Traveling for Christmas

I will be traveling to Iowa with the wife and kids for the holidays. We will be gone for 11 days, during which time we will be visiting my parents, Cheri's parents and our siblings. I'm looking forward to a few days off of work and the gambit of games, both board and card, that we will play during the holidays.

I will also be going to LA for 36 hours during my vacation to see the very last Live Diggnation EVER! I'm very excited about this. I will be flying out of Omaha to Orange County with my sister Cindy. We will then be heading to Palmdale, CA and then to LA the next day for the show. Then next morning I have an early flight back to Iowa for the rest of the holidays.

I'll try to get another post in over the holidays, but I'm not sure when. Happy Holidays Everyone!

My Mom was Right

I hate to admit that I may have been wrong, but I just realized that my Mom was right. In college I was an art major, so basically I took the low road and slacked off a bit my freshman and sophomore years. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that all art majors are lazy and more interested in life experiences than getting good grades and going to class but I certainly fit the bill during my first two years of undergraduate college. But I did do much better, grade-wise, in graduate school.

I got a business minor and now I seem obsessed with game that simulate economy, asset management and acquisition of currency. It's funny because I have never been that interested with these activities in the real world. But somehow, doing mindless tasks in a video game is less strenuous that doing the same thing in real life.

I have dabbled in the stock market, mostly in my retirement funds, but I have not had much success in that matter. But I never seem as interested in researching actual companies and their activities as I have in moving minerals and trade goods from station to station in the EVE universe. I realize that this makes for more questions than answers and they are all questions about myself and my motivations. Hmm...

Got back to Minning

Well over the weekend, I have gotten back into mining. I was finally able to get anchoring researched and I purchased a few large secure containers to stash my minerals in. It made the mining much faster and more secure that it has ever been. It was still not as fast as mining in a group, but mining into a large secured container in space is much more efficient than making several trip to a station with the limited cargo space in my mining ship.

Of course, my mining was finished after I got shot I fled in my pod to the nearest outpost. Once I landed I was informed that my security status had been revoked and I could be shot by anyone in the area and the concord would not protect me. But all I did was protect myself (badly) and I'm being punished. I just don't understand the PvP in this game. How come he wasn't flagged, or did he not care that he was flagged. Anyway, it's hard to say. I need to find a way to establish whether a ship is friendly or not quickly and how it will affect my ship to either attack or flee from a fight.

Gooder Eve: Collected

Here is a link to Gooder EVE. I'm very impressed with the way this on-going series is setup. Please give them a look as they are some very interesting ideas ... and just good reads.

"Gooder Eve is an on-going series that attempts to prod the Eve Universe into motion by suggesting ways in which it could be made gooder. These suggestions range from the serious to the silly, but each one is intended to start a discussion, engage your brain and hopefully start the ball rolling in new and interesting directions."

TOR Torn

There is this new MMO coming out called The Old Republic and it is based on a franchise you may have heard of ... Star Wars. There is a lot of buzz out there about this MMO and how it might be the next World of Warcraft. It is being released just in time for Christmas on 12/20/11. As it states in the title to this post, I am torn. I want to play it but there are several things holding me back; both financially and technologically.

Can I play another MMO? Well the answer is yes, but should I is a better question. As you may have guessed from my previous posts I cannot afford to pay multiple 15 dollar monthly subscriptions to feed my video game addiction. In truth, I'm trying to adjust my play to have EVE support itself monetarily. Unfortunately, I'm a little too new to be making that sort of ISK just yet. So if I was to start playing TOR I would have to pay 2 monthly subscriptions. I cannot afford 30 dollars a month for MMOs.

Secondly, I have always wanted to experience the launch of an MMO. I came into WoW around 4 years into the game. I have just joined EVE in its 7th year. When I joined FFXI it was in it's 8th or 9th year I think. I have never played a MMO at launch. I have always experienced the game as many players are leveling their alts and experiencing the content for the 3rd or 4th time. These is famed to be an excitement and electricity around when people are experiencing the game for the first time. I want to be a part of something like that, but is this the game? Is this my time to experience an epic launch?

But, The Old Republic cannot be played on a Mac OSX. Now there is a way around this, but dual booting into Windows on my Macbook Pro. Or I could try to run parallels, but that is going to be expensive as well. If you are interested in the technical aspect of running TOR on a Mac, here is a link to a thread that talks about playing TOR on a Mac. So this puts me in another finical pickle; I have to either get a PC capable of running TOR or I need to pay for Windows (and possibly Parallels) for my Macbook Pro. This is in addition to the cost of the game and another monthly subscription. I but you're saying "don't do it Chuck, it's too much money" and you are probably right. But it is Star Wars and it is a MMO launch.

In conclusion, I want to play TOR but probably for the wrong reasons. I love the Star Wars franchise and I'm interested in playing a Jedi but I don't have a need to play this game. I want to experience the launch, but I just want to be able to say that 'I was there'. Usually I take the approach of waiting until a game is reduced in value and the developer has had time to make some improvements to the UI. Is it worth the extra buck (and technical difficulties) to be there are launch? What do you think?

What to Do

I need to post today, to keep me to 3 posts a week. The problem is that I don't have much to write about. I was busy all last week and I only got into EVE to check my skill que and move some minerals around to build 2 Vexors. I have been training my production efficiency skill to reduce the amount of minerals required to manufacturer a ship. At the moment I have trained the skill up to level 3, which has resulted in a 11% reduction in the 7 minerals required to build the Gallente Cruiser.

I'm having trouble figuring out what I want to do with my character in EVE. Now that I have finished the beginning tutorials I'm having a little bit of trouble finding things to do. Originally I was trying to be a miner, but I found that profession monotonous after a few hours of running loads back to the base. So I have decided to pursue ship manufacturing as a profession. The problem was that I could not produce the ships for less that they were selling for on the market. So I looked into making my production more efficient and lo-and-behold there is a skill called 'production efficiency'. I'm still working on leveling it to 5 and hopefully then I can start turning a profit on these Vexors.

I was thinking that I should expand my production to the full line of Gallente Cruisers. I have an Exequror, Celestis and several Vexors. I still need to get a Gallente Thorax but I can't fly them yet. I think the next step is to get into some Battle Cruisers but it may be awhile since I'm focusing on my production skills, rather than my piloting skills.

The problem is that to produce the ships I need minerals, and to get the minerals I need to mine. But if I spend all my time mining I won't have any time for exploring, salvaging or ratting. So basically I have not picked a profession yet. I like salvaging, and it goes hand-in-hand with ratting but I have not found an efficient way to find pirates to rat. This has resulted in my flying from asteroid belt to asteroid belt looking for pirates to destroy and then salvaging their dead husks. I have also been trying my luck in low-sec but as you read before I keep getting podded in the 0.3 Old Man Star. I'll keep you posted.

Old Man Star 0.3

I had a pretty interesting trip into the Old Man Star system on Wednesday and it resulted in me being podded twice. I went into the system to do some scanning and I was hoping to find a radar site or a hidden asteroid field to mine. I did find many anomalies but no sites to hack or mine. I found a couple of Gallente Outposts which I decided to explore.

I wasn't podded twice on Wednesday but once on the first trip and a second time on a goofed salvage operation a few days later. This picture is a screen shot from when I was fighting the separatist pirates. I did not get podded by the pirates, but by a player who was camping the acceleration gate I needed to warp through to get to the pirates.

When I was fighting the pirates I had to warp away to my safe-spot and repair my armor and recharge my shields. I was going back for my 3rd trip to fight the last pirate and that's when the gate camper picked me off. I still have a lot to learn about pvp in EVE since I seem pretty easy to kill to a veteran player. Oh well...

Then I went back 3 days later to pick up some minerals I bought for ship production. Once I jumped into Old Man Star I found 3 ships waiting for me. I was still cloaked since I had just arrived, but once I engaged my warp drive to head to the signature I had bookmarked the shot me out of the sky immediately. I should have just jumped back through the wormhole, rather than trying to warp to another location in the system. I then tried to save my pod but that was destroyed not 2 seconds later. This marks the third time in a week that I have been podded in Old Man Star. I'm just having bad luck in this system. I really need to stop going there.

The Lord of Assets Triforce

I just wanted to take a moment to talk about my vision for the Lord of Assets blog. Clearly I'm playing EVE now, but the blog has it's roots in World of Warcraft. I started the blog with the idea of addressing the management of assets in a group setting within a MMO. Really I just wanted a place to talk about my guild and the role they played in my gaming experience. Now I realize that is a very vague idea so let me expand upon this different parts of that idea.

That statement can be broken into 3 parts: assets, groups and MMOs. I will address each aspect of the Lord of Assets 'triforce' individually. On a side-note you should all look at the Google image results for triforce; several of them are quite interesting.

ASSETS: An asset can be anything of perceived value to the player. Generally this is a reference to in-game currency that can be traded for goods or services within the confines of the game. I have recently expanded the definition to include time spent and entertainment received.

GROUPS: A groups is a collection of individuals that are united in purpose. I'm using the term to refer to my guild (in WoW) or my corporation (in EVE). Again, this concept can be expanded to included players in general that adhere to a similar game-play style. You might even expand the definition even further to include all gamers, or nerds in general.

MMO: I have already talked about this, in-depth, in some previous posts (MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online games). Both WoW and EVE are MMOs but the term is also being expanded to include iPhone/iPad apps and games that utilize social networking like Facebook or Twitter. For now I intend to mainly focus on the larger, subscription based MMOs but as you saw in my Wonders of PLEX post the way we pay and play these game is changing. Who knows what the future holds for the MMO market.

Getting back to my vision for the blog; I hope to post about MMOs, market strategies for making in-game currency and about the guild dynamic in gaming today. I just don't enjoy single player games as much as multiplayer games. And there are no bigger multiplayer games than MASSIVELY Multiplayer Online games. There is something about player involvement and the community at large that appeals to me. I also like the economic side of a player driven market.

How about consistency? I'm not very good at making consecutive posts or making 'X' number of posts per week. I'm working on this. I'm sure that you can see the 10 month gap in posts from January to November. I'm trying to combat this by getting ahead of the blog by starting several different posts over the weekend and then releasing them as I finish them throughout the week. I have 4 posts in progress right now, and I'm trying to work ahead and think of topics to cover that can keep the blog heading in the direction I want.

What do you want? I want to consider what a reader would like to see; and how I can best provide this. So please leave a comment or send me an email and tell me what you would like to hear about. Cheers!
.

Wiki Economy Link

Here is a link to the wiki entry on EVE's Economy. I found this interesting and probably a more graceful way of saying what I was trying to say about PLEX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameplay_of_Eve_Online#Economy

The Wonders of PLEX

I would like to think of myself as a seasoned MMO player from my time in World of Warcraft, but the truth is that I'm probably still a noob. I have been playing video games all my life, but I have only been playing Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games for 2-3 years now. The fact is that MMOs have ruined my gaming experience everywhere else. I don't get as much enjoyment from playing a RPG on my xBox 360 as I used to. NPCs just don't seem as exciting as playing with real people from around the world.

Now the real kicker here is that I don't spend a lot of time raiding, or running PvP with corp-mates so a lot of my game time is spend playing solo. Just that fact that there is multiplayer aspects available is enough to keep me emerged in the game and ready to go at any moment. I dream about the day when I can get in a fleet with 8-10 of my corporation buddies and fly into worm-space make ourselves heard. But until that moment comes I'm content with leveling my skills and working the market so I can afford that shinny new battle-cruiser.

I have listened to several podcasts about MMOs and how the market is changing to 'free-to-play' models. Yet these large, sucessful MMOs are sticking to their subscription models. Which one is better depends on the context of the questions. The subscription model is better for the businesses because it is guaranteed income for them each month. Is it better for the player? An argument could be made that a free-to-play model with micro-transactions would make more money for the game designer because more people would play. If your player base increases by 500% then you only need to make 20% as much from each player to maintain your income.

Which pay-model is better for the player depends on what type of player you are. Some players are content paying 15 dollars a month and having that be it. I was one of those players, justifying that it was about the cost of going to a movie and getting popcorn and a coke but gave me many more hours of entertainment.

If you look at how much I have paid to play WoW over the last 2 years the number is a bit staggering. 24 months at 15 dollars a month is 360 dollars. But I also bought the game itself in the battle-chest for 40 dollars (which included Vanilla and the Burning Crusades). Then I bought the 2nd expansion (Wrath of the Litch King) for 40 dollars and the 3rd expansion (Cataclysm) for another 40 dollars. Bringing my grand total for 2 years of WoW to 480 dollars. Now that is a lot of money for a video game. Would I have spent as much in a free-to-play model? That is a hard question to answer.

Getting back to PLEX and what it has done for EVE. PLEX stands for 30 Day Concord Pilot License Extension. Basically it is an item that you can buy for real money that can be sold in-game for isk (Intersteller Kredit) or applied to you account to add 30 days of play time. Here is the BIG difference, PLEX can be bought for isk in-game and then used to add 30 days of play time. So you can pay for you game time with currency you have earned in-game; or more simply you can support your MMO habit by playing the game. This makes EVE self sustaining, which is the big difference between the near 500 dollars I have spent on World of Warcraft.

At this point I has spent about 35 dollars on EVE because I bought 2 PLEX after my 14 day free trial. I used one to convert my game from a trial account (by adding 30 days of play time) and I sold the other one on the market in-game for about 450 million isk. Notice that I did not have to purchase the game, it was free to download but I needed add game time to continue playing. Now you can go with the standard subscription model and continue to pay 15 dollars a month to play EVE, but they offer PLEX as an alternative approach. I paid for my PLEX with my paypal account rather than giving my credit card to another MMO. I hope to eventually cut my gaming costs down by at least 50%, or maybe more.

Now you may be thinking, isn't selling a PLEX in-game for isk counter intuitive to cutting my monthly gaming costs. Effectively I spent 35 dollars on EVE this month with no guarantee that I can make enough isk to afford a PLEX next month. The way I look at it is that it takes money to make money. I'm using the extra currency to buy bigger ships and more skill books that I can use to make more currency in-game. I'm pretty sure that I can't make 450 million isk in the next 30 days. However it is my goal to be able to eventually afford to play EVE by playing EVE. I just think that this is an interesting way to approach playing and paying for a MMO. Thoughts?

Gallente Exequror

I got a new ship last night and I thought I would share a picture. This is a Cruiser Class Gallente Exequror.

It was a gift from my corporation's CEO.

EVE Online

Well I took the plunge and downloaded the EVE 14-day trial. That was about a week ago and I have already upgraded to a full account and purchased some PLEX to continue my subscription and sell on the open market. I also just joined my first Corporation (basically a guild) in EVE as well; the Kog Mining Co.

I'm going to keep this one short, but take solace in the few hints I have provided in the previous paragraph. EVE is a MMO, so many of the topics are related. I mentioned the open market so there is a connection to the Asset portion of my blog. And finally, I mentioned a corporation/guild so those themes will remain as well. That is how I leave you wanting more!

Need versus Greed in Pugs

I had an interesting encounter in a random dungeon yesterday. It involved winning a couple of need roles on gear with my Death Knight versus the tank. I'm level 64 and was in the que as DPS. The tank for our group was a Paladin who was also level 64 and for the most was a good tank. He knew what he was doing, moved pretty fast and we didn't wipe even though he was pulling a bit to many mobs for my liking.

Just because he is the tank, does that give him the right to be a whiny asshat about loosing his need roles. His was the nicest, albeit passive aggressive asshat that I have seen in a while, but it was still uncalled for. Here is what happened:

We were running The Underbog in Zangarmarsh in Outlands. We came up to the second boss, the green hydra thing on the platform. It was probably the toughest boss fight we had so far because the tank and myself both kept getting knocked back from the tail swipe. Anyway, we got him down on the first try and he dropped a rare 2-handed mace with 3 sockets called Hatebringer. Now bear in mind that I was currently fighting with an uncommon 2-handed mace that was not as good as this drop and the tank was fighting with a sword and shield as tanks should. I need on it since it was an improvement and rolled a 26, the tank needed and rolled a 01.

The tank then proceeded to tell the group that this was the third time he had lost a need roll on that mace. He whines about this for a little bit and finally I say "ouch, and you rolled a 01". He didn't say anything after that. I'm not sure what a tank pally would need a 2-handed mace for but maybe he was dual-specked as retribution. Anyway, the very next boss fight the boss drops plate legs. I look at my character pane and see that the legs are also an improvement. I roll need . . . and so does the pally tank. I win again. The tanks says "@#$& you Gluug". Did I do something wrong?

I understand that it sucks to loose several need roles in a row but I don't whine about it (at least not in party chat). It has happened to all of us at some point, we run random after random and come up empty handed. We have also all probably had those days where every drop helps us and we are rolling great on every need roll. It's part of the game and you have to roll with the fucking punches. It's just gear and at level 64 I'm probably going to get better gear from quests at level 66. Gear DOES NOT MATTER when leveling.

Need roles are reserved for an upgrade. If it helps me I'm going to roll need on it. If it's not something that I can equip immediately, I'll role greed (or disenchant) on it. Its that simple. If you are a whiny asshat, I’m going to write about you on my blog.

Aside from really pissing off pally tanks I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of my DK. I rolled him on a different server than Chuckem and have been slowly building him up. I won't get into why I rolled him on Earthen Ring instead of Demon Soul in this post, but I'm sure I'll come back to this topic someday. For my professions I'm going mining/jewelcrafting and I wanted to be able to mine the nodes in Outlands when I started leveling there. So I took the time to level my mining and jewelcrafting to 300 before starting in Hellfire. Anyway, I'm finished with Hellfire now and moving on to Zangarmarsh. I tried to skip directly to Blades Edge Mountains but I guess you have to be level 65 to get the quests there. I was pretty impressed that Hellfire alone took me all the way to 64. I want to see different content this time through Outlands and I never went into either of the northern zones on Chuckem my first time from 60-70. However it will be a LONG time before I'm ready to quest in Hellfire again.

The many faces of Chuck in WoW

I like to name things after myself. First there was this cat I picked
up in a garage sale in Pennsylvania. I named her Charlie. Then there
was my first website, www.bucketofchuck.com and the corresponding email
addresses (and twitter handle). I have since moved on to other names
like cupofchuck and Lord of Assets (which is just another reference to
Chuckem).

Moreover, I like to name characters in WoW after me. Who wants to be
named something long, hard to pronounce and even harder to spell. My
name is awesome! I just wanted to share all of my character names on
the Demon Soul server.

My first horde character was actually an orc hunter named Dachuck.
Then there is Chuckem, Ottochuck, Franklynn, Nochuck, Chuckman,
Warchuck, Chuckita and Barnabee. There is another one as well, but I
can't remember the name right now.

Chuckem is my main, a level 82 mage. Ottochuck is my bank alt and a
level 9 druid. Franklynn is a troll rouge (maybe level 12 now).
Nochuck is my orc DK who is at level 64. ChuckMAN is my shaMAN and my
first gobin character. WARchuck is my goblin WARlock (who I should
have named Chucklock, lol). Chuckita (like the banana) is my undead
priest and Barnabee is a troll warrior who I made to do the new troll
starting area. I thought my readers might enjoy how I name my alts.
Cheers!

Shared Topics

I just wanted to give my readers a little info about where my ideas come from. I'm a member of Blog Azeroth and they do a weekly shared topic thread there. My letter to frost nova came from that thread. I wanted to link to it and to the others letters written last week.

blamesquelchy

primetimecasual

wowcasualraider

expeditionazeroth

cowandbones

wayofthedruid

Please stop by and give them a read. --Chuck

Growing your Guild

I wanted to talk a little about the pros and cons of growing your guild. What I mean by growing is expanding the core number of players in a guild. For example, my guild Morningstar has 39 members if you look at the guild pane in game but as far as I know we only have 5 active members. Most of us have 3-5 alts in the guild as well so our guild is not really growing if we add another alt. What we need to do is add to our core numbers so that we can have more that 5 players online at once. This has several advantages, but a few disadvantages as well.

I'm going to start with the advantages because those are what make people excited to be in a larger guild. First and foremost if you have a larger guild there will be more players around at any given time. This is great for several reasons; if you need some help on a quest or are looking for a group to run some instances. But is also nice to have someone there to say hello and ask how your day is going.

It's nice to have those players around for professions as well. In many smaller guilds you don't have crafters of every profession available to help you when you need something made/enchanted. It is also nice to not about geming you gear or getting all of your glyphs in place. Although our guild is small we have several max level characters so this is not a problem for our younger players. We have at least one toon with each profession above 450, and a few at 525.

Growth is important for meeting new players as well. It is nice to have a close relationship with all of your guildies but sometimes that can prevent you from meeting new players as well. I think it is vital to continue to meet new players and add to that friends list. After all not everyone from your guild can be on every night. If you enjoyed a run with someone from your server add them to your friends list and send them a whisper the next time you see them online. It will work wonders! If they are looking for a guild send them an invite. Be careful to not grow too fast or the guild can start to feel like a bunch of strangers standing around with the same name floating above their heads. As with everything in life, guild management is about balance.

Now for the disadvantages, nobody knows your name. I like the close, intimate feeling of a smaller guild. I have a few alliance toons in various larger guilds and I always feel like an outsider when I play those characters. Whenever I log with one of those characters nobody says a word to me. I want too login and have a few people say hello and ask how I'm doing. I want that community of players because we all know that the game is better when you play with friends. So go and grow your guilds, but make sure to take the time to get to know you new players.

Dear Frost Nova

You are a reliable spell that I have used many time to save my meager mage life. I cannot count the number of times that you have rooted enemies and kept them from beating my soft and squishy skin senseless. But I have noticed that in the new zone in Cataclysm you no longer work reliably. When I'm swimming around Vashj'ir I constantly get attacked from above or below by various viscous sea critters. My first instinct is to frost nova and then blink to safety before turning around to smite my attacker.

But for some reason when I frost nova in the ocean it comes with mixed results. I may catch the attacker if he came from the same level as me, but if the attacker is from above or below they seem unaffected by my root. I'm usually so disoriented by the blink underwater, and the enemies can swim much faster that me, so I hardly have time to turn around before I'm being crushed again. I'm squishy and all wet, and I can't take a hit like this. Why has such a reliable spell like frost nova been made useless underwater? WHY???

My favorite is when I frost nova and instead of my assailant I root the 4 fish swimming by. Then once the root has worn off and I just barely survived my assault 4 angry fish come swimming my way. Apparently fish don't like being frozen any more than the naga. Also, shouldn't ice float. Why don't the frozen fish (or naga) float to the surface of the ocean after I nova'ed them. That would make my fleeing for safety a lot easier. I remember from physics that ice floats.

Moreover, if I cast Ice Block I would like to float to the top of the ocean in Vashj'ir. Is it too much to ask the WoW follows the laws of physics? Ice floats, why shouldn't any ice that I make in the water float as well. Why don't giant blocks of ice in the ocean float? Please fix this immediately, your friendly neighborhood mage, Chuckem!

The Lord is 80!

Chuckem just dinged level 80 a few days ago. This is my first max level character and I thought my loyal readers (thanks mom) should know. Now I know that 80 is not really max level anymore but it took me over a year to get Chuckem this far and I wanted to celebrate. Now to farm heroics for justice points. Cheers!

Recruiting as a Guild Officer

Recently in my career as a guild officer I tasked myself with recruiting new members. I discussed the idea first with the guild master and we both agreed that it would be nice to add a bit of new blood to our guild. Then the question came up of what type of players we are looking for. We discussed it in guild chat and came to the consensus that we wanted a mature player who was not an asshat. That unfortunately is hard to find World of Warcraft. After a little more discussion here is what I came up with the spam in trade chat.

Morningstar is a casual working guild that intends to do PvP and PvE progression at our own pace. We are looking to expand and find more core players. Our bank has 4 Tabs and we help our lower level members. Pst if interested!

And spam it I did. I must have said that in trade at least 20 times before I got a response from a level 61 DK. I was exited that I had gotten a bite so I invited him into the guild. He was going to be my first recruit, my apprentice, the Anakin to my Obi Wan. Clearly he has read my message so his must be a casual players who wants to meet new players and like to help out. I didn't say 'NO ASSHATS' but it was implied. I wanted core players to build our guild around, that's not too much to ask it it?

Before we go any further let me tell you a bit about our little guild, we are small but pretty advanced. Although we only have 5 real members at this time we have almost 40 toon in our guild. Most players in our guild have at least 2-3 alts in the guild and our guildmaster has 5 level 80+ characters. 4 of our 5 core members have at least one end-game character and we have at least 1 of every profession leveled over 450. And finally we have a guild back with 4 tabs which always seems to be full. Although most raiders would consider our guild casual, I think we are very focused on progressing through the content. We even PvP a little.

Back to my story. I invited this DK into the guild and we chatted a bit. I told him about goblin night (because we were going to be playing in a about 2 hours) and invited him to be our 5th. I thought what a great way to welcome our newest member. Having him participate in goblin night would be an awesome way to show him how cool Morningstar is. I said, "IF you can get a goblin to level 7 before 10:00 server time you can level with us." He seemed pretty excited and I left him to his work, I was logging off for a hour and a half for dinner before goblin night. I said goodbye and see you in a couple of hours. Before I logged he asked me to be promoted from noobie, the lowest rank in our guild.

To promote or not to promote, that was the question I was faced with. I didn't know this guy at all, but he was my new apprentice and I didn't want him to leave. The fact that the asked to be promoted within 20 minutes of joining the guild should have been a sign, but I didn't catch it. I panicked and logged off quickly like I didn't see the message. After all, how could he be offended if I didn't know what he had asked. More on this subject in another post.

I came back online a little before 10:00 to make sure I could find our new goblin and get him in the guild before goblin night began. I found him and got the invite sent, but he was only level 5 at this point. I asked him how things were going and if he would be able to make level 7 in the next 20 minutes before everyone else got there. At this point he freaked a bit because he wasn't going to be ready. He thought I meant 10:00 am, not 10:00 pm. I thought this was a bit weird because I had said "I'll see you in a couple of hours" but I can see how the mistake was made. I told him to keep leveling and he should be able to catch up. Unfortunately we could not go back and help him because of the phasing but that is a different issue altogether.

I introduced him to everyone as they came online and I assured him that he could catch up if he kept playing. After all, goblin night goes pretty slow when we were looking for all the drops 4 times. He kept asking us to wait for him and I felt bad because of the misunderstanding but I couldn't stop goblin night in progress. We had all been looking forward to goblin night for awhile and I was not going to throw that away for someone new. Its really hard to get 4 adult's schedules lined up for a 2-3 hour block of time. We had planned this a week ago and I had no idea when the next one was going to be. I kept telling him that I was sorry and that he could catch up. He kept whining in guild chat for us to wait for him. Now I was feeling bad for bringing this on the guild, we were trying to enjoy ourselves and this guy just keeps asking for stuff. After 30 minutes of this I felt like a complete turd for inviting this douche along for goblin night. Eventually our guild master logged off his goblin, got on his level 85 shaman and kicked the guy from our party and guild.

My apprentice was gone, my hopes of helping a new player level and join the guild were crushed. I felt like a jackass for ruining goblin night. Where did I go wrong?

Later that night I talked with the guild master about it. I apologized for inviting the new guy and I really felt like I had let him down as a guild officer. He told me that it was not my fault and that you can't know what a person is going to be like until you actually run with them. I learned a lot from this experience. I was too hard on myself, it was going to take some time to build a larger group of mature players. But my guild is AWESOME and my guild master was very understanding. I'm really glad I didn't promote the guy. Back to trade chat to try again!

Goblin Night

I want to introduce you to an event that my guild, Morningstar, has been participating in. It is the gathering of young goblins from our guild to work towards leveling, guild achievements and most importantly guild togetherness. It has been the most fun I have had in WoW in a while, and we are doing it with lowly level 15 characters.

This event took place last night and was the first goblin night of the new year. We had just dinged level 15 and we were going to run our first instance as a guild. This picture was of all of us before we entered the portal to Ragefire Chasm. It is the first instance on the horde side and is located in the basement of Orgrimmar. You will notice that even though we were level 15 and had the ability to que for the dungeon finder we decided to walk into the portal for the first one together.

Later that same night we ran Shadowfang Keep which is located in Silverpine Forest. Shadowfang proved to

be a little bit too high for our lowly level 16-17 characters but we did manage to clear all the content until the final boss. We will go back and take the Keep once we have leveled a bit more.

The best part about goblin night is that we are doing things together as a guild. I think that is what makes goblin night so much fun. As far as I know, this was the first time that an entire party of five characters from Morningstar have ever grouped for anything. Granted I have only been in the guild for about a year so it is possible that it has happened before. But for clarity I'm just going to claim that this was the first time. Its not that we don't play well together, its just that our guild is small and really only has 5 core members. We are recruiting so if you happen to have a toon on Demon Soul, or want to roll a new goblin there, just send me a message and we will get you in. Be warned, we don't allow asshats in our guild.

This picture is of our party just inside the first few rooms of Shadowfang Keep. I'm not sure if we had just cleared the first boss, or were getting ready to, but I thought it was a nice screenshot that showed the whole group all together.

Welcome to LoA

First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Chuck and I'm the Lord of Assets for my guild. Or should I say that Chuckem is the Lord of Assets for Morningstar, a guild on the Demon Soul server. If you don't know what a guild is, you might be in the wrong place . . . but that's fine with me so stick around awhile. Basically I'm the treasurer for a guild in the MMORPG World of Warcraft. If you are asking yourself why a guild needs a treasurer then I applaud your curiosity; I will attempt to answer this question in depth over the next series of posts.

Instead let me tell you what I have planned for this little blog. I am a newly appointed guild officer and that puts me in an interesting position. I have been given a responsibility that I take VERY seriously and I wanted a place to talk about it. A place to discuss the what it means to be an officer in a guild and a place to define what that means to me. It will also be a place for me to write about my experiences in WoW and how they have shaped my enjoyment of the game. After all I pay a monthly fee to play this game, why not squeeze every ounce of enjoyment out of the experience.