With the connection of Aszune and Shadowsong announced as being July 2nd, I decided to check out the web for a list of common issues post connection, so I could be prepared for the worst, should it happen. What I found was reassuringly few problems but the ones I did find were fairly major ones.

PROBLEM: ALL characters vanished during the connection process. Blizzard is did restore the toons and did make this their no1 priority but still there can be delays.
SOLUTION: Open ONE ticket to request ALL your characters be restored and list ALL character names, guild names and specify the server name.

PROBLEM: Players who have deleted characters and created new ones to replace them have seen the deleted character(s) reappear and the new one(s) disappear after the realm connection.
SOLUTION: Deleting the "deleted" character, switching to a different realm and then back to home realm will update the character list to restore the "missing" character. If that fails, log out of battle.net then back in and if you're still missing a character, open ONE ticket to request the missing characters be restored and list ALL character names, guild names and specify the server name.

PROBLEM: Guilds have disappeared.
SOLUTION: If you're not an officer, don't panic let your officers do that! If you're an officer, still don't panic raise ONE ticket explaining the problem and let your other officers know you've done it. No point slowing the Blizzard folk down with duplicate tickets..

PROBLEM: All mail went missing. Blizzard will try to restore the missing mail but they can't guarantee they will restore everything and they won't accept your word for what went missing!
SOLUTION: Make sure to empty out the mailbox for ALL your toons and avoid sending mail unless absolutely necessary.

PROBLEM: Auction Houses have lost all auctions. Blizzard restored the deleted auction items to the players who had posted them but it can take days and that's several days you won't able to sell those items and earn gold.
SOLUTION: Don't post auctions that will end after 2am Wednesday morning. To be 100% safe, don't post any auctions AFTER 2am Monday morning.

PROBLEM: Raid lockouts are lost. That means any old raid saves may be lost. Also if the connection gets postponed to Thursday, we may be at the start again on Thursday.
SOLUTION: We will get 2 lockouts, progress will be hindered BUT we get 2 shots at loot.

PROBLEM: If you have the Valor of the Ancients buff you'll lose the buff during connection. Unfortunately, the system still retains a memory of the VP already earned by character for the week.
SOLUTION: You'll need to cap on a different toon. However, this will only be a problem IF you cap between the weekly reset and for the server shutdown prior to the connection. As our connection is Wednesday morning, don't cap until after the connection. You could also get close to cap so you'll only need a quick HC or a few daily quest hand-ins to cap.

Hopefully, as we're far from the first realms to be connected, whatever was causing some of the issues above has been fixed. But it is still good to be prepared and if something major goes wrong don't panic, it will most likely not only be you and simply raise a ticket and give Blizzard as much info as you possibly can and be patient.

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Princess Aszune and Maiev Shadowsong the namesakes of our realms

Well OK not actually connected but that days is not far away as this week the announcement that I have been praying for each week finally came. Shadowsong EU is to get connected, To Aszune. Wait what realm? I'd never heard of it during my research into realm pops so this one had slipped through my radar completely, the cynic in me made me suspect that this realm connection was to a Horde biased realm and that wasn't going to help Shadowsong at all. So I got out the old detective kit and went searching for some positive news.

What I found was, thankfully, all good. Firstly I discovered that Aszune has a similar population balance to Shadowsong, both realms have approx 60,000 characters with an Alliance heavy faction bias. This means that it puts the realms into the same character population bracket as Magtheridon.

Of these characters about 20,000 on each realm are 90. So however you look at it there will be double the number of characters around to raid/PVP with which is bloody awesome. However, the physical trip to Aszune (OK it is virtual but I sent atoon there) revealed a realm that felt quiet just like Shadowsong. This isn't what Magtheridon feels like and there the population is 60k per faction. The merged Aszune/Shadowsong will have almost 100k Alliance. I suspect therefore that many of the realms characters are inactive. So while it may be good it won't feel very busy, but it will feel busier..

A look over at WoWProgress and Guild Ox shows that the raiding is very similar on both servers although Aszune is rated marginally higher than Shadowsong, this is good for my raid team even though we will drop in the 10 man (from server 9th to server 21st) and 25 man rankings (from server 5th to server 9th). 

PVP on Aszune is also ranked slightly higher than it is on Shadowsong, this is again good news for my RBG team but will mean that we have more competition. We will still be ranked no 1, but we're only a few points ahead of the top 3 RBGs teams there so we will need to keep focused and work hard for our ranking from now on.

The chatter on Shadowsong is very positive about this and a few Shadowsongsters have made friendly posts on the Aszune realm forum although at the last look the same hasn't happened on the Shadowsong realm forum but at least the two communities are talking to each other which can only be good. I know my guild will be having a recruitment drive on Aszune soon and hopefully this will be the beginning of something great.

And finally, if, like me, you're thinking who/what/where is the realm named after.....

WoWPedia wrote:
Aszune was a night elf princess. Long ago she mocked the Oracle's wisdom. As punishment, she was transformed into living stone. Only the retrieval of her gemstone heart could end the curse.

Thrall happened upon the statue in the caverns of Stonetalon Peak during the Third War. The statue's magic created an impassable barrier, and the voice of Aszune spoke in Thrall's mind. The imprisoned spirit told him that she would not allow passage to the Oracle's domicile until her heart was returned to her.

Thrall found the heart in the possession of a red dragon. The dragon was under attack and nearly killed by harpies that were after its treasure. Thrall retrieved the dragon's magical amulet and gave it to Aszune. With this act, he ended the curse, allowing her spirit rest, and also the barrier that denied him access to the Oracle was lowered.[1]

The essence of Aszune's heart had come, through unknown means, into the hands of the Kirin Tor of Dalaran (after the city was destroyed too, it seems). They locked it away in the dungeons beneath the city, where it was eventually found by Lady Vashj.[2]

The Pillars of Aszune is a series of arcs on the Broken Isles that lead to the open sea. When Maiev Shadowsong was fighting off the Naga forces, her runner got through the Pillars of Aszune to reach Malfurion Stormrage on Kalimdor.[3] The name of the pillars implies that Aszune lived before the Great Sundering and was rather famous.

Nothing is known about Aszune beyond the information revealed in the above missions of Warcraft III. Her title suggests she might be related to Queen Azshara, but no information on this has been established. She makes no appearance in any document pertaining to the War of the Ancients - if she was indeed related to Azshara then she was likely imprisoned some time before the war, as no relations of Azshara would have gone undocumented afterward. However, there are a few obscure highborne princes featured in World of Warcraft, such as Prince Tortheldrin and Prince Toreth (and possibly Lord Talendar in The Frozen Throne), and she could have been their equivolent for the Kelani Magi, who had some connection to the caverns and ruins beneath Stonetalon Peak. She was also cursed for her arrogance, a trait typical of the Highborne. Her name appears to be somewhat similar to Queen Azshara's."

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My guild, Exhumed of Shadowsong EU are trying to build a Mythic raid team for Warlords. This is no secret in the guild or outside and that goal is something I am not just saying to make people feel good. I am heavily invested in this goal as I play the game for raiding remove raiding from my game time and I'll stop playing WoW all together.

One of the current main obstacles is recruiting new people because Shadowsong has a tiny population and too many raid guilds. However, I'm personally working hard in game to get that happening for us so Exhumed isn't a casualty of the conversion to Mythic raiding and there will be guilds that die because of this. 

Recruitment is the primary reason we are putting together 25 man raids on a Sunday and Monday. Having experience from the real world of being a manager of people, I know that the best way of building a team is not to lose the team members you already have and to treat them so well that they not only want to stay, but they bring their friends here too because they're always telling their friends of what a great place it is here.

There is also a benefit to the team in keeping changes to a minimum and research has proven that teams, like individuals, experience a learning curve and as their members become familiar with one another the team becomes more successful and almost three quarters aviation "incidents" happen on the first day of flying together. I guess that is why our raid team does so well given that we only raid 6 hours per week.

However, you cannot always keep everyone happy enough for them not to leave for something better and if someone is set on achieving something we cannot offer them I'll gladly help them achieve their goal. But that means that they need to let me know before they go and sadly, that is something that didn't happen recently with one of our key raiders who left us because he didn't think we will be able to expand to 20-man, he may be correct but if I had known 3 weeks ago that he felt this way and was considering leaving I could have talked to him about why I think he was wrong and how I feel it can offer him what he would like to get out of the game in the future. If after that talk he still wanted to leave, I would have at least known and started recruiting specifically to fill the position while he was looking for a new guild, just as an employer would in the real world when you hand in your notice.

I consider all guildies friends and I'll always try to help my friends achieve their goals, even if it means having to wave to them as they leave. So I've asked my guildmates to speak with me if they're wanting more than the guild can offer them so hopefully we can work something out that means they don't have to leave us unless it is truly something greater than the guild can offer. 

Am I being reasonable? Should I expect people that act like friends not to do things secretively? I think the answer to both those questions is yes. But then I guess that just my old fashioned ways from another era.

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I've been asked a couple of times the past week what the guild needs for raiding in Warlords of Draenor so people can re-roll a new class.

While this is all very good of you guys to want to do the best thing, my answer is and always will be, "Play the class you want, in the role you want".

Ultimately, this makes you a happier player and better at playing your class because you don't feel that you're stuck playing something you may not enjoy.

The other reason I give this answer is that I don't know what class balance will be like in Warlords, today's OP class is liable to be the weakest class next expansion because that is generally how Blizzard over-correct things. So warlocks, brewmaster monks, blood DKs, enhancement shaman and disc priests will likely be the "ugly sisters" in Warlords as they're the most OP right now.

The other variable is your guild, if the GM/raid leader tells everyone that asks to roll a mage or a rogue as they are the DPS class needed most right now, in Warlords EVERYONE will be a mage and a rogue and they'll need a hunter, a warlock and a DPS DK to balance the team and then there won't be room for all of the people that specially went out and rolled the mage and rogue, which makes them upset because they will claim, "I only rolled one because you said so, and now you don't want me".

If you're really stuck for what class you want in Warlords, my generic advice is roll a tank or a healer as these are the spots most in demand. I won't promise that you'll be guaranteed a spot in yout guild raid team as they'll only need 2 tanks and 2-6 healers depending on raid size and difficulty.

When choosing your class for your tank or healer choose one that has 2 alternative role choices as this means you get more flexibility. If you decide you want to try a tank role and you enjoy healing DON'T choose a warrior or DK. If you want to try healing but enjoy tanking DON'T choose a priest or a shaman.

Keep your options open and play what you want to play, after all it is a game not a job.

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I would like to thank all 26 people who replied. The mix was good as I had all 13 of the HC raid team respond (I did /slap them though) and 13 other people respond. This means that the results are a really good indication of what you guys want both now and in Warlords. The information gathered will allow us to make decisions that fit your life and game goals. I have put as much of the information into pictures to keep the waffle down. I have also broken the responses into 3 groups:

• Overall: This is everybody that replied;
• HC Raiders: This is everyone in the Wednesday/Thursday raid team;
• Non HC Raiders: This is everyone except the HC Raiders;

Also during this post please note that the terms I use are the Warlords of Draenor terms for the raid difficulty:

• Normal: what we currently know as Flex and raid on a Sunday;
• Heroic: what we currently know as Normal and raid on a Monday;
• Mythic: what we currently know as Heroic and raid on a Wednesday/Thursday;

Overall

Almost 2/3 of the people want to do Mythic raiding in Warlords and only 2 people want to tackle raids only on the easiest mode (LFR doesn't count).

The people who want to raid Mythic difficulty also prefer group loot over personal (LFR style) loot and the majority of people would like to use the Loot Council method of loot distribution.

One of the questions I asked was, "Would you be prepared to be an assistant raid leader, this will need time spent in and out of game?" looking back this was a badly phrased question as what I was after was people who could help manage a Mythic raid team if we decide to run that content in Warlords. The reason for needing this assistance is that managing a squad of 15 raiders is hard work and one that my co-raid leader and myself  have done this expansion and while my co-raid leader has been a great help I have carried the bulk of the "invisible" work that needs to get done to get the show on the road.

A Mythic raid team will need 30 people for us to get a raid team out every night, this is a big task and also means that we have to put a loot distribution system in place as /roll really doesn't work in a large team. Therefore, the kind of roles that we will need filled are:

• Raid Leaders;
• Class/Role Leaders;
• Loot Masters;
• Strategy Planners;
• Statisticians;
• Recruiters;

and that is what I meant by "assistant raid leader". 7 people responded with at least a "maybe" and that includes 2 of Exhumed's raid leaders and myself. I will be speaking with the other 4 over the next week or so.

Here we see that most people want to raid only 2 days per week, none of you want to raid only 1 day but a few folks would raid 3 or 4 days per week.

The most popular days are our current raid days with Sunday and Monday the most poular. Only a few people liked the thought of raiding on a Saturday (afternoon or night) and a few liked the idea of a Sunday afternoon raid).

With regard to our start and finish times 69% said they could start at 8pm (server) while 54% could raid until 1am (server).

HC Raiders

Looking now only at our HC Raid team. The vast majority want to raid Mythic. One person that doesn't want to move to Mythic because of the 20 man raid size and the other would raid Mythic but preferred Heroic difficulty.

The majority prefer Loot Council, and the "n/a" figures also include people that had no preference.

In addistion to my co-raid leader and myself, 3 people said they would maybe like to help run the raids. As stated previously, I will speak with these people soon™.

Most people like our 2 day raid schedule...

...and our Wednesday and Thursday schedule...

Almost half the team could start at 8pm and almost 2/3rds could raid until 1pm.

Non HC Raiders

While not as numerous as the HC Raider group,almost half of our more casual players would actually like to do Mythic raiding in Warlords.

Of those wanting Mythic raiding, over half would prefer Loot Council. The 46% "n/a" shown below either didn't want to raid Mythic or had no preference.

In addition to the normal team's raid leader, 1 other person said they would like to assist in the management of the raid team.

Most people want to raid 2 days per week...

...and for Sunday and Monday to be those days...

Most of the Non HC Raiders want to start at 8pm but over half don't want to finish later than midnight.

What Does It All Mean?

In brief:

• We raid on days that the guild members want to raid on;
• Most people prefer to raid 2 nights a week;
• The Non HC Raiders would like raids to start at 8pm;
• The HC Raiders generally like their 9pm to midnight raid times;
• Most people want to raid Mythic;
• A few people may be able to help assist in the running of raids;

Over the next few weeks, the Exhumed officers will be using this information to decide our Warlords schedule and that may possibly include changes to the way we are raiding for the rest of this expansion as we make the transition between the 2 expansions.

If you'd like to part of Exhumed, on Shadowsong EU, please check us out at http://www.exhumed-guild.co.uk/  and if you like what you see, register and apply to join.


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It has been a while since my last post so I just thought I'd make a quick post to confirm I'm still alive, still playing WoW and still planning on writing blog posts.

The reason for my slackness is that I'm having to put a lot of time into guild management as we hit the lull period of the expansion. I've lost 3 of my 15 man raid team to real life and raiding boredom which means I'm chasing my tail trying to keep the other 11 raiders signing up so we don't have to cancel raids and lose progression opportunities. 

I'm also busy trying to recruit, but our home server isn't highly populated and trying to find 3 heroic ready people to fill even DPS spots is proving to be difficult so I'm now casting my search wider in the hope of pulling in some x-realm people to what is a medium pop realm.

I would consider trying to convince the GM that we should realm transfer but the guild transfer only brings 1 benefit  over a non guild transfer mass exodus, the guild structure (e.g. level, acheevs, gold, bank contents, ranks, membership) all transfer with the GM and members get to use a time limited code that means they automatically join the guild on the new realm when they arrange their own personal transfer. 

Also as Shadowsong is a English PVE realm we'd need to stick to that realm type, and we'd want to be on an Alliance heavy realm right now that means Silvermoon (http://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/eu/lang.en) and Silvermoon is bad because there queues at busy times NOW during the lull let alone during xpac launch and patch launch times.

The next best PVE realm is Magtheridon, this is a good realm, I have my Hordies there and it is a relatively faction balanced realm, but that creates 2 problems, not a high raiding poulation to recruit from and I have only 3 spots free.

The next few realms Arathor, Emerald Dream and Turalyon are not that far ahead of Shadowsong in terms of raiding population which sort of negates the reason for moving. Next on the list is Shadowsong, oh wait.....

That would means we'd need to reconsider our requirements, and for me the only changeable variable is the realm type to cover RP and that means Argent Dawn. The raiding population there is double Shadowsong's and I'm really not convinced that is worth the effort either.

One other thing has always stopped me doing realm transferring Evlyxx, I want my alts all in 1 place and with 10 alts I have an emotional bond with (my monk means nothing to me) that would be £150, which I simply couldn't justify to the accountant (aka the wife).

So all things considered I'm hoping for a realm connection soon to help ease the problem, but in the meantime I'm working on a plan B which is to motivate the Shadowsong EU community into action so we can draw more players to our realm. Some of Shadowsong's more prominent residents (some may be considered WoW community celebrities) are aware of the cause which to be fair is currently being championed by Monsterbaby of the all druid guild Druids of the Beast. For now I can't be more specific (because I don't have all the info!) but as soon as I am able to share I shall.

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Putting together a raid team is no easy task, the first thing to decide is not who are your tanks, healers and DPS, but rather how many of each you want to carry. My 10 man raid team has 3 tanks, 3 healers, 3 mêlée, 3 ranged and 3 off-healers that was an "easy" choice, knowing who to fill those roles with was not so easy as there are a number of things to consider.

The first thing to consider is that my raid team is a progression focused group in a social guild. We raid 6 hours a week over 2 nights so we're not the type to switch people in on fights or demand a super high attendance. However, we do expect full effort on fights both in and out of game.

Some spots were obvious choices as they are long time raiders with the guild, some players are just too awesome to leave out and sometimes that has meant juggling the team to accommodate all the people worthy. As an example I have 3 awesome healers I raid with meaning I am 1 of 4 healers in a 10 man that is a bit excessive but we get round that by using rotation and I accept the fact that I can't heal all the time so get lumped into the off -healer group.

Another factor to consider is availability, I have crappy shifts that prevent me raiding for 3 weeks straight every 8 weeks, one of my ranged DPS can only raid every other week and one of my healers has seemingly erratic shifts which at times causes issues if it clashes with one of my 3 weeks and a random absence by another healer. Thankfully despite all these challenges, our raid team has got off the blocks every week this expansion and things look to be staying that way as we are now a quarter of the way through the the second year of the expansion.

Performance is another key factor in deciding who you use to fill those spots and here performance becomes very subjective, DPS players always assume that the only thing that maters are the raw DPS output figures. In an ideal world this would be true and in many top end guilds that ideal is a reality. However, I prefer to take dependable people who can get the job done, by which I mean I prefer to take someone that does competitive DPS and does things right than a DPS king that has bad positional sense, stands in the fire, dies too quickly and consumes the one battle res I have available, doesn't listen on TS/Vent/Mumble, doesn't read strats, shows up late (or worse, not at all) and in general causes me a crap ton of stress.

The last thing I consider is possibly the most important which is their personality. I want to raid with people I can depend on. I need them to be there when the team needs them to be there, someone that promises to be there then doesn't show up is not someone I want to raid with, I need them to do the job assigned to them, I need them to fit in with the other members of the team. That doesn't mean I have to consider everyone I raid with to be my best friend (although that is always a goal) but I do need to be able to respect them as a person and a player. Thankfully everyone I have on my raid team scores VERY highly on this at the minute.

If you raid lead or have a say in who is in the your raid team, how do you choose your team? If you're not able to choose your raid team mates, how would you choose them if you could? I'd love to know your thoughts.

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Duane has returned this week and to be honest he is wearing my patience down. For my newer readers, he is not a real person, he is merely a character I have created to represent "my typical guildmate". This post contains not one incident but two! 

Duane#1 is an old time guildy, he has a history of declaring himself as a wannabe raider but also has a history of changing his main, random afks, turning up late having to leave mid way through the raid and has been generally unreliable. Our progression team is also looking for a hunter and Duane decided he wanted to try out. Exhumed has 2 raid teams and we always start people off in the lesser progressed raids so we can get a look at them and give them a chance to gear up before we let them into the progression team. Duane started his trial by turning up 10 minutes late, then taking afks and left early. He then repeated this the next raid and in the 3rd one he was 10 mins late again so I replaced him and told him I wasn't going to accept him into the progress team, at which point he decided to realm transfer the hunter to find a raid team that was compatible with his available times.

Yesterday we were short a man for our 2nd team run and were facing Megaera with 2 healers and average DPS. This meant we were looking for a really good DPS or a 3rd healer and Duane shouts up in /g saying he'd like to join on his DK who was in PVP gear and an average ilvl of 483. I told him we needed someone with much better gear or a healer. After 30 minutes of trying to fiond the right person, we made the decision to cancel the raid. Just after this I got had the following conversation with Duane:

Duane: not raiding? 

Me: No, cant get a team capable of taking down Megaera  

Duane: now kids back at school im capable of being here more now gearing up dk atm bored of hunter  

Me: How long before you're bored of that?  

Duane: wont be I get the impression tht u guys are not my greatest fans?  

Me: It is not that but you have a history of changing your mind, getting bored with toons and when joining raids disappearing mid way through when we raid we need someone we can depend on to turn up, do a good job and not keep other people waiting around  

Duane: only wen kids on holidays its hard for me to find time u must understand tht. but normally all i need is 2 mins at 8:30 to put kids to bed and thts it, u will see i will prove myself 

Me: That I understand completely, but as a raid leader I can't be pissing 8 people off to accommodate 1 persons RL needs  

Duane: true tht but 2 mins at 8:30 is all i will need ever,  i have alot more time play with intference now 

Me: But if that is in the middle of a rid that isn't good enough  

Duane: so u wont accept 2 mins at 8:30 to put my kids to bed? so im really not gonna get a chance to raid here really then?  

Me: No, because it interupts the flow of a raid we have a scheduled raid break at 2130 UK if you're wanting a break before that we would have to take a break 30 mins in to the raid. We have a set raid time because it fits the lifestyle of most guild members, many like myself are here because of that. Sadly we cannot make things fit for everyone 

Duane: totally cool, I messed it up for myself really 

Shortly after the conversation ended he /gquit and logged off. It saddens me to lose guildmates but to be honest losing someone that can't accept that the guild can't be shaped to their personal circumstances at everyone else's loss is something I can live with.

Then today Duane#2, a recent recruit to Exhumed who has signed up for a few RBGs and a raid once (if my memory serves me right. /w me and the conversation was:    

Duane: what is the min ilvl for the 2nd raid team? really need to start gearing up  

Me: With Siege coming this weekit is 520ish 

Duane: for 2nd team?  

Me: Well 1st and 2nd team will be doing same content so ilevel is the same  

Duane: im sitting on 480 and no more drops from lfr but i cant get that from LFR apparently, been looking on boss loots 

Me: You could have been signing up for the Sun/Mon runs and spending your valor on the 522 gear from the rep vendors 

Duane: i have been but dont have enough valor atm for another peice 

Me: You have not signed for many runs otherwise as a healer you would have got in the team

Duane: i have been and for pvp BG's also been on the website alot 

Me: And if you valor capped each week and had been running 4x ToT lfr you would have better than 480 ilevel  

Duane: im unlucky with drops if they drop at all,i have [Contender's Wyrmhide Leggings]+ [Hurricane Belt]+2x trinkets pulling my ilvl down thats all

Me: You have killed Jonrokh x1, Horridonx1 and Councilx2 in ToT lfr on Duane. That means you have not tried to gear up  

Duane: hmmmm, deffo run more LFR than that  

Me: with only 4 boss kills you cant claim to be unlucky  

Duane: iv deffo ran LFR more times than that, im missing some achi also that i should have from running all the bosses in LFR, I'll run LFR this week, the reset is tomorrow 

Me: Well you'll still be a long way off the min level. We'll probably run a flex raid Monday that you could join  

Duane: ok  

Me: Ideally you'd need to be close to 500 but depending on who signs it won't be a major problem if you're a bit under 

Duane: i will try and gear as much as i can  

Me: and sign up for the raids on the calendar, you should also gem and enchant your gear 

Duane: i am working on it, my JC is 600 but my enchant is 450+  

Me: You're not working on it, nothing is gemmed or enachanted  

Duane: so im working on it  

Me: The AH has all the stuff and there are JC and enchanters in the guild that will do the enchants and cuts for free if you give them the mats  

Duane: Duane is busy fighting against Looking For Raid - Megaera (100%, 25/25 people alive)

Duane#2 actually upset me more than Duane#1, because I can't stand being lied to, His gear is shown below as grabbed by Mr Robot, and currently sits at ilevel 480, unenchanted and ungemmed:

His raid experience is also far from awe inspiring (see below), and with a total of 4 boss kills in Throne of Thunder LFR I'd hardly call getting no loot unlucky.

So, the guy has put in zero effort and is now expecting a spot in our Siege of Orgrimmar raids. Call me mean but I really can't see the point in carrying people through content when they're simply too lazy to help themselves. Although as you'll see at the end, he did get off his ass and go straight into LFR, although it is too little too late I fear.

Is this typical of my guild? No thankfully, but I think it is typical of the entitled casual that the game encourages now by throwing loot around like sweeties and these guys just don't realise the impact gear has on their performance. Sure if you're a world first raider type you probably could compete in such gear and if I'm missing out on a player of that calibre, I'll regret it when I find out he's moving to Method or Paragon next month.This all reminds me of an excellent parody by Sharm.......

Am I being mean?  If you think I am I'd love to hear how you would deal with the situation.

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Duane returns to the scene this week which is sad because he has brought some drama with him. For my newer readers, he is not a real person, he is merely a character I have created to represent "my typical guildmate". It has been a while since I had to write about him as the my guild has been largely devoid of drama and even when there is some drama it isn't anything I felt the urge to write about. However over the past few months things have been slowly building to a point where I feel I need to vent the steam that is building before it boils over uncontrollably. 

I am certain many of you can relate to the events that I shall briefly describe here and if you can my heart goes out to you all and I hope that most of you, my dear readers, don't have any experience past, present or future. 

So lets set the scene a bit. Duane has been around the guild for a long while he is a good player and knows how to make himself popular with others. Sounds great, but Duane gets bored/distracted easily and often considers the rest of the guild to be slightly beneath him and at times I get the impression that he thinks we are holding him back. Duane likes to raid and as a raid leader he is hard to leave out of the raid because he is good. However, he has a cycle that has repeated itself on more than one occasion that in short is:

1. playing like a boss and being the perfect guild/raid member;
2. forming a clique;
3. becoming bored/disillusioned;
4. causing drama upsetting one (or more) players who may be part of the clique or not;
5. disappearing from the game for a short break which ends up being months;
6. returning as if nothing had ever happened;

Duane is currently in the early stages of step 4 and I am in a position of knowing what is about to happen and being powerless to stop it as if I do the clique that has evolved will see me as the bad guy which will upset the balance of the guild's raid and PvP teams.

This is not only affecting my game enjoyment but also that of a few others that know fully of Duane's past. I know something needs to be done I just don't know what the best course of action is to take.

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Today I realised that I have neglected the blog for 3 weeks and while I don't care about that so much I do care that I have let you, my readers down as I haven't even let you guys know about my "absence" and that makes me feel bad.

It all started back in September when MoP launched, my life got busy and a lot of guild stuff happened too. But things seem to be settling down and fortunately much of the work I have put into the can be used here too so I'll be back from the blogging wilderness with a bang soon.

Now that part is out of the way lets bring you up to speed with where I am in WoW.

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After 3 years and 4 months I have finally gotten my legendary mace, Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings and I appreciate that it is an expansion too late but my first fragment was gained on April 15th 2009 (the day Ulduar was introduced in Patch 3.1) thanks to one of my healing crew passing up the chance for the fragment, thanks Spicefang! 

Finally last week I hit the magic 30 fragments on our Leviathan kill, which meant all I needed to do was grab myself a Yogg'Saron kill with 1 keeper missing and throwing the Shattered Fragments of Val'anyr at Yogg. But we were a small group and many had never seen the Yogg fight and there was a lot of tired people failing miserably so my planned night of victory failed at the very final hurdle.

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In only a few short weeks, we will begin the charge to Pandaria and to level 90, but before September 25 arrives, we even begin preparations for the big day.

We need to consider many things for our characters and our computing hardware. Many of these tasks are quick and simple housekeeping type of things that if we weren't so busy we would keep on top of all the time but always find some excuse to put them off. But now there is precious little time remaining, we can procrastinate no more, the time for action is upon us!

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Tired of an empty guild, an empty, a very expensive Auction House, a newly dinged level 85 with no gold and a desire to try to get into some Horde side raiding I finally realised that keeping my Horde priest on a low pop realm and on a minority faction was a pointless exercise. I had considered a realm transfer a week ago but struggled on, the Blizzard hit me with an advert on the loading screen.

The timing was impeccable and I decided that with all the problems and the offer it was like a sign from the gods. My dear old friend, Gricey, happened to be online and on his Horde alt on Draenor EU and a few questions to him suggested it sounded like a suitable candidate for my new home. Then a trip to Warcraft Realms stats page confirmed that it could be a good realm but a couple of other realms also looked appealing so I rolled a couple of level 1 toons and set of for 30 minutes “spying” in Orgrimmar.

I was looking for signs of an active community, a active but not stupidly priced mats market on the Auction House what I was also looking for the treatment of the trade trolls a section of the wow community I have no respect for and will avoid at all costs. Draenor as a recommendation was my first visit it looked good financially as the AH was full and prices not to far off the prices I’m used to on Shadowsong EU. The one thing that I was worried about though was the spam in trade and lack of pug activity.

I also gave Kazzak EU a look and that ticked all the boxes and had a over stocked AH with rather low prices on mats and good prices on finished products meaning my tailoring and enchanting could be levelled up and then return an income, which is high priority as I have 200g left of my 7000g from last week after levelling enchanting to 350 (and getting ass raped for the price of the rods needed to do the enchants) and HATE farming for gold. Other realms that looked good were Defias Brotherhood and Stormscale but visits there didn’t give the same warm fuzzy feeling I got from the other 2 realms. It was hard to split Kazzak EU and Draenor EU so I decided to visit the realm forums and there was nothing to split the 2. In the end it came down to the AH prices and the sheer volume of pugs being advertised on Kazzak EU that sent me there. 

I was mad at myself for not doing this last week when I could have played the markets a bit with my 7000 gold and transferred some profitable items over to Kazzak EU, but with a measly 200g it simply wasn’t worth the effort of looking for items I could drag over with me. Mistakes, we all make them this one is recoverable. 

Next on my to do list is finding a full time guild there, but as I got invited to a level 25 "super guild" within a few minutes of logging on the immediate rush to do so has been removed as I can get the benefits of the guild perks already, but I have a good feeling that my Hordeside adventures will be much better after the move. 

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Diablo 3, summer, end of expansion blues and more are affecting the WoW community right now. Many guilds are struggling to keep their members active in the game but here on Shadowsong EU, my guild, Exhumed, are thriving. All because of Firelands, yes I kid you not!

For the past few weeks we have been scheduling Firelands raids once per week to go and grab some achievements, heroic kills and a bit of fun to break up the monotony of nothing to do except maybe another alt run through Dragon Soul. A few people claimed they had been there, done that and got the T-shirt and weren’t interested. A few had never been and wanted to go get some easy HC kills via ye olde zerg method of beating old content. Warnings were given to say it wouldn’t be that way, the warnings were laughed at and we set off for doing normal kills with achievements.

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My long term readers might remember Duane, he is not a real person, he is merely a character I have created to represent "my guildmate". It has been a long time since I had to write about him as the guilds I have been in are mostly devoid of drama and even when there is some drama it isn't anything I felt the urge to write about. But this week that changed....

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A few weeks back I made a tough decision, I love the guys and girls at Saturday Knight Fever, they rock they really do. But sometimes you have to be selfish and after a lot of  soul searching and attempts to prevent it happening I decided that I had to leave them behind. The options were limited, I love WoW for 2 reasons, the friendships I have built and the challenge of raiding and losing 50% of the reason I play simply means I don't enjoy playing the game and that meant leaving WoW or leaving SKF. Having tried out SWTOR and not feeling  that it was along term WoW beater yet I decided to change guilds. 

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Been a long while, since I posted a "Backstory", in fact just looking at the last one and its been almost 6 months, man I have been slacking more than I realised. So I guess it's time to make amends for my erroneous ways.

So just a brief recap of where I left the story, a few months into The Burning Crusade myself and a few friends set up our own raiding guild, Deadwood. We had high hopes and put a team of suitably skilled raiders together and battled through Karazhan and eventually we got 25 people and went and killed Gruul.

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Back in April 2010, Blizzard announced the single raid lockout for 10 and 25 man raids. They also announcede that the loot in Cataclysm raids would be the same iLevel for 10 and 25 man raids. It is now 10 months since Cata launched and I have had time to assess the impact this policy has had on raiding, guilds and the game in general.  I finished Wrath in a 25 man raid team that was in turmoil due to internal guild drama and decided that in Cata I would stop being a progression type raider and "go casual" with a group of guys that I had raided with during TBC and early Wrath, we like to consider it a retirement home for ex-casual hardcore raider. During this time,we have only done 10 man raids, so my viewpoint may be somewhat blinkered or one sided but I still think it is valuable in assessing the impact of the policy that is in place.
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Deadwood 1st raid Boss Kill July 4th 2007 and Shynight started a tradition...

While I still consider Vanilla the Golden Era of raiding, it was with Deadwood that I had the most fun and success. As mentioned in my most recent "The Backstory" post prior to forming Deadwood my previous guild, Teddybears of Doom had just killed High King Maulgar and had made good progress through Karazhan. The group of players we had were some very good players but as a raid group we lacked balance. We managed to recruit a few friends into the guild and we managed, with the power of alts, to get 2 tanks and 3 healers and 5 DPS together to go and start back at the beginning. Attumen the Huntsman was our first target...

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Time for another visit to the way back when machine. All the way to July 2006

The guys at Soul of the Fire were great, they let me join their off night raids for the next few weeks which meant a quick blitz through Molten Core followed by a Zul'Gurub run sometimes I would miss the Zul'Gurub run if they started there as my schedule meant that I couldn't start raiding until 2000 GMT (2100 server) and their raids started at 1830 GMT (1930 server).

A few pieces of epic loot and some of the "epic" blues that dropped in Zul'Gurub slowly started drifting my way and the Soul of the Fire guys also must of had some confidence in me as a few times I got asked to join their Blackwing Lair progression runs as they were a few people short, no chance of any loot as their guys were still gearing up but the experience was good enough for me. I have always enjoyed raiding for the challenge of killing the boss mobs, sure the loot gained on the way is nice and at some points necessary to achieve the ultimate goal of killing said boss mobs.

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