Just because I don’t play anymore, doesn’t mean I don’t care…
Shamefully ninjaed from treebarkjacket with much love.
Category: WoW posts
So I finally decided that enough was enough and I stepped fully down from my WoW guild helpage/admin monkeying.
I don’t really think it particularly:
a) Interesting to the outside world, or b) exciting, to really post about on here perhaps in a few months I’ll give a retrospective, there was/is drama but it was primarily my time to step away, now I feel free to have left the forums. I can concentrate on the Swedish (tests again next week), and being a budding little blogging housegirlfriend without constantly hitting refresh to see whats happening now/next, and trying to keep all the raiders happy and meh!
I do have exams next week, so updates may be sporadic, though I do have a few planned. 
Thank you for reading.
Flight to the UK was cancelled, and I found out that my eye make up for the day wasn’t epic tear proof, so after I’d rebooked my flight I got out the Sugarpill and went for another, bright look to cheer myself up. No outfit as I was layered to the max since I’d planned on only taking cabin baggage.
- Urban Decay Primer
- Sugarpill pressed eyeshadow in Dollipop, Flamepoint and Buttercup
- Maybelline waterproof mascara.
World of Warcraft, no emytree
A few people asked me why I stopped playing, and I always find it really hard to explain – especially as it’s often in an environment where it’s hard to really get down all my feelings and a lot of people seem to think ‘I’ll be back in a few months’. But it’s simply not true.
Background to Emy
I could write my WoW history, but I can quickly summarise with- started in Vanilla, raided in TBC to Mu’ru, then led a guild till Ulduar before quitting for a while, coming back at ToC times and helping a guild till present. I was never the *best* resto druid, but I know I was good enough to get by in a *serious* guild, and I know I can raid lead and manage a guild- problem is that’s more like a full-time job, and when you already have one… it doesn’t work.
Ye ole oak
The thing is I’m old fashioned I don’t move with the times, I want hard bosses not hard modes, and if my current guild couldn’t do it, then there was a reason for it (in the same way that in TBC certain bosses didn’t die before heavy nerfs). I was un-impressed with Naxx and the stupid achievements, even more un-impressed with the Sarth shite involving drakes, as it just split the guild squarely in half, with the finns on the floor with the vodka. In the same way I’m unimpressed with ToC and ICC now. Possibly less so with ToC – least the Hard Modes are independant to the instance, but still.
10 mans, the final frontier…
The final straw was most definitely 10mans. I love the theory, and I have considered setting up a 10man guild for the very purpose of just playing with my friends, but in a raiding guild with 50+ raiding members, and aims for 25man raiding, 10 mans just cause strife. Good practice for 25man? Absolutely, if you rotate the players within them so everyone can see the fights- but you tend to get little cliques forming with people wanting to be with each other week in, week out usually moaning if you change the group slightly (not to mention the people rotated out) or not running hardmodes because someone in the group doesn’t fit the puzzle. I understand keeping a static group if you’re extending the lock-out, but the way our signups work does make that difficult… let me explain our system:-
Signups/Setups
People sign up over the weekend for the coming reset with their availability and their max number of raids a week (and our minimum is 2, which is nice and casual). Then on a monday night, I sit down and put the pieces of the puzzle together to make a setup which we post on the forums. It’s nice for people to know in advance when they are raiding (but of course you get the people who only sign for farm nights, the people who play the system, the people who cancel for the wipe nights… it’s not without flaws). While the 10mans that took the LK down began off the raid-ar (heh heh I mean setup, but see what I did there 
), they did go back on at a point where they were having problems running. But it did mean that some weeks not all parts of the puzzle were available every day, cue annoyance.
Personally at this point I was being left to run my own 10man (as the other 2 groups had all the other 4 actual raid leaders in them), and that did me in. I was left with less than harmonious setups, people who cancelled on me, or didn’t show at all - alt tanks, alt healers (love to those who did that for me) - and there was no way for me to get into one of the other groups even for just a week, as they both already had static healers. I could 100% understand that, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t suck all the enjoyment I possibly had remaining out of the game. Suggesting that I wasn’t good enough to be in a group was fine (though if it did happen it was behind my back). Only wanting me when their usual healer couldn’t play, ignoring my offers of help, saying I couldn’t be in their group because it had too many officers in it already, wasn’t fine. Then moaning because one week I split people up to facilitate groups, ugh. So I stopped playing, partially studies, partially work, but mostly… that.
I’m still doing setups, and every week you get people who complain:
- I try make the 10 mans fair, they aren’t good enough for hard modes.
- I try to make them good for hardmodes, I’m leaving people out.
- I try to make 3 groups to allow the max number of people experience in 10 mans, I’ve spread the groups too finely and people sign off – causing one or more groups to be unable to go.
I can’t win, and with a seeming healer bleed, signs to avoid wipe nights and spring in the air it gets harder each week to give raiders raids. But yes, that’s my problem – and I enjoy putting groups together, upsetting people – less so. I’m left hoping for some new healers/ranged dps on a daily basis!
TL:DR
I don’t like hardmodes, I don’t like cliques, I quite like collecting shinies in EQ2
Spring has sprung, snow is melted, second pair of glasses are on fizzog, Gem is happy.
Geek wise I’m 2 months WoW (ingame) free, and working on getting other people to deal with my officer duties within the guild, though since I do their weekly setups, that’s easier said than done, especially seen as I do love them (mostly) deeply. It will be better for them though to have someone who is in game to do setups as lets face it I don’t know half the stuff going on in game, and it’s pretty hard to mind read if people fail to post on forums (pet peeve of gem there…). To geek it up with Mr Emybloom we’ve been playing Everquest 2, which works well as a) We’re levelling characters together, b) We can log off whenever and there’s no one needing anything of me half the time.
Along with that I’ve started the job search again, with a Swedish CV under my belt and a bit of a sunny disposition with respect to what I want to do. I’m passionate about pretty much anything, from selling sandwiches to engineering geology, though at the moment I’d love another part time job being a carer, it’s furfilling, or a shop assistant (my time at LUU was awesome) – so fingers crossed I get some responses from the applications I’ve posted. Svenska som Andra Språk *should* be completed in June, though its wierd as anything (I have no idea what they are on about when they talk about clearing SAS to be honest, so need to read up on it). I’m considering starting to type some of my blogs in partial swedish, but not sure how much it would help me.
Anyways onto the eyecandy! Todays outfit and eye, along with one outfit from the weekend, enjoy!
Hi!
Second pair of glasses, I went for the geek look! Necklace has infact dyed my neck. Nice.
- Glasses – Missouri (at specsavers)
- Earrings - Frozenfire from etsy
- Neckalce – Six
- Top – H&M
- Dress - Indiska
- Pants – Lindex
- Shoes -Matalan
- Socks – H&M
Makeup
Tried to make my eyes look a little springey, well actually I took inspiration from cherry blossom.
- Urban Decay Primer
- Sugarpill Pressed Shadow in Dolipop and Tako
- Urban Decay 24/7 liner in Graffiti
- Maybelline Mascara
I tried to make the edge look a little like the edges of my cherry blossom tattoo, but meh! Ignore the eyebrows, I didnt realise how many strays I was harbouring till I uploaded this picture!
And the weekend…..
- Cardigan – H&M
- Top – Lindex
- Pants – Lindex
I’m not sure I should admit, but they are jeggings, and I really like them…. *hangs head in shame
So yeah, I seem to be posting every 6 months or something. Have to rectify that! What’s new in my world then?
Well I started playing WoW again towards the end of last year, in the guild I think I was in when this all started up – Echoes of Lordaeron (Scarshield Legion). Even when I wasn’t playing I gave a lot of time to people/friends I knew within the guild, and so when they were looking for a Recruitment Officer, I applied. Initially I ended up as Assistant Officer, but after a while the girl who was made head stepped down, so it was left to me.
Did that until the end of January, when I stepped down from the recruitment side of things to concentrate on real life swedish exams, and also on the weekly setup side of things. With exams, friends weddings and working I haven’t logged on now for about 2-3 weeks, and once more I’m realising I’m not missing it.
I need to do me some sewing, and I have some cunning plans involving bringing makeup into this blog/journal a little more – I’ll leave you with a sneaky peek!
Its bad when you’re supposed to be packing the car for another trip to remove stuff….that I’m considering the importance of making a 10 man raiding guild- right down to the players I would have in it, the roles they would take etc.
Oh well, maybe its that the filling boxes with copious amounts of stuff is finally (?!) getting boring, or that I just still want to play quite badly.
Its perhaps something to discuss with friends in Istanbul next week at least- perhaps we could make something of it.
Damn you tree bark jacket!
Much has happened since I last posted here.
We got “Of the Nightfall” though it was a very bittersweet night- we had to not take any of our melee – set up was
2 Paladin healers
Druid healer
Warrior tank (drakes)
Pala tank (adds)
Druid tank (on Sarth)
Ele Shammie
Mage
Mage
Shadow Priest
I was sad about the set up we had to use, and as a result didn’t raid lead the attempts, but we got it down – and that was the important thing.
The week after we worked on 6 min malygos, with me solo healing – we were in the end around a minute too late (unfortunatly the strongest dps wasnt available), but solo healing still felt sweet.
The next day it was Ulduar time.
We had some awesome initial progress, but then started to quickly hit our heads against a brick wall – players stopped signing up after 2 weeks of raiding there, and the furthest we got was to Iron Council.
It was at this point I decided to take the guild to inactive status. We’ve been through this situation before- recruiting more people to fill peoples gaps because they couldnt be arsed to wipe. And to be honest I don’t spend half my life in a game or checking tactics and idea’s for people to just not care.
2 members of the council decided to try keep the guild going after I stepped down, but they suffered the same problems and after 2 weeks they transferred to other guilds. rerolled.
I personally at this point reduced my play-time significantly. Transferred to my original home on Scarshield Legion and planned to rejoin a guild I’d played with in TBC towards the end – Echoes. However. I’m taking a sabbatical from my RL job this summer to go to Sweden, learn swedish and attempt to get a job. There’s a lot to do, and if I’m playing WoW I’m not going to do it.
So as of Monday this week I’ve completely stopped playing.
I don’t regret this, it was time for me and its taken so very much of my life over the past few years.
But then without WoW I wouldn’t have met so many amazing people and visited them. I wouldn’t have met Toomaj. I would’t be moving to Sweden.
From a very real point of view, raid leading over the past 6 or so months has also helped in the real world. I’m more assertive and can take better control of a situation than I ever could before. I can tell what motivates people more easily (true in the real world it isnt achievement points, epics, progression or playing with friends) and I actually find it easier to approach and talk to people than I did before I played.
But it was time.
This blog will go on, though I will probably change the skin/etc to reflect that I’m real not a tree anymore.
So about 2 weeks ago or so we finally nailed it, after repeated brickwalling on Shadron, it seemed in the end that it was simply switching the heroism to Shadron from Vesperon, and creative resto druid/Shaman useage.
We used a Druid tank in Fire/Frost gear, with a shaking of nightmare seeds, various resistance flasks and stuffs, a warrior on the drakes and 2 DK’s on the adds.
Healer wise we used the 7 healer tactic, with 3 paladins, 1 Disc priest, 2 Resto Shaman, 1 Resto druid.
DPS wise we took a broad range of casters/melee including Shadow priests and Ele shammies.
We’ve since done the fight once more, and I’m pretty happy with repeatability.
10 man though… oh what a challenge in terms of dragging the right set up >.< more on that another day!
Not long to go I presume until we finally get some new content. Currently still fighting with 3D, though its more a fight to get the optimal set-up online at the same time. Think should I manage that for a couple of days then we should take him down with ‘relative’ ease.
Achievements are something I’m not convinced on. While it gives new content, in a way… it also divides player base. I must admit I don’t really care for some title or another, but harder content and harder fights- yes please.
With the information that Uldar is going to have 10 or so bosses with an additional hard mode, it doesnt exactly fill me with glee, but the fun to begin with is going to be actually clearing the content.
Reading around on the upcoming nerf, it makes me wonder how in practice healing set-ups will actually change, but I’ll think over that and maybe post something later- really hoping I can read some PTR Literature, or get on there myself.
Well on the eve of 3.0.8 I look back over Wild Growth… and kinda feel a bit short changed that I haven’t really had the time to bask in its multi-person healing awesomeness before it got its brand new cooldown.
I’ve used it in certain fights (it’s lovely on the Vortex on Malygos, rather good on that guy in Plague wing, and nice with multiple drake Obsidian Sanctum), I’ve used it when I’ve just looked at grid and thought…. holy hell many to heal there! But well I don’t think I’ve had enough time to really appreciate it, and it certainly isn’t up there with my regrowth/lifebloom/rejuvenation spam.
Anyways, at least we aren’t hit as hard as the priests. I’m really going to have to reconsider the roles of some of my healers in raids I suspect.
