Casual Raid Leader

Oi…. hey! Get up!

Oh god… what do you want?  Can’t you see I’m planning a fairly lengthy rant?

Its time for your interview.  Can’t let you get out of it…. if you’re going to use the interview format on other people its only fair that I use it on you.

Look.. you realize you’re a self righteous twit don’t you?

No… That’s your job.  I’m the pompus over intellectual ass whose too self absorbed to recognize your pain. 

Oh right… you’re sure I’m the self righteous twit?  Absolutely positive?

Look.. you’re just putting this off… do I need to remind you of the day you put me in charge?!?!?!?!?  Want a repeat?

Oh yeah… I guess we’d better get on with it.  Well since you’re acting all important and in charge.. I guess you’d better do the intro then.  It seems a bit over the top if I introduce myself and write my own intro don’t you think?

Fine!!!

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You ok there?  Need some help?  You realize this has gone on overly long already right???

No… look I’ve got this….

Ok….

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Welcome to part four of our series on Raid Lockout.  Today we’ll be interviewing Starman from our very own Casual Raid Leader.  Starman is the raid organizer for a small casual 10 man raiding guild.  They are currently focused on progessing through Ulduar and ToC as we wait eagerly for 3.3.  Their focus is on keeping it fun while still progressing through the content.

He currently runs a blog with a small and amazingly quiet crew of readers who some day will open up in an amazing dialogue the likes of which has never been seen!!!  But till that day we’re force to put up with him as he is.  Without further ado… lets dive in and see what Starman has to say about the new Raid Lockout feature. (more…)

Welcome to part three.  In part four I’ll be weighing in on my opinion.  When I hunted people down for this particular sequence, I wanted to get a few different types of opinions.  I come from an alliance guild who’s kind of small and really we’re quite casual.   Lodur comes from another kind of  casual style guild.  Kasdingo runs a more raid focused  10 man guild, and our last interview is from a larger progression oriented guild.

I’m sure just from the name in the title of this post, most of you probably know him.  Matticus is probably destined for his own in game item at some point.  He’s well known for his contributions to the healer community at World of Matticus and the Plus Heal forums.  He’s a regular contributor over at Wow.com as well.  NostockUI is also a brain child of his.  From a personal perspective I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone in the community at large whose putting forth such effort to further the hobby.

But of course that’s not why I picked him.  Matticus is the GM of Conquest.  Its a fairly hard hitting raid guild located over on Ner’Zhul.  From an outsider’s perspective they get a lot of work done in what would be probably a typically short raid window each week.  They approach it professionally and going into this interview, I was fairly sure they hadn’t even used the feature.  But its a great perspective to see how someone from a more advanced guild views the feature.  Lets take a look shall we? (more…)

Today I had the chance to finally put up some information I was able to get from a guild leader I’ve known for a while.  This will be part two of what will be a four part series on raid lockout.  Today I was able to track down a friend of mine who plays a horde character.  So never let it be said we don’t provide equal opportunity for Horde and Alliance over here!!!!

Today’s victim volunteer is GM of a small 10 man raiding guild located over on Thunderhorn.  They in many respects face the same issues I’ve seen many times over in my own guild, and we correspond quite a bit to just discuss strategy and tactics.  Without further ado, lets catch up with our next interview. (more…)

For those curious about my somewhat sporadic posting habits, a lot of it is directly related to what’s going on in my life.  This week I’m attending a SANS training conference.  I’m basically sitting in a classroom for 10-12 hours a day learning about security practices and some hacking techniques.  When the guy you’re sitting next to is literally sniffing packets off the Wireless all day long looking for something interesting you think twice about doing absolutely anything with your computer while in class.  Couple that with the fact that I’ve literally had a raid 10 minutes after I got home every day for the last three days and…. I just haven’t had time.

But over the weekend I was extremely fortunate.  No… I didn’t get to go Blizzcon.  I  obviously need to get enough sponsorship to just flat out pay for that trip obviously .  But I was able to trade some information with Lodur over at World of Matticus.  I decided before putting my own personal take on the raid lockout extension feature I wanted to track down some opinions from various people.

Many of you may recognize Lodur from his work as the resident Shaman poster over on World of Matticus.  Most recently he’s written about The State of Chainheal.  With out further ado, lets dive right in on what Lodur had to say. (more…)