This morning I went over to WoWJutsu to check out my guild’s progression, now that we have our first bear mount.  It’s not that I expect us to be ranked crazy high or anything, but I was just curious.  Well, we are ranked 31st on the server, which all things considered isn’t half bad.  Keep in mind that we rarely run 25 mans in house (our last 25 man was probably 2 months ago) and we are most definitely a casual guild. 

While I was there, I took a look at the big time raiding guilds that are on top on my server.  We don’t have any guilds that have cleared SWP, but of course we do have our share that are running it.  Still, there are many guilds FAR more progressed than ours.  Just for giggles, I decided to look into how those higher up raiding guilds do recruitment, and see what kind of commitments they require.

I did this with NO PLANS to ever try to apply to such a guild, just as an academic exercise.  What does it take to be in the top 10 guilds on our server?

Well, what I found showed me that I will never, ever, EVER be a part of any of them, and here is why.

First of all, I STILL don’t meet many of their gear requirements, and I like to think I’m doing pretty well.  I don’t have ALL the good badge gear or anything, but I have the best pants and healy mace.  (Frankly, it’s dang near impossible for me to farm badges regularly.  When I log on at 10 pm, it can be hard to find a decent heroic run, in guild or not.)  I also have a smattering of gear from ZA, SSC, and one of the best pair of healing boots in the game.  (My armory, for the curious.) 

From the looks of it, all I really have to do is farm the 230 or so badges to get the rest of the 2.4 badge gear.   

Yeah, right.

Of course, I could also get lucky with a couple more drops, like the helm from Jan’alai in ZA and the T6 gloves from Azgalor, should I get lucky and be high enough on the SK list to grab them.  Still, it would take considerably more time, unless I got REALLY lucky.

Ok, gear aside, what about the time investment?

Well, most guilds I looked at raid 4 or 5 nights a week, for more than 3 hours each night, and expect 80% attendance.  So I’d have to raid 3 or 4 nights a week, 3 or more hours each night.  And that doesn’t include time farming for consumables and the like.  I play roughly 10 hours a week now, as a raider I’d have to put in at least 5 more by my calculations.

Add to that fact I’d have to raid Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights in most cases.

Again, yeah, right.

The only way that would happen is if I went through the Big D, and I don’t mean Dallas.  Now, I know there are those out there who have sacrificed their relationships for WoW, but I am not one of them.

I don’t have the gear, I don’t have the time.

So I sighed, realizing my lot in this game.  There is only so far I can go. 

Let me ask you this, though, why don’t raiding guilds value skill MORE highly than attendance and a few holes in gear?  Yes, they do all have a trial period or other skill-based "audition" for the guild, but that comes AFTER they see you can make 80% of the raids and you’re already decked out in T6.

I am POSITIVE that if they gave me some kind of audition, maybe a run with them through Heroic MagT or something, they will see I’m no slouch. 

Oh well, those are the breaks.  That’s the sacrifice I make, or rather don’t make.  WoW is a past time for me, and I have no intention of "clocking in" three or four nights a week.  This has made me even more appreciative that I do have a raiding outlet given my time restrictions.  I can only go once a week, but when I sign up, they always take me.  I like to think I’m one of the better healers in my raiding alliance, and I can be happy with that.

Maybe Wrath will change the way things are done.  We shall see.

Briefly, I want to give a shout out to my guild for nabbing its first Bear mount from ZA on Sunday.  I wasn’t there personally, but it’s awesome that they got it done.  They have been working on it diligently for a couple of weeks now, and I’m ecstatic that their work paid off.  That’s one more check mark for my casual guild before Wrath hits!

As you know from some of my recent posts, my guild has been making an effort to get a bear mount or two before the big patch hits.  While we are close to success, I thought I’d use the mouthpiece of my blog to try to dredge up some extra tips and advice from my readers.

First, 3 questions:

• What kind of group do you take?
• Do you use any fancy tricks or shortcuts to cut time?
• Is there a particular use of trinkets or other tools that you consider necessary to a successful Bear run?

By way of example, here is the general group make-up we have been using.  All members have some or most of their 2.4 badge gear.  They represent most of the best our guild has to offer.

Tanks:

• Warrior
• Pally

Healers:

• Tree
• CoH Priest

DPS:

• Elemental Shammy
• Elemental Shammy
• Boomkin
• Mage
• Rogue
• Hunter

We also have a VERY well geared Lock that often comes along for one of the DPS spots.

There you have it.  I don’t need to get any further into details, the rest of this post is up to you guys.  Let’s hear it!

I’ll freely admit it.  I let my emotions get the best of me in a few guild issues over the last couple of weeks.  I said/posted some things I probably shouldn’t have, and ended up ruffling some feathers that didn’t deserve ruffling.  I am guilty as charged, and I’m here to apologize.  The problem?  It all boiled down to communication, or the lack thereof.  So first, let me say I apologize publicly to those involved, and I hope this post can be an olive branch to mend the torn fences.  (On a side note, this paragraph may have the most cliches per capita of any post in Part Time Druid history.)

In a nutshell, here’s the story.  The names have been omitted to protect the innocent.  A few weeks back, I started to ask around in guild if we had any intentions of trying for a Bear mount.  I knew that they would be going the way of the dodo soon, and I wanted to see our guild accomplish the task.  We are a casual guild, so we can’t often achieve challenges that are easy for other guilds.  Getting all four chests in ZA is one such challenge. 

I made some posts on our boards, I spoke to a couple of key guild members through PMs and in game, and I even made a couple weak attempts at organizing Bear runs.  About a week or so after my failed attempts to get it going, I got an invite by one of our Raid Leaders to go along on a Bear Mount attempt.  I told him I would see if I could "get the night off" from the wife to go along.  I did.  We were pushing for at least the first three chests, and wanted to see how we could do going for the fourth. 

We didn’t get it done, but overall did fairly well.  The healing setup was not ideal, as we went with myself and a Holy Pally.  We lost a good deal of time on the Dragonhawk when we had a hard time keeping up with the raid damage.  I wasn’t surprised, as I would wager a Pally/Druid combo is one of the worst combos for such an attempt. 

Anyhow, I had a lot of fun that night, and mentioned that I would like to keep trying.  I said I would have to change my raiding schedule, shelving my T6 raiding temporarily, so I could come along once a week, but that I did want to go again. 

I wasn’t clear enough.  My failure to communicate was that I thought mentioning it off-hand would be good enough. In retrospect, I should have talked directly to the raid leader.  I should have said, "I’d like to come to this every Thursday, will I be able to go if I do clear it?"

But I didn’t.  I made assumptions, and jumped to conclusions.

So when the next Thursday rolled around, and I was in flight to Ghostlands thinking I would be coming along, I got emotional when I saw a group zoning into the instance without me.  I flew off the handle a little bit, and considered some very untoward actions.  I did manage to cool myself down, knowing in my heart that it wasn’t anything personal, but I still felt slighted.

At the time, I didn’t know that the Raid Leaders had actually been planning to start these attempts soon.  I don’t have access to those message boards to know what’s going on.

Honestly though, I should have known better.  I should have communicated better.  I should not have assumed that I was a big catalyst for these starting, or that other people understood the lengths I would have to go to in order to "clear" a night for ZA.  I think it speaks to our general tendencies to see things with blinders on, to think of things from our personal perspective and not those of others.

I fault myself for this, and I’m a little embarrassed of some of the things I said because of it.    So I hope some of the parties involved read this and understand that I did screw up a little bit.  If I had waited until the next morning, I would have been better off.

Now I’ll just cheer largely from the sidelines and hope they can get it done.  I know time is running short, and maybe I’ll be able to come along again before time runs out.  Honestly, I don’t even really want a bear for myself, but I do want to be part of the team that GETS IT DONE!

Ok, not directly. 

On a side note, wouldn’t it be kind of interesting if Blizz worked occasional national disasters into the game?  It’d be tough to get a boat from Menethil to Theramore if there was a hurricane off the coast!

But I digress.  Hurricane Ike did have a direct affect on my raiding alliance.  The main raid leader for the alliance and quite a few other members live in the Austin, TX area.  They were without power for about 10 days.

And our alliance has been without a raid for longer than that.  This brings me to the real point of this post.  I have found what I believe to be a major fault in our guild raiding alliance.

When the main Raid Leader is out, people don’t show up.  It’s not like we don’t have other experienced raid leaders, either.  We have a co-raid leader who is there for EVERY SINGLE RAID. 

But when the big guy is away, we struggle to get them off the ground.  I suppose people are used to his style, and used to the success we have when he is leading.  The problem with that argument, though, is this:  How are we going to have success with another raid leader if we can’t get people to show?

Oh well.  It doesn’t matter much to PTD in the end. I had already decided to suspend my 25 man raiding in order to help my guild try to get a bear mount before 3.0 hits.  I can only raid one night a week, so if it’s between 25 mans that will still be there after 3.0 and a bear mount that won’t, I’m going for the bear.

I’ll keep you posted as far as how it goes, I’ll be in the attempt again Thursday night — Hopefully!