I had an old friend of mine stop by last night to chat.  We’ve played together since he was just a new player back in the Burning Crusade days.  He did the traditional WoW route.  He started as a hunter because EVERYONE told him to play one.  Its simple they said.. and you know what?  He got pretty damned good at it, but it wasn’t quite fulfilling for him.  Ok that’s a lie.  Due to financial difficulties at the time that Wrath came out, he just couldn’t afford a copy.  So he did what any redblooded casual WoW player would do.  He started an alt.

Since that time, the Alt became the Main as far as raiding is concerned.  He’s learned by trial and fire how to tank.  He’s discovered that he really likes it.  I mean hell…. who wouldn’t like getting their face beat in day after day. 

Lets be honest, its a very high profile position in a raid.  What’s the first question the healers ask?  “Who’s the tank?”  Who do people pin their hopes on in 25 mans and 10 mans?  The Tank and the healers, but honestly.. tanks are more visual.  When you’re looking at killing the boss, you see the tank.  You half the time don’t notice the guys propping him/her up and keeping their furry …er… plated…. buttocks up and running.  Its not fair to healers, but it is what it is.

We keep in touch from time to time.  He has moved on to tank on the Alliance side on Whisperwind.  I’m of course tanking on the horde side on Thunderhorn.  So as I was babbling on, we got to talking and the conversation kind of progressed like this….

Me:  Rough night in ICC.

Him:  Which boss?

Me:  Not a boss, more of just a general feeling of people being off tonight.  Not terrible, just didn’t quite make it as far as we wanted.

Him:  Yeah?  …. hey do you mind if I ask you a question?

Me:  No sweat

(queue… long wait)

Me: Uh oh.. must be a long question??!!!

Him:  Ok… so I’m pondering is it normal to feel like you want to be the Main Tank and not the Off Tank anymore?  Is that a normal feeling? 

Good question… lets pursue it shall we??? Read the rest of this entry »

Some times you just kind of run dry.  You try and try to come up with things to say… and in the end you just sit there..and can’t really think of anything that you’ll find that important.  What’s most interesting about taking a break is that it does wonderful things for your creative juices as well as kind of putting you back in touch with why you do this.

I think when I started this blog, it was for an entirely different reason than why I write now.  I won’t ever be a Matticus. 

I won’t ever be hard core theorist.  What I am… is a 30 something disorganized raid leader with a little bit of whit and a whole hell of a lot of sarcasm.  Plus I have some good friends who watch here looking to see what I am doing from time to time.  Which is encouraging.  I’m not an expert at anything in particular.  Some people would say I probably don’t give myself enough credit, but to be honest, I believe in thinking you always have group to grow and learn. Read the rest of this entry »

I know… its been quite a while since I posted anything here.  To be honest… I just haven’t had it in me.  While I’m going to take a week or two to think about it, at this point I’m likely coming close to the point of shutting the doors down here.

Now… why?

Well lots of reasons.  Not the least of which is… I am a very busy man.  I have a lot going on with my kids.  I’m extremely busy at work, and I find my free time in the game filled with a million details as we work our way through Icecrown Citadel.

When I I first started this blog to be honest I was bored at work, I had a lot of free time and my kids were younger.  Since then my son’s in Karate 4 days a week and we’re trying to juggle everyone’s schedule and I have a different situation at work. 

I love to write, but its just not something I feel I have the time to do well…  I’ll give it a couple of weeks to just kind of mull over, before I put my final decision here.  In that mean time, I may post… or I may not.

*salute*

Happy raiding folks.

Last night was a good night to die!!!  Well for Saurfang it was.  We had spent Wednesday working on clearing the first three bosses, but as we thought we’d only have 5 attempts at Saurfang, we figured we’d hold off after a long night of raiding to do Saurfang on a fresh day.  Thursday I knew would be a very busy day for me.  My daughter had a music program at school, so I really didn’t anticipate having time to raid, but about 8:30 I jumped online and there the group was.. waiting for me to show up.

So we headed on in to Icecrown Citadel.  I suspect there was a bug as we were granted 8 attempts at Saurfang, but I’m not going to complain… we downed him.  Lets crank it up and see what we learned about Deathbringer Saurfang. Read the rest of this entry »

Its funny how we kind of find ourselves in a rut.  I think in an MMO, its kind of a natural thing.  You end up stuck… you’ve done most if not all of everything in the game and then.. things slow down… they crawl to a halt and you find yourself just filling in the spaces….

I’m sorry if you disagree, but Blizzard in my opinion has proved why they deserve the king of the hill for MMOs.  With the release of 3.3, they’ve redefined what it is to play WoW… again. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been an interesting few weeks.  I was accused of being a real pro the other day in a raid and to be honest.. it felt good.  I’ve been quiet on purpose.  I’ve had a lot to say, but to be honest, I wanted to give people I knew a bit of time to adjust… pick a direction and decide what they wanted to do with the game.

I’ve picked my path and thus far I’m not regretting it.  For those who have been watching, you know I jumped from Alliance to Horde and swapped servers.  $55 later (ouch), I found myself in a guild formed by some friends of mine I see once or twice a month.  So its a guild largely comprised of people who know each other.  Lets take a few minutes to dwell down what I’ve experienced and some of the surprises I’ve seen. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday was one of those blessid days.  Why you ask?  Because we got mail!!!!

Now… I actually have a decent amount of people who read what I write, but comments are kind of few, and emails are kind of slow some days, but Edgar… we love you man.  Since you wrote in to ask me about a topic I hold dear, you get to be answered all personal and such :p

Edgar wrote:

Hey Starman, I’m a new reader of your Casual Raid Leader blog, so I’m not sure if you’ve addressed this before but I saw an article on WoW.com that dealt with the topic “How to coach your raid members“. I was interested in knowing what you felt, knew and could say about the topic in general, not just what was said in the article.

Regards,
Edgar

Thanks Edgar.  I actually hadn’t even noticed that article to be honest… though I’m not even sure how I missed it.  Its not a bad article, but… I feel it glanced over a few key points.  Lets pop the hood and see what we’ve got. Read the rest of this entry »

If I get one and only claim to fame for this expansion, its that I was blessed enough to coin the phrase, Children of Wrath.  Its one that spawned a TON of posts across the Blog Azeroth community, but lets take a bit of time almost a year out to do a little retrospective.  This was the first post that I did, that WowInsider took notice and was nice enough to crash my site over.  Its a post of mine that still gets hits to this day. 

When I did the original post, I was focused on the things that a Child of Wrath missed.  Now… almost a year in the future, I want to take a look back and see what their world is like.

This is probably one of my more interactive topics folks.  I would highly encourage anyone who has grown up in Wrath to post on this, whether it be to share your perspective, or to show me where you blogged on it.  This is something that really fascinates me, and to be honest, I’m really curious what life has been like for someone who started the game after Wrath of the Lich King was released. 

But for now, lets take a deeper dive on my perspectives on how life has been for the Children of Wrath…  I’m not going to go into the world of PVP servers, but stick with our care bear PVE servers. Read the rest of this entry »

In the wake of changing guilds, I wanted to take a bit of time to sit down and really think about what happened and see the ripple effects before I really talked about what I learned. Its now been over two weeks since I left my previous guild. Since I left, my previous guild has become a shell of its former self. A lot of very good players have been scattered to the wind. Some of them went places I’d rather they hadn’t. Some of them have been left to drift in a quagmire not sure where to go. Others have picked new directions.

Lets start with something I’ve learned about burn out. Just a fair warning… if you’ve ever seen a bear wall… this is going to look an aweful lot like one. Read the rest of this entry »

So I was sitting there last night looking at new trinkets.  I had finally gotten up in the 60 badge range on Emblems of Triumph and wanted to look at getting a shiny new trinket.  I went over, bought a nice one and finally… after all the blood sweat and tears got my hands on a trinket upgrade.

I’ve been using the same iLVL 200 trinkets forever.  Now granted… for bear tanks I’m pretty sure they are about the best of the best.  They have mountains of stamina coupled with dodge or the shielding effect that you get from the “Black Heart”.  They are great trinkets.  I’ve got no complaints there.

So I went and bought a nice trinket upgrade.  I was talking with a friend of mine about my Emblems of Triumph purchases.  I was pretty excited.  I only had one more purchase and I’d be all done I told him.  I figured I’d pick up the idol they had and then I could start buying off set items.  He then promptly whispered me, “Don’t need any T9?  That stuffs just vendor bait”

Wait… run that by me again?  I looked over the T9.5 stuff and I knew it took a token to buy… did I miss a vendor?  Oh my god… I did… There’s a T9 vendor you can buy the T9 stuff with no extra token… *headdesk*

I’ve wasted friggin badges already hunting things like a ring upgrade etc.. I could have had 4 pieces of T9 by now… So I promptly ran back to the badge vendor… sold back my shiny new trinket and ran over to the T9 vendor to buy a couple of really nice upgrades.  I’ve been dying for a shoulder upgrade forever… yeah… silly me.  Well at least I wasn’t alone.  The other bear tank in the guild didn’t know either… so we’d both wasted a bunch of badges.

Oh well.. call me in another 200 badges once I’m done buying all my upgrades ok???