Fortune Favors

• It took a while to get started.
• We had a couple wipes where we really shouldn’t have had any wipes.
• One guildie said over vent that he closed his eyes when he went to repair because he didn’t want to see how bad it was.

But…

• It was (to my knowledge) the first raid Nia ever organized, and it was organized very well.
• It was another opportunity to run with some friends over in <Heros of the Lance>.
• We learned from our mistakes fast.
• The mood of the raid stayed positive and personable.
• The PUG raiders we brought in were valuable assets to the team.
• It was incredibly fun!

Special thanks to Officer Nianeve for having the initiative for organizing the raid, Thebunnie for being our meat shield main tank, Odiwonkenobi for topping our damage meter and providing some good advice (even if we didn’t always take it), and Whimsycal for (get this…) passing on her teir gloves, even though she won the roll, because it was more of an upgrade for Magressa than for her!

You guys are awesome.

What happens when <Fortune Favors> and <Heros of the Lance> get together and do a fun run through Kara to give some gear and raiding experience to some sub-80 players?

We end up using Prince Malchezaar as a trampoline.  Again.

Grats to all who got something out of the run, whether it was XP, gear, a learning experience to prepare you for fights that are more than “tank ‘n’ spank,” or simply a good evening spent with friends.

For me, it was the last one.

Not everyone got all the flames (roster changed a bit through the night), but some of us did and everyone made progress and had some fun at the same time.  Horde was there to greet us, of course, but that’s to be expected.  There were plenty of deaths on both sides.  Good show.

<rant mode>Oh, except for the one Horde DK who thought the only way he could flex his PvP prowess was to gank Alli with rez sickness while they were forming a portal to go home.  Good for you, buddy.  Did you even get credit for an honor kill from that?</rant mode>

But seriously, we need to do another run like this before the festival’s over to hit the cities that some guildies missed for whatever reason.  We can discuss the details in-game.

As a side note you may notice that Inch has left <Fortune Favors> to begin raiding in a manner more serious than our casual guild allows. Nymper’s done the same, though in the above pic he’s on his mage.  Other than some good-natured ribbing over vent we wish them all the best.  They both still have several alts in the guild and hang out with us when not raiding with their new friends, so it’s all good.

What started as a guild run with 5 people evolved and devolved into something more and less than that.  Be that as it may we had enough 80s who knew the fight to make it a walk-through.

Inch even tamed himself a new core hound, once the warlock and several tanks stopped pulling them off of him.  (Seriously, I think it was close to 10 attempts before everyone in the raid realized what he was trying to do.  People, they didn’t put /rw in there just to annoy people, you know!)

I tried to get a pic of the achievement too, but someone got loot-happy and the item windows covered up the achievement almost instantly.

All things concidered the run was a lot of fun and we really need to do it again, only this time with more guildies.  PUGs can be fun too, but I much prefer the guild runs we do, even if they’re harder or take longer.

Officer Nymper has been key to organizing some fantastic old school runs in part to gear up lower level characters, but mostly because they’re fun and no one seems to do them anymore.

We started off with Zul’Aman, followed by a jaunt over to Kalimdor to punch Onyxia in the face … again.  On our way back Inch and Nymper discovered a drawback of their quest for getting new headgear – no one in Mudsprocket would talk to them!

It wasn’t until we took a quick trip to Blackrock Mountain that I remembered I should really be taking pictures.  Oh well.  Behold, the only reason people go to Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS): The Jenkins title.

I’m told a graphics bug also made Cuddles render at his original ginormous size for everyone else, but since I could only see it by looking over at my wife’s computer I have no screenshots … yet.

From there we headed off to everyone’s favorite level 70 stomp-fest, Karazhan!  It, uh … should be noted that when you’re one of the people who decides to bring a level 68 into what was once a Burning Crusade endgame instance it’s almost impossible for you to be geared up and ready, so most things will one-shot you early and often.  I thought I’d gotten the hang of it in ZA, which is technically harder, but I was wrong.

Being dead gives me more time to think up responses.

Illhoof dies in a fire.  Wheee!

Pew pew lazors!

Moar pew pew!

Ohnoesidied.  Though to be honest we’re pretty good if the healer gets disconnected and only one 68-who-shouldn’t-be-there buys the farm.  Though Farnight (Daynear) was close…

Hold me closer, shiny dancer.  XD

Aaaaand, we win.  Yes I died again, but to my credit that did not happen until Malchezaar was almost down.  Whew!

Grats to all those who got gear, enchanting recipes, & achievements!  Trips like this will hopefully become a weekly event.

(PS: Had some other screencaps that didn’t take place durring the raids.  Posted them here.)

… especially Daynear.

But seriously, a big thanks to Nymper for organizing yesterday’s series of old content runs.  It was good gear/xp for the lowbies and a fun experience for everyone.

Thought I’d share a somewhat recent picture of a guild run through the place.  Most of us are big fans of the older content, and our … *ahem* … advanced levels allow us to play around a little more if we want to.

We want to.

Lehon suggested a guild photo with the members wearing Red Winter Clothes, and I thought it was a great idea.  While he unfortunately was not online when we did the photo shoot, he was able to contribute several outfits to the cause!

As someone who once took 24 consecutive pictures of water, I naturally took too many shots.  After weeding out the worst of them I’ve included most of my screen captures below.  Some of them are quite amusing by themselves, or if placed in the right sequence.  There’s also one there with names turned on, so you can see who was there.

And just because you weren’t there for this one doesn’t mean you missed out completely – I’m happy to do more of these, or even accept submissions of ones that were taken when I was unavailable.  (After instance runs is always a good time.  Put the downed boss in the background for an added flair to the shot!)  Just send the images to the email address below.

Have an idea for an awesome guild event?  (Or even a so-so one, we’re not picky!)  Let me know in-game or send an email to me at splat [at] myguildhome.com

In any case, here’s the rest of the pictures:

Time to put the “fortune” into Fortune Favors!  Announcing our first ever scavenger hunt!

The rules are simple:

1. You have to be a current guild member.
2. Be the 1st person to mail the following items to Splat in-game and you win 100 gold.
3. True to the song, you need to send me that many of each item – not just one of each.  (So look for 12 Tough Jerky before you try sending things, and so on.)
4. You don’t win when you say “I sent it,” you win when I see it in my mailbox.
5. Whether or not you win all items will be returned to you at the end of the scavenger hunt, so even if you just vendor them you’ll still get a “consolation prize” of sorts.
6. Don’t ask me where to find these things.  All I’ll say is that there’s more than one website that’ll tell you without my help.

Oh, and the list of items…

(Sung to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas, in case you couldn’t guess.)

On the day of the scavenger hunt a guildie sent to me…
12 Tough Jerky
11 Darnassian Bleu
10 Darkshore Grouper
9 Small Barnacled Clams
8 Torn Moth Wings
7 Beer Basted Boar Ribs
6 Kaldorei Spider Kabobs
5 Dirty Trogg Cloth!
4 Strider Stew
3 Melted Candles
2 Minor Healing Potions
And a Shiny Seashell that’s …

Oooooh, shiiiiiiny …

Um, oops, sorry about that.

Ok, so it might not fit the tune exactly, but there’s the list.  All of these items should be obtainable by players under level 20 and they should all fit in a single in-game mail.  Whomever finds them all and mails them to Splat first will receive bragging rights.

What?  OK, I’ll give you 100 gold, too.

As you can probably tell by the lack of activity on this site, I’ve been spending the majority of my free time exploring that great big continent that wasn’t on our maps a few weeks ago.  The same is pretty much true for every active guild member (and person on my friends list) that’s level 70 or higher.  Sunday’s Kara run was short people, and Thursday … well, I didn’t even get an invite, so I don’t think an attempt was made.

Of course not everyone in the guild has reached that level – some members are encountering pre-BC instances for the first time.  If you have a moment why not help one of them out?  They’re cool people, I assure you.

Speaking of which…

I’d like to do some guild events again.  I think the last one that wasn’t a Kara run was all the way back in February when we had a parade through Stormwind.  Good times indeed.  If you have an idea for an event that could appeal to the wide range of levels that makes up our guild, then you can either tell me (or mail me) ingame or email me at splat @ myguildhome.com.  These could be just for fun stuff like that parade, fun runs through lower level content (Stocks raid?  Hogger raid?), some PvP action, or something else entirely.

In any case, let me know.

[EDIT]

New member Släzenger suggested a scavenger hunt, and it looks like people agree it’s an awesome idea.  I’ll work on the list (and the rules) over Thanksgiving break.

[/EDIT]