…is like throwing a really big party and inviting everyone you know. It’s kind of fun at first, but it doesn’t take long for the groups of people who liked each other to being with to start going off and forming their own little groups. As the party goes on and more people show up there is inevitably going to come a point where some kind of ugliness happens, and at the end of the night regardless of how hard you tried everyone who had a bad time is going to blame you.
Mmm…so very deep.
There is a downfall to running a guild in which the large majority of your players are not only people you know in real life, but people who actually read your live journal. It kind of makes it difficult for me to take off my “diplomatic manager hat” and be a snarky, nasty asshole in my blog.
Which, if this is the place I’m supposed to be able to just vent and be myself, must mean I’m a snarky, nasty asshole.
Meh. I can live with that.
Regardless, I will choose discretion in this and not go into truly sordid details.
I just wish that people would have talked directly to me, or if I was unapproachable one of the other officers, instead of letting this shit fester to the point where heads exploded.
I also find it sad/amusing that someone who we let into our guild because of drama caused when they refused to group with someone in another guild started the same problems in our guild. I guess I should have seen that coming.
…when it’s really hard not to become this guy.
That is all.
So last night we made our second ever all guild attempt of the Black Morass, which is the second event you find in the Caverns of Time. The first time we tried it was about two months ago, right after we first got the ability to do so. It was a nightmare, really. In the event you face 18 waves of monsters, with three of those waves having a “boss” type of monster. We never made it past the 6th wave in that first attempt.
Last night? We finished the whole event on the first try. No deaths.
We didn’t even have to use an ungodly number of consumeables (potions, bandages, etc…). Nothing more than we’d have used doing any other dungeon, anyway. All told, I used one Greater Intellect Potion, one Adept’s Elixir, one Elixir of Healing Power, 2 Super Mana Potions and 1 Bandage.
So…what’s the difference between now and then?
Gear, mostly. Proof that Blizzard had a pretty clear plan in mind on how you’re supposed to progress through the Burning Crusade content, if you ask me. At the time our gear was largely uncommon (green), with a few rares (blues) and maybe a leftover old content Epic (purple) or two. The party last night had been working for a while in Outland, improving their gear and tweaking their specs, and it showed.
Tonight we’re trying again. Might be a completely different story. Our tank is new to level 70, having pushed an alt through because of our lack of tanks. On the upside, it would be nice if we made it and he got the two items that were sharded (destroyed because nobody can use them) last night.
Edit – Comment from
reminded me I should put up our group configuration.
Druid (Tank), Shaman (Healer), Shaman (DPS), Rogue (DPS), Hunter (Non-elite wrangling, DPS)
So, it’s been a while since I’ve sat down and written just a “this is what is going on in my life” post. Figured it was high time.
Frankly, this week has pretty much sucked balls. I’ve been dealing with a bunch of crap, and most of it has revolved around those three words often repeated here – World of Warcraft. Specifically, the people in the game. Not individuals per se, or their actions, but the fact that there are so many of them in our guild now. Despite the fact that most of us have at least some kind of real world connection, that’s no guarantee that we’re all going to think and act alike. There are occasionally going to be bumps in the road.
Just turns out that a few of those bumps decided to show up around the same time, and they were all those really big speed bumps that will totally fuck up your car if you go over them too fast.
The sad thing is that most of this happened on Tuesday night, when I wasn’t even online. I had decided to take the night off because I was feeling stressed about the game for OTHER reasons. I watched some TV, relaxed for a bit, and decided to check our guild forums before I went to bed. In the 3 hours I was offline Mt. Kilimanjaro decided to explode all over the guild. In the days following, the volcano kept spelling ash out all over the damn place as I had all kinds of issues that folks have been keeping to themselves dumped in my lap.
So I’m also dealing with a lot of red herrings. Joy!
There are 94 people in our guild currently, and at times it seems like there are 94 different ways that people think the guild should be run. From the super casual folks who feel neglected to the super hardcore folks who don’t think we’re strict enough to everyone in between I’m standing in the middle trying to do my best to keep my cool and find ways to keep everyone happy.
Lots of times, it ain’t a lot of fun. It certainly ain’t easy, and I don’t always succeed. Sometimes I make the wrong choice. Sometimes I blow my top, too. It doesn’t happen often, but it happened twice this week. I ain’t proud of it, but ya know….Try walking a mile in my shoes….
Yep, I could quit. Would be as simple as stopping the payments on my credit card. Trust me when I say I’ve thought about it. I guess what ultimately keeps me from doing so is the fact that this game has not only put me back in touch with old friends who I hardly ever spoke with, it’s also the only social setting I can associate with certain folks who I met there. I mean, I have friends in this guild who I’ve known since I was a teenager. 20 year relationships, and I talk to them more now than I EVER did before we started playing WoW together. I’ve also gotten very close with people who I met in the game. People who we’ve since met in real life and consider part of our inner circle. WoW is the ONLY way we regularly “see” them.
I know. Those of you who think it’s “just a game” can’t possibly understand. These games have brought more than a few people into our lives, though. People who we never would have known had we not played them.
being the big example, there.
Which is also why it’s not easy for me to just say “fuck it” and start kicking everyone out, too.
It would be easier to deal with if I was one of the yelling, controlling, “this is how the guild is going to fucking be” types. Not what I’m about, though, and not the kind of people we are. Sometimes I envy those folks, too.
Speakingof WoW, the fact that K. is going to now be working for wowinsdier.com means that we’re likely going to go to Blizzcon this year. Which, while being an exciting thing, also sucks because it’s the weekend one of our friends is having a get together in Colorado. Fact is, the only reason we’re really going to be able to do Blizzcon is because it’s going to be a tax writeoff for K. As are her monthly game fees and upgrades she makes to her computer.
You take whatever help you can get, really. Things are a little better after the refinance, but still going to be tight for a while.
I don’t imagine the flight is going to be a lot of fun for K, either, especially since we’re going to have to do this with as little time out of town as possible (I’ll be wrapping up a big project at work). She’ll have very little down time between one flight and another. Couple that with jet lag and it’s going to be…interesting.
Yeah, it’s sad that I’ve written this much about a video game and that said video game pretty much defines the state of the Critus, but there it is. Have some other stuff I could write about, but at this point I gotta get back to that real life stuff….
We have too much of it. K spent the weekend beating our bedroom and the hall closet into shape, and much of the excess stuff has made its way into our computer room. This stuff will hang around for another two weeks, when we are planning to have a garage sale and get rid of all of it.
That which does not sell gets donated. The stuff goes. Once the garage sale weekend is done I don’t want to see it anymore. Yes, it means giving away some things that may have value to someone if we can just find the right person, but enough is enough. We need to get our house back.
Over the course of this week and the weekend, I plan on tackling the laundry room and the shed.
We also shed a lot of stuff in WoW this week. More to the point, we walked away from the guild alliance that we’ve had for about a year now and started doing things “on our own.” I put “on our own” in quotes because we still have a few players from that alliance tagging along with us, but we’re doing it our way now. We’re using a new loot distribution method (called Suicide Kings) that is incredibly fast and easy to use, we’re signing up on the Children of Midian (name of our guild) boards, and the majority of the people going are in CoM. This last Sunday we went into Zul’Gurrub, a 20 player dungeon, with 19 players – 15 of those players were from our guild. We took down four bosses, including one we had never fought before (Gri’lek from the Edge of Madness event) that wiped our party twice before we figured out the encounter. Not bad at all, considering the fact that 3 of those players had never even been to Zul’Gurrub before.
Yeah, it was nice.
Things are still a little crazy in game with the other guilds. The main guild we were allied with has proceeded to implode in the wake of our leaving. I feel a little guilty about that, as it almost seems like it’s our fault, but I know that’s not really the case. It was going to happen eventually anyway. I think our leaving was just the final straw on an overburdened camel’s back.
In other WoW news, I pre-ordered my copy of the Burning Crusade this morning. I actually managed to get the Collector’s Edition, even though Amazon (according to the web site) has already sold out. I already had it in my cart, though, and it let me place the order. We’ll see what really happens. I’m going to pay extra for next day shipping as well. I was going to get free super saver, but then I realized that would be a week of people teasing me with new content I couldn’t see, and we can’t have that.
Taking part in a weight loss challenge with etcet and a few other guys in the IT department here at work. We call our team “Shrink Geek.” I’m not really doing anything out of the ordinary as part of this, though. Just trying to stay on track with Weight Watchers. Was down a good bit last week, which was nice. Hopefully the trend will continue.
The boys continue to take lackluster care of their pets, regardless of the fact that I have emphasized that they are rapidly nearing a point where they are going to lose them. I think, at this point, I’m going to take one final step towards making sure the cats are properly cared for. I’m going back to chore calendars for the boys, and cat maintenance will be part of it. So will their other chores, of course, but the cats are a big one.
The weather recently has been absolutely stunning. Those few days a year that make living in Florida worthwhile (weather wise).
And since I’m talking about the weather, it’s time to go….
Meh.
Wasn’t all that funny, really. I had a few chuckles, but overall? Not so much with the impressed. I used to think that show was brilliant, and I still think that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are in general, but if what I watched this morning (yay internets) is indicative of the quality of the show overall now, I’m glad I stopped watching when I did.
You know, maybe I just am a glutton for punishment. Or a drama whore. Who knows? For some reason, however, I keep sticking my opinions into conversations with our allied guilds in which I know I’m going to end up being attacked or villified for.
I keep telling myself I’m doing it for my guild, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m doing them a disservice in the process.
Meh.
So. More guild drama in WoW over the last few weeks. Miscommunication leading to distrust and speculation, guilt trips, childish tantrums, accusations. So much bullshit. I finally had enough. Made a HUGE post in the officers section of the shared forum that our guild community uses, and vented my spleen all over the place.
Despite some inital concerns that said post was going to get us kicked out of that community, the response was on the whole positive. In fact, most of the people who replied there (or contacted me outside the forums) told me that I had said what most of them were feeling but hadn’t spoken up about.
Somebody has to do it, I suppose.
I understand now why there was a very serious article in Wired magazine about how some companies have actually had their hiring decisions influenced after finding out that a potential candidate was a guild leader in an MMORPG. This shit is a serious pain in the ass sometimes. I want to have fun just like everyone else, but a lot of my time in game (and outside of it) is tied up dealing with the management end.
I am very, very thankful to have the officers that I do in my guild. I don’t know that I could be as effective as I (hopefully) am without them.
On the positive side, we have another potential alliance in the works with a larger raiding guild that will get us back into the 40 man raid instances. I know that my endgamers want to see this content, and I’m really glad that it looks like we have a chance to offer it to them again. Until the expansion comes out, it’s pretty much all that there is left to do for some of them, and I worry about them burning out. Hell, Krystalle is suffering from some serious burnout, and with her impending sememster o’ doom ahead of her she is going to have even less time to play. I’m hoping that on those rare occasions when she does she’ll have something enjoyable to do.
In non-game related news…
Got a LOT of cleaning done around here this weekend. All told between Saturday and Sunday I probably spent between 8 to 10 hours scrubbing and organizing. It felt really good. The house had really slipped in the last few months, and while it wasn’t disgusting it definitely wasn’t “clean.” Now I can look around and not see proof everywhere that I’m slacking in the house keeping department. Gonna do some more this weekend, but it shouldn’t be quite the extravaganza that it was a few days ago.
zayna stopped by today to drop off a nifty shirt she had purchased for her beau that was a tad bit too snug in the chest area for him. It’s pretty damned cool, and will make for great Papa Tiki’s Undead Luau wear.
If I ever go, that is.
Got a truly nifty little addition to my home office working today. A few months ago, my company converted over to a VOIP phone system, and they just gave me one that I could bring home. All I have to do is sign in to the phone and instantly my extension works in my house just like it would if I was at my desk.
Technology rocks.
I was going to go to Orlando for a week in September for some MySQL training, but right as we were getting ready to start paying for things I realized that it was the same week my boss was going to be out of the country on vacation with his family. Oops. I’m his right hand man, basically, and I need to be there in his absence to cover any emergencies that might crop up. So, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it is going to happen.
Heh. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get to go to one in Vegas again instead.
Glee!
Helped xany_hellion get his computer fixed on Friday, and spent a day or so reformatting my Mother’s computer as well. She had let the grandkids use it, and they proceeded to get her box loaded down with viruses and spyware. I’ve got it running smooth again, and this time I completely removed the icons for Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. I figure if she sticks to Firefox and Thunderbird she’s got less of a chance to get plagued with that stuff.
I have to admit to being incredibly proud of my Mother for her level of tech capability. She gets all frustrated when her machine is messed up because she can’t check email or listen to her internet radio stations, and when she was talking to me about this the other day she said “I’ll just have to break down and send this snail mail.”
HA!
She said snail mail.
My Mom rocks.
Speaking of which, it looks like my “needing a new car” woes have been solved by her. She’s got two vehicles she owns free and clear, and she doesn’t need them both. Once my nephew leaves for the Army (sometime next week, I believe) I’m going to take ownership of her Mercury Villager. It has about the same gas mileage as my current vehicle, but it won’t require me to fill it with Super Unleaded.
Yeah, it’s a mini-van.
Bite me, ok?
I’m gonna pimp it out with a bunch of geek stickers and shit.
I’ll end up paying her for it, but she seemed pretty relaxed about how much she wants from me every month.
Ranney is stopping by on Friday night to work on some stuff for his web site. Will be good to see him again. Also going to be putting together a web site for my brother-in-law’s electrical business.
No, I don’t have the balls to charge my sister for it, either. If I do she’s probably gonna whip out some huge “back daycare” bill on me and slap me around with it. Better to leave that one alone, ya know?
Maybe I can barter some free electrical work out of her husband some time if he likes it.
Not much else really to report, so I’m gonna go eat dinner and get ready for the Wednesday night raid.
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