Monday, 26 September 2011
When to Give Up
I'm getting increasingly frustrated with trying to rebuild my guild. I want to go back to being a casual player who raids, but I can't. I guess it's a sense of duty to the guild my friends founded but aren't really active in anymore.
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Priests and Paladin Related Problems
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| Ayella |
I have been making huge strides in gearing up my new priest, Ayella. I'm not giving up on Mirax or Rhysati for her, but given how much a badass I feel like when I'm running around on Elscol rolling a level 85 priest and mashing shit up on her made sense. Now that Ayella is 85 and running Zandalari heroics, she's better geared than my druid, Ineri. This kind of makes me sad, but it makes sense given my current love affair with Disc priests and my frustrations with my ability to play my druid in any spec. (I have been working on her Feral/Bear spec and gear and might be able to switch to it as a MS eventually. I just need to pick Sheltem's brain a bit more and get some practice.)
Speaking of frustrations, I've been getting increasingly frustrated with Mirax. I can't get her dps to match her gear level. I had a similar problem with this when I was gearing up for Cataclysm raiding, but once I got her some raid gear her dps shaped up. I'm wondering if the same things is happening now with this next level or raiding tier. All of my stats are correctly prioritized. My gear is all appropriate and the only real upgrades I can get are from Firelands or heroic Tier 11 content. I've been doing research and changing some glyphs around and I just feel stuck. I don't think getting stuck healing half the time has helped. I'm sure that if I had drawn a hard line on dpsing verses healing I'd probably be better at my Ret spec. However, since I get stuck changing my role all the time I feel as though I am not as proficient at either spec as I could be. During Wrath I hardly healed even though I felt competent doing so and I think that helped me be a better Retadin.
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
A RIFT in WoW
Most of the officers and long term members of my guild are getting increasingly bored, frustrated, tired of WoW gameplay. Yes, Blizzard did an amazing job updating Vanilla content and there's a ton of new stories to experience. But it's all just the same. End game has nothing for us and the immense difference in the cost of abilities verses their effectiveness from Level 84 to 85 is so crazy that most of us don't want to level another toon to 85. So those of us who log into vent nightly but not WoW have been talking about what game(s) we might all play together once we move on from WoW.
To this extent several of us have rolled toons on a few different games. Our PVP officer, Stormrydr, is currently playing Forsaken World. He got me to roll a character on there, but I don't like the character controls. Myself and Mälik rolled characters on RIFT and we got our guild's MT, Sheltem, to try it out. (If we bounce to anything RIFT would be my preference at this point.) Our main raid healer, Starathir, and a newer member, Greatknight, have stated that they're going to Star Wars: The Old Republic when it comes out. Mälik has also expressed interest in Diablo III and I might have to check that one out. Meanwhile Sheltem and Greatknight have been playing Team Fortress 2 to pass the time and I've been mashing it up on Epic Battle Fantasy 3 on Shelt's recommendation.
I would like to see all of us stay together and continue to play together post-WoW as it's the people that I met in WoW who keep me in the game. Thankfully I've been making friends with most of these people and have ways to stay in contact aside from playing WoW. Don't get me wrong, I still like WoW. But it doesn't hold the same fascination for me that it once did.
To this extent several of us have rolled toons on a few different games. Our PVP officer, Stormrydr, is currently playing Forsaken World. He got me to roll a character on there, but I don't like the character controls. Myself and Mälik rolled characters on RIFT and we got our guild's MT, Sheltem, to try it out. (If we bounce to anything RIFT would be my preference at this point.) Our main raid healer, Starathir, and a newer member, Greatknight, have stated that they're going to Star Wars: The Old Republic when it comes out. Mälik has also expressed interest in Diablo III and I might have to check that one out. Meanwhile Sheltem and Greatknight have been playing Team Fortress 2 to pass the time and I've been mashing it up on Epic Battle Fantasy 3 on Shelt's recommendation.
I would like to see all of us stay together and continue to play together post-WoW as it's the people that I met in WoW who keep me in the game. Thankfully I've been making friends with most of these people and have ways to stay in contact aside from playing WoW. Don't get me wrong, I still like WoW. But it doesn't hold the same fascination for me that it once did.
Monday, 29 August 2011
The Men Behind the Screen
In video games we rarely see what the person on the other side of the screen looks like. Even thought they may be your childhood friend you just reconnected with on Facebook and shared Xbox Live handles, you still don't physically see them when you are playing games together. In MMO games its even worse where you tend to become close with guild members that you otherwise would never know. When talking to these people on Ventrillo, Team Speak, Mumble, etc, it's a lot like listening to the radio and wondering what the DJ actually looks like. Face it, we all get curious as to what our guild members and fellow player look like in real life.
To quell this curiosity my guild established a forum page to link a picture of yourself to. That way any guild member could see who was who without giving away personal information and in a setting where only registered members of the site could log in. after all, it never hurts to be safe on the internet. Last night we finally got one of the longest standing hold outs per say to post his picture up there. Our MT has always been closely guarded with his information which I always found funny as I can find his blog on there where he gives out of rather personal information. (i.e. "Hi my name is _____. I live in _____. I'm a member of this church and I have my Eagle Scout.") The funny thing about this guy is that the gays in our guild were discussing what he actually looked like just 2 nights ago. They determined that he was a skinny, nerdy white guy in glasses. Well, they got the white part but he is anything but nerdy looking and is built like the Scotsman he is. I would say he's downright good looking, escpecially those eyes.
This brings me to my point. Does knowing a person in a video game allow you to truly get a feel of their personality free of an visual judgement? The gay boys in guild have been straight up about this and told me it was a good thing I was a pretty girl or they couldn't continue to be friends with me. As for the MT who finally posted his picture, I think his personality does match his appearance but I liked his personality before I knew what he looked like. The same was said previously when I fell head over heels for the Ele Shaman in guild. I would have dated that man no matter what he looked like. Then I met him in Vegas and what do you know, he's exactly my type and is incredibly cute. So is it really wise of us to want to see what our fellow game players look like? I know I get hit on more by the guys in guild once they see my picture on the forum. Then again, knowing what the men in my guild look like doesn't help any crushes I may form on them in-game. It just tricks the mind into thinking the men on the other side of the screen are not far away an thus unobtainable. Yet, I think I would be curious no matter what. Afterall, we humans are curious, visually stimulated creatures. Why else do we play video games?
To quell this curiosity my guild established a forum page to link a picture of yourself to. That way any guild member could see who was who without giving away personal information and in a setting where only registered members of the site could log in. after all, it never hurts to be safe on the internet. Last night we finally got one of the longest standing hold outs per say to post his picture up there. Our MT has always been closely guarded with his information which I always found funny as I can find his blog on there where he gives out of rather personal information. (i.e. "Hi my name is _____. I live in _____. I'm a member of this church and I have my Eagle Scout.") The funny thing about this guy is that the gays in our guild were discussing what he actually looked like just 2 nights ago. They determined that he was a skinny, nerdy white guy in glasses. Well, they got the white part but he is anything but nerdy looking and is built like the Scotsman he is. I would say he's downright good looking, escpecially those eyes.
This brings me to my point. Does knowing a person in a video game allow you to truly get a feel of their personality free of an visual judgement? The gay boys in guild have been straight up about this and told me it was a good thing I was a pretty girl or they couldn't continue to be friends with me. As for the MT who finally posted his picture, I think his personality does match his appearance but I liked his personality before I knew what he looked like. The same was said previously when I fell head over heels for the Ele Shaman in guild. I would have dated that man no matter what he looked like. Then I met him in Vegas and what do you know, he's exactly my type and is incredibly cute. So is it really wise of us to want to see what our fellow game players look like? I know I get hit on more by the guys in guild once they see my picture on the forum. Then again, knowing what the men in my guild look like doesn't help any crushes I may form on them in-game. It just tricks the mind into thinking the men on the other side of the screen are not far away an thus unobtainable. Yet, I think I would be curious no matter what. Afterall, we humans are curious, visually stimulated creatures. Why else do we play video games?
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
New Favorite Alt
When is it time for you to move on from a character to another?
This is a question I have been pondering for awhile now. For the most part is in regard to my druid, Ineri, but these days I almost wonder if I shold start asking the same about my paladin, Mirax. The question about benching Ineri comes fro the fact that I feel as though I suck at playing her. Of the three characters I have leveled to 85 in this expansion she has been by far the hardest to gear and run with. Just transitioning from regular dungeons to heroic dungeons was painstaking and I didn't feel comfortable running those with her until she practically outgeared them. I have talked about her restoration and balance specs with the main resto druid in guild. He helped me with my spec and things have become a bit easier, but I still feel that druid healing and I do not belong together. I do love playing bear, but I am a horrible tank with the exception of one boss fight in Violet Hold. For some reason I can kite the kite boss perfectly in there but cannot tank anything else successfully. thus my inepitude at the druid class makes me wonder if I should stop playing a class I once enjoyed so much.
This brings me to the topic on benching Mirax. She is my first character and the main one that I play. I'm not sure I could ever truely bench her for that reason alone. Lately however, I feel as though I am not able to play her to her full potential. Other retribution paladins kick my ass when it comes to dps. Other melee classes that are less geared than I make me efforts look silly. I have been wrestling with making her a holy paladin as her main spec, and while I do well at healing on her I still feel as though I do not play her to her full potential. This combine with the amount of time I have spent leveling my two discipline priests, Elscol and Ayella, I feel as though I am almost more proficient at playing them than Mirax. I'm constantly getting complimented on my healing skill as a disc priest and the insane things I can heal through. Heck, Elscol pulls the same HPS at level 72 that Ineri pulls at level 85. And with my current drive to get Ayella to 85 I'm not sure what I'm going to do in terms of the character I play most when she gets there and gets geared up. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
This is a question I have been pondering for awhile now. For the most part is in regard to my druid, Ineri, but these days I almost wonder if I shold start asking the same about my paladin, Mirax. The question about benching Ineri comes fro the fact that I feel as though I suck at playing her. Of the three characters I have leveled to 85 in this expansion she has been by far the hardest to gear and run with. Just transitioning from regular dungeons to heroic dungeons was painstaking and I didn't feel comfortable running those with her until she practically outgeared them. I have talked about her restoration and balance specs with the main resto druid in guild. He helped me with my spec and things have become a bit easier, but I still feel that druid healing and I do not belong together. I do love playing bear, but I am a horrible tank with the exception of one boss fight in Violet Hold. For some reason I can kite the kite boss perfectly in there but cannot tank anything else successfully. thus my inepitude at the druid class makes me wonder if I should stop playing a class I once enjoyed so much.
This brings me to the topic on benching Mirax. She is my first character and the main one that I play. I'm not sure I could ever truely bench her for that reason alone. Lately however, I feel as though I am not able to play her to her full potential. Other retribution paladins kick my ass when it comes to dps. Other melee classes that are less geared than I make me efforts look silly. I have been wrestling with making her a holy paladin as her main spec, and while I do well at healing on her I still feel as though I do not play her to her full potential. This combine with the amount of time I have spent leveling my two discipline priests, Elscol and Ayella, I feel as though I am almost more proficient at playing them than Mirax. I'm constantly getting complimented on my healing skill as a disc priest and the insane things I can heal through. Heck, Elscol pulls the same HPS at level 72 that Ineri pulls at level 85. And with my current drive to get Ayella to 85 I'm not sure what I'm going to do in terms of the character I play most when she gets there and gets geared up. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
In-Game Character Relationships and Quasi-RP
I don't play on an RP server and the notion has always appealed to me. Yet, when I tired rolling a toon on a serious RP server once I failed miserably at it. Like a lot of players I do make up backgrounds and personas for my characters as I find it helps me get to know and understand my characters better and I feel it helps me play them better. If you know the character's M.O., then you understand why you play them the way you do. This quasi-RP as I call it had lead to some interesting things as I've gotten to know Mirax and she helps me understand my own motives.
I've struggled to make a background for her, though thankfully Blizzard did that already as she's a Draenei and crash landing in Azuremyst Isle was one of the most profound experiences I had when I first started playing WoW. The land was breathtakingly gorgeous and the environment was so surreal that I was captivated as soon as I got away form the level 6 striders that kept killing me after I had deleted my hearthstone. That experience of running around Azuremyst and later Bloodmyst Isles shaped who Mirax is and why she does the things she does. There have been few in-game experiences that have affected me like this and most of the subsequent ones all had to do with a single player, Mirax's partner in most crimes: Mälik.
Like Mirax, Mälik crash landed on the Exodar and took in everything that Azeroth had to offer. Since sometime during Wrath, after Ulduar was no longer top raiding tier, Mir and Mal have been stomping it up all over Azeroth and Outland. We got out Hero of the Zandalar Tribe together, helped each other finish quests and get dungeon achievements. And we've done a bit of play RP together. I could argue that Mälik is Mirax's in-game soulmate as the nature of our RP does tend to devolve into more adult themes and thankfully I'm female in real life and Mälik is male. Makes for a bit less on the awkward side, except I'm not sure Mal considers Mir his in-game partner the way I do.
The only issue with a relationship like ours is how our situations outside of game affect the in-game one. When we do get into the RP part, we are projecting part of ourselves onto out characters and that's the sticky part. How does one deal with the fact that their in-game mate/date/lover/etc deal with the fact that they have a girlfriend outside of game and how does that affect their gameplay with you? Yes, WoW and everything that happens in the digital world of Azeroth is just a game, but the people and personalities are real. I actually met up with Mälik in real life this year and he is exactly the same person in the real world as he is over the Ventrillo server. So it makes you wonder what's going on in a person's offline life that makes them do the things they do online and how comfortable they are with the actions you take in-game regarding them.
I've struggled to make a background for her, though thankfully Blizzard did that already as she's a Draenei and crash landing in Azuremyst Isle was one of the most profound experiences I had when I first started playing WoW. The land was breathtakingly gorgeous and the environment was so surreal that I was captivated as soon as I got away form the level 6 striders that kept killing me after I had deleted my hearthstone. That experience of running around Azuremyst and later Bloodmyst Isles shaped who Mirax is and why she does the things she does. There have been few in-game experiences that have affected me like this and most of the subsequent ones all had to do with a single player, Mirax's partner in most crimes: Mälik.
Like Mirax, Mälik crash landed on the Exodar and took in everything that Azeroth had to offer. Since sometime during Wrath, after Ulduar was no longer top raiding tier, Mir and Mal have been stomping it up all over Azeroth and Outland. We got out Hero of the Zandalar Tribe together, helped each other finish quests and get dungeon achievements. And we've done a bit of play RP together. I could argue that Mälik is Mirax's in-game soulmate as the nature of our RP does tend to devolve into more adult themes and thankfully I'm female in real life and Mälik is male. Makes for a bit less on the awkward side, except I'm not sure Mal considers Mir his in-game partner the way I do.
The only issue with a relationship like ours is how our situations outside of game affect the in-game one. When we do get into the RP part, we are projecting part of ourselves onto out characters and that's the sticky part. How does one deal with the fact that their in-game mate/date/lover/etc deal with the fact that they have a girlfriend outside of game and how does that affect their gameplay with you? Yes, WoW and everything that happens in the digital world of Azeroth is just a game, but the people and personalities are real. I actually met up with Mälik in real life this year and he is exactly the same person in the real world as he is over the Ventrillo server. So it makes you wonder what's going on in a person's offline life that makes them do the things they do online and how comfortable they are with the actions you take in-game regarding them.
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| Mälik and Mirax in a secluded room in Stormwind. |
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Drawing the Line on Guild Raid Performance
My guild has a BIG problem. Our players are constantly getting outshined by the PUGs we bring in to fill out our 10-man raiding team. Last week in the first official guild-sponsored Firelands run one of our 3 dps was constantly lower than the tanks on the meters and the undergeared PUG was outshining our fully geared out in Tier 11 enhancement shaman. Had our dps been pulling the numbers we needed them to we would have had Shannox down no questions asked. Many times we got him to 3% but then everyone started taking too much damage and the raid wiped or we were too slow on the dps and he hit enrange. At 3%.
Our officers, who coincidentally are our regular raiders, had an impromptu meeting after the raid to discuss the issue. Sadly the meeting didn't result in much except our low dpsers saying their dps was low "because we're melee and have to run around a lot." This kinda pissed me off because the main spec on my paladin is retribution and earlier in the day I had been pulling 14k dps without thinking about while running around like an idiot trying to heal the tank while do ranged dps in a ZG because the healer and dps kept dying. And I'm just as geared as the enhancement shaman. Hell my under geared enhancement shaman pulls the same dps as the other raider. Back to the issue at hand, being melee dps isn't a good excuse for low dps in a raid. I think I was so pissed off about the comment because I had been asked to heal for that raid due to the fact that we have too much melee dps and the only other melee with a heal offspec is the guild lead who pulls the trump card. And this issue has come up before--forcing one of the best dps in guild to go heals.
So last night a few of the officers were talking about the raid dps issue once again since our previous meeting had not produced anything other than excuses. We realized that our guild is in the EXACT same position it was in when Trial of the Crusader came out--our guild dps and overall player performance is lacking and Zeffra and Mohrrgun are not in the picture currently--and the guild needs a gimmick to re-invigorate it. (Zeff and Moh are two of the guild founders who happen to be the glue that holds us together.) And just like when TotC came out we decided that we are going to start running 25-man PUG raids on Saturdays that are not guild sponsored and thus we are not obliged to take under-performing guild members along with us. This also means that any PUG we bring in has to pull at least 15k dps or they will be kicked from group. Granted leading 25-man raids makes out main tank and primary raid leader go batty, but he was the one who suggested it. However, unlike TotC he's not running the 25-mans on his own. He has both myself and his co-raid lead to help with group formation and raid execution.
I will always hold out hope that our guild can regain the glory days of our 10-man Ulduar raid team that made our guild 9th on server for 10-man progression. Maybe this is what's needed. Maybe we need to stop walking on eggshells around guild members feelings and be straight up asses about the raid performance. Maybe we should just start our own new guild or go join another. But I don't want to leave a guild I have worked so hard to make a great place to play WoW that it is.
Our officers, who coincidentally are our regular raiders, had an impromptu meeting after the raid to discuss the issue. Sadly the meeting didn't result in much except our low dpsers saying their dps was low "because we're melee and have to run around a lot." This kinda pissed me off because the main spec on my paladin is retribution and earlier in the day I had been pulling 14k dps without thinking about while running around like an idiot trying to heal the tank while do ranged dps in a ZG because the healer and dps kept dying. And I'm just as geared as the enhancement shaman. Hell my under geared enhancement shaman pulls the same dps as the other raider. Back to the issue at hand, being melee dps isn't a good excuse for low dps in a raid. I think I was so pissed off about the comment because I had been asked to heal for that raid due to the fact that we have too much melee dps and the only other melee with a heal offspec is the guild lead who pulls the trump card. And this issue has come up before--forcing one of the best dps in guild to go heals.
So last night a few of the officers were talking about the raid dps issue once again since our previous meeting had not produced anything other than excuses. We realized that our guild is in the EXACT same position it was in when Trial of the Crusader came out--our guild dps and overall player performance is lacking and Zeffra and Mohrrgun are not in the picture currently--and the guild needs a gimmick to re-invigorate it. (Zeff and Moh are two of the guild founders who happen to be the glue that holds us together.) And just like when TotC came out we decided that we are going to start running 25-man PUG raids on Saturdays that are not guild sponsored and thus we are not obliged to take under-performing guild members along with us. This also means that any PUG we bring in has to pull at least 15k dps or they will be kicked from group. Granted leading 25-man raids makes out main tank and primary raid leader go batty, but he was the one who suggested it. However, unlike TotC he's not running the 25-mans on his own. He has both myself and his co-raid lead to help with group formation and raid execution.
I will always hold out hope that our guild can regain the glory days of our 10-man Ulduar raid team that made our guild 9th on server for 10-man progression. Maybe this is what's needed. Maybe we need to stop walking on eggshells around guild members feelings and be straight up asses about the raid performance. Maybe we should just start our own new guild or go join another. But I don't want to leave a guild I have worked so hard to make a great place to play WoW that it is.
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