Continuation After a Few Years Break

Been a while! Recently I had the urge to write again, I've missed it. My mind is odd, I go through periods in which I can write and have ideas coming out of everywhere and periods in which it's hard to string a sentence together. Probably a typical problem for a prospective writer, but who knows.

First off, I did not realize how long ago I last posted. Norushen was my last post?! That was like 2 expansions ago now. I still continue running Legendary Exiles on Rexxar, which is unfortunately falling off due to the low population of the server and members leaving. It's been tough, people I have known forever starting to get more and more scarce - to a point where I'm usually the only member online. But, I manage.

We're currently on the Legion expansion, which in my opinion has stepped up it's game from the previous ones. The storyline is actually attention grabbing instead of what feels like filler. Major players that I've known of my entire Warcraft career have come around, and I am loving it - having plenty of fan girl moments sadly haha.

I'm back to my mage, and loving her for the time being. I played my druid for the first time in a long time in recent months and loved it, but while I enjoy healing nothing can beat the rush of flinging ice bolts at an enemy and critting for a large amount. Especially considering I have what a consider a savior complex when it comes to healing - need to heal all the people, even if it means I may die in the process.

I'm excited to see what the rest of this expansion holds, I'm worried I'll be unable to raid because of the low population of our guild but I'm sure I'll manage whether it be pugging or grouping with friends.

I've been playing a lot of Overwatch and Diablo 3 on my PlayStation with some good friends of mine, and have been enjoying that. I'll touch on that in another blog!

Week Two of Heroics - WoW as it Applies to Real Life (You can put that on a resume?)

This week we didn't attempt anything new as we missed Thursday due to multiple absences, but we did manage to kill Heroic Protectors and Heroic Norushen for the second time Tuesday night! Going to attempt to get a group together Sunday to make up for the missed day, I have my doubts but we'll see if we can get in and get to our next Heroic fight, General Nazgrim. If not, that'll be next weeks task.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/19/technology/world-of-warcraft-resume/index.html

So I read the above article today on a guildies Facebook page and I got to thinking, what has WoW done to effect my life that could possibly be placed on my resume? I feel that my raid leading skills has definitely boosted my confidence in a leading situation, am I nervous or unsure at times - sure, but it has gotten better as the past year has gone by. Wow, it's really been a year since I've started. Time has flown. Raid leading has also helped with my problem solving skills, when that one boss just can't seem to get killed I'm one of those looking for a way to make it happen. Last but not least, to be a good raider of course you need to be good at teamwork.

Question is, would I be I don't know, proud(?) or brave(?) enough to put my nerdiness on a piece of paper to try and get a job? At this time, I'm not sure. I have difficulties sometimes even admitting I play a videogame in my spare time to the people that think it's un-cool, so I don't think I'm quite there, but maybe someday my raid/guild leading will help me get a better job; we'll just have to see.

First Week of Heroics

I am pleased to report my teams first two weeks of heroic went excellent - definitely better then I expected going in!

During our first week of Siege of Orgrimmar heroic progression I decided we'd give Heroic Protectors a try, a fight that for some is one of the harder of the first four bosses as it relies on a groups strategy and coordination to complete the fight successfully instead of brute forcing your way through. Most gear checks are an example of this, like Patchwerk in Naxxramas; a fight that's easier on mechanics but has a quick enrage timer to beat.

So, we went in Tuesday before last to give Heroic Protectors a shot and I'm just thinking the whole time to myself "Please don't let this be too bad". I knew with the extra upgrades on our gear available to us that it may be easier, but I really didn't think I'd have a group capable of completing many heroics after our struggles with Garrosh. Our first few attempts didn't look so great, we've noticed that these particular bosses have adds that just don't agree with one shots as they don't like sharing their health pulls the first pull as they are supposed to...After those first few pulls, things just started to click and when we got to the time I originally wanted to take a break and continue going through the bosses on normal we were all feeling confident we could make short work of them. We continued until the end of the raid night on Heroic Protectors, with unfortunately no kill by the end of it.

Day two, we come back in and go back to work. Things just seemed to click quickly for us, and earlier then I expected - we got our first Heroic kill!

At the point we killed Heroic Protectors, we had over an hour left to raid and no one wanted to leave it at that. We moved on to the next boss, Heroic Norushen with me being totally unprepared (bad raid lead is bad), did some assignments on the fly and a quick explanation and started attempts. First thing we noticed, this boss really isn't that different from Normal to Heroic modes; things hit harder and there's an extra portal to take, big whoop. Three attempts later, down goes Heroic Norushen! Turns out maybe we should've attempted that one first!

Just one week into heroics and we managed to kill two, I was floored. Nothing could take the grin off my face at that point. I am incredibly proud of my raid team and even more grateful for those that have come in full time and part-time to help us out. We couldn't have gotten those kills without the great group of folks we have <3.

Garrosh takes a fall

It was a long time coming, but Garrosh is finally dead as of this evening. Took a LOT of work and determination to achieve it, but it was worth it to finally see that SoB dead in my opinion. We had a total of 268 wipes over a span of three months, a lot of time to spend on a boss for a group that raid together on a regular basis. Quite a few fill ins, including one on the kill, some days missed due to too many raiders being missing, and group members that either don't pay attention when it's needed or don't take advice that's given to them definitely did not help us get a kill sooner.

Next up, hopefully kill Garrosh again before moving onto Heroic Siege. I'm going to be taking a look at doing Heroic Protectors before attempting Heroic Immerseus; with the group of people that I have we can handle mechanics easier then gear check bosses like Immerseus and Norushen. Have to kill Garrosh again first though.

Unfortunately I am no longer raiding on my priest at this time, with some members of that team leaving it wasn't very productive to continue trying to fill spots with extras every week. We were hoping to get going again when we get some new recruits, but the longer time goes by the less I think that will happen.

Things have kind of gotten to a standstill in guild, with the Warlords of Draenor expansion not even in Beta as of yet we have no idea if we'll have it before the year ends. Recruitment has slowed to a crawl, they opened up Siege of Orgrimmar to be able to be completed cross server so people won't have to leave the server their on to raid. This with the fact that this raid tier has been out a year in September and many have completed the content is getting us back to the end of expansion blues. Hopefully we can continue raiding until close to the next expansion, but we will have to see how things go.

Garrosh times two, new team members and goodbye to Epicism

This week was a pretty great week raid wise - at least compared to the last few. The team I lead made it back to Garrosh with amazing timing, it was great considering we had our shadow priest healing and a member of the other team filling in on his mage. One thing I've noticed on Garrosh, enhancement is totally overpowered, the numbers are insane and I sneeze and the mind controlled people are broken. Wouldn't surprise me if I end up killing someone at one point, managed it while healing already!

 The other crew that my priest Angelcakes heals for had a good week as well, we welcomed two new members to the team - a windwalker monk and a combat rogue and they seem like pretty good fits to me. We've had another new addition in the past two weeks, a frost mage from the same guild as the monk joined us as well and we look to be well on the way to getting back to Heroic progression this week. Would be complete with our third healer, but that will come with time and more recruitment.

We did pull off a second Garrosh kill to end the Hellscream blood drought of the past few weeks, looking towards some progression kills this coming week!                                                                                                      

Within the last few weeks we found out that our prior guild Epicism is no more, the guild still physically exists but GM has been passed off again and there was another large amount of people leaving, including the majority of the officership again. The website is shut down and they are no more outside of game. I've found myself experiencing deja vu about the subject, it's almost as if when we left in November occurred again even though I wasn't involved. I am quite sad that they didn't put more of an effort in to rebuild and just abandoned the cause after two months. I know with who was left things didn't look the greatest for them, but if they got the right people involved and returned to the roots Gale (the founder) left us with I think they could have fought a pretty good fight and maybe scraped by for a bit and god knows maybe made a comeback.

Some days I wish I was there for the end, I know that us leaving was essentially a firestarter and I do have a bit of remorse about it. But, I know that I'm better off where I am now, I had a lot of built up stress in that guild that I haven't found myself experiencing lately. I can't imagine what could have happened if that was allowed to blow up but it would probably have cost more then leaving did.

RIP Epicism, you had a great run until towards the end - just shows what one person can do to a group of people. World of Warcraft may be just a bunch of pixels, but behind every character is a person; it's not wise to take others feelings lightly.

Another week of raiding!

My raiding week is halfway done, 3 raids down and 2 to go! My raid crew did amazing this week, we got 2 progression bosses down in a matter of 2 raid nights! This Tuesday will be more Garrosh progression, woot woot!

 Apps for our guild are finally flowing in so hopefully we'll be able to get some Heroic progression bosses killed soon. It's about time people started to join our awesome group of peeps, it looks like our fresh start is only just beginning.

A New Beginning...

Well, yet again I've slacked off on posting to my blog!

Lots of thing have gone on in the past two months; bit of guild drama in what is now my previous guild, a fresh start with some familiar faces with all of it leading up to now. I have to say night now I'm pretty content with my current in-game situation, I'm busy a lot of the time but I get to do what I enjoy!

Quick overview of what happened:
- A troublesome female joined my old guild and did what most people think female gamers do, caused drama. Our new GM essentially fell for her, it was messy and he was willing to not see it any other way then his.
- The new GM screwed up - badly and would not own up to his own mistakes, instead tried to remove the entire officership because we were at fault supposedly. Bad move since the four of us were in agreement minus the GM.
- A large amount of the guild left, including the four officers and we created our own guild - an inside joke as we called ourselves the Legendary Exiles. Somehow my raid team managed to all come over with us, I was very shocked but I still have my raid team minus one of our tanks that had to leave due to a job change.

And that pretty much sums it up. It was an interesting journey, involved a lot of heartbreak from me due to leaving a guild that I had spent so much time and energy on, but I am happy to report that I am now happier then ever minus the Drama Llama(s). Took us a lot of work to build back the guild that we had; we still have more work to do to keep both of our raid teams going, but we're getting there.

 I am currently the GM of this ragtag group and am still actively raid leading. I'm proud to say that my team has made it to 11/14 bosses down in regular Siege of Orgrimmar to this date. The other team (formerly Anger Management once a name change poll gets completed) have killed Garrosh as of last week! I am currently raiding on both my shaman and my discipline priest (I'm the pretty one in tier 5 in the picture!) so I had the pleasure of being one of the members that contributed to the kill! Very proud of both groups, AM managed to pull together and finally get a well deserved Garrosh kill and the former Team Fail Status, now Team Legendary is still steadily getting progression kills.

Looking forward to continuing our new start with a great group of people, hoping to have some more good news the next time I post here!