25-man Lich King

The atmosphere is almost tangible, when finally all the hard work and effort pays off, as the encounter is defeated and the Lich King falls to the ground. It validates all the decisions and paths that we have taken as a guild, letting us know that we did it right. The right people were at the right place and at the right time.

Now it is time to look for future the horizon, raise the par even more and begin tackling the hard modes of Icecrown Citadel, while at the same time bring in those who couldn't fit into last night's kill, so we can all enjoy it.

Heroes of the Alliance, I salute you.

Inspiring Loyalty

It has been a while since I have written, I apologize for this. It has been rather hektic on both World of Warcraft and personal front. As a tide of big news, The Increment decided and followed up on changing realms, due to the lack of quality new recruits to strengthen our ranks, to allow us to press deeper into the ICC hard modes. We are now residing on Neptulon, much to my disappointment since it is a PvP server and all who knows me, I am not big on those. However, it has been a week now and live has continued fairly normally, though a time of mourning for many of us because we also consequently lost several old members of the guild of which, some, have been in the guild for a very long time.

The reason I picked this curious title for my next article was because during this change, decided to try my alt in a Neptulonian PvP guild, just to see how it is like and maybe get some quality PvP. It took me one whole day to find I did not like the guild and left – sent on my way by the GM’s grand statements about loyalty among members.

Loyalty, as in, honor and dedication to someone? Loyalty is inspired by respect, and respect in turn, must be earned. If it was taken for granted, you never really had it. So what is it within us that inspires respect and loyalty to a guild? Depends on the person, what each individual plays for but I’m pretty certain most people who actually play World of Warcraft value simple and common themes like dignity, honor, decency, humor, good manners and mature behavior. To judge a guild, you need to judge its character, which is made up from the personas who inhabit it.

This is where the danger lies; it is a common misconception for guild masters that people whom they invite, need to show and up hold standards, including loyalty and self-sacrificial ideals to be accepted as members of the community. However, in many minds, this only goes one way and often leads to conflicts when new members find they do not enjoy themselves. Most of the time, these can be settled amicably, in civilized manner but with millions of subscribers, you can count on finding few rotten apples in there. I personally experienced this not too long, when I specifically applied and even transferred realms to join a guild I perceived to be a good one. After a couple of months though, I quit, firmly but still politely informing them that it was not the kind of guild I was looking for and since, as long as I stayed on that server, met with a lot of hostility, even if I as much as passed them on the streets of Dalaran.

That is not the hallmark of a guild that inspires my loyalty and respect. A guild that expects us to sacrifice our evenings, join and give our full support, needs to return the favor. It is never a privilege to be a part of the community, as long as the relationship is only exploitive. For this reason, there are very few guilds, truly, who thrive whether they are big or small for running such a group is a challenge that requires a lot of talent from its leaders.

Any fool can put together a guild and invite anything from a dozen to several hundred players. It takes an exceptional individual to successfully make that guild thrive.

Some have been curious as to why, after only having been in this guild, The Increment, respectively for only such a short period of time, was I willing to spend the trouble and currency to change servers. The answer is simple: they have inspired my loyalty.

Loot System: DKP

Got around to check the latest weekly mormot from Lore this morning and figured I would bring this up myself. Unlike him though, this is not an overview of various system, rather I felt would be beneficial to explain how DKP works in Pro Finlandia; the guild that my main character is a part of.

So far, it is a rather unique from what I have seen and it works great. Like one of the variations that Lore mentioned, in this DKP system everything has a set price; tier pieces cost 65 dkp, 2H-weapons 65 dkp, epic mounts 100 dkp, etc. Everything is properly prized.

In turn, dkp is gained with small tidbits; 1 dkp on time bonus, hour bonus 1 dkp, etc. It might not sound like a lot, but the gist of the system is that you can bid on an item, even if you have no dkp. Let me explain – if you have 30 dkp and you bid on a tier piece. That will make your total dkp –35 = 30 – 65. So, you can actually have less than zero dkp. This means that you can always bid, but ofc, the lower your dkp goes, the less likely you will win the bid.

At first glance it seems ridiculous, but actually works beautifully. After all, in the end, it does not matter if you have below zero dkp. The system stays in balance because as usual, the more you spend, the lower you go. It prevents spite bidding and usually prevents anyone from gaining so many dkp that they can bid whatever they want.

This last feature is ensured at the beginning of each new tier patch, when all dkp is nulled and we all start over, so that in between tier patches, no one can gather up ridiculous amounts of dkp. It is fast also very fast because there is no bidding circus; anyone who wants an item just types “bid” and the loot master checks who has the most dkp.

Of course, all guilds have different needs, but this works for us and in my opinion, is really great.

Tribute to Insanity

It was a rather happy and proud moment for us all that evening, when the achievement finally glowed on all our screens; the Tribute to Insanity. It took us a bit by surprise, as none of us were really aiming for it, at first. On the contrary, I was pessimistic about our run when I foolishly died tanking Gormok in the beginning, however, it turned out to be the best run we have had.

That makes it the third 10-man group, within the Pro Finlandia guild that has reached the achievement and none of us can but feel proud because of it. It was nice timing as well, since patch 3.3 is arriving shortly and seems like a good way to end one chapter, and start a new one.

Thanks for the photoshop-enchanced image goes to Heidi, my partner and love, a.k.a Atheqa.

Guilds and Specs

A week's worth of raiding in my new guild is behind me and it is time to look back for a bit. Those of you who regularly read this blog had, without a doubt noticed the guild change. Suffice to say, I was not as happy in my previous guild, as I would have preferred. Differences in views, between me and many other, especially senior members drove me to decide to leave.

Instead, I now find myself in a finnish guild, as per my own national and so far the experience has been superb. I have always had a theory about one-national guilds, that they have to, by their nature do and manage better than a multi-national guild; simply because they have a smaller pool of people to recruit from, thus, have to by average for better.

The summer of course means that there are fewer of us online and available for raids, which makes it ideal for me, giving me a lot of raid time, with the past week having easily passed by exploring Ulduar for the first time. Aye, was the first time I ever went beyond Flame Leviathan, shocking to some people I know but the simply reason was, I had rather spent my time first gearing and clearing raids like OS and Naxxramas. For my take on Ulduar, have a read at my earlier post, Ulduar Breakdown.

The biggest change, since my guild shift, was the redesign of my dps spec. I had been testing an unholy dual-wield spec for my death knight and it did not quite seem up to par in my new guild. Of course, being a raiding guild, opinions were quite frank and straight forward, so to lay the issue at rest, I have thus put my experiment on hold.

I now play a 53/18 blood spec. It uses a two-hander weapon, fresh from Ulduar, Relentless Edge and is all about producing very high damage through Obliterate and Heart Strike, in that order. Dancing Rune Weapon and Hysteria providing valuable cooldowns, and with Blood Tap and Empower Rune Weapon, provide as many hits with obliterate as possible.

I also found another build, a 51/2/18 blood spec. Naturally, a two-hander build but because it lacks Annihilation, it uses Death Strike in its rotation. This produces less damage per hit than obliterate but compensates with extra output from diseases and auto attacks. I had no chance to test test this one but having looked at it, and the fact that it is one of main specs that Ensidia death knights use, I have no doubt it is a very good option in the right hands.

Just remember to arm yourself with the proper glyphs, respectively.

Glyph of Dark Death

Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon

Glyph of Obliterate

Glyph of Death Strike

Politics

One of the things I find most sad about the game is guild divisions. I cannot hold myself to the spot of a veteran player. I only started to play soon after the last expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was published but believe I have played long enough to see my share of events. Often, I find myself listening to other people tell their stories and realize, hey, that happened to me as well.

This includes guild drama. I often try to ward myself against them and since my initial duties in leadership positions, I simply chose not to accept those anymore. I am happier as just a grunt and there is a lot less of aggrevation. But then, life tends to kick the gear in and once more, I am in a position of guild leadership.

As always, inevidebly, drama has followed suite. It seemed to me, at first, that it all started when I took office but on reflecting the truth is, Retribution has had its share of drama for quite sometime. Why? Simple, few select individuals are unhappy with certain changes and events, and have thus voiced their discontent.

Personally, this is fine. If you are unhappy with something the leaders are doing, you should voice it. However, it is another thing when it happens behind your back or worse, when it is the leaders themselves that are arguing. Even worse, it seems for us, some are not even willing to settle matters and this is what I have the most problem with.

If you do not like a person, that is currently me, by the way, that's fine. I don't generally care if I am not popular and my life is blissfully unaffected by the social acceptance of others. Odds are I do not like you either. However, this does not prevent me from fulfilling my duty and talking with the same people who might dislike, hate, or even dispise me. This is how a mature human being acts. If I went to work one day and told my boss that I refuse to have anything to do with another person, with whom I sadly shared an office with, I'd be fired.

Sometimes, and quite often in fact, you just have to work with dislikable people. Life tends to suck; get over it. Afterwards you are free to go rant and slander all you want. But for the good of the guild, you should at least compose yourself and act responsibly.