Bear Runs, Guild Mergers and Other Hazards of Raiding
It’s been a while since I’ve let you all know what my characters are up to, so I thought I’d post a bit about that. I’ll talk about my two mains today, and maybe a bit about my alts tomorrow if I have time.
Adrenis - 70 Blood Elf Warlock
After the demise of my old guild, I took a bit to find something new. At that point, I was raiding more on the Ally side, and I wasn’t too anxious to find a new guild quickly. I figured that I would want to get back into the casual raiding thing on Horde eventually, but wasn’t in any hurry to do so. So after I left TBL, I just kinda floated around. I did some dailies on Adrenis, played my druid some, and mostly just enjoyed not being in a guild for a bit.
After a few weeks went by, I joined a new casual guild that was running Kara (full clear) and ZA (partial clear). To be honest, it was a bit of a mess. It was a smaller guild, and it seemed that most of the members knew each other in RL, and they didn’t go out of their way to socialize with any of the new people. There was also one incredibly annoying kid that was on all the time, and never, ever stopped talking.
Now look, I don’t think of myself as a curmudgeony old gamer (I’m only 28) and I usually get along fine with people of all ages, but this guy absolutely drove me up the wall. He never stopped asking silly questions, he had an annoying voice on Vent, and as I said, he was on All The Time… so any time I logged on, he was there, being annoying.
Between him and the lack of socialization, it only took a couple of weeks with that guild before it became apparent that it wasn’t a good fit for me. It wasn’t a bad guild, but definitely not what I was looking for. I don’t want to just raid; I want to raid with people that I like. That’s a huge difference.
So after a couple more weeks, I joined my current guild, Delusions of Grandeur. DoG was formed shortly before TBL’s demise, by some members of TBL who did not like the focus on raiding that we had at the time. (Ironically, DoG is now doing the raids that TBL was aiming for.) And as TBL fell apart, a lot of the members who had originally stayed in TBL went to DoG as well. So I knew a lot of the members going in, and I figured that this would be a good match for me.
I’ve been with DoG for a couple of months now, and things have been great. It’s been nice to see the old TBL members that I had lost touch with, and I’ve enjoyed running things with people I know again.
On the subject of raiding with DoG, we are running Kara most every week, and are also running Gruul’s, Mag, and ZA as part of a three guild alliance. It’s been interesting running the 25-man raids. There’s definitely a lot more to coordinate and it’s more difficult to keep things running smoothly. On the other hand, with 25 people, we just about always have every buff possible (which is nice for more effective pewpewing =D ).
And as the title of this post suggests, I currently have ZA Bear Runs on my mind. If you aren’t familiar with ZA, when you start the instance, a timer begins to tick down. You have to get to, and kill, each of the first four bosses within the given time limit to keep the timer going (each time you take down a boss, the timer is extended by a certain amount). If you are able to take down all four bosses within the time limit, then you will receive an Amani War Bear mount from the last boss. (Or, to be more exact, each boss you kill within the time limit gives you the key to a chest that gives you more loot. The last chest contains the Bear mount.)
The guild alliance that DoG is a part of has already gotten one ZA team with a successful Bear run, and tonight the 2nd team, which I’m a part of, will make our first attempt at it. I’m pretty excited about going to ZA for the Bear run. I like the instance a lot, there are at least a couple of gear upgrades in there, and I always enjoy having a secondary goal in an instance (other than just killing things and getting loot 
).
I’m not sure what to expect tonight, as several of the team members are new to me, but I think that at least two chests should be doable. More, perhaps, depending on how well we mesh as a team. I will let you all know how things go here, and if I get a Bear mount, you will definitely know about it. =D
McGraken - 70 Dwarf Warrior
My other main is also on Shandris, on the Alliance side. McG is a proud member of Paradox, and has been since he hit 70. I was definitely lucky in finding such a great guild so quickly, and I’ve enjoyed raiding with them tremendously. We have nearly cleared Kara (only Netherspite’s death eludes us), and have been into ZA several times, although not for anything as serious as a Bear run.
Paradox has also been a part of a guild alliance in the past, and we’ve run several raids with some of the guild alliance members. That alliance officially dissolved several weeks ago, but we’ve kept up with the members of one of the other guilds, and we are now discussing the possibility of them merging into Paradox.
The merger seems like a no-brainer, since we run things with those guys all the time anyway, but the logistics of an actual merger are always more complicated than you would like. Who’s going to be the leader of the merged guild? Whose rank structure will you keep? Whose raid nights will you continue to raid on? What about gear? If one guild’s gear level is below the other’s, are you going to raid the lower stuff, that some people have passed, or the higher stuff, that some people are not quite ready for yet? It’s definitely an intriguing situation. I’m going to be very interested to see how it all plays out.
One other thing to mention about McG: I told you guys a while back that I spec’d Prot to be one of our raid tanks in Kara. Well, I have now respec’d back to Fury, at least for the time being, and it’s very nice being able to take a little break from tanking.
In raiding, it’s easy to blame your tanks and healers when things don’t go quite right, but let me tell you, they have a very, very difficult job. If anyone reading this has only DPS classes at the moment, then allow me to encourage you to play a healer or tank. You will definitely gain a whole new understanding of the game.
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