I was tagged to do this by a number of folks, I’m sorry but I slacked off so long that I can’t remember exactly who they all were but Cymre was definitely one (possibly the first). This was the outfit I wore to hang out with Velen while I was doing the Love Is In The Air stuff. I wanted the pink lovebird, so I made a visit to my faction leaders every day, and on this day it happened I had gotten my hands on the Velen staff look-alike from the quest chain in SMV. I was thrilled because I THOUGHT I had done the quest chain already and somehow lost the staff, but it turned out I’d never completed it! This staff is an essential component of any draenei caster’s repertoire.

Speaking of the joys of transmogrification, check out today’s From Draenor With Love for another glimpse into my mad ‘mogging. Bag space is becoming a serious issue.

I think every single person has been tagged to do this screenshot thing already, but if you haven’t, consider yourself tagged!

Here’s a Tuesday Art Day that is not necessarily WoW-related, if you’ll forgive me! This is my glacially leveling SWTOR sage, Nima. Like all of my “main” characters, she is blue and has Freckles. Well, she’s sort of a turquoise. But the freckles are essential. The blue thing is the punchline of a recent From Draenor With Love – I like things and people that are blue with a disproportionate love. I don’t know why, but it’s always been true!

I haven’t really been playing SWTOR very much, when I have a hankering to play a game lately I’ve logged into WoW, but I’m sure we’ll pick it up again soon. It’s been an enjoyable game for the two of us leveling together, the story is quite engaging. The few instances we’ve done have been fun. Nima herself is pretty awesome, Voss said she is stuck-up but I don’t see that. In a world where Twi’lek are often exploited (and even slaves) she has to work especially hard at making it pretty clear that there’s no price in the galaxy that is worth her integrity. Also, she will throw a droid in your face. DROID TO THE FACE. So she’s straightforward, no-nonsense and a bit of a hardass. She trusts the Force, and that’s pretty much it.

I was listening to the Double O podcast today (Episode 15: “Breakup to Makeup.”) This is relevant because while there are no guests, O2 does spend some time talking about a trend in the blogosphere for people to leave the game, switch to another game, or in our case, just take a step back. I can’t really respond to Ophelie’s statement that Voss and I were anything other than regular raiders. (i.e. quintessential raiders or something, her words, certainly not mine). I mean, I’m flustered to think that anybody “looks up” to me. But that sense of obligation was a part of what kept me going for so long, because I find it hard to let anybody down.

Something that Oestrus said hit me even more, though. She remarked that a tendency when responding to goodbye/I’m leaving or changing type posts is for people to be sad or regretful. And it IS natural to feel sad about it, but at the same time she made a great point: That you also have to be happy for the person, because clearly this is something they need, and she’s absolutely right. When I wrote my last post, I was still somewhat reeling from the events that had happened. It’s true, the straw that tipped it for me was not big. It was pretty miniscule, but the cumulative effect of carrying the straws was what broke me. It wasn’t a feather’s weight, it was that feather on top of everything else. Now that it’s been a few weeks of casual raiding, let me tell you about it.

I am drunk on the sensation of free time. I really am. I have an underlying health condition that I haven’t written about because it’s not relevant to a WoW blog, and my health is closely tied to my diet and exercise. It always felt like a huge struggle before. I’d try to cook healthy meals (I love cooking) but I’d have to start them really early so we could walk the dog as soon as Voss came home and even then we’d have to eat our food really quickly and bolt. That was on a good day. On a bad day, it was more like both of us were too tired to cook so we’d end up ordering in or picking something up, eating that and not walking the dog at all. That was before. Now, a delirious array of possibilities has opened up before me. I’ve cooked so many awesome meals. If I’m missing an ingredient, Voss swings by the store on his way home and then I cook it. We walk the dog a bit later (during what would have formerly been a raid time). There’ve been Former Raid Nights where I went downstairs and worked out while watching a movie at my leisure, then laid back and read a book, or worked on From Draenor With Love, or whatever. After just a few weeks of raiding casually (only once a week) I’ve lost six pounds and gained energy I didn’t even know I had. I feel amazing. I can’t believe I put this off for so long, but I can say absolutely and unequivocally that it was the right decision for Voss and I.

I’ve experienced slight pangs of guilt (like when a guildie tells me they’d still wish to raid every night) and that’s hard, but for me to have kept on the way we were going would have been wrong. Voss and I started playing Warcraft because we’re that annoying couple that is inseparable. We are best friends and we do everything together. The raiding situation was putting a strain on us we didn’t even realize. He didn’t want to do it, I felt obligated to do it, he was doing it grudgingly to keep the peace – it was just bad. I told him, “If you tell me that this [game] is affecting our relationship, it’s over, without a second thought. You are 100% my priority.” But he never felt right asking that of me, so it had to come from me, but I see now how it WAS affecting our relationship negatively. Now, he can stay at work late if he needs to without worrying. He doesn’t always have to rush home. We have more time to go on date night whenever, not only on Tuesdays. I’m rediscovering what it’s like to play because and when I want to, and I hadn’t realized how far I’d strayed from that.

That is the key here, for anyone in any situation. Hardcore raider, partcore raider, 5 nights a week, one night a week. If it’s what you want to be doing then it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing! A number of people have linked to my post or commented that it made them evaluate their own relationship with WoW. (To borrow from Double O again, it IS like a relationship). We don’t all have the same experience, drives or motivations. For me, I knew that I was neglecting my health in favour of the game, and so I can’t be apologetic about my decision. I’ve had a few people tell me they’ve had so much fun with our raids since we “went casual.” I think last week they cleared DS in about two hours and then ended early. My only concern is that it can’t last because some people will get bored of the limited schedule and seek something more intense – but I can’t and wouldn’t change what they want to suit what I want, so that’s something we’ll have to face when we get there. I’m not going to worry about it prematurely or borrow trouble. Everyone has to do what makes them happy and will be best for them.

I would be lying if I said I haven’t had pangs. Every time I see a heroic kill announcement, a part of me inside has a pang. When I realize that I won’t get the achievements for heroic kills – another pang. I thought about seeing if anybody would be willing to go back into Firelands with me to try to keep building a Dragonwrath, and then I thought – you know what, I don’t want to spend the time it would take to do that, when I could spend that time on something in my real life. So I’m able to login for one raid a week, the overhead is very low – one roster, one schedule, one night, it takes about twenty minutes – and otherwise I login if I really feel like playing and hanging out. When I’m done, I logout again. This game has been part of my life too long (four years!) to just say “I’m done with it,” but I have definitely eased off the throttle. It feels great. I am doing great. Can I say “great” again? Except for the fact that the fire mage nerf landed today. That is somewhat less great. In fact, the opposite of great.

Let’s all have a moment of silence for the burning that was. We’ll still be singeing our enemies, just about 6% less. Every good thing has its time, right?

I thought that it started when our most recent tank recruit went missing. Voss pointed out that actually, it started when our DK tank stopped raiding about a year ago, and thereafter followed a cascade of turnover such as we’d never tackled before. Constant recruiting is wearing on a team, and the subsequent struggle as new players joined and the recruitment pool shallowed have made this a fairly hellish year for one small tens guild. Obviously, I can’t claim to speak for all guilds, and never have. I’m sure many guilds have had great years, and I’m happy for you. But not in this post, because this post is all about me, and my guild.

Players dropped out one by one, with expressions of regret. They weren’t leaving for greener pastures, they were just leaving. “Tired of raiding,” “Not really feeling it,” “Would rather be doing something else.” I used to say to Voss jokingly, “We’ll stop recruiting if we lose x number of players at a time, or we’ll stop recruiting if we lose x percentage of our original team.” (I never followed through on that, by the way). Each time we lost someone, I’d hit the forums and WoW Lemmings. I’d refresh tirelessly throughout the day in-between work I was doing. I’d write personalized messages to convince people that BT was the guild they wanted to be in. For the most part, it worked. But it was like a full-time job. I spoke to potential applicants, fielded questions, did my best marketing pitch. I was always positive about the guild, and always happy to bring people to it, because I believed in the small community we’d made and wanted people to join it.

Meantime, our progression started slipping. From a One-Light and a Tribute to Insanity to an H LK guild we slipped – to a 7/13 H guild, then a post-nerf 6/7 H guild, and finally, in this tier, a 0/8 H guild. Vosskah was right – the missing tank was only the last straw in an uphill battle I feel I’ve been waging all year, a struggle to stay above water.

I’d committed to raiding Dragon Soul despite a deep tiredness that was underscored by the loss of my Grandfather at the end of November. It caused me to question many things personally – was I spending too much time on what is, ultimately, a video game? Did I want this to be such a major feature of my life? Could I reinvest my energy in another area? Who would I be if I wasn’t the guild leader of Business Time? How central was it to my identity? And more importantly, to me, how could I let everyone down like that?

It was a question that pushed me to start out in Dragon Soul even though I was tired, even though I knew I wasn’t doing my best as guild leader any more. I wasn’t logging in as often as I should, I wasn’t pursuing applicants as aggressively as I should. I wasn’t keeping up with the standards I had set for myself, and when our tank failed to show up for last Wednesday’s raid, I had a sinking feeling. A day went by with no word from him, two days. We still hadn’t heard, and I realized as the weekend loomed, two facts:

He wasn’t coming back.

I didn’t have the heart to replace him.

In a moment, just like that, I was done. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, as if a lethargy had settled over me. I knew that if that’s how I felt, I had to come clean to the guild and tell them exactly how I felt. So I did, in an epic post that will remain for BT’s eyes only. I talked about our struggles, I talked about how damn proud I was of them, and more than anything I told them how sorry I was that I just didn’t have any more left to give. I didn’t know what the outcome was going to be, and I couldn’t even clearly articulate what had driven me to this point. I knew that by posting it, I was acknowledging the possibility that the guild would disband, or at least dissipate. It was a hard realization, but it was a choice between the dissolution of the guild and the continuing impact on my personal life and I think, my health. Please note (because guildies do read) that I have to write this for myself, to get it all off my chest and to sort through it, and none of it is meant as an accusation or a criticism of the folks in BT. Of course they aren’t perfect, and neither am I (duh) but really, there’s no hindsight ‘if only this’ or ‘if only that.’ Burnout happens. I think that ‘victims’ of burnout are probably often to blame because they failed to delegate properly, or even to give warning signs that they were feeling that way. That is absolutely my failing. I’m a firm believer that strong leadership doesn’t show weakness because as soon as you show signs of faltering, the entire team begins to doubt. In this case, I did us all a disservice because there was little warning. I posted that I needed some help, around the end of November, and then the beginning of January I was saying: I need to not be guild leader.

I blithely pretended that our slow progression through heroics didn’t frustrate me. Of course it did, it frustrated all of us. What we were selling (a hard mode progression guild) wasn’t matching up with the reality: a guild that did hard modes but not all of them, and lately, a guild increasingly struggling with hard modes. Our new tank was very green and hadn’t done hard mode raiding at all. It was evident that he would have to learn, even before he disappeared. Underscoring all of it, I felt, was a sense of ennui.

Forums that used to be hopping with activity in the strategy threads slowly dwindled to very little discussion. Mumble grew silent on progression nights. Voss admitted to me that he didn’t have the interest in hard modes that he’d once had, and I had to admit I felt the same. Was Business Time doing hard modes because we liked to do them, or were we trying to do them because they were what we’d always done? I asked myself this and many other questions. In the wake of my massive forum post, a few guildies spoke up. They wanted to have a meeting so that we could talk about what I’d said, and what the potential outcome might be.

I prepared for the meeting with open eyes: There were three potential outcomes to this kind of guild shakeup.

1) Someone could step forward and assume leadership of the guild, with the realization that it would take a lot of time and work and recruiting. With Vosskah and I ceasing raiding, at the least, they’d need two new tanks and another DPS and a healer who’d also declared his intent to slow raiding.

2) I considered this a compromise between the two options; Business Time could decide to go casual, scale back our raiding operations significantly, and no longer attempt hard mode progression.

3) We could cease all raiding completely (effectively an end to the guild).

Option two was my favourite, and I even admitted that in light of the reduced requirements of option two, I would be willing to remain guild leader. We wouldn’t really recruit except friends and social members if folks had anyone they wanted to bring aboard. Every single guild member attended the meeting, and every single guild member voted for option two. (I am not so secretly pleased that, like a true DPS, I tricked my guild into spamming “two.” That might only be funny to me.)

So from there we had to figure out just what shape option two would take. Would we raid on the same day? For the time being we’ve agreed to make it a variable day based on availability each week, as well as tracking who has to sit (because we still have a roster of thirteen) so that nobody has to sit unfairly. This week we’re raiding Monday, and I’ll admit, it feels completely weird to be writing this on a Wednesday. Wednesday is Raid Day. All night I’ve been wandering around a bit lost, cooking supper at a leisurely pace, browsing the internet, chatting with Voss, and letting it sink in. For two years, we were raiding any two to three days of Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. He’d come home, we’d cook supper hurriedly (or I’d have it ready beforehand) and we’d race to be online a half hour before raid time. Even on a night when we were on standby, we’d often check in to make sure we weren’t needed. We’d check the forums for any “I’m not going to be able to make it” messages. We’d prepare the raid roster, although in recent weeks that task has been assumed by another officer. We’d talk about the roster and any difficulties. Every day may as well have been an “officer meeting.” I don’t feel at liberty to go into Voss’ personal reasons, but we were both exhausted.

What made it even harder though, was that we were tired of the raiding, not the people we were raiding with. I think many hobbies do have an expiry or a limited time on them. Gaming in general is a life-long hobby for me. Even WoW itself I have played for almost four years now. I couldn’t turn my back on the raiding without feeling that I was turning my back on ‘my guys.’ So to say I was absolutely astonished at the guild meeting is putting it mildly. I steeled myself to this decision. I wrote the post. I sat there crying for five minutes while my mouse button hovered over the “submit” button, feeling like I was pulling the trigger on something I loved, that had been a huge part of my life for two years.

I was pretty shocked when I decided to turn away from my guild, and they wouldn’t let me.

We went down the list of people, giving each a chance to talk about their feelings and goals. Many admitted that their life circumstances had changed since we first started raiding. Their enthusiasm for hard mode content had waned, their time available to play the game had been reduced, but they still loved playing with all of us. “I love you guys,” our rogue declared.

“You’re going to make me CRY,” I admonished them all. (Cry AGAIN, that is).

“Yeah, we actually agreed to do that beforehand, it was an e-mail FWD titled, ‘Let’s see if we can make her cry.’”

*pause*

“Voss was in on it.”

I don’t want to get into my feelings about hard modes in general, encounter design, or why I think Ulduar was still the best raid I’ve ever done. Perhaps that’s for another post, and anyway, that strays into “maligning the way other people play” territory. I still respect hard mode raiders, it just took a great loss and a potential second loss to make me realize that I’m no longer one of them. I don’t have the drive to succeed at that level of content that I once did, and you know what? For the time being, I’m okay with that. Ironically, considering my last post, we had just as much fun messing around in LFR last week when our tank didn’t show up. We like the time spent raiding together, and that’s not dependent on the content we’re doing.

All of this to say: I’m still a guild leader. I’m now the guild leader of a one-night-a-week, social and casual raiding guild. It feels a bit odd, but I’m sure it will grow comfortable over time. I don’t know what the future will bring – there may come a time when commitments or other interests drag people away from the game altogether. But as I told Business Time at our guild meeting, even if they quit to play Diablo III: Battle.net allows us to play that together. Those who are playing SWTOR have made characters in our little sister guild. I have a lot of the guys on Steam. If I’m playing any multi-player game, I want to be doing it with them. If that’s what I take away from this game the day the servers go dark – friends that transcend any particular game, any specific pixels – that’s more fortune than any person could ask for. I’m humbled, I’m proud, and as of this week – I’m also casual. It feels good.

So the department is crowded; I’m only there to find some clip-on earrings for my Grandma, and a kindly lady shows me how they are mixed in and where I can look, etc. I feel for this woman because she is clearly petrified and it’s her first day on the job. When I find the earrings I want and am paying for them, she is taking the time to get gift boxes for them, and tissue paper to go along with the sweater I was also buying. She’s not moving at light speed, but I think it’s a reasonable length of time for a transaction. Before my things have even been bagged, though, the lady behind me has moved up to the jewellery counter and is placing her items while impatiently asking, “Is it possible to get some service here?” I’m still inputting my PIN into the machine at this point and the lady is almost shoulder to shoulder with me. The poor woman helping me finishes up our transaction while the woman training her takes over for Ms. Can’t Wait Two Minutes. I walk away from the jewellery department exclaiming to Voss, “Did you SEE that?”

As far as these stories go, it’s a pretty mild one. Entitled lady doesn’t think that waiting in line is necessary, she wants service and she wants it now. She’s the real life equivalent of a “go go go”-er. However quickly things are moving, it’s not fast enough for her. They’re unpleasant in real life as they are in a video game, and I’m afraid that more and more the game is tailored to them.

I've been taking screenshots of LFR chat here and there since the patch, here's one of them with more to follow.

This is fairly radical for the erstwhile Pugging Pally to admit, but I don’t like LFD. I don’t like LFR. Wait, before you scroll to the bottom and start typing an angry comment, let me clarify. I understand the dilemmas that LFD and LFR were introduced to address. I’m not one of the elite raiders who feels that only 1% of people playing the game should see end-game content. I don’t need other people excluded from things so that I can feel awesome about myself. It turns out, it is possible to have your internet dragon and loot it too. No one else can take away from your accomplishments in-game because they’re yours. So that’s not my problem. And on the surface, LFD and LFR work. You want a dungeon? You can be doing one anywhere from instantly to twenty minutes later, most any time of day. It turns out that the same is true for LFR; you probably won’t wait in a queue longer than twenty minutes and probably less for that, too. I have run LFR solo, I’ve run it with my guild, I’ve run it with just a few friends. I’ve done it as a druid, a paladin, and a mage. I’ve had plenty of experience with it. And here’s where I think the problem lies.

What it purports to do, and what it actually does – are two completely different things. In theory, LFD and LFR lets you get together and cooperate with a group of people to achieve a group goal: killing internet dragons of various ilks. In practice, they mask singular goals with the illusion of group play. Yes, you have to more or less cooperate to successfully complete an LFD or an LFR run. But are you there to cooperate, or are you there to acquire loot/VP? Herein lies the problem. Once upon a time, I used to run dungeons yes, to acquire emblems or points or gear or whatever, but also because just running dungeons was fun. On my old server, I had a massive friends list of people who might want to run a dungeon at any given time. If nobody felt like trying to run a dungeon, I would hit Trade or the now-defunct Looking For Group channel. It wasn’t elegant, but generally it worked. More importantly, it allowed me to make friends and build a reputation for myself as a nice/fun and competent person to run with. I did this across several characters. Usually, if I felt like running a dungeon, I could make a group to do so. If I couldn’t manage a group, I’d put it off and do something else.

Now before you counter that it’s still possible to assemble groups this way, it’s true, but unlikely. I’ve tried. I can usually gather up guildies to run things if enough are interested and perhaps if I wait a bit. I’ve tried different channels to ask if people want to run something, with very little response. I can check my same-server friends’ list and usually folks are raiding or already IN a dungeon. And why wouldn’t they be? Joining one as a tank or a healer takes all of ten seconds. You can’t blame people for taking the path of least resistance. I’m more likely to group up with friends on other servers – many times, friends I have made via this blog and Twitter. So I’m in the interesting position of having to build a reputation as a good player outside of the actual game in order to run with people I enjoy playing with. I’m sure my server has such people, but it’s unlikely I will find them because they’re either running with their own guild, or running quick pugs with LFD.

This was a guy raging on Zon'ozz because no other healers were dispellers (I joined the group after they'd wiped on Zon'ozz).

So it goes with LFR. And I will be completely honest – yes, there are good parts of LFR, but overall LFR alarms me because of what it represents, and because of its potential impact in many different ways. First of all, if someone gets their introduction to raiding through LFR I fear for what they think raiding actually IS like. A raid full of people face-pulling the boss, ignoring strats, backtalking each other and constantly squabbling, ninjaing loot they shouldn’t have (feral druids winning Int gear, I’m looking at you). LFR is a bad LFD pug writ large, with a proportionately larger number of Go Go Gos and bad attitudes. The issue with LFD and LFR both are that the majority of people feel that they’re being put in a position where they have to ‘put up with’ other people to get what they want. It’s not an opportunity to meet new folks or make friends, how could it be? There is no additional benefit to befriending people via LFD, and even if there were, you’d need to be willing to add that person via Real ID to take advantage of it. Most of us won’t do that.

Now, Blizzard has taken some steps towards addressing these issues. They acknowledged the erosion of server community by coding a preference in LFD to group you with same-server folks wherever possible. I think it was a bit too little too late, though, because most of us are already conditioned to join the group, begin killing things with the other four, faceless and anonymous people in our group, hope that it’s a “good group” so we collect our loot, points, or whatever and then move on to the next group. I’ll sometimes remark, “Hey, we’re both from this server!” and the reaction is almost always the equivalent of a shrug. If I don’t mention that we’re from the same server, then it usually doesn’t get mentioned. There’s a confusion of paradigm in what exactly is being awarded. So we’re grouped with people from our server; but tanks and sometimes healers can also obtain a satchel of loot if they are willing to join on their own. Even if a pug tank likes the group of four he/she is put with, there’s no benefit to them for staying with that group, and there is benefit to dropping group and re-queuing to obtain another satchel.

The second thing Blizzard is doing is introducing the “Battle Tag” system (currently being tested in Diablo III) that is probably what Real ID should have been all along. You’ll be able to choose a pseudonym that others will see if you choose to friend each other mutually, and gain the benefits of Real ID without letting people know your real name. This has the potential to enable friends lists to transcend server restrictions, and possibly even make reputation matter again to a certain extent. You could build a network of folks you’ve run with and would like to run with again, no matter what server they are on. For me this has great potential, and I’m watching it with interest to see what develops. I don’t just want to whine about things uselessly – I recognize that LFD and LFR were introduced with a purpose. Especially for smaller population servers, and for dungeon grouping while leveling, these systems have been a great boon. They enabled myself and other players to see lower level dungeon content that we probably didn’t have the opportunity to see before. Assembling lowbie groups was always a bit of a crap shoot – find four other people near your level, traipse out to the dungeon (possibly located in a place you hadn’t been, or you had to get there without a mount). Now we get mounts at level 20 so that’s much less of a concern, but LFD has made that completely moot anyway. It’s never been easier to join a group to do a dungeon, or as it turns out, a raid. At least, something raidish, with a raidish shape.

The overall DPS of this group WAS pretty low. I wasn't going to say anything about it, though.

I am concerned that LFR takes my favourite part of the game (raiding) and makes it so effortless yet empty to me. When you can roll in and kill Deathwing in under two hours, where is the impetus to join a long-standing, dedicated raiding group? Is it going to be worth it to the average player to say “I killed it on normal mode,” or “I killed it on heroic mode?” It was already reasonably tough to find people driven to complete heroic modes – what about now, when there seems to be three options of difficulty? I’ve had at least one friend privately confide to me that they weren’t much inspired to kill Deathwing on normal mode, having ‘seen’ him on LFR difficulty. Hard modes always stretched the veracity of the game for me in terms of lore considerations, which is more of a concern for RPers, but it does matter. There IS a “roleplay” in this MMORPG we all play, after all. Does Deathwing care if we killed him on “Looking For Raid” mode, normal mode, hard mode?

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I was already a bit worried about LFR when it was announced. How will that work, I wondered? It’s the size and scope of a raid, and all of the art, without the heart. It doesn’t have the voices of my guild friends along with it; it has random and unpredictable people. It has that guy who will queue as a healer and then go ret instead and win the caster ring from Hagara and never say a word. It has mercenary people who are just in it for themselves, it has verbal abuse. (I’m not excluding myself from the mercenary people category, by the way). There is no benefit to being magnanimous or sharing loot or anything in LFR. It doesn’t have the jokes or the camaraderie or the time or the dedication. It doesn’t have what makes raiding fun for me. Yes, I know, it’s 1) not for me and 2) so just don’t do it then. I will stop doing it when there is no benefit for me, or I will do it and quietly do my job. But what worries me is the people who are doing it who might get the impression that they’ve experienced all the game has to offer and don’t need to seek a guild who will help them to reach those goals on ‘normal’ mode, or worse, the people who’ve never raided and are left with the impression that this is what raiding is. There’s no question whether Blizzard has managed to make a random grouping tool that enables pugs to down ‘raid’ content. For me, the question is really whether or not they should have.

What do you think? Please don’t hesitate to respond and say that you love LFR and are really happy with it, and your reasons why. I don’t consider my opinion any kind of definitive one here, it’s just mine, nor am I going to argue or get defensive with you. LFR has enabled me to get three pieces of loot I wouldn’t have obtained from our regular raids – and I’ve been doing it because I know it can help me perform better for my actual raid. I know many of my guildies have been doing the same. I’ve already seen a marked drop in overall LFR speed and efficiency since the first week, though. I wonder what it’s going to be like a month from now? I’m interested to hear what you have to say about all of this, whether good or bad.

DO IT THE RIGHT WAY

Fyreuni, Vas, and Fyreuni's pet collection.

I decided to do both Fyreuni and Vas because most times they are together in the comic and interacting (i.e. Fyreuni is griefing Vas in the best possible way). You’ll notice that bunny is totally messing up his hair. As far as the pets go, I included all pets that Fyreuni actually has, with a bias towards ones that I wanted to draw (d’aww little armadillo, boo Lil’ Taregosa). I am especially fond of the armadillo and the panther cub Fyre is holding. I did this more or less the same way that I do From Draenor With Love, which is very cartoony/chibi-esque and with no lines. It’s a time-consuming way to work but I like the results, at least for now.

As far as backgrounds go, I changed the background a few times, initially having them be in the Dalaran pet store but later changing to the little parkish area alongside the sewers. I didn’t like the indoor lighting, and it’s actually pretty dim in there. This is better. It’s actually unlikely that Horde would hang out here, I think, because it’s really more on the “Alliance” side of Dalaran. (Neutral city isn’t as neutral as they’d have you believe!)

Anyway, I hope you all had/are having a good holiday. This is really more of a “Wednesday Art Day” post, but I’m sure that doesn’t really matter.

It’s been a definite adjustment to me learning to juggle the needs of a webcomic, a blog, a guild/raiding and oh, that real life thing, too. Unfortunately it’s been Manalicious that has suffered the most because I consider the webcomic to have a hard deadline, and I’ve given priority to some RL things as well. (For example, visiting my Grandmother weekly, which I consider time really well spent).

Anyway, long story short – I haven’t written here but I’m not dead and it’s just for lack of time. Today I’m working on finishing off my Secret Santa Art Trade piece, which I’m excited to share when it’s done. Look for it next Tuesday! If you check out that link on the 25th or later, all of the art should be up.

If you haven’t otherwise been reading From Draenor With Love, we started a seasonal story arc a few weeks ago. You can check it out starting here:

Winter Fail (Part One)

It has rockets, gifts, and snow, so it’s pretty much the perfect holiday gift, in my humble and extremely biased opinion.

I also took part in a cookie exchange organized by Liala over at Disciplinary Action. Rather than mailing cookies, we traded and baked recipes from mystery givers, while someone else baked our own recipes. The cookies pictured above were not my cookies from this event, I made them last year but I can’t resist using the picture again. They are draenei! But also gingerbread!

Mana Cake Musings wrote a nice Fire mage specific guide to Dragon Soul, if you are a mage of the fiery persuasion it’s worth checking that out.

On a more serious note, Jaded Alt writes about Mental Illness and WoW in a piece that I found both insightful and personally significant. If you’ve ever struggled with depression, you’ll probably recognize yourself in what Windsoar describes. For me, WoW has been at times an unhealthy escape and a blessing. It’s good to have a way of being in contact with people, however minimally, at a time when your tolerance for socializing might be low. It’s also good (for me) to take myself away from WoW sometimes to get out and meet with folks face to face. I usually have to force myself to do that if I am depressed, and it usually does help.

Redbeard at Parallel Context has been writing about how the blood elves and draenei are really more alike than they’d like to think. He starts part one here, but it’s a four part series so make sure you read the later three if you’re interested!

Tzufit has a post about The Ethics of Raid Finder Loot that’s very thought-provoking! You may have already seen it as it was linked from WoW Insider, but if you haven’t it is well worth a read.

Many WoW bloggers took part in the Furtive Father Winter event and their posts are starting to be posted! I didn’t take part myself (because I was already doing the art exchange and I was already behind on doing it so I knew I wouldn’t have the time) but I’m sure there are some great gifts that came out of it. It’s always fun to discover new bloggers this way, too.

These are just a few items from around the WoW blogsphere I wanted to mention. Meaning, these are people who have been writing when I haven’t. I hope you find something you enjoy, and Merry Christmas to you if you celebrate it, happy holidays otherwise, or have a great weekend if none of the above apply to you! I’m going to be curling up with a good book and eating too much with my family. We already ate most of the baking, but it’s as if the chocolate in this house is multiplying (not that we mind).

Our latest stint of recruitment unfortunately coincided with me being away for family concerns, so recruiting feels like it’s taking a little longer than usual. I’ve written about recruiting being hard this expansion before (harder than I’ve ever seen) but I’ve been thinking about this a great deal and I’ve started to isolate some specific factors. It’s pretty interesting, actually. In a strange way, we’ve contributed to making things difficult for ourselves.

Special Snowflakes

Back when we were a “strict” ten hardmode guild, there weren’t that many out there. Kae over at Dreambound was my ‘strict ten’ buddy in the blogosphere, and perhaps there were others but I didn’t know about them. Some people expressed confusion about the strict ten ethos – why deliberately avoid acquiring gear that would make your encounters easier? For us, strict ten was a specific challenge. Hardmode tens encounters were often overtuned or designed in such a way that they were afterthoughts to the 25-man version, or ham-handed adaptations. Doing the heroic Lich King encounter while wearing tens gear meant something. It took ages for anyone in the world to even do it, and then it took longer for more groups to follow. (In the interests of full disclosure, we defeated H LK following patch 4.0, so it was easier than it was for people who did it prior, definitely. But it was still an achievement).

Strict tens guilds faced challenges in many ways. Recruiting was difficult because you were seeking players that wanted to do hardmodes and had the ability and will for them, but many such players gravitated towards 25s and considered tens the more ‘casual’ raid size. That was a hurdle we managed to overcome by appealing to that niche player – burnt out 25s raiders who wanted a smaller format, or people who were just a bit offbeat but still didn’t want to waste their time. A “serious” tens raiding guild seemed like a contradiction in terms to many, but we managed to bring in players despite that. Some of them were those seeking 25s that I managed to convince, others were those who wanted a tens environment on their own, and we built something we could all be proud of.

Having secured a roster, we faced other challenges – the perception in the community still being that tens wasn’t “real” raiding. 25s would farm our instances for gear (things like the trinket from H Gunship 10) all the while laughing at how easy tens were. But naturally, they had a significant gear advantage as they did this. This all changed with the adjustment to raid lockouts, something that I know a lot of 25s players weren’t happy about. Rather than doing “this AND this,” suddenly it became an either or choice. You were either raiding tens, or you were raiding 25s.

But ICC was hard on people, and many players in our guild teetered on the edge of burnout as Cataclysm loomed. Overall, we were ecstatic with the announced changes – shared raid lockouts meant that tens were a viable progression track and not just a place where 25s players went for an alt run or to let their hair down on the weekend. The announced changes to gear distribution in Cataclysm were amazing. We’d no longer be at a gear disadvantage, which meant that there would be less reason for people to turn up their noses at tens! Balance would be less of an issue (they could balance around existing gear because it’d be the only gear there was). It was like a tens raider’s wildest dream! I remember being giddy and feeling like our efforts as a strict ten had finally paid off. We’d stubbornly insisted on treating tens as the viable progression path we felt they were, and finally Blizzard was acknowledging it, too.

Be Careful What You Wish For

In a twist that strikes me as truly ironic, though, what was our wildest dream has also turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. I feel like I am Hipster Guild Leader. “Hipster GL knew about ten-person raids before, but you probably haven’t heard of them.” In Cataclysm, everyone knew that tens would be getting the same loot. They’d even be eligible to make legendaries (something that hadn’t been true ever before). They already shared a singular lockout with 25s, and a raiding populace burnt out after six months of ICC flocked to ten mans in droves. I remember hearing about 25s guilds splintering into several groups, or forming up an “elite” team and leaving their other members in the dust. Ten man hard mode guilds sprung up like weeds, and suddenly our pretty small pond of tens raiding guilds was flooded. Ten person raiding went mainstream.

What did this mean for a hardmode tens guild that had been raiding tens since April 2009? It meant that suddenly there was a whole lot of competition. We went from being this odd little guild of people with the funny notion about tens to being one in a crowd of tens guilds – a single fish in a vast school of swimmers. Our server now has only tens progression guilds. All of the 25s guilds either folded, splintered, or downsized. The raiding world saw tens and saw that they were good. If tens raiding was our little indie band, suddenly we were hearing it on the radio twenty times a day. We were a pop hit.

We no longer had our elite strict ten ranking to use as a recruitment tool. At the height of our achievements, we were ranked tenth in the US (among strict ten guilds) during ICC. This was an awesome way to attract the kinds of players that we wanted. That method of recruitment was gone. I removed the ranking from our recruitment ad, because it’s not impressive anymore. We’re not in the top ten, or even the top hundred. There are thousands of guilds doing just what we do. The strict ten ranking was an odd thing that has engendered more than one debate over the past few years. The strict ten designation was very restrictive; it operated by counting the number of people in your guild who’d achieved a particular kill (25M Marrowgar, for ICC). Then it set an arbitrary limit, e.g. you could have seven people in your entire guild who’d downed 25M Marrowgar, but any more would disqualify you from being a strict ten guild. This meant that some people’s alts couldn’t join the guild. We maintained this level of monitoring for a long while, because it WAS one of our strongest recruitment tools. We had a big discussion in the guild about keeping it or letting it go, and we decided to ultimately drop the ranking (although we didn’t actually obtain any additional gear for our H LK kill so I still consider it pretty strict. Maybe strict-ish).

Comparisons are Odious

The problem for me all along, I’m realizing, was a shift in how and why we considered our rankings. Were they a tool we maintained for recruitment? Or perhaps did we fall a little bit in love with that number, and that spot? I can’t use our ranking as a recruitment tool anymore. So why was I checking it all the time? Also, what is our strongest selling point in a market that is 1) shrinking all the time, and 2) has an abundance of choices to buy what we’re ‘selling’?

It’s no secret to my friends and guildies that I am pretty hard on myself a lot of the time. Each time we slipped down a rank or failed to achieve a kill, it felt like a personal failure of mine. Why was I unable to keep those guildies from losing interest in the game? Why couldn’t I retain these members who’d been with us since ICC? Why didn’t we get that kill? Why didn’t we achieve this within a “reasonable time frame” (as measured by other guilds’ accomplishments?)

The big problem for me personally is a saturation of information. Twitter and blogs allow us to be connected to fellow players more than ever before. Heck, I have Twitter on all day long and when I’m not home I have it on my phone. Thus I’m in a position to see messages come rolling in like, “Just killed x boss,” or “Finished the entire raid!” and anything less than that feels like a personal failure. I actually think the raiding community is a lot smaller than we think it is. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of “coincidences” in the form of raiders joining our guild who used to raid together, or people leaving to join another guild that someone else is in who I am personally acquainted with. I think it’s more than just coincidence, it’s the fact that our pond is actually a lot smaller than we think it is. Which is part of the “too much information” syndrome.

For me, it’s a strange process. I have to consciously examine the facts of the guild at another point in time: We had very little turnover for a year. Our roster was stable. We had much less competition. We also used to raid four nights. A stable roster meant no readjustment period with new people coming in. It meant most people had experience with the same fights. We knew we were at a gear disadvantage, and perhaps that had a psychological impact as well. When we needed to recruit, we could point to our GuildOx ranking as a way of saying, “Look, we have credibility.” We were doing hard mode progression raiding with an adult roster of friends and dedicated raiders.

Then I have to consider the facts of the guild as it stands: We’ve had a ridiculous amount of turnover (in my mind) since Cataclysm started. We lost almost all of our healers, several tanks, and have had a veritable revolving door of DPS. But we only lost them to general disinterest in WoW, not to our guild personally. We downsized to three raid nights at the end of Wrath, so we have one less night and three fewer hours than we used to. Our roster raids less overall, and thus doesn’t master fights as quickly as they once did. Our old biggest selling point (GuildOx ranking) is no longer applicable. I think one of the biggest things we have to recommend us is that we are a stable guild (despite roster turnover) and have been so for going on three years. We still are doing hard mode progression raiding with an adult roster of friends and dedicated raiders.

Just Socks

At the end of the day, I have to recognize that Business Time – like any group of people – has changed over the years, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We’ve all gotten a bit older, and/or recruited people who are older. We have jobs, girlfriends, wives, family obligations, children. We adjusted our raid nights to reflect that, and it’s impossible to pretend that wouldn’t have an impact. I should note, this isn’t an invitation to tell me all about how YOUR guild does xyz in x number of hours. I’m happy for you, but I’m talking about my guild, and the expectations or achievements of one guild can’t be applied to another. There are no rankings for things like dedication, maturity, longevity, and the ability to tease Voss. For the record, as far as I’m concerned we rank pretty high in these intangibles (especially teasing Voss). We are still dedicated to progression within the time allotted to us, and I think it’s important that we focus on what we’re doing, instead of constantly having one eye on server rankings or Twitter. And yes, I’m mostly directing that statement at myself. I took GuildOx off my quickbar bookmarks. Not because I don’t care if my guild does well (I do) but because I want to focus on what we’re doing. I think I’ve let myself be distracted by things that are of lesser importance, and that I need to focus on one boss at a time instead of always bemoaning what we didn’t do. We earned those purple birds last tier, we have a blast raiding three nights a week together. I am damn proud of what my guild does, that it’s managed to stay together and reasonably stable for all of this time – that even though we have to search really hard sometimes, we can always find the right people that want to be part of BT with us. This is your Business Time. There are many like it, but this one’s yours. (It’s not a Booterang, although that would make kind of an awesome guild name).

Finally, an entirely shameless plug, we ARE still recruiting and the link above will take you to our post. We’d like a shadowpriest or moonkin, ideally, with a working resto off-spec. We did find a paladin tank so we’re halfway to our recruitment goal!

Last but not least, tell me about your experiences this expansion. Has your recruitment gotten harder? Did you change raid sizes? Are you happy with the change?

With Patch 4.3 and what Ratshag is calling the TRANSMOGALYPSE just around the corner, I thought it would be appropriate to re-visit the idea of “The Well-Dressed Paladin” with the intention of making Transmogrification-friendly outfits inspired by each of the Paladin races.

I’ve omitted bracers except in one case where they are actually visible, and left choice of cloaks up to the person using the outfit. The lists compiled by Rades were very helpful for choosing weapons to go with these outfits.

The Crusader

modeled by Ophelie
Helm of Purified Thoughts, Chilled Shoulderplates, Cerulean Filigreed Doublet, Breastplate of the Righteous, Studded Girdle of Virtue, Legplates of the Righteous, Earthmender’s Plated Boots, Spiritualist’s Gauntlets, Aledar’s Battlestar, Commander’s Crest

I built this set around the matching boots and gloves. Originally I tried it for a Dwarf, but soon decided that it would work better for a Human. The Highlord’s Favor/Hyperion Shield/Khan’s Buckler would also be an appropriate choice of shield for this ensemble.

The Knight of the Silver Hand

modeled by Lisan
Khan’aish Helmet, Khan’aish Epaulets, Red Linen Shirt, Leonine Breastplate, Khan’aish Girdle, Shattered Hand Vambraces, Shattered Hand Gauntlets, Starcaller’s Plated Legguards, Explorer’s Boots, Ironfoe, Royal Treasury Courier’s Shield

This set started with the chestpiece and leggings. I tried it with the gloves and boots that I used in the previous set, but the silver trim on those items just didn’t work. The green on the pants doesn’t quite go with the Ironforge Red I used elsewhere in the outfit, but I couldn’t find any pants that I liked better.

The Vindicator

modeled by Vidyala
High Chief’s Crown, Justice Bearer’s Pauldrons, Rich Purple Silk Shirt, Fire Scarred Breastplate, Vindicator’s Cinch, Skyfire Greaves, Boots of the Watchful Heart, Life Bearer’s Gauntlets, Vindicator’s Brand, Aldori Legacy Defender

The chestpiece of this set, a quest reward from HFP, is sort of like a less-ornate version of the T4 Justicar chestpiece.

The Blood Knight

modeled by Antigen
Helm of Infinite Visions, Boulderfist Epaulets, Sawbones Shirt, Blackened Chestplate, Goblin Girdle, Runed Sketh’lon Legplates, Bloodforged Gauntlets, Bloodforged Sabatons, Summoner’s Blade, Bloodforged Guard, Blood Knight Tabard

This is a pretty standard Blood Knight ensemble, spiced up a bit with pure red boots and gloves.

The Sunwalker

modeled by Haloma
Glorious Headdress, Runic Plate Shoulders, Thunder Bluff Doublet, Plate of the Shaman King, Commander’s Girdle, Imperial Plate Leggings, Warbringer’s Sabatons, Warbringer’s Gauntlets, Serenity, Saltstone Shield

The Sunwalker outfit gave me a bit of trouble because most Sunwalker NPCs wear the Grunt’s Plate set, which is white-quality. Only the chestpiece is available in a green- or better quality version. It took me a few iterations of clicking through item lists in WMV to find a harmonious all-plate ensemble.

Bonus Set: The Redeemed Blood Knight

Lightforge Spaulders, Golden Filigreed Doublet, Ursa’s Embrace, Commander’s Girdle, Leggings of the Ursa, Hyperion Greaves, Hyperion Gauntlets, The Willbreaker, Outland Shield

I first started putting this outfit together for the Sunwalker, but once it was finished, it didn’t feel very “Tauren” to me. Rather, it seemed more like something that would be appropriate for a Blood Knight who had embraced a more Human/Dwarf/Draenei-like relationship with the Light following the rebirth of the Sunwell. This shield is a smaller model of the shields hanging around the walls of Sunfury Spire in Silvermoon City. I think this set would look particularly awesome when the Paladin is riding the Thalassian Warhorse or Thalassian Charger.
With the Ironforge shield shown above, it would also be appropriate for a Dwarf.

Paladins have a lot of great Tier sets, to be sure, but I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into how you might create a unique look that still has “Paladin” written all over it.

Meantime, From Draenor with Love has a few comics lined up without me doing any more, but I don’t have anything planned for the blog. If you have an itch to write a guest post, I’d gladly take a post or two to put up here while I’m away. You can e-mail one to me at puggingpally AT gmail DOT com if you’re so inclined. Other than that, if you’re looking for a guild, maybe we are the right guild for you! Thanks for your understanding as I let Manalicious take a brief pause.

p.s. – I was on Blessing of Frost this week with Kurn, Majik, Beru and Stoneybaby. There are a few sidesplitting moments (I think, at least my side was split). It’s well worth checking out for Beru’s moment of glory alone!

Business Time is a hard-mode focused ten man guild. We raid 9 hours per week and are 6/7 HM in Firelands. Raids are on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 6-9 PM PST.

We are currently seeking two exceptional players to join our team of dedicated raiders. This is a unique opportunity to join a small roster of adults committed to performance but with a friendly, tight-knit atmosphere.

What we’re looking for:

You are an exceptional player of any role. We’re able to accommodate either a tank, a healer, or a DPS. Regardless of which role you’re filling, above all what we need from our new members is flexibility. If you are a tank, willingness and ability to fill a DPS role if needed is an asset. Similarly, you earn major points for being a healer who can also DPS on the odd night, or a DPS with a competent healing off-spec.

Paladin, priest and/or warlock applications may be given special consideration because of token distribution but above all we’re seeking the best personality and skill fit for our group.

Apart from your spec and class, we expect the following of all members:

- You are a player dedicated to excelling at your class and follow the latest theorycraft.
- You’ll always research strats (and will discuss or at least read strats on our forums in-between raids).
- A raid never catches you unprepared – flasks, food, fully gemmed and enchanted – you treat your gear with care because you want to do the best you can, not because you’ve been told that you have to.
- You’re interested in finding a like-minded group of people who are serious about tens.
- But you don’t take yourself too seriously, because even though we are all ready for business, occasionally that only lasts two minutes (but “two minutes in heaven is better than one minute in heaven…”)

What we have to offer you:
-Flasks, feasts, and repairs are all provided by the guild bank for each raiding member
-We also maintain a supply of enchanting mats and raw gems to help raiders keep their gear at its best
-The ability to experience hard-mode content in a relaxed atmosphere. We believe in accountability for our raiders, but we’re adults and treat each other as such.
-Progression raiding with good friends. Whether we’re hitting the BGs together or going to visit old content, we’re happiest when we’re doing it with our guildies.

About us
Business Time is a progression-focused tens only guild based on Moonrunner US (PvE, PST). We’ve been a guild for 2.5 years and we’ve raided strictly tens for all of that time. We chose to raid exclusively tens because we enjoy the challenges of additional responsibility being on every member, and we like to know the people we raid with.

We are a group of adults (ages 22 to nearly 40) that don’t have an infinite amount of time to devote to raiding, so when we raid – we aren’t there to mess around. At the end of Wrath we finished out the expansion with Bane of the Fallen King after acquiring Frostbrood drakes back in June. We were in the top ten “strict” rated guilds in the US at that time! Presently we’ve completed 6/7 heroic mode encounters in Firelands, finished up Glory of the Firelands raider, and we’re ready for Dragon Soul!

We raid Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 6-9 PM PST.

We are a no-drama, low-turnover guild that has stayed strong for two and a half years now. We’re looking for long-term members who will stick around and continue to make our guild a great place to be.

If you like what you’ve read here and are thinking of applying or you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask here in this thread. You can also roll an alt on Moonrunner to chat with us – look for Millya, Vosskah, Yahwen or Shaen, or ask any member of Business Time for an officer.

If you’d like to check us out some more, you can do so at:

http://businesstimeguild.com