GuildMasterpiece Theater

Well, after talking it out with my officers and members… we did decide that we NEED to kill the Lovely Lady with the snakey hair, and we are willing to wipe our butts off to do it. That being said… I know my guild… and they needed a night of fun. We went into SSC on Tuesday night to take out the first three bosses to get all cleared and ready for an all Vashj weekend, and it was less than stellar. After wiping for (I kid you not) two and a half hours on HYDROSS (yeah, you read that right) we finally got an attempt in that was going to work and our main frost tank lost internet connection! (Damn Canadian snow…) It was bad bad bad… so we split off into ZA groups and finished the night downing some crazy trolls mon. We regrouped on Wednesday and cleared it out all the way to Leo pretty much catching ourselves up for the week. We took Thursday off because hey, nerds need love too, and then we headed in to SSC to get the place ready for Sunday night Vashj love. So she sits there taunting me ready to take her down, but we had some more casual players that still needed some gear from Mag, and a few of us are still in desperate need of our T5 Shoulders from VR, so we headed out to clear both places. It went quick and effortlessly, and with plenty of time to spare… and we figured hey it’s Friday, why not stay up and play some Warcraft… so I headed up to Hellfire, and a friend headed down to Shadowmoon and BOTH world bosses were up… how could we not give it a try?

Doomwalker first… took three attempts (would have only taken two, but a kid from another guild started screwing with the raid… tried to tag the boss first, made him evade by flying on top of him during an aggro wipe, etc.) and we killed him. We got to bring some of the less geared guildies, so we were able to get some fun loot for them that not a lot of people on the server have!

Well, we figured we might as well go for two in one night, right? Nothing like getting to write TWO posts on the guild progression post on the realm forums… so we headed up, two shotted Kazzak, and called in a night! It was an awesome boost for our guild, and just the kind of silly thing we needed. Now, I have full confidence that we will kill that crazy snake lady, oh yes… we will

“Here, come here! Look! No, no, you twit, not at the bush, but between the branches. There! No, dolt, look at where I’m pointing! The finger, man, follow the Illidan-be-damned finger! There - do you see it now?

“Isn’t he beautiful? So graceful, so lissome - never mind the fact that he’s wandering around Stormwind proper in an alcohol-induced stupor. Without pants. You’ve been given a rare opportunity, friend, to see one of these in its natural environment. It’s rare to see them out in the open, especially given the harsh conditions in which they reside. Some people consider them a rare and endangered breed, but I! - I know otherwise; they’re out there, but you just need to know how to locate them.

“What is he, you ask? That, my good fellow, is a member of the enigmatic World of Warcraft species known as Performinous Azerotherus. More commonly known as the roleplayer, this oft-misunderstood creature resides predominately on roleplaying servers. A common misconception typically places roleplayers in remote locations such as the Deeprun Tram or Goldshire where they supposedly perform a number of, well, inappropriate actions (not that I would know anything about them, of course, thank-you-very-much!), but he and his ilk can be found all over Azeroth and in many places in the Outland.”

Poor attempts of humor aside, I am - as I have previously mentioned - an avid roleplayer and the guild master of a medium-sized roleplaying guild on the Feathermoon US roleplaying server. As a part of providing more information on the joys and tribulations of leading a roleplaying guild in the upcoming weeks, I thought that I’d give some small insight into some commonly-held beliefs of the roleplaying community and what being a roleplayer personally means to me.

The term roleplayer refers to an individual who assumes the role of his or her character in-game and conducts himself or herself in an in-character manner. Roleplayers typically follow the rules established by Blizzard for their RP and RP-PVP servers, including following the naming conventions, limiting or readily identifying the use of out-of-character chat, and avoiding discussion of subjects not pertaining to the game in public channels. They act out their characters through the use of emotes, /say, /yell, and sometimes other channels.

While in-character, a roleplayer assumes the role of his or her character and will converse with other characters as his or her character would. However a roleplayer may not always be in-character; the amount of time that a person spends in-character may be denoted through the use of terms such as casual roleplayer, medium roleplayer, and heavy roleplayer.

Personally, I disdain the use of titles to characterize what kind of roleplayer that I am; however, if pressed I would admit that many people would consider me a heavy roleplayer. I tend to conduct myself in an in-character fashion at almost all times when I venture into Azeroth, with the largest exception being when I raid; the way my main raiding character butchers Common would leave my fellow raiders in a state of utter confusion. I roleplay in-group in the face of frequent opposition from players who, for some odd reason, disdain roleplay and yet play on a roleplaying server. To be honest, this is a state of affairs that still perplexes me, two years after having actively joined a roleplaying server.

Roleplay is just another aspect of the game to enjoy, along with end-game content, PvP, and just socializing with friends. Despite the stigma associated with many roleplayers by non-roleplayers, I’m almost gleeful when I inform people that I actively engage in frequent PvP (both in the Battlegrounds and world PvP) and raid on two characters up to both Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern. There are many of us that combine multiple aspects of the game; there are many, too, that languish in the lower levels, weaving intricate stories and adventures with friends and foes alike - having never stepped foot into a single end-game instance, much less a full 25-man raid. In fact, one of the members of the roleplaying community that I respect most reached 60 on her very first toon mere weeks before the first expansion, despite having played the game since its public release. As with many other aspects of the game, World of Warcraft is capable of catering to a wide variety of playstyles and this is no different when applied to roleplaying.

Greetings, fellow bloggers! As the newest addition to the GuildMasterpiece Theater crew, I thought that I would take this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Eszti and I am a long-time player of World of Warcraft having participated in the open beta-testing. While originally a Horde supporter and an active member of a number of PvP servers, I was eventually coerced by a good friend to reroll Alliance on the Feathermoon US roleplaying server. There I joined the ranks of prepubescent teens everywhere by rolling my Night Elf, a hunter by the name of Eszti Nightwing.

I am currently guild master and co-leader of a medium-sized roleplaying guild on the Feathermoon US server. Known as The Regiment, the guild is comprised of a tight-knit group of eclectic individuals mostly located in a small town somewhere in the Midwest. I am one of the original founding members of The Regiment, which was conceived in early August of 2006. Since that time I’ve held both the second- and top-ranked positions within the guild, having served as Guild Master for well over a year now. I balance my responsibilities as guild master with working fulltime, an admittedly lacking social life, and a rather robust raiding schedule; the guild’s success, however, can be attributed to my fellow Generals and the wonderful people beneath my command. Without their help, The Regiment wouldn’t be as half as successful as it currently is.

I look forward to interacting with all of you and sharing my thoughts in upcoming months. While I probably have a lot to say, for your sakes I hope that it’s worth the read!

I know someone wrote a post about this earlier, and now I am in a similar predicament…

We have a player that raided with us for a while, went a little loopy, /gquit and then came back as a casual, non-raider… he promptly /gquit again hours later, and we were like oh well… because he brought a lot of drama with him.  and, frankly we were glad to get rid of it.

Well, fast forward three months, and he wants back in.  He just wants to hang out and not actually raid.  (We have both casual and raiding players in our guild.)  Well, when the officers saw his app it was a unanimous no.  A couple of his real life friends are in the guild and they are pretty upset that he wasn’t let back in to the guild, but we just don’t want to deal with the “bad apple” that he used to be.

Apparently he has gotten his life back together and his friends assure me the drama is over, but I just don’t know if it is a risk I am willing to take with my awesomesauce guild!  On one hand, I feel like everyone deserves a second chance, but on the other… I kinda feel like he already got his… alas.

I am sorry to inform anyone who reads this that I will me taking a heitas from WOW for reasons that I will not specify here. Unfortunately that means that I will be giving my giving up my guild into more capable hands. Thankfully I have an officer willing to lead and he will be great at it too. So this is my resignation on as a writer here on GuildMasterpiece Theater.

It may have been short, but I am glad that I had the chance to write here and I will continue reading and commenting on the site. Good luck to yall and keep having fun!

Your GM,
GanonIS

Okay, so I was giving my RL a bunch of funk for his crazy macro, and he swears to me that it makes WAY more sense if you don’t change up your UI to be as girly as mine, but I did get a cute little screen shot out of it, and I thought I should share! Here is my little guild working away in SSC!

Okay, a little history about my guild…

I became friends with most of the start up players in my guild when I was in a casual guild that couldn’t get past curator.  There was nothing wrong with my old casual guild, I was just bored of never getting to see any new content, and I had made friends with this other guild that was a little more hard core, but was looking to fill out a second kara group and some 25 mans… well, the day before I decided to finally quit my casual guild and join the raiding guild they had decided that they were going to merge with a hard core guild, and my husband and I ended up being a part of the package deal.  This had the potential to be really cool, but they promised us a part of the raiding team although they pretty much already had their top raiding spots filled out.  Our main tank became a ‘catcher,’ the hunters all ended up on wait list behind their hutners, etc.  So, we kind of just stuck by what we were doing, kept running our little kara group, and basically felt like very little fish in a big pond.

Well, they instituted a MT need list.  In doing so, they said that our Kara MT friend basically wasn’t getting any gear from the 25 mans… well, this sucked for our friend, but we were willing to just deal with it… until the day we showed up to a raid only to be informed it wouldn’t be happening because they MT had decided to retire his MAIN warrior and instead he would be playing his ALT dps warrior… yeah, that REALLY happened.  We weren’t able to raid that night because we didn’t have a MT.  Apparently he had cleared all this with the officers of the guild, but they didn’t bother to bring it up to the guild… well… needless to say, after he took gear over the other tanks that planned to remain tanks, then switched over to his other character…. that was the day we /gquit to start our own.

And we have been hot on the heels of that other guild ever since… They had a big advantage over us because they had enough guilldies ready to start 25 mans and we barely had enough to fill out a kara (although it was awesome to clear kara on our first night as a guild, that really brought us toghether as a team.)  But, we quickly got our numbers and are now plowing through the 25 mans…

Now, that being said.  Vashj is kicking our butt, as a guild, and as a raiding team.  Three hours of wiping only to get her to 1 percent was one of the biggest blows in my entire guild’s history.  So, I am wanting to take a step back, get a few boss kills in the Tempest Keep.  We need those kills!  Ours is a guild that loves the progression, and I know that the wiping will get us there eventually… but it just isn’t happening right now!  I mean we have only downed one boss in The Eye, so I think this is the right move… right?

Ahhh we are so happy to finally have an off night!  We have been pushing so hard for progression, and we keep playing through our scheduled guild off nights, but we decided this weekend to just screw around on alts, farm up all that stuff we need, and just have a great guild time.  It really was nice, and I got to hang out with people in guild that I don’t really get to spend time with.  Off nights are really important to guilds because they rejuvinate.  So, even if you are SO close to that big boss kill… take a break!  Mara is pretty this time of year. 

Wow, I see there’s been a lot of activity on here. I’m sort of on a hiatus from WoW which explains my absence here recently (and probably into the future). But I had to share this little story with you.

Background:

My guild was formed by a merger between two sort of mediocre guilds, one of which I was the GM (this was around 4 months ago). Being a pretty democratic kind of guy myself, my leadership style is pretty fluid - I like to delegate a lot and rely on my officers. Anyway, going into the merger I didn’t want the other guild to feel

So was up late last night discussing the latest patch notes for 2.4, which as always can be found here. One of the big things is the attunement for Hyjal/BT taken out, along with being able to go straight to Vashj/Kael and skip the other bosses. This is a hot topic as seen on the wow forums, along with my guild forums and quite a few more. For us, the higher end guilds, it feels like all the hard work done, was for nothing, ok well a title “Hand of A’dol” but come on..

On the other end, this gives medium to lower end raiding guilds, a chance to finally see Hyjal/BT or go straight to Vashj/Kael for items instead of having to do the entire instance each week, which may take 2-3 days, and then loose out on time they could be doing Hyjal/BT. And recruitment will be much easier now for all since the first thing on every app is “Are you keyed to Hjyal/BT”.

There are a ton of +’s and -’s of this new patch, and I think it all will work out in the end, but its just going to take getting used to.

So how does your guild feel about the removal of attunement to BT/Hyjal? Will going straight to Vashj/Kael affect your guild yet?