Saturday, January 29, 2011

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.

Monday, January 24, 2011

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!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

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.


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.

Friday, January 14, 2011

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!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

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!

Monday, January 10, 2011

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.