind the pack, plinking at Professor Putricide.

My favorite part of this dance is a month from now when y’all come back from where ever you are and find the raid is partially staffed with New Guys. New Guys who are in YOUR spot. And man, quite a few of you will not be pleased about that, and then you will send me cranky PMs and I will make a very squinchy face when I read them. Finding new people is a lot of work. I have to advertise, respond to questions in-game and on the forums, conduct interviews, get feedback from our people, help the new dude get settled with rules and culture, analyze performance logs, and then conduct the Membership Discussion should they make it that far. By the time they’ve made it to their second or third raid with us, I am not very inclined to push them aside for the guy who disappeared without warning for a month.

Seriously, what does it take? We had progression, we have a pretty damn awesome guild culture, leadership with open door policies, limited time commitment (6-9 hours a week!). All I need is for people who said they would come on raids to.. actually come on raids. I’m not paid to do this, remember. I’m a volunteer, just like you. Sure, I get the benefits of being guild leader, but I also do a lot more work and am expected to care a lot more than anyone else. That’s fine, as long as I’m also getting what I want out of the game, and one of those things is progression raiding.

This morning, when faced with yet another round of real life events and apathy and frantic recruitment posts across the internet, I am not sure why I bother.

Love, Cranky Liore.

* Dear healers: you sign up for everything, and I love you for it. I wish we could kill new bosses routinely with 8 healers, because I would take you all on every run.

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Guild Management guildleading, raiding, rants

So this week I’ve been between contracts (this is a civilized way of saying unemployed), and as usual my restless brain came up with a fiddly, time-intensive, and totally useless project: seriously playing the Auction House.

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be the rightful winner of a Battered Hilt during a LFG random. Everyone in the party froze when it dropped, and after giving each other the stinkeye we all agreed to roll need. Usually I am quite strict about need being “need this for an upgrade on this character right now” (and I had passed on another Hilt the week before during a guild run for that very reason), but in all honesty on a pug who doesn’t NEED 20,000g? I need to not have to farm again for a very long time, thanks.

So anyway, all of the above means that this week I have lots of spare time and lots of spare gold. My mission was clear: become an Auction House mogul. Buy low, sell high, have a big money fight with all my friends. This may surprise you, dear reader, but after some effort I learned that apparently buying low and selling high is trickier than you might think! I know! Go fig!

I can’t really give ‘helpful gold-making tips’, because I am a very unreliable source. I will say that I started out with 1000g in seed money and had 750g in profitable auctions close yesterday (gross, not net). However, I turned right around and sunk everything back into inventory so I can’t really tell how well I’m doing overall. I can say that I’ve had a lot of fun so far, which I suppose is the point.

The constant, stable income is in level 80 crafting professions. Jewelcrafting and Inscription seem to basically be licenses to print money with a little research, and I have a level 70 tailorbot who has been quite profitable. Enchanting is less awesome with the LFG system, but still good. Alchemists should be using their epic gem transmute every day. Keep an eye on mat prices, and stock up when they’re low.

The alternative to making money with your professions is flipping. This works best, I think, when you are available to log in during weird hours, such as late at night or early in the morning. With mods you can search for auctions that are about to end and slip in a bid. Items such as herbs, ore, and enchanting mats sell constantly, hundreds each day on each server, so you cannot go wrong by picking some up for under market value. It WILL sell eventually. In truth, the flipper’s motto is “buy low and sell normal”. Go for the sure thing, and go for it in bulk.

And don’t undervalue bidding on stuff! It’s not sexy or flashy or exciting, and it doesn’t appeal to my need for immediate gratification, but holy cow you can find some good prices. Be patient, bid on all those profession goods with the 1s start, and a small percentage of them will show up in your mailbox. There is something really satisfying about having a 50s bid go through and then turning around and selling the item back for 30g. It seems sneaky. I like it!

The big lesson I have to learn now is how to sit on inventory. I don’t have to flip everything immediately, and in fact would benefit in many ways by waiting until the price on, say, Lichbloom goes back up to its usual ridiculous number. I suspect I’ll get better at this over time as I learn the ways of the marketplace.

I will keep y’all updated as to my success. Oh, and Uldumites… go buy a bunch of stuff off the AH, okay? Thanks.

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Random rants, silly

Look, let’s just put this in big bold letters up front so everyone knows where I stand: DO NOT NERF PLAGUE WORKS FOR A LONG TIME. Thank you.

I should hasten to add that we haven’t killed any of the three new bosses yet, so I am hardly speaking from a position of uber superiority. In fact, we wiped to Festergut 11 times on Tuesday, getting him as low as 3% once. And when we kill him tonight, as I suspect we will if everyone is on the ball, it will feel really good.

Everyone who has ever raided knows how good a first boss kill can feel. That rush is proportionate to how much work you put in to killing him. I remember after five weeks of slogging away on Kael, I literally teared up when he finally died. That feeling when the boss you’ve been banging your head against falls down and Vent erupts in cheers — that’s the rush of raiding. I like to improve my character and hang with my friends, but that boss kill is the real kernel of raid satisfaction.

That satisfaction has been sorely missed by “average” raid guilds such as mine.

Oh sure, there are Heroic modes, and we do a fair number of them. Some are unique fights in their own right, like Sarth-3D, and very challenging. But most are just the same old boss you have already fought three different ways, only with everything scaled up. I killed Gormok in normal 10s, heroic 10s, normal 25s, and now I can kill him while he hits the tank for 40k? Awesome. I mean, I’ll do it, but it’s not very interesting.

Meanwhile, normal modes in ToC-25 were so easy that we were clearing the place in an hour by our third run. I remember when we would be all excited to get a screenie of us standing around the corpse of a new boss, but with ToC it was hard to feel like we’d actually done something until we just finished the place. Even the first wing of ICC was a little underwhelming, at the end of the day. Don’t get me wrong, the boss mechanics are interesting, the setting is neat, and I get to shackle things, but none of the kills gave that sense of accomplishment.

Then along came the Plague Works. It was incredibly fun: fresh new content, and a boss that at our level requires solid concentration, effort, and teamwork from everyone involved. Our team has been buzzing since Tuesday, too. People are analyzing the raid logs, posting on the strategy threads, and shoring up any holes in their gear. There are places to go and things to kill.

Back in TBC we were very happy to have a new boss down every two weeks. Fourteen days! And we liked it! I understand that Blizzard wants to get away from elaborate fights like our five week effort to kill Kael’Thas, and I’m not entirely opposed to that. But give us some challenge. Give us a reason to be good (and get better) at what we do. Give us the occasional morsel of fresh content that we can’t just brute force into the ground, and I suspect that you, my dear Blizz, will find many satisfied customers. For the moment, I am one of them.

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Raiding Ruminations ICC, raiding, rants

Look, I try to be nice and not complain about stuff too much, particularly stuff on the PTR. But the Tier 9 graphics.. in all sincerity, this pushes me to flip out in despair more than anything else I’ve ever seen. All armor classes look alike.

I am going to look just like a mage and a warlock. In our raid of nine different classes, there will be 4 different armor designs. Is this supposed to make us excited? I remember getting my Prophecy Robes in MC and feeling like a “real priest”. Even before the arrival of TBC I yearned for the T5 wings, and I admit my eyes watered a bit when I finally got them. T6 had the hood and shoulders of justice, and currently Liore is strutting around in a T8 ninja mask, which is entirely pleasing.

Call me vain, call me shallow, but I like Liore to look good. And this.. this is not good.

And don’t give me that lame RP excuse nonsense that, “we’re in an army now, we have uniforms”. First, nice decision to suddenly plead realism as we JOUST our way to Arthas. Secondly, I have to spend enough time looking like everyone else in real life as part of the office worker army, thanks. I really don’t care to do that in a game. And finally.. Liore the elf character is an anti-authoritarian fabulously sassy priest, and she doesn’t wanna wear a uniform. Yeah, take that RP excuse.

You know what? I’m feeling stubborn and reactionary this morning, but I’m not doing it. I’m not going to take any T9, if I even go to the Colosseum at all. Hopefully there will be offset gear, and if there’s not then I’ll just heal the whole damn thing in my Ulduar gear, and I’ll still rock. I. Am not. A mage. I’m not even a caster! And I won’t even get started on how my DK friend feels about looking like a PALADIN. It’s not pretty.

3.2 in general is just making me nuts, although I’m trying to not think about it too much while everything is still in flux on the PTR. Why are they bringing out another raid instance so soon? It feels cheap and rushed, with us locked in a big empty room with a big empty monster, wearing identical clothes. (And yes, I know the spoiler for the end of the instance, but still.) Oh, and more priest nerfs. And multiple overcomplications of the raid lockout system.

Really, really not impressed.

/rant

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Raiding Ruminations, Random, WotLK gear, patch, priest, rants