GuildMasterpiece Theater

I have trouble yelling at people, and I am not so great with the tough love tactics.  I am more of a kind guild master, I listen to your woes, and I always give people the benefit of the doubt.  I never yell, and I keep my raid leaders from losing their tempers as much as I can.  So, last night, when I was having to grab tainted cores from the people on the bottom of the stairs, and people were rambling on in vent and I yelled “Shut up!” it got REAL quiet.  I don’t even like that phrase.  I am a kindergarten teacher by trade, and to five years old that is the equivalent of telling someone to “F off.”  But I needed to know who to grab my core from, and I needed to be able to get there and I needed to be able to hear when the mage at the pillar was ready to get it!  SO… I yelled it… haha I still can’t believe it, but it worked.  The entire raid got quiet, got their business together, and we killed her.  It was awesome.  I almost got my helm too…. damn mage. 

Ok i’m sure you have all run into this, and yes its not directly related to gaming but its something i use inorder to raid I’ve talked to support for a couple of games and most recently creative and there email/chat support always seems to have issues with the concept of reading your issue.  I mean i understand that you do this all day and its boring and you’ve got scripted replies, but Please people if you are going to do a job where you are trying to fix something make sure you understand the issue before whipping off a reply that has nothing to do with it and looking like an idiot!!!!

Now for the examples, heh. So i recently bought a second creative sound card. The xfi to be specific. Its snazzy sweet has awesome sound, enter the problem. I run Dual sound card’s i’ve been doing this for about 6 years now with a sound blaster and some on board sound. I recently built myself a new computer. The New pc’s onboard was realtek, and i really really hate realtek even high end realtek. So i went out and got a second sound blaster card. There not the same model, so hey there should be no problem right? Differn’t drivers and all that. WRONG!! Creative in there infinate wisdom has apparently decided that if you are installing the driver package for a product Any creative software you previously had installed must be something not in the system any longer and it auto uninstalls it. I mean comeon people you couldn’t put a damned prompt in? We detect blah is installed on your system do you wish to uninstall????? So i send creative an email about it because of course like so many companies now adays they don’t have any actual phone support. And i get a reply that reads the following.

“From the detailed description provided; I understand you have an issue
with your Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer wherein you run dual sound
cards. When installing the driver and software for one of the sound
cards, it uninstalls the other sound card’s driver and softwares.

I would like to apologize for any inconvenience that this webcam may
have caused you and I understand where you’re coming from.

However, let me just advise you that it would not be possible to use two
sound blaster cards at the same time since these may create conflict.
Therefore, I suggest using just one sound card one at a time.”

Now to add further insult to injury i’ve already got it working but the shiny xfi software isn’t, And i’m not using a webcam children… No where in the damned email i sent did it mention a webcam. And this is one of the better replies i’ve gotten lol. So what i want to ask the world is, Why is it so hard to actually read what your replying to, when this is your job? I guess it boils down to being lazy or something. Or potentially english is not there first language who knows.  Oh and to tie this into the gaming thing, I use this for streaming music to vent and speakers as well as running a headset for vent. Nothing funier than dj’ing some classic songs in vent preraid lol. You can get some really good sound quality doing it as well, but it does require some fiddling with the settings.

Oh and Woot morogrim tidewalker added to our kill list last night. He died and everyone was Hes dead really? As usual the wonky strats worked for us. but ill post another blog about that later once we’ve refined it a bit. That puts us 4/6 in ssc with lethoras, and vash to go.

Omg I can’t even believe it, but we actually KILLED Lady Vashj! That’s a full SSC clear People!

Well as one of the more recent albeit slow to post additions to this site, i will attempt to give you a brief idea of who i am. My in game name is Bellemorte, I run a alliance raiding guild on runetotem Called vindicated. Were relativity successfull inso far as we are actually making progression in SSC/TK but are no where near hyjal yet. I run an adult guild yes you read that right, adult. This means were probably less mature than the 16 year olds on the server, and pretty much everyone ill be writing about is 20 + age wise.

I’ve been playing wow since it came out, didn’t beta though. I’ve run guilds on two servers in wow, and also when i was in galaxies. I’m an extremely blunt person, and cut to the chase allot. Not a yeller and screamer though , at least when it comes to raids And oh I’m a girl This makes for some interesting wow situations. I work full time as technical support, Have a boyfriend who thankfully understands wow more important than valentines lol. Yes my priorities are screwed up, at least i don’t call in sick to work to play games…. well most of the time.

 The guild is structures as a dictatorship, i haven’t found raiding to work any other way. I’ve got two fill in Gm’s that are my voice when I’m not around, and about 8 or so officers of varying flavours. They keep peace in the guild keep the drama to a minimum, and make it so come raid time everyone is ready to roll and not pestering me with things like, where do i get the strat, i forgot my flasks, i forgot to repair, Wahhh so and so stepped on my toes. Although i very very rarely if ever get the last one.

I’m pretty wordy, and a horribly bad typer so if there’s spelling mistakes, or grammatical ones. Don’t point them out i don’t care, as long as you get the drift of what I’m saying.

 Anyhoodle, this is my introduction. Now to some of the fun stuff. I’ll be posting in spurts as i have time.

 -Bellemorte

What can I say, it seems to TOTALLY be working!  We took a good step back, and we cleared even more BOSSES!  How fun is that?!?  Next week it will back to our regularly scheduled more Vashj!

Look at us! We just keep on keepin’ on with that step back! We downed yet another boss! How fun is that?

So, this morning I sign on and check out Digg like I always do, man you can get lost in that site for hours and there on the front page I see this article: Husband and Wife get Divorced over WoW and it makes me think about the game. As a GM I spend a LOT of my free time on this game, and I don’t ALWAYS have my priorities straight, but I would like to think that most of the time I do. I feel like this is one of the top five toughest parts of being a GM. Sometimes when you sign on your screen turns totally pink in whisper, or sometimes when you log onto vent people are begging to yank you into a super secret channel… these things happen all the time, and before you know it, a quick log in to check your auctions can turn into an hour and a half of dealing with why so and so really wants his mom’s best friend to join the guild to raid even though she is a rogue who turned 70 six hours ago. (I would totally let a mom in BTW, cause MoM WoWers are the coolest.) But still, you get the picture.

Over the course of being a GM, I have discovered a few ways to handle this. On occasion I will put up my <DND>sign, and people for the most part get that means I don’t want to be disturbed. But then, there are always the select few that don’t get it. One of my favorite things to do is to just go <AFK> and stay that way. Then I don’t feel obligated to answer any whispers, because I am obviously AFK.

Now, I am not saying that as a GM you should always do that… that would make you suck a lot. But, I am saying that as a GM I sometimes find that I need to finish my darn dailies… or else someone is going to have to cover my repair bill!

So… how do YOU guys deal with the taxing time it takes to be a GM?

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!