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Friday, June 18, 2010

Much Better

As you might imagine, last night's Raid went much better than Tuesday's. Ann, Batra, and I had a guild council meeting before hand which resulted in us being 45 minutes late for raid. We ended up pugging a tank for ICC, which is always an adventure. Our first several trash pulls were extremely messy. A lot of people had issues with threat. There was much dying by characters here and there, but surprisingly little wiping. And despite everything, we rolled face and took out the first five bosses in an hour and a half. We did Festergut, which seems to be easier for our group than Rotface.

Mord did an exceptional job raid leading last night. I think he had his best raid-leading-behavior on because he knows he's being considered for the permanent position. Oh, the prestige of leading Noobraid! I'm not sure how he handles the excitement.

In light of the most recent drama, and some other frustrations, the Council has decided on a stricter enforcing of Memento's rules. Notably the sections that basically say "You shall be appropriately dressed for raid" and "You shall not be a dickhead". Some of our DPS have been known to show up in half DPS gear and half tank gear. Or PVP gear. Or with strange enchants.

And in regards to the gear issues, we've decided to treat this rather simplistically. If everyone raiding that night has the gear for ICC, we'll do ICC. If not, we won't. If a lower geared member wants to raid, they merely have to ask the GM to schedule a raid more tailored to their gear level. Memento is extremely easy going. I don't think any of us have problems visiting Ulduar or TOGC or even Naxx again.

Mord bought me a shiny! Does me very little good unless I can get my hands on some Primordial Saronite, but Ann got a pair and I got to feel important.


Wednesday, June 16, 2010

My Raiders are Five Years Old

This post is very likely to offend some guild members. And I'm not going to apologize for that, because I believe that as a writer and as a Councilor for Memento this post deserves my unvarnished opinions.

Let's start with some good news. Memento has gained a new member! Mord's brother has returned from wow-retirement with a Lazer-Chicken named Hippycrit. Naming decisions aside, Memento is happy to welcome new members.

However, the emphasis is on new member, not necessarily new raider. Our general raid roster is already caster heavy and since we've started doing ICC on a regular basis, Hippy comes to us rather undergeared. This is not problem. As I've said, Noobraid is not about GS. I do wonder, though, if he would have been as quickly accepted if he had joined us through normal recruitment channels.

Also, getting a reputation for nepotism just when we're getting a reputation for being cool, good people would be a terrible blow.

The drama started early last night. Mord is our raid leader the vast majority of the time. He and Militia have the most experience in raid leading and Militia generally isn't interested in doing that at this time. So, Mord was filling up the raid group and we got down to this situation: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 6 DPS, and 2 empty slots. I asked Takk to switch to his Shaman for heals so we could fit more guildies into the raid because Batra hadn't joined us yet.

Mord did not seem to be a particular fan of this idea. He seemed to want to include a warrior who has been running with us in ICC. This would have been fine if the warrior, or anyone in the raid group could have switched to filling a tank spot. Which, both of our healers could but that would have left us with even more issues.

Guildies come first. We needed to pug a tank for ICC and this was simply not happening. Our illustrious GM suggested a trip to Ulduar instead, being a particularly nice alternative for our new boomkin to get some gear in a location we could actually handle with only 9 people.

It helped that the weekly was Ignis.

We chased Orbit-uary a couple times before giving up and destroying the towers. Ignis was no big deal. We had some fun with the Deconstructor. Mord asked all the dps to pop their cooldowns when the heart first showed up. So we did. And the heart ate it big time. And then we wiped.

Anyway, we took the Deconstructor out the second try. We tackled the Assembly of Iron and won. Hurray, that counts as progression! Kologarn finished out our night's adventure in Ulduar.

All of that is on-screen goodness. I switched to Demonology at Ignis and had a blast the rest of the night. I am a GIANT PURPLE DEMON. What's not to like?

Behind the scenes was a different story. Batra seemed to be having some severe connectivity issues. He disconnected several times between the start of the run and Deconstructor.

Mord reports to Ann and I that, during one of these disconnections, a toon with the name [Mord's real name]sux was online and harassing him. Specifically telling him what a terrible raid leader he is and saying some fairly personal things that I was not privy to. Mord assumes that this is Batra's doing.

Now, there is a history of animosity between Mord and Batra. I don't know where it came from and I don't think there's a way to fix it, patch it up, whatever. So long as it doesn't impede my real life or the guild, I don't have to deal with it. Because of the personal nature of what was said, we have to assume that it was someone in the guild. It's guild business if one member of the guild is harassing another, regardless of whether or not its done on a alt who is not a member of the guild.

I went with the direct approach and asked Batra if he had an alt by the offenders name. He denied it. This is, naturally, the expected response whether he actually does or not. Maybe I thought I could get lucky, I don't know. I went on to ask Mord's roommate if he'd done it, just to cover the possibility of someone else screwing with Mord's head.

Points in Mord's Favor
* Chances are extremely slim that the harasser was not a guildy and Batra was the only member offline during the incident
* Batra has done something similar in the past in regards to Senach

Points in Batra's Favor
* Batra is careful not to deliberately provoke Mord anywhere a guildy can see or hear. I mentioned the history of animosity. In general, Batra goes out of his way to not direct anything he says at Mord.
* We cannot prove or disprove the identity of the harasser.

For the most part, the Council is the ruling body of the guild. The GM steps in only when necessary. We run into an interesting dilemma when it comes to dealing with this issue, though. We have Batra on one side, a Councilor himself, and Mord on the other side, significant other to Ann, who is also a Councilor. So, in my view, two of the three members of the Council who should be dealing with this are too biased to view the issue rationally.

Which leaves... me.

And, despite being the only unbiased Council member, my initial response is something that most people who know me would agree is typical Mara: Deal with it.

I recognize that this is a big deal. I am given to understand the the offender said some things that even I would want to punch him or her for. Unfortunately, this doesn't change the fact that there is nothing I can do about it.

If it was something I had witnessed personally, I think I would have been quick to jump on it. Particularly if it happened in guild or raid, or could be easily traced to a specific guild member. Memento has a set of strict "Don't be a douchebag" rules.

At the risk of sounding like my mom, or anyone's mom really, all I have to say is this: This kind of behavior is juvenile and unnecessary and it will not be tolerated. All involved parties will please act like adults from here on out. And if I find out who did it, expulsion from the guild is imminent.


Friday, June 4, 2010

A Week of Awesome

Memento had quite an interesting week this past week. A week made of awesome, in my opinion. A long week, mayhap, so here are some wall breakers:

I. Tuesday
II. Wednesday
III. Thursday


I. Tuesday

On Tuesday we tackled ICC-10 as is our modus operandi. Our attempt to institute a day time raid earlier in the afternoon flopped horribly, so we started the night with Takk's alt and everyone else had their main raiders. We pugged the necessary extras and got down to business.


This is, in fact, our primary raid healer of complete awesome Time snuggling with one of our pugs. Pure win.

Business on Tuesday included downing the first six bosses instead of the usual four. That's right. Memento went in there, kicked ass, and took names from Rotface and Festergut in addition to the first four bosses.

I'll bet you can't guess what we found in the chest after Deathbringer Saurfang. Go on, guess. Yeah, the fourth or fifth Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff. Where is the love?

And, while had some issues with the spores on Festergut (who doesn't?), things went fairly smoothly. Batra bailed on us 15 minutes before raid was scheduled to end. Which also happened to be right before we were supposed to take on Rotface. Needless to say, our raid leader was pretty upset. But the significant other of one our pugs was willing to come in for just the one fight, despite getting saved to a raid that was probably not going to be continued.

We went in and one-shot Rotface no problem. Raid even ended on time.

II. Wednesday

I don't know about other servers, but Hydraxis has this neato chat channel that I will call DAY in case its supposed to be a secret. Or, at least, in case it supposed to be invitation-only or some other such nonsense.

Anyway, once you've joined the channel, anyone pugging groups during the day can start there to find some talented and eager to raid players.

On Hydraxis, DAY runs ICC-25 on Wednesday afternoons. The rules are simple. If you go, you commit to being there the entire time. Anyone who leaves without warning will not be invited back. The loot system is a basic plus-one, main-spec deal common to a lot of pugs and guilds alike.

25-man raids are certainly an interesting experience for someone who is more or less sworn to 10-mans. I enjoy them, but I find them absolutely exhausting. Frequently there is just TOO MUCH stuff going on.

Still, it was fun and I got a new neck piece on my first run. That right there is enough to get me to go back next Wednesday. It has also helped with an influx of frosties as DAY usually manages to tackle the first six bosses as well. I am just a smidge away from my t10 bonus and more hit than I currently need. I've been running mostly affliction, but with the increase of hit on my gear I will well and truly be able to switch to demonology whenever I feel like it.

III. Thursday

When I said that Memento doesn't generally put stock in GS... it may have been more accurate to say that some members of Memento actively hate GS. Prompted entirely, I would bet, by the "You must have X gs to join our raid" tells that have plagued the pug groups on Hydraxis. I know other servers have this problem as well.

So, Thursday we were taking it easy. Weekly and VoA and frosties for all.

When Mord went off to pug the empty slots he deliberately looked for some less geared players. This may be counter-intuitive for some, but we found that it really just didn't matter. We didn't struggle with Toravon any more than we usually do. He did, perhaps, drop crap gear just to spite out attempts to help under-geared players get free tier pieces. Hmm.

Our weekly was Razorscale. Despite being only 5/12 in Ulduar, I think Memento just always has a great time going in there. There's something about Ulduar that is just so... epic. One of our under-geared pugs got upgrades off of both Flame Leviathan and Razorscale.

And everyone else got Nuked from Orbit and 5 frosties for their efforts.