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.
Introductions are In order
Let me say, it was hard to leave my old server and a lot of people I knew behind. I specifically didn’t tell a lot of people where I was going not to be cruel, but some times you need a bit of silence and a bit of time to wrap your head around where you’re going.
Now is as good a time as any though to finally share what I decided to do. Howdy… My new name is Telent. I’m a raider over on Thunderhorn in a small 10 man Horde guild called Skeleton Crew. Will I be a raid leader at some point? Probably… Icecrown is just way too tempting…
Reset….
The first and most annoying thing I found was that I was sooo close to completing the LoreMaster achievement… and… I went from being 100 quests away to being about 800 quests away… *sigh* That’s what I get for not thinking about it before I transfered.
The second and slightly less annoying aspect was having my entire Argent Tournament grind reset. That… was an incredibly long grind the first time… it was an incredibly long grind the second time too. I finally finished up on Tuesday (*cheer). The bright side of that, is that while I was a bit cash poor when I transfered over, I found myself quickly having access to many thousands of gold. The grind of Argent Tournament rep is amazing for the cash it brings in. Plus to be honest, its a nice mindless thing to do (if annoying).
Raiding HOOOOO!!!!!
Since I’ve joined this small guild, I’ve found a sudden vaulting of content. Its been both exciting to see and a bit disappointing. Now let me clarify that a bit. Its been exciting because I went from barely being able to clear the first two bosses in TOC to pretty much clearing all of the content in the game.
My first week in there, we did Ulduar one night and I was able to see Hodir and Mimiron go down without any major problems. Unforunately we didn’t have time to go on and see General Vezax. We moved on to TOC and Onyxia a second night. The Onyxia was down in under 20 minutes and about an hour and 10 minutes later, we were standing on Anub Rekhan’s corpse. Wow… 1.5 hours and we were just plain done.
There’s a bonus and a negative to going that fast.
The bonus is that you very very quickly clear the content. I mean everyone is getting gear. You’re getting the badges you need. People are racking up their T9 gear.
The down side is that people don’t want to go back and finish other things, and I can see their point. We’re getting much better gear in TOC than we do in Ulduar. It takes us 45 minutes to an hour to clear. However…I’ve never gotten to see General Vezax or Yogg Saron. So…. that’s kind of the biggest negative.
Is it earth shattering? No… Its just something I’d like to see to be honest.
Support Structures
I’m not a rich man. I run a blog. I do zero advertising on this blog. I have no sponsors. Its a personal thing. I think I can afford the $7 a month to write a blog and not have to worry about advertising, or gold sellers, or anything else. Would it be nice to completely offset the cost? Possibly, but hey.. I enjoy doing this so I don’t mind paying for it.
However… that being said, paying $55 for a SINGLE server transfer is not something easy to swallow. I’m an avid altoholic. On Alliance I had 9 characters above 60, 6 above 70. I had almost every single profession maxed out. I had the ultimate support structure built. I could do anything I needed to support raiding. I had a max level Jewelcrafter, Leatherworker, Blacksmith, Alchemist, Tailor, Inscriptionist and anything else I needed.
Transferring over, I have… a raiding character with Jewelcrafting and Leathworking… and no support structure. So… I’ve been having to build that back up. I have a Deathknight working on my herbalism and Alchemy and a paladin working his way up with my Mining and Skinning. Its a long road to rebuild that support structure.
Plus I decided I really wanted to speed level the characters using two pieces of the BOA gear. Unfortunately I discovered… that the best way for me to get them was through the Argent Tournament… and that had been reset.
What about badges you say? Well….
RESPEC!!!
In an effort to be more useful, I decided to swap my off spec. My guild has been incredibly supportive. They ran a TON of HTOC and other heroics to help me get badges and the starter gear. We have a glut of melee DPS. So my off spec really wasn’t needed. To be honest, I wasn’t really that good at it as I really never got to use it. The melee kitty rotation takes a LOT of practice and if you don’t practice it, you won’t be able to nail it very well. I could pull a respectable 3k, but… to be honest, with my gear level I should have been doing around 4500 DPS.
So my choices were really ranged DPS (which we’re short on) or a backup healer. Well as one of the main tanks for the guild pretty much healed the first four weeks I was there, I decided adding some depth on the healing side was a good thing. Plus I’ve done it quite a bit with my other druid. So I know what to expect and have all my macros layed out.
Of course that’s filled my bank up. I’m not about to pitch my DPS set which I’ll probably use for leveling at some point, but… hey… you never know.
Unique problems… same problems
One thing I’ve discovered is that its not all that different to be in another small casual raiding guild. The people are a bit more focused in this one, but similar problems persist. Not everyone can make every day. So size is always an issue.
Some of the players as long time players are burning out on the game. They’ll almost always show up for a raid, but… the off days can be a bit slim.
Still the raids are almost always at 8 or 9 signed up and someone wanders online at the right time. However we’ve had one problem that I thought was kind of unique. We’ve had DPS shortages. I mean… the class that most guilds have flowing out their ears…. we tend to have shortages on that. We almost always have 3 tanks online and probably 3-4 healers, but DPS? Its just a truly bizarre problem to have.
Still… at least its easier to PUG in some DPS than worry about covering your tanks and healers.
Tags: Altoholism, Faction Transfer, Raiding, Server Transfer
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One benefit of SC is that we will be well positioned to rock into future content. Our tanks and healers have great skills and gear, our dps is high, for only having reliable access to 10 man content. With Icecrown and further, we will see it all.
Stormsword´s last blog ..Trial of the Crusader cleared!
Glad to hear things have been working out well for you man!
Wiredude´s last blog ..Help out your healers!
I’m sorry I didn’t get to talk to you before you swapped… not because of trying to stop you but just to at least say hey and bye hehe. I found out you swapped servers via Facebook from Theo, was a sad day. I have since cancelled my WoW account and its been a few months since I have played (starting to DT) but hope to be back before to long, possibly after the holidays if not sooner. I wish you the best of luck and hope I can find a raiding guild thats as quick paced. The guild I joined before I left was nailing 10 man easy modes up to ToC10 minus Yogg. I know what you mean, its hard getting people to spend the time in Uld to down one boss when you can clear Ony and ToC in about an hour an half. Anyway, starting to ramble. Hope to see you around sometime!
Glad you found yourself somewhere to sit back and chill for a moment or two and enjoy the content, i dont think people understand the sacrifices that a RL has to make sometimes in terms of their own game play, not complaining because it goes with the rewards of the job but everyone needs a breather.
You guys planning any TotGC 10’s? Your pretty much at exactly the same place as us and with the same numbers. We dont have your advantage of extra healers yet but plenty of DPS, would much prefer your scenario though
Hope it all goes well for you.
Cybac´s last blog ..Raid Leader Rant 4: I don’t got no vent
My fiance recently did the same server/faction change. Rough!
Jens´s last blog ..Happy Thanksgiving!