Been thinking a lot about this recently and how we can get the benefits of a big server without moving everything off of Shadowsong.

What we're after is a bigger pool of players to recruit from than Shadowsong is able to offer us. Somewhere like Silvermoon is perfect as it has a big Alliance heavy population. It is a perfect realm for what we want, but none of us really fancy the expense of moving 600 characters to a different realm, and I'm sure Blizzard would hate such an influx to what is already the EU's most populated Alliance biased PVE realm.

The question is do we have to?

With the way the game is moving I have always believed that Blizzards ultimate goal is to have 4 "servers" in each region, PVP, PVE, RP and RP-PVP. If I am correct our current server based communities will become irrelevant and our recruitment pool will be everyone within the PVE environment in the EU.

Therefore, I have thought about ways we can be "ahead of the curve" and solve our current recruitment issue and I thik I have a crazy idea that might just work. 

Create a sister guild, called Exhumed, on Silvermoon and join forces to raid with them. The only two issues I see are:

• our current website cannot  deal with non-Shadowsong "guildies" and that makes managing event signups difficult;
• Mythic raiding will not be possible cross realm;
• No cross realm chat;

Both the first problems are easily solved by having those Mythic raiders transfer to Shadowsong, which then only leaves the signup issue for normal (aka  flex), heroic (aka normal) and RBGs, which can be resolved by creating alts on Shadowsong purely for the purpose of signing up to events. The third problem is a big one that I cannot think of a way to solve, and may be the showstopper.

Not sure if this is a vision or delusion but I've put it to my fellow officers and get their opinions on the matter. No doubt I'll be declared a crazy fool!

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Something a little different this week as I'm looking at a screenshot I took from a video from my old guild in Vanilla from a healer perspective.

Rewatching it reminded me of how much panic there is in today's game compared to Vanilla. Today you have so little time to react to a situation compared to then.

However, I'm not saying the Vanilla situation was perfect, For one look how little activity the healer has. Casually casting a spell whenever Rejuvenation falls off the tank and very little else, because he was simply healing his assigned target not trying to top meters because back then the name of the game was mana regen and keeping your assigned target(s) alive. 

If you tried to meter whore and snipe other healers heals you soon went oom and ended up with your assignment dead. Over time this model became unsustainable as damage went silly and with smaller raids you simply didn't have assignments, you healed all who needed it and this led to the healer meter whoring we see today and it gets worse as mana conservation is simply not an issue in today's raids.

You'll also notice how little game world was visible. It was this that led many to run clean custom UIs but even then it wasn't much better as 40 health bars takes up a load of space regardless. It is funny seeing addons like Group Buttons which put your main heals as a button next to each raid frame, stuff like Raid Status Monitor showing the mana and HP of key raid members (by class because each class only had 1 role!) and Emergency Monitor (now banned) which gave you a big ass buttom to click to target the most needy players so you could heal them.

Finally look at the Tank Targets, that isn't the mobs that are targeting the tank, that is the list of designated tanks and their targets, here you'll see 9 tanks! Finally, I thought I'd share the video with you too, enjoy.

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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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This week's screenshot is from Scarlet Halls. The shot was taken during a normal heroic run when the server suffered a major lag spike while we were fighting the trash just before Armsmaster Harlan and I went walkabouts towards Flamemaster Kuegler. The odd thing was the trash shown here is in the corridor before the final approach to Flamemaster Kuegler and while he was there the trash between the 2 points hadn't spawned.

My curiosity nded up killing my shaman as the lag cleared while I was in the end boss room and the boss showed me that an ele shaman can't tank him!

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This week I killed my keyboard, well that may be an exaggeration, I killed my "2" key, which to anyone who has heard me mash my buttons while on TS or Vent will wonder how the hell my keyboard lasted this long and they will also be surprised that it wasn't as a result of my mashing buttons, but when I was removing buttons to clean it I suspect that I tore the rubber membrane meaning the key doesn't return to the normal resting position but prefers to sit a mm or two above the activation point and actually hurts when pressing the button repeatedly as there is no rebound.

My current keyboard is a Logitech G510, my previous keyboard was a Logitech G15 and that is still giving great service to my son who received it as a hand-me-down when I saw the G510 and the bank of 18 macro keys and though to myself, "hmm, I NEED one of those!". I also have Logitech G5 mouse despite replacing it 4 years ago with a Razer Naga. I say replaced, but again I exaggerate the truth, I had a brief fling with the Naga for about 2 months before I realised the aches in my hand where because of the uncomfortable Naga that is way to small and causes my thumb to play a solo game of Twister when trying to hit all 12 buttons. So you could call me a Logitech fanboi but I prefer to think of it as me preferring man-sized goods made for men, by men that understand that men come in man-sized packages as well as small boy sized. 

In the last few months I have been considering getting a mechanical keyboard and had been doing the usual browsing around. For those of you that don't know why a mechanical keyboard is claimed to be superior to a traditional keyboard watch the video below, it can do a much better job than I could:

Sadly Logitech only offer 1 mechanical keyboard, the Logitech G710, a fine looking keyboard aimed at gamers. However, there are two shortcomings with this keyboard, no screen and 12 missing macro keys. The screen I could live without but having gotten used to 18 dedicated macro keys I know I would regret every one of the £149 spent on it. It could be the best keyboard ever made and I'd hate it.

So, I started to look around idly and discovered that there were many gaming keyboards with mechanical switches but very few had macro keys. It was then that I discovered the Corsair Vengeance K95 keyboard, this beast met all my needs but it did lack the screen of the G15 and the G510. However, I was in love, wait that is creepy., I meant I really liked it and wanted one. Sure I had reservations, I had never heard of Corsair as a peripherals company, only as a memory supplier, I found a few review all sounding positive but I found no negative feedback, in the Internet world, that means they must be good because if they weren't there would be stacks of bad news forum threads. All I had to do was convince myself that spending £145 on it was a good investment and then to be able to convince the wife that I deserved one, maybe if I was good and saved some cash on the weekly shop and stopped buying the occasional goodies to add to the petrol purchase I could claim I'd "earned the right".

This was all when I didn't need a keyboard urgently, sadly my "2" key decided to break and my dreams were shattered. I searched for a bargain buy all over the Internet, I couldn't find many places that sold them let alone one that was selling them cheaply. I considered buying lesser mechanical keyboards, that is to say ones with fewer macro keys but none were priced cheaply enough  to warrant the loss of the macro keys. 

Therefore, I have decided to stick with my trusted brand, Logitech, and go with the latest incarnation of the G510, the G510s. It offers me everything I want out of a keyboard except them mechanical keys but for less than half the price I think I can cope, my wife will still have a nervous breakdown when I get the bill through on the credit card but ultimately I know I have got a quality product that will give me many years of service through all the abuse I'll give it.

For now, my mechanical keyboard dreams are over but next time, I'm hoping that Logitech has the product I really, really want, a mechanical G510, maybe the G510M? Oh and while you're at it drop a USB3 hub in there too so i can use my headset that require USB power to work or maybe I'll replace the headset.

The keyboard and mouse is such an integral part of our gaming but one that we often overlook or take for granted. Do you use a gaming keyboard/mouse combo? If so I'd like to hear what you use.

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Recently I've been concerned about my own performance. So much so that I have begun to wonder if my aging fingers and brain are simlpy not up to the demands of HC raiding in Mists of Pandaria. The reason is that I have been getting my backside handed to me by a rookie druid healer who has slightly worse gear than myself. All the podcasts I listen too that mention healing by druids always say that the druid simply cannot compete with the disc priest's imba shield. My experience however, was not backing this up.

I started to do some digging around and could find no real concrete evidence to confirm or deny either belief was the right one. While this didn't please me it gave me some hope. I therefore decided to look around and find out performance enhancing threads around on various forums and blogs regarding the healing output of disc priests to see if I could apply the diagnosis to my own play.

Overall what I discovered was encouraging as it showed that while I wasn't perfect I was far from the mark and, if I'm brutally honest, told me what I should have known just by looking at my combat logs.

The list of a what a perfect combat log should contain is here:

• Six casts of  Penance per minute either damage or healing depending on the fight;
• Six casts of Holy Fire/Solace per minute;
• Six casts of Prayer of Mending per minute;
• Five PW:Shields per minute to ensure Rapture procs on cooldown;
• Using the level 90 talent spell on cooldown (4x Divine Star, 2x Cascade or 1x Halo);
• Three casts of Prayer of Healing, ideally used with Spirit Shell)
• Two casts of Archangel per minute;
• Inner Focus used at least once per minute (again used with Spirit Shell);
• Spirit Shell used at least once per minute (to allow for effective timing);

Over a minute that means your casting 34 spells if you ONLY stick to the above list (I'm assuming you have Divine Star). In my 570ilevel healing gear, have a 1.4 second GCD which means in total I can cast a maximum of 43 spells per minute not allowing for spells like Prayer of Healing and Penance that range between 1.6 and 2.1 seconds and Penance (between  depending on Borrowed Time.

Lets assume the worst and say I never utilise Borrowed Time and not forget that Inner Focus and Spirit Shell are OFF the GCD:

• Six Penances = 6 x 1.9 seconds = 11.4 seconds;
• Six Holy Fires = 6 x 1.4 seconds = 8.4 seconds;
• Six x Prayer of Mending = 6 x 1.4 seconds = 8.4 seconds;
• Five PW: Shields = 5 x 1.4 seconds = 7.0 seconds;
• Four x Divine Star = 4 x 1.4 seconds = 5.6 seconds;
• Three x Prayer of Healing = 3 x 2.1 seconds = 6.3 seconds;

This means my must cast spells consume 47.1 of the available 60 seconds which means I have 12.9 seconds left of my minute which is enough for 9 Smite's or 6 Prayer of Healing's and 0.3 seconds of downtime in my imaginary minute.

Because of the number of instant casts and the fact that I use Glyph of Penance means movement will have minimal impact on the number of spells cast.

What I discovered in my spell list was too many Smite's not enough Holy Fire's, Penances, PW: Shields and possibly a bigger crime of not enough Spirit Shell. So now I know where I need to focus my attention and as long as I am getting close to the 39 spells per minute below I'll be happy that even if I am getting out healed, I'm doing the what is needed of me.

• 9x Smite;
• 6x Penances;
• 6x Holy Fires:
• 6x x Prayer of Mending;
• 5x PW: Shields;
• 4x Divine Star:
• 3x Prayer of Healing;

If you've found this post useful or even if you think it is all wrong, I'd love to hear from you either by leaving a comment below or sending an email to evlyxx at evlyxx dot com.

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OK I just realised that today is Monday not Sunday (damned 8 day shift patterns screwing with my mind again) so my post is actually a day late, but it is A Bank Holiday here in the UK so it is like a Sunday!

This week's shot is of my guild's RBG team who this week hit an 1800 rating, to maintain our first ranking on Shadowsong EU.It is a great achievement for us as a guild to get this rating. We're still not without our faults, but that just means we're still not at the end of our journey as we continue to learn from our mistakes and work together as a team.

The two biggest qualities we have displayed as a team to hit this target are determination and teamwork. We have not ended up losing and then resorting to bitch and whine at each other.

At times we have all had a bitch about the oppoition, the class imbalances and on getting Silver Shard Mines again but we have never turned that anger/frustration on each other and for that I personally salute everyone I have had the pleasure to heal in our RBGs.

There are 5 people in our group that I think deserve an extra special mention. I'll go in chronological order to avoid any claims of favoritism.

Exilezz for his persistence in getting the team off the ground back in Cata and again last year after he returned to WoW, to Maxizilian for his excellent RBG calling and being a bossy git and not being afraid to kick the asses of people much older than him in a mature and professional way, for Ukufa for taking the lead role and keeping things moving after James "retired", for Applejack for his excellent input into BGs almost acting as a coach for the whole team and seeing things that others often missed and finally Dumics for levelling another priest here on Shadowsong when we needed an extra body in the team and for being a great personal coach that has helped me adapt my PVE skills into something more useful on the PVP battlegrounds (I still have a load to learn).

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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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So, Blizzard seems to have committed fully to no moe flight, at least not in the Warlords of Draenor expansion.The forums have exploded, and many tears are already being shed and many more will follow I'm sure. But is it really a bad thing?

There are of course many benefits to flight, we can fly direct from point A to point B is the most obvious one and with the magicl mystery tour that some flight paths take that really is a good thing. Then of course there is the fact that we can quest faster, why bother wading in through armies of mobs when we can drop into the exact spot highlighted on WoWHead and get exactly to the objective? It makes sense faster questing = faster levelling = WIN!

Also farming herbs and ores is very efficient whiel flying. The amounts you can farm per hour are dramatically higher than you can even on the fastest of ground mounts.

Other arguments for flying include:

• it expands the world as points of interest can be hidden away in places that are hard to reach;
• it gives us more content;
• it provides for more variety in mounts;
• it is better for short WoW sessions;
• archaeology will suck;
• it gives better game performance as there are less people consuming your FPS;

While all these are valid points some are stretching things, although not as far as the most bizarre point I've read from the pro-flying brigade; that Blizzard are doing this to save development costs as they won't need to develop in all directions.

My personal view is that it is actually a good thing overall. Sure I'll miss it but I'll cope because of the benefits that I hope it will bring. 

The main benefit is that it will fill the world back up, I remember WoW as an MMO, outside of the majorr cities, it doesn't feel like a multi-player game. Because, the first few weeks of the expansion aside, you go out to a quest hub and you're likely the only one there. Now I always assumed that this was because people had levelled up and no longer went there. But thinking about it, early in every expansion nobody can fly. 

It will also make questing feel immersive, Bashiok got it summed up best when he said:

Questing like this also gives you XP and the chance of loot drops that cn be sold earning you a few extra gold that you can then spend on your taxi rides! If Blizzard design the quests right you'll end up with multiple quests that you complete along the way to killing the end goal target. In Bashiok's example above, you could have the enemy leader is your primary quest and you have 3 side quests to kill 10 minions, collect 10 rifles and steal some invasion plans along the way. But we do have to hope they do that.

I also believe that we make more friends when we see others around, again I had put this down to moer people playing early in the expansionbut it is because you're more likely to group up to kill quest mobs rather than fight over them.

This re-poulation is good for more reason though, it allows guilds to grow and it prevents ne people falling into the trap of believing they are playing a solo game. Could it produce better players overall? Maybe not but it just might make everyone frendlier and less likely to break Wheaton's Law.

Some also argue that flying has killed world PvP, again while it has not helped world PvP, I think killed may be a bit of an exaggeration as half the servers are PvE and many PvP servers have ridiculous faction imbalances that they too may as well be considered PvE realms.

Blizzard are promising not to create crazy flight points and more importantly to add more flight points and both these points are essential to make life easy in Warlords without flight. The biggest irony? Our first visit to Draenor was the expansion that gave us flight and the Reins of the Raven Lord mount (which didn't fly) and our reward for purchasing the Collector's Edition of the expansion that sees us return to Draenor is Reins of the Dread Raven, a a revised version of the original, that does fly. Go figure!

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With the announcement yesterday of BlizzCon 2014 I decided to have a think and see what that means for the likely dates for the release of Warlords of Draenor.

BlizzCon is on November  7th-8th and that for me means that the expansion WILL be before this time. Then I had to make the following assumptions:

• it takes 3 weeks of work in the BlizzCon offices in preparation for BlizzCon;
• as we have no beta yet the launch can't come earlier than August;
• Blizzard are creatures of habit;

This led me to the assumption that the expansion will come in August, September or October.

Next I looked through the history of WoW to see what has happened previously in those months and discovered that Blizzard has a heavy bias towards releasing content in a 5 week window that is the last week in August and all of September. 

There is of course a very good reason this time of year is chosen. Many players of the game are young 20 somethings, who like to go and party in the summer months, a good number are college/university students who go home for the summer and return to their studies in late August early September. On top of that you need to consider the Blizzard workforce also would like to holiday in the summer and when you consider that it makes perfect sense.

Looking back through time you see a lot of major events happen:

• September 2 2001 - World of Warcraft announced.
• September 13 2005 - Patch 1.7.0
• August 22 2006 - Patch 1.12.0
• September 11 2006 - Burning Crusade announced to be released on January 16, 2007
• September 27 2007- Patch 2.2.0
• August 21 2008 - Wrath of the Lich King cinematic released
• September 15 2008 - Wrath of the Lich King release date announced to be November 13, 2008
• September 2 2009 - Faction Change service offered
• September 19 2009 - World of Warcraft relaunches in China under its new licensee, NetEase
• September 22 2009 - Patch 3.2.2
• September 7 2010 - Cataclysm pre-events Operation: Gnomeregan / Zalazane's Fall
• September 25 2012- Mists of Panderia released
• September 10 2013 - Patch 5.4
• September 25 2013 - The first Connected Realms are implemented

We also know that Blizzard release everything on a Tuesday. This now gives us five potential dates:

1. August 26 2014;
2. September 2 2014;
3. September 9 2014;
4. September 16 2014;
5. September 23 2014;

Historically, the prepatch comes 4 weeks before the main event so this "evidence" only leaves one possibility, September 23 2014 with the pre-patch (6.0.x) hitting us on August 26 2014.

So much for Blizzard "not leaving us hanging" like they did in Wrath or Cataclysm, but there is the possibility (or should that be hope)  that I am miles off target. I know I certainly don't want to wait that long, as my guild is already struggling with the attendance boss in raids.

Do you think my prediction is miles off target? Too optimistic? Too pessimisitic? Do you have crazy theories for the release date? If so, please leave a comment. more »

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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This week I have been mostly looking after my alts, old and new. This is because my shifts at work have stopped me from raiding which happens every so often. In my time off from raiding I have been doing some fun stuff like boosting Artherion's level 60 horde rogue through Blackwing Lair and levelling my horde death knight, Wournos to 90 and also to get my shaman, Mikmaq, progressed through the the next stafe of the legendary questline to collect the 20 Secrets of the Empire.

On the guild front, Exhumed had a good week with our 5 heroic farm bosses downed quickly and good progress made on Iron Juggernaut.

Exhumed are still looking to recruit a couple of heroic ready players. One  of which would ideally be a mage to assist our class balance as we already have 4 shaman! We're rarely killing normal mode bosses so we really do need our recruits to come fully geared. So if you're an ilevel 560+ player that please get in touch soon and if you know someone that may be interested please point them my way.

If you're into running old content for fun and like having a laugh with crazy wow addicts and are looking for a new home come give Exhumed on Shadowsong EU a look. In addition to our social side we have 2 raid teams, an RBG team and run Challenge Mode dungeons alot on an ad-hoc basis.

We also have our "Monday" raid team which is now 13/14 of 14 on normal (not bad for 3 hours a week!) and is always looking for more players, to help keep the momentum going.

Our PVP team is going from strength to strength and is always looking for exceptional players as well (currently ranked #1 no Shadowsong EU) and top 1000 in the world.

For more information or to apply to join, visit our website. more »

This week's screenshot is me on our recent Immerseus kill during the ooze phase. Nothing much more to say than that really apart from the usual guild plug for Exhumed of Shadowsong (eu)
Our progression team is still 5/14 heroic as we seem to have hit a small attendance issue and we're therefore looking to recruit a couple of heroic ready players. One  of which would ideally be a mage to assist our class balance as we already have 4 shaman! We're rarely killing normal mode bosses so we really do need our recruits to come fully geared. So if you're an ilevel 560+ player that please get in touch soon and if you know someone that may be interested please point them my way.

If you're into running old content for fun and like having a laugh with crazy wow addicts and are looking for a new home come give Exhumed on Shadowsong EU a look. In addition to our social side we have 2 raid teams, an RBG team and run Challenge Mode dungeons alot on an ad-hoc basis.

We also have our "Monday" raid team which is now 13/14 of 14 on normal (not bad for 3 hours a week!) and is always looking for more players, especially healers, to help keep the momentum going.
Our PVP team is going from strength to strength and is always looking for exceptional players as well (currently ranked #1 no Shadowsong EU).

For more information or to apply to join, visit our website. more »