Invitation for Larísa(s)

The big news is "no Firelands in 4.1". This coincides with (and explained by) the slowdown of progression overall. Not just The PuG has difficulties. Not just Spinks and Larísa are struggling to maintain the raiding. Two weeks ago I posted we killed Chimaeron was at the #17K position. Despite we killed nothing after that, we are still #18100. So only 1000 guilds in our range progressed in two weeks. The lowering tide sink all boats.

Also the server's activity is falling, Tol Barad is no longer 2 full raids, it's rather 1 raid in peak hours and half otherwise. Herb prices are falling as bots are busy collecting them but the buyers are absent.

Several raiding guilds used to be 25-man and they rather scale down to 10 than trying to recruit to keep up. Too much work, too much frustration. That happened with Larísa too. She did not get into the core team, so she left the guild. She was invited back by lot of members who liked her (like there is someone out there who don't like her). But the problem is still unsolved. There are 10 spots in a 10-man raid and if someone is in for social reasons, someone else will be left out. That person will definitely be the first in the planet who won't like her.

"The problem is, I’m 41 next month. My reflexes aren’t what they used to be, there are youngsters in our raid who act like they have the reaction times of rattlesnakes on crack and they handle fights like this with ease. Me, I need time to process things, time to let muscle memory take the slack that my reflexes can’t handle and my brain can’t process." - she explained her situation with a quote. It can also mean becoming weakest link in a hard-core 10 man raid. I don't think she wants that.

So here is the offer to her, and all those people who want to raid, but the 25 to 10 transformation took away their "I'm one of the infantry" status. The 10 will be the HC elite aiming for hard modes. Hard modes are now hard, we are not in ICC anymore. In the hard modes there are no "infantry" spots. Everyone must excel. The problem is that 10 left out good players are not another 10-men guild. The original 25-men keeps the tanks, the raid leaders, the ventrillo server, key players.

Staying with friends would be great and they "have a couple of retired raiders who have been offered to stay in the guild, as a gesture of honor. I suspect that I could have gotten such a place myself if I had wanted to, but it wasn't an option. Seeing the rest of the guild raiding, while I couldn't, would be more painful than fun."

Take that offer! Be "friend" rank among your friends, maybe step in when they need one extra raider, but let the "rattlesnake youth" do the hardmodes. Raid with us! No attendance, no emotional/social load, just raiding. I doubt we can do much more than 1-2 hard modes before 4.2, so a good, but not "rattlesnake" raider would perfectly fit. Just because you can't do hard modes you don't have to give up on raiding or raid 2/12 with arthasdklol.

The PuG is always open for all classes and levels as long as the person keeps the rules. Of course the rules are a strong barrier. We lost a few good players who couldn't stand being unable to "have fun" in the chat (at the expense of 20-50 other people who can't care less about their real life stuff). But hey, you can have that in your "friendly" guild. Of course it works two-way, there are many players here who wouldn't leave for a much progressed guild where they have to suffer the terrible jokes of random strangers.

The black horse is the no-voice rule. While voice chat allow even pretty bad (but not completely useless) players to down bosses, it also drains the life force of the boosting officer fast. If this officer burns out and stops playing, the guild is dead and we are free to fish. Of course if he doesn't burn out, a lesser guild can kill more bosses than us, luring players.

Prizes and progression

Recently farm raids are also suffering from low attendance. It's rather and overall activity drop than avoidance of progression. To balance it, I'll extend BoT lockout so people at the raid can always choose between farm raid of BWD or progression on Cho'gall.

Since the recent news is that there won't be new raid until 4.2 and currently I don't see a setback in raiding, I'll promote big-group PvP, maybe setting up a TB-dominating plan or rated BGs (that would be hard, as the feature is unused by anyone except real HC PvP-ers)

Also, I will step up in financing legendary weapon collection.


We are currently on 1360 guild achievements and I want more, in the hope that it will shake up social guilds, therefore the following prizes are offered!

55 exalted: To get United nations achievement one person must get 55 exalted reputations and revered guild rep. 5000G offered.

Legendaries: You need to have the legendary weapon and be honored with the guild. The prize is 5000G, after we get the achievement, you show me your item and your guild rep, proving it was your doing, and the money is yours. I cannot nominate anyone to "shadowmourne wielder", cannot force anyone to help you or even to not compete with you. You must get them on your own. But I pay you a nice prize! Sulfuras and Thunderfury are taken!

Are you not entertained? 3000/G person

Stay classy bunch: They need a lvl 85 character from the class and race below with honored guild reputation. First to get them receives gold, bold text is new/increased price:

• Human hunter, 3000G (achievement alt is in progress)
  
• Night elf mage, claimed by Donella
  
• Draenei priest, 1000G
  
• Draenei mage, 3000G (achievement alt is in progress)
• Worgen rogue, claimed by Rhougala
  
• Worgen warlock, 1000G (achievement alt is in progress)
• Gnome death knight, claimed Fifth
• Gnome priest, claimed by Tyelrin
• Dwarf warlock, claimed by Roijer
• Worgen warrior, claimed by Dibb
• Human rogue, claimed by Rukus

Obviously no one in his right mind would class change for 1000G, new rerollers are the target audience of these offers.

Also, to have these achievements, it is now allowed to have an alt in the guild with the above combo. This is a temporary pardon from the no alt rule, after the achievement is done, the alt (or the old main) must leave, but you'll have an alt for whatever purpose you wanted one and the gold prize. If you want to invite such alt, come to me, not an inviter. The "achievement alt" exception applies to legendary wielders too.

If you see "achievement alt is in progress" next to any class/race, it means that such alt is already on that job. It does not mean that you can't go for it, just advised to check the armory to see how close they are and how active they are.

Please note that the above is an exceptional pardon, and not a right. I can remove any alt any time I find him no longer useful.

Richness is not getting what you desire

Richness is being OK with what you have.

I'm not saying one shall ever stop to want more. But a rich man is separated from a poor not by an artificial $ number. The rich man believes that he has everything he needs and now only goes for things he wants. The poor man believes that he don't have things he needs, usually by someone else's fault. A man with very little money but "rich" attitude is a happy man who will sooner or later get the money. The man with lot of money but "poor" attitude is a man who will spend lot of money on medical bills related to coronary and ulcer issues.

I wanted to write about it long ago, motivated by punks who "needed" gear to perform. They were unhappy players who felt hopelessly behind without the "needed" gear. What reminded me to write this now was this post whose author is QQ-ing how much druid healers need damage mitigation cooldowns. She does it when druids just get an awesome buff: 3 mins Tranquility CD. No it's not enough, because a paladin/priest combo has better mitigation. She mentions shamans too, who are also undesired for healing, especially now that mages and BM hunters have BL. Oh poor poor us.

I never felt poor or behind. I never felt the need of mitigation talents. Actually I always felt shaman healers overpowered. We have variable totems, providing half the available buffs. We have the awesome Healing stream totem that provides both resistance and about 1/3-1/4 of another healers output for a single click. Poor priests only have lightwell that stays up unused since the DD won't click on it unless shouted by the RL. We have self res. We have mana tide. We have wind shear that throws me to the top of interrupt list practically every fight. We have purge to annoy Maloriak, ghost wolf for Atramedes, earthbind totem to the various oozes. We can keep a DoT up on the boss for little damage all the fight and fire elemental when burst DPS needed.

Whenever a buff arrived like +10% CH effectiveness, +15% passive effectiveness. I received them as unneeded gifts. I never felt that CH or the overall healing was weak, as I was always on or near top healing. I was rich before and I got more gifts to make me even more rich! And in next patch wind shear won't miss any more. Great!

The only situation when I felt poor was Chimaeron. I simply couldn't heal people up after a decimate as a CoH priest or a druid. But this feeling last only until I learned to use my abilities: start casting CH on tank when boss starts decimate, so when everyone at 1 HP the tank, the offtank and some melee gets it. With a healing stream tick 3 of them are already over 10K. Also I stopped using riptide on every CD on low HP people (as everyone was) and used it as 6-seconds switfmend-like instant ability on someone who was at 1 HP. When the boss died I no longer felt poor, I felt stupid for feeling poor for a second.

I'm a rich man.

I'm afraid lot of people would remain poor if they'd have a Lamborghini and instant cast damage mitigation spells.


PS: I have no idea about the loot table of bosses. I don't know which boss would drop an epic to a slot where I have a blue. I go to raid when I want to. If something drops, it's always a pleasant surprise. No I don't need that loot. After all, the boss died without it. It provides me the genuine fun when someone (who can't use it) bids against me to get a juicy second bidder's gold. I just let him have the item and laugh (usually I buy it from him for half the bid later).

The smell of the M&S

The PuG update: Here we stand again proudly at the feet of a dead boss!Oh wait, who is the boss? Is there a secret 14th boss hidden in BWD? No, the new boss is called "a pair of draconid drudge", aka "Magmaw trash".

OK. Congrats ... I guess on killing the third easiest boss's trash. Why do you post a killshot? Because, due to the no-attendance rule we had just one tank online. Magmaw can be one-tanked, but his trash? Wowpedia says "Linked pull should be picked up with two tanks and positioned on opposite walls of the room. The rest of the raid should create a triangle just off the path between the two tanks. They will occasionally (every 25-30 seconds) swap tanks charging and cleaving along their path, stunning the tank on impact." While one tank can hold 2 (meleeing 50K each) but they will charge out, killing a DD or healer, and cleaving the rest of them. 2 tanks needed, period.

This event allowed us to figure out something original, unwritten. The positioning: Ranged -- Tank ------ Sheep, linearly. Who is the sheep? We sacrificed one DD on every charge, who ran back. So we had 1 tank, 4 healer, 3 DD, 1 alive sheep, 1 dead sheep. Of course every DD was sheep one after the other.

To reward our unique bosskill, epic loot dropped.

I hope this "bosskill" tells a lot about our approach to handle the problems generated by the no-attendance rule. If you are looking for such guild where you can raid when you want (granted, sometimes in weird setups) and not when not, join! Just don't miss the rules before whispering.

---

I was about to create a moron screenshot, but I started to get a feeling that I was the moron. In short: a guy asked a question about the guild. He had terrible grammar (u, m8, i, plox), and asked something that is clearly in the rules. I referred him to the rules but he kept asking a short answer. I called him a "lazy idiot" which made him disappear. Real M&S either "fight back" by screenshot-worthy replies like "fukk u nolifer lulz", or keep on begging. This guy just disappeared. I armoried him and found him to be in one of the 2/12 guilds with 2/12 + BH achievements but fully gemmed, enchanted, 346+ items.

I realized that I scared off a prospective member. He was probably a good player who had enough of his "i cba 2 gem i play 4 lulz" guildmates and wanted to trade up. But why did he wrote in M&S dialect and why did he not read the damn rules where the answer for his question was?

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

It can be a dove who was born among ducks, raised by ducks, lived with ducks but feels inside that he is something more and wants out. He tried to reach out for a better place but was ridiculed and rejected because he was identified a duck.

We find it obvious that we can talk like a decent human being without "lol", "m8" and "i". We find it obvious that we read materials. We find it obvious that if we approach an officer of a guild where we want to join and he tells us something, we consider his advice. It's not hard to do it. Actually it comes naturally. I have to slow down and think to be able to write something like "i cba 2 red 4 a game lulz". I check wowhead before asking a person.

I naturally consider everyone who acts differently M&S. But actually it only holds if he made a choice to live like this, knowing about the alternatives. But what about someone who grew up in this sub-culture and find it natural, even if he feels he could do better? Can I actually blame him for acting like M&S especially when he shows signs that he wants out?

On the other hand I surely cannot blame a mosquito for being a mosquito. It is absolutely unable to understand that spreading bacteria and causing people itching red bumps is inappropriate. It is also absolutely unable to change its behavior. Yet it don't stop me from killing it without any bad feelings. Shall I suffer an M&S just because he was never given a conscious choice to be something else?

I don't have an answer. I'm lost here. What would be the proper action? Answering his hand-holding questions? Then on what basis do I ignore the morons who spam trade with "where iz the dk trainer plox?" or "how can i get to undercity?" or "can som1 plz help me with rign of blaad qs"? If I make a totally subjective distinction between "real M&S" and "unlucky people who look like M&S" don't I do exactly the same mistake that helpful socials do?

So what shall I answer if someone asks me "when do ur guld raids plz"?

The ghosts of progression

There were lack of people for progression raid. Again. This time Cho'Gall was the lucky one who avoided us. Of course the farm raids aew overbooked. The "people come to farm raid and not to progression" is common among guilds.

This thinking is counter-intuitive at first glance. I mean everyone must firstkill a boss, why do people prefer doing it in a farm raid (meaning most others killed the boss)? If he is not good enough (which is likely when he sees him first), he will fail anyway, regardless the raid being "progression" or "farm".

Finally figured it out what's wrong with progression raids: other people failing. If I firstkill the boss with a raid where everyone else are veterans, we can only wipe if I fail. Unless I am M&S who can't improve, I can only kill the boss or fail and learn, become a better player, and soon get the fun of overcoming a challenge. On the other hand on progression raids the very frustrating "I did not do anything wrong and we wiped" can happen again and again. Imagine the situation of a DD at Chimaeron: he does his best rotation, stack up when has to and disperse when needed, yet wipe, wipe, wipe. The problem is not wiping itself, it's being totally impotent to do anything. He cannot play better to prevent the wipe, healers has to.

While good players have this kind of frustration every time when we wipe, it's limited to a few wipes in farm raid and can be soothed by punishing the failer. On the other hand on a progression wipefest even the worst player has it. If he has 50% fail chance and everyone else has just 10%, than the chance of kill is 20% and in half of the wipes he did everything right. There is a chance that the boss will not even get to the next phase, despite you have nothing left to improve there.

What can I do to overcome it? The only thing I have is the newbie fee. It's currently practically capped at boss loot /10, around 600G. I can elevate it to 2000G by saying you must pay it when you firstkill a boss (and of course you get pot share). Of course it has the drawback of keeping newbies away from the guild. We are 9/12, so on the first farm week he would pay around 9000G (assuming 1 other newbie paying and boss pot is 6000G). If progression halts, it may comes to that.

However I have a design idea, and if you find it good I'd ask you to echo it on forums, your blog and so on: "the ghosts of progression". This is a game feature when you can talk to an NPC who offers "practice with helpful ghosts". You choose a boss, your role and off you go with 9 bots. The ghost boss acts exactly as the real one, the bots are doing their job, you have to do your own. The practice is over when you or the boss is dead. Of course you can get no loot from the ghost-boss, but you get an achievement what can be demanded by every guild before raid inv.

The pros of this system are obvious:

• People could learn the boss without suffering from others failure. Bots don't fail.
• The raid encounters would be free of simple errors before even PTR as many errors would be identified by countless botmatches (10 bots must kill the boss)
• The raid encounters could be perfectly fine-tuned both gear and skill-wise by "failing bots", bots programmed to be a bit slow or use sub-optimal specs. The normal boss must be killed by "average" bots in blue gear, while Sinestra demands error-free execution in full epic.

The only negative of the system would be an objective feedback to M&S: you suck. If you fail miserably in a raid, you can still believe you are awesome as socials won't blame you. If you don't get raid inv, you can blame elitist no lifers. If you can't get into P2 with bots, there is no one else left to blame.


PS: One thing wasn't clear. The bots only allow you to practice some generic tactics, basic do-not fail stuff, like on Maloriak don't stack on others in blue, do stack on red except when debuffed, attack adds in green. 10 people who did it with bots wouldn't be automatically able to do the encounter as for example no one practiced interrupting, bots did it. No one broke ice blocked bots as other bots did. The bots would be able to carry the person unless he fails miserably, simulating a farm raid with veterans, you being the only newbie. 10 such people would have much to learn and organize to kill the boss, the bots would merely save the others from hopeless fails.

Folk consensus

Not surprisingly I did not get any disproving argument to my post defeating the "raiders are no-lifers" post. On the other hand I got lot of "there is not enough data to make claims" comments. I finally figured out what's wrong with these people: they believe I challenge a consensus based on non-complete data.

If I would do that, I would be clearly wrong. For example there is a widespread consensus about all theorycrafters that hit is a worthless star to healers. Every EJ post, every class blogger suggest to gather other stats and clearly consider +hit gear as "spellcaster". If I would come up with the idea to gear for +hit, some random data like "I missed a wind shear on Maloriak and we wiped" would only be enough to get me to the EJ Banhammer forum. If I would gather the data for every Maloriaks by log datamining from all topguilds they might not ban me, but the idea would be defeated as interrupting is usually not a healer job and having one more interrupt-capable DD is easier than getting hitcap for a healer (By the way, if you are a Blizzard developer, WTB Glyph of accurate winds). I would have to collect impossibly huge data to disprove every expert who claims +hit is not for healers.

The big difference between "hit is good for healers" and "progression is not correlated to playtime" is that the latter is not claimed by any expert. While everyone seem to believe it, no one says: "I've tested it and it's true" or "I read a study that says it's true". It's like the Flat Earth idea. No scholar, not even ancient one ever claimed that the Earth is flat. Uneducated peons believed so, without any ground, just because they looked around and saw it's flat. When the first Greek scholars came up with the spherical Earth theory, there was no one to debate it, simply because everyone who believed the alternative did so without reason.

The "Earth is Flat" and "raiders are no-lifers" come from "common sense". If you look around, you see flat plains. If you would raid more, you could kill more bosses. Also, since everyone around them believes so, the sheep-mentality also supports their "theory".

Again, the problem with the "raiders are no-lifers" theory is not that "unworthy" people believe in it. The problem is that they have no data at all and don't even know where the data could be. The pre-Newtonian idea of "force is needed to maintain movement and without force objects stand still" had literature. It was an idea, even if a wrong one. People claimed "I read this study that claimed so". The studies had experience, research behind them. Do you know any study that claims that "raiders in general play more than non-raiders"?

I'm not challenging scientific consensus with my new ideas. I just challenge medieval peons who believe that the Earth is flat. Any research with real data (even if just a few) is enough for that. No, I did not call you a medieval peon. Most "more data" commenters said that they don't believe that raiders are no-lifers but I did not gather enough data to convince the others. Who are the "others"? Do you know any person who claimed "raiders are no lifers" or "raiding needs lot of time"? The answer would be "no one I know but seems lot of people do so". Yes. The modern version of medieval peons.

Please recognize that not only the myth of the no lifer is wrong. The belief in the "theory of no-lifer" is also wrong. There isn't such theory. I am not arguing with anyone as there is not a blogger or prominent forum figure who would stand up and say "raiding needs time and not skill"! I'm educating primitive folks, or more correctly, created a study that you can use to educate them if you ever bump into them on /trade or on their lvl 1 forum alt.