Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Guild Builder!


I'm out of the club, I lost my blogging card....cuz this blog isn't about 5.0, Panda's or anything that happened at Blizzcon. I figured you'd be inundated with all that. Right now the info is coming from Blizz in bunches so I'll break that up and talk a tiny bit about something I've decided to take on.

I'm done with raiding, I mean, I'm done raiding on a set schedule. Life is just to hectic to say I'm going to raid with someone and have something change where I have to leave. I'm frankly not into looking for someone fit what I'm looking for. I'm not the type to allow others to wait on me to show. That just wouldn't be fare.

My options are to look for a casual guild that is super big and made level or grab a guild that has a raid team and be the outsider who try's to even get heroic tanking jobs. So instead, I'm going to LEVEL a guild.Why? Not sure, but I wanna try it.

A few months back I got ahold of a guild with a terrible name and three bank tabs. So I've put all my toons in this terribly named guild and started doing some quests. After 3 weeks I am now half way thru LEVEL 1...omg. The XP it takes is overwhelmingly high. Blizz really set the bar high getting to level 2 with a guild. To give you an idea, after 3 weeks of questing in my epic tabard, I couldn't hit level 2 until next week. To top it off, no one, and I mean, no one wants to join a level 1 guild. There is no reason too.

So whats the plan, not sure. I've made a macro and I try every day to hit up all the unguilded people I run across for every 3 I get, 2 leave. I don't wanna be a trade spammer and frankly I'm embarrassed about my guilds name. Sooooo until I can change it, I won't be doing the trade route. Until I get to level 2, I won't have success recruiting the lower level toons.

Back to the that plan...Well, I'm a tank, a pretty good tank. At least good enough for the heroics pose now in difficulty. I offer an insta que to those who want to gear an unguilded non raiding toon. Once I get a few who wanna get those toons some gear, we can hit that magical level 2 and then I can get the lower alts to come and stick.

I guess I should wonder whats the point of this, but I'm bored with the game, not in a place I can raid and just want to do something I have done before. This is my next project....

Stay tuned!

Friday, October 14, 2011

Tanks Gone Bye...



I was once told that you should thank the people you need too thank before its too late.

Going thru some Blogs last night, I was listening to the Double O Podcast about tanking done a few weeks back. What a great episode and I learned some stuff but...I also started thinking about those I have tanked with, set up a relationship with and I think I need to take a minute to say thanks to them, tell them what they did to advance me and let you see the pixels that not only helped me become a better tank but allow you to stroll down this memory lane as well.

Below is the links to those who I've Co~Tanked with and a bit about how they moved me along:

Saharah - The person responsible for me being the player I am, in fact I rolled a tank so he could play his hunter that he really enjoyed playing. All in all, this is the person that taught me to tank and was an in game friend. Sah, ran the guild, was the RL in TBC and basically a father figure to us all. A bit of a misunderstanding in the guild and resulting drama drove the guild apart.

Solner - The coolest RP'r I've met in game. On top of that a hell of a tank with so much of a real life it held him back from being one of the best in the world, IMO. Solner, taught me pace, mob control and how to min/max. He also allowed me to make mistakes and guided me to be better. He was a no nonsense tank and I hope I take some of my style from him.

Kurok , Jexar and Janthar - My Co~Tanks, from a guild I was in called Natural Twenty. I was newer to hard core raiding when I joined them and we sat around top 1000 in the world during Ulduar. All of these guys were ahead of me in skill but always made me work to earn my spot. In fact Kurok, gave up his tanking spot to DPS so I could tank and Janthar played his Shammy. Natty 20 was the most talented guild I was ever in. One day I logged on to see the GMotD state "thanks for the memories, we will not be a guild as of next week. The members of Natural Twenty made me a capable raider.

Soten -Best tank I've played with while he was on and had incredible motivational influences on the raid and he was a natural leader. Amazingly he was only a teenager but I at time felt in awe while tanking with him. I learned so much from him. We were in a guild called Refuge, they were super casual, none the less great.

Shem -  He was such a great guy and a good tank. The guild always made him feel inferior due to how good Soten was. He was good, he never knew how good. During Wrath pally's were OP and that fueled Shem and Skreebo in the ongoing "Pally's are OP debate".

Skreebo/Raxial - What a goof! This guy was probably the closest friend I had in game. He knew so much about every class in game and helped me learn warrior and druid tanking. He had a job that didn't allow him to raid hardcore and he got tired of the game far too fast. He took about 3 extended breaks while we tanked together. Amazingly he had so much grace he made a troll look like a ballerina while pulling.

Vars - I learned something every time I logged on to raid with him. Much to my chagrin none of it was good. Vars was the GL and RL for the guild he was in and ruled it with a heavy hand. He was a loot hog and disingenuous. No wonder he had gone thru several tanks including me and the other pally he recruited at the same time as me. It was a great lesson thou and other than the comment about "our guild doesn't give new people gear because bring new raiders in is a big investment" there are no hard feelings. Hey Vars....the big investment is the $50 it cost me to learn how bad things really can get.

Elms - The best DK I've ever seen! He was RL, tanked and always wanted the kiting job or OT role. He never missed anything and made improvements on the fly. We were top 3000 in the world and I think most of that was because Elms was so good at his jobs. I really wish things would have been different and I could have stayed with that guild.

Lifedrynker - What do I say about Life? He was a tremendous player, an officer without the role and just let me do my thing...Tank. He had ZERO ego when it came to putting the best class in its proper role. He was a step ahead at all aspects of the game and I wish I had his awareness. Life just recently left the game due to burn out, too bad we didn't get to tank more together. I could have learned alot from him had we tanked more together, as it stands I'm a better player for working with him. Who knows maybe SWTOR will see me and life getting hit in the face again.

And I never tanked with any of them but a special big shout out to those who have helped me and did so much work with the pally community at Maintankadin.com.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Pink is the new Green.

Cancer is bad! It is such a  horrible disease that takes far to many lives in the world each day. So any cause that works to fix and treat cancer is a great thing. If you look here and other places on the net you will see there are so many places that want to help and ways to show that you helped put an end to this terrible disease.
The most recognizable and widely embraced is the Pink Ribbon used for breast cancer awareness. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and most major sports pay respects to this and allow the players to wear pink to honor the month. I think this is amazing and it's sad that this is only done during this special month but...it is what makes it an awareness month.

Something I've noticed so much lately is not only are more people wearing the pink to show that they care and want to help, it seems many retailers are cashing in on this as well. If you look at this from a business sense its a no brain money maker but the purpose of this is supposed to for increased donations and income for breast cancer research. Now, I'm not saying donations are not being made to the organizations that need the help but if you look at pricing at a retail stores the mark up is higher on anything pink during this time. This is not to bash anyone so I'm not going to link examples but a local NATIONAL chain sporting good store has a display as soon as you walk in showing the pink items they have. Very nice and respectfully done. If you head back to the specific isle to look at others they offer, the pink items cost about 25% more for the same type of item, the only difference, it's pink. This was across the board, something as simple as a branded T-shirt that was pink is now $3 to $5 more just for the color.

While wearing pink during this month is cool, remember that probably not all the extra profits go where they are needed and far to many people are cashing in on self profit for this to be only done for only good intentions. Here is an article I found that might give you some different thoughts as well.

Remember while wearing pink during this month does so many so much good, its also helping line pockets of others. If you really want to sure that your efforts are going to the correct place visit some of the following links:
http://www.nbcam.org/
http://www.breastcancerfund.org/
http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/
http://www.cancer.org/
Check them out, see if its somewhere you think you money might go to help those in need.

I understand this is in no way a WoW blog, but it was something I wanted to get out there and say and since pally's are pink....we kind of have a relation....right?

Also a really quick footnote, I am in no way related, nor do I endorse or am I affilated with any of the links in this post, it was something I thought would help get people moving in the right direction.