Well, That Was Unexpected
I logged onto my Horde guild’s website (The Blood Legion) this morning to check out the forums, and found a thread from the two guild leaders entitled “Closing Our Doors”. Hmm… that doesn’t sound good.
After reading everything, I would say that things are indeed not good, but not as bad as they could be. Long story short, after losing key raiding personnel (including two of the three guild main tanks), the guild leadership has decided to “mothball” the guild. We’re not disbanding, but we will not be actively raiding or recruiting for the foreseeable future. All of the raiding mats in the Guild bank are being sold and the gold will be banked towards getting back into raiding after WotLK is released.
So, as I said, unexpected. Although I’m disappointed to see this happen, I do understand why it came about. The guild leaders said they don’t have the time or energy to go through another large scale recruitment process and I can totally understand that. I have a small idea of how much time is involved in running a successful guild, and can definitely say that I wouldn’t have time to run things either.
This does leave me with the question of what I want to do now with my Horde characters. I haven’t been able to raid regularly with my Warlock for a couple months now. My schedule in the evening is such that I was able to make the raids occasionally, but I was definitely not a regular attender. (I have been able to make my Alliance raids though, so I’ve been focusing my efforts there.) I’ve stayed in TBL, hoping that perhaps we would be able to start a second Kara team and I would be able to make those raids more frequently.
So here are my options:
1) Stay in TBL, play my Warlock and Druid occasionally, but focus my raiding time on my Ally characters.
This is definitely the simplest solution, but I don’t know that I like it too much. I really enjoy raiding on my Warlock and I don’t want to stop that completely. I also have 50 Badges saved up and I would like to be able to spend them on some nice gear before WotLK comes out.
2) Find another Horde guild on Shandris to join, raid with them, and split my raiding time between Horde and Ally.
This would be an easy solution as well. There are a couple casual raiding guilds recruiting on Shandris right now, and I could get in with one of them fairly easily. The problem with this is that I would probably be raiding four nights a week and I’m not sure that I want to spend that much time in WoW. I’m also not sure how Egwene would take that news. Well, to be honest, I think I have a pretty good idea of how Egwene would take that news. Let’s just say that four nights a week of raiding would not be a great option.
3) Transfer my Horde characters off of Shandris, find a casual guild on a new server to chill with until the xpac comes out, focus raiding time on Ally toons.
This is a lot like the second option, but would have the added benefit of freeing up some Shandris character slots for more Ally characters. I have a 50 Rogue from my old server that I would love to play with, plus I will eventually need a slot to make a Deathknight. Transferring my Warlock and Druid off would also allow me to delete my Horde bank toon, so that would free up 3 slots on Shandris. Transfer my Rogue over, save a slot for my DK, and I’d even have room to make a new alt. Because I need more of them =D The biggest problem with this is that it would be a bit pricey to transfer 3 characters. And I give Blizzard enough money as it is.
Hmm… I’m gonna have to give this some thought.
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I honestly and truly don’t understand the draw of raiding. I know that’s where the “good stuff” is gear wise, but it honestly doesn’t even look remotely fun. I’ve seen the stress levels with it thanks to my roomate. I’ll admit I’m a self proclaimed “Solo artist” that finds the most enjoyment when I’m soloing, or duo-ing with a friend. I genuinely don’t see the fun of some mass of people running around like lemmings and listening to an overly bossy person on a program I wish would curl up and die in some dark & dingy corner (I’m talking about YOU Ventrillo!!).
Maybe someday I’ll figure it out. My Pally is in her 60s now, and I’m wrangling a friend to go after my epic mount (Never again will I think Paladins get their mounts for free. Between the AH and Mission quest givers, I’m spening MORE gold, and having to run _3_ dungeons is INSANE!!) and I can state I solo-ed a vast majority of the way to 60 and on (duo-ing with a hunter friend when necessary).
Offside, on you class comments, Retadins are good for levelling until the mid-40s. I’d personally recommend what I did, and swap to a Prot build focused around AOE grinding for levelling after. You only sacrifice a small amount of DPS for a LOT of survivability. Yeah it means yer a tankadin, but it works great (Unless you’re fighting mages. Really REALLY look at getting a lot of arcane resistances or mages will shred you).
- Polecat
Raiding is all about how you approach it and who you do it with, in my experience. I don’t see how it would be fun to get epics with a bunch of people you don’t enjoy being around. I’ve always enjoyed the guilds that I’ve raided with, and so I enjoy the raiding. Being a hardcore raider who gets yelled at for not being “on my game” doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Your comments on Pally leveling are interesting. One of my Horde guildies recently leveled his Pally from 30 to 70 in a span of about three weeks. He said that he tried a Prot/AoE grind spec around level 50, but it turned out to be slower than questing. I suspect it’s pretty much a tossup.
I didn’t say I wasn’t questing. I don’t “grind” for levels. But the build works while questing… especially when you get multiple pulls instead of one at a time. Survivability goes way up while on quests, and it’s only as fast as the Retadin to my experience. Tho I’ll admit my big complaint as a Retadin was having so much rely on getting crits for decent damage. I prefer my abilities more reliable then a “random change it’ll happen” sort. Course now I have 2, Redoubt and another I forget the name of, but they aren’t key to my damage output, they just speed things up nicely when they do occur.
- Polecat
I know what you mean about Retadins relying on crits. I’m leveling my Horde Pally Ret, and if I get a crit (and an SoC crit), I can hit a mob for 80% of their health in one blow. Then the last 20% can take 10 swings to finish off =/