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Joining A Raiding Guild

Posted by on Mar 23, 2010 in Commentary |

It’s been nearly a year since I joined a raiding guild so I’m kinda in the mood to reflect on what it’s been like and how the previous months have turned out for me.

First, a lot of history. This is going to be long so consider yourself warned. Also, this isn’t a guide or anything so if you’re looking for ways to bump your DPS, this isn’t the post for that.

I started playing WoW on a private server with a couple of real-life friends and officemates. When I got banned (woot!) for exploiting, I went ahead and joined the real thing. Note that this was during TBC, pre-Sunwell. Through careful prodding, and a lot of not-so-subtle manipulation, I was able to encourage most of my friends to follow suit. We were initially Alliance. My first toon was a warlock. The first class I got to level 70 was a hunter.

I started doing 5-mans with my friends and for a while, we were content with it. It got boring later on though so we decided to gear ourselves using welfare epics by doing BGs. The repeated losses we experienced in AV prompted us to re-consider our faction and, a couple of days later, I made the decision to start over on a new realm and roll Horde. This was pre-WotLK, folks. Faction transfers weren’t in place yet so we literally had to start over from scratch.

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On Realm Transfers & Raiding

Posted by on May 30, 2009 in Commentary |

It’s probably very late (because saying “too late” doesn’t really cut it) to talk about it now, but I’ll tell you guys about the realm transfer.

Sinlaris and Razcien used to be in Quel’dorei. Some of my guildmates were being asked to move to Area 52 and, under a bit of peer pressure, I decided to join them. I’ll admit that for personal reasons I was hesitant to do so but these guys were my friends. That outweighed the misgivings I had about the whole thing.

So anyway, I moved. I realized about three weeks ago that it has been worth it. Aside from the gear upgrades that Sin has been receiving, I’ve been able to see content that I would have been unlikely to see back in Quel due to the number of PUGs in Area 52. For example, I’ve been to Ulduar thanks to a guild that has been gracious enough to include me in their runs.

Unfortunately, this is also the downside. When one consistently runs with a good PUG or guild, the idea of joining their side of the fence eventually comes to mind. A guildmate has already done this (note that I do not fault him for that. I’m merely stating a fact.) so a precedent has already been set. After all, you do better with them than you do with your own guild so why not join them instead right? I haven’t given jumping ship serious thought because I can’t commit to a raiding schedule due to time zone differences but the temptation is certainly there.

On a side note, our guild is planning to host a Naxx 25 run this weekend. Hopefully it will push through. I don’t know if we’ll be doing Ulduar 10 but I certainly hope that we will. The previous week’s one-boss kill on Flame Leviathan was pathetic. I mean, come on, one boss? I know we can certainly do better than that.

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Establishing A Raiding Schedule

Posted by on Nov 7, 2008 in Commentary |

For the past two weeks now our guild has been raiding the 10-man dungeons during weekends. I see this as a significant step for us because we’ve never organized ourselves like this before. We actually have a raiding schedule now and I’m glad to see it. One of the things I learned during the time that I was a member of a hardcore raiding guild is that schedules have to be made and kept. Seeing it happen with ours is very encouraging.

I’ve been having a hard time classifying what kind of guild we are. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that we’re a casual raiding one. Our approach to the game is still not as serious as other guilds are, but at least now we actually take the time off to raid. I’m just hoping that we can continue the push till Wrath hits.

On a personal note, I respecced to Assassination to give it a taste. I’ll write about that later.

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