Fortune Favors

Just some friendly advice for all the people I see nowadays starting up new guilds:

1. Don’t forget you have a life outside of the game. Running a guild is important, but it can fall apart so long as your real life doesn’t.  RL > WoW

2. Find members who are awesome and make them officers. Awesome officers can help hold the guild together and run it for you when you’re taking care of rule #1.  If everyone’s awesome, then make them all officers.

3. If a member is a drain on the guild (constant begging, leaching from the guild bank, annoying other members, blatantly breaking rules…) give them a 1 on 1 warning, then take action. This could be demotions or outright /gkicking them from the guild if the offense is serious enough.  Make no exceptions – those will be remembered as special treatment by other members of the guild.

4. Remember there are players not in your guild.  Refusing to give free Deadmines runs to non-guild members is one thing, but being a jerk to everyone reflects poorly on you and your guild.  You will always lose members through attrition, but you won’t be able to pick up new ones if you’ve acquired a reputation for trash talking, ninja looting, griefing, and so on.

5. Limit your rules to 5 things.  Your guild members will for the most part not be lawyers.  Don’t overcomplicate things. Rules that are hard to remember are also hard to follow.

…

… see what I did there?

Someone who likes bubbles, I’m not saying who (oh wait, I just did), decided to participate in a haiku meme without tagging anyone specific at the end.  To help appease the high lords of the internet and prevent my fellow healbot from getting disconnected during a Naxx run I must take it upon myself to continue the meme!

Behold, my character summaries in haiku form!  Mwa-hahahaha!  To keep things from reaching epic poem status (see what I did there?) I’m only going to mention my favorite characters, in order of their creation.  Hello, my name is Splat, and I’m an altaholic.

Elumi
Resto drood for life!
Tried Feral, didn’t like it.
New hat is awesome.

Splat
Draenei paladin
Holy spec, but tanks U.K.
Healadin Tank, HA!

VonSplat
I’m a Death Knight, LOL!
Best ability? Death Grip.
It’s fishing. For cows.

Kerrsplat
Beastmaster hunter
Wait, there’s no tanks my level?
S’ok, I’m specced Prot.

Jagar
Go away, I’m old!
Grumpy dwarf hunter with bear.
No, won’t join your guild.

Now to tag someone, lest I myself anger the high lords of the internet and continue the cycle.  Hmm, first I think I shall bother fellow GM Nia/Birgette.  The Dark Titan himself has mentioned that he enjoys haiku from time to time.  And of course Zhire.  What’s a new blog without a meme or two?

(And if you can’t wait to be tagged, consider yourself tagged.)

I must apologise for not spending as much time on WoW as I’d like lately. This is mostly due to the spring cleaning I’ve been working on for the past week or so, though I’ll admit I have started other projects.

To get my WoW fix I’ve started hanging out with some cool people on Twitter.  It’s sort of like our forum, but with fewer features and a lot more people.  One cool thing is that our forum has Twitter integration, so you can have things you post there show up automatically on your Twitter account too.

Do I like Twitter better?  Not really.  ShoutEm is a lot easier to manage and more customizable.  But like I said, there’s some cool people using the service.

In any case, if you choose to check Twitter out be sure to look me up and say “Hi” so I can find you.  And don’t forget to look at who I’m following.  You’d be surprized who’s online these days.

(Disclaimer: While *I* watch what I say not all conversations on Twitter are safe for work and/or children. Use the service at your own risk.)

Death Knight: I just bash the keys.  In most cases I still never die.

Warrior: I just bash the keys.  And die.  A lot.  Then delete the character so I can make something else.

Rogue: Started out using strategy … then found I got higher DPS by bashing keys.

Paladin (Ret): See Rogue.

Mage: Bash the keys until my DPS gets me killed.

Warlock: See Warrior, only speed the process up x2.

Priest: Forced to use strategy to keep the party from wiping.  First class I played that I actually enjoyed.  Coincidence?

Druid (Resto): Take priest, replace bubble with more HoTs, give better armor, sit back and watch the fun.

Druid (Feral): Complain about it for 5 minutes then respec back to Resto.

Paladin (Holy): Forced to change my strategy from how I played priests & druids, but enjoyed the class even more than both of them combined.

Paladin (Prot): Forced to use strategy to keep the party from wiping, but hated every minute of it.

Hunter: Could probably bash keys and get away with it on most runs (have some good guildies), but forming a strategy is so much more fun and rewarding for all involved.

*This is not a jab at any class but merely an insight into how I’ve come to play the game.

You may recall a while back when I mentioned that I had respecced Prot to tank for the guild.  Almost anyone who talked to me at least once in-game will also recall me saying how much I hated it.  There was much rejoicing on my part when I gave up and switched back.

Yeah, we’ll need a real tank eventually, but right now we have some pretty awesome healers so I can pretty much healadin-tank my way through Utgarde Keep.

Speccing Protection for a while was a decent learning experience though.  I reccomend that all healers should try tanking specs if they can for at least a while, and vice-versa, just to see how it is on the other end of the spectrum. One of my strengths as a tank is I’m very much aware of what’s going on with the healers, and as a healer I’m now more aware of the mechanics that the tanks have to use when the DPS or healer screws up.  Some of those mechanics are pally-specific, but not all.

And that leads to the main topic of this post: I really, really like playing a hunter.

Wait, what?

Hunters are more than just DPS, they’re a party in and of themselves.  The pet tanks, the hunter heals the pet and does DPS.  That’s all 3 roles right there.  Would it be better with living, breathing people filling those roles for you?  Yes, but warm bodies aren’t always availible.

I have a paladin and a hunter in both guilds, and while hunter leveling is coming along smoothly for the hunters – McSplat (Alli, NE) is level 32 and Kerrsplat (Horde, BE) is quickly catching up.  Meanwhile my Horde pally is stuck as a severely non-twinked 19 bank alt.

I’ve even discovered something – I love to tank when it’s not me taking the hits.

Kerrsplat tamed himself a bear and specced Beast Mastery because we really didn’t have any characters who were ready to be tanks and the other hunters were speccing Marksman.  As a result Sherman the bear can hold aggro and hold it well without taking a dirt nap.  My experience as a healer has me keeping one eye on Omen and the health bars of everyone to see if I need to help anyone out, and my experience as a tank has me knowing how to do that.

And it rocks.

OK, so our current forum setup as-is happens to be clunky and rarely used. I’m unsure of how much need we have for a forum, but feel compelled to try out new things anyway.  Enter ShoutEM, a service tht lets users create their own microblogging networks.  If you’re familliar with Twitter it’s sort of like that, only more customizable  and much, much smaller.

Again, I’m not sure if this is the right thing for us, but I’d like to give it a try.  If you’re interested, the Fortune Favors forum can be found here.

[EDIT: Trashed the old forum and replaced it in the sidebar with the new shiny one.  Whether or not we keep it will depend on levels of participation.  Try it out!]

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.

Just in case you haven’t been reading the guild MotD when you log in, we now have a sister guild on the Horde side of Trollbane.  Nia decided it would be fun to play Horde side at least part time and a lot of us agreed, so now she’s a Guild Leader.

… What, you think I’m gonna be GL of two guilds?  I’m not crazy enough to do that, uh, again.

This again is not an abandonment of Fortune Favors.  (Just today I respecced Splat back to a healadin and jumped into Heroic Old Kingdom.)  However if you’re wondering why a guildie isn’t on during their usual play time, you might want to check out the <GnomereganDefenseLeague>.

Yeah, that’s what we named it.

We’re odd that way.

So last night I did something a little crazy – I spent well over 1,000 g in new gear and respecced protection.  The gear isn’t the best an 80 can get, I’ll probably have to respec a few more times to get the talent points just right, and I haven’t even TOUCHED my glyphs … but I’ve officially made the switch from “healadin” to “tankadin.”

… I feel dirty.

It still seems kind of odd to me.  I leveled Splat as holy spec, and while this isn’t the first time I’ve shuffled her talent points she always had the majority of them in holy.  Never seriously considered any other spec for Splat until now.

So why the switch?  Because we needed a tank.

My lovely wife Mel may be a prot spec warrior but she’s had enough computer issues and some medical ones to boot that when minor cause a few seconds delay and at worse require her to go AFK for a boss fight or two.  In a casual guild this is understandable (real life comes first and all of that), but right now she’s much better as an off-tank or DPS because of it.

And we tried having Inch’s pet Evilfluffy tank Nexus.  We downed Keristrasza, but when the killing blow comes from the party healer it’s time to rethink some things.

So I’ve switched to prot, at least for now.  I’m sure I’ll make some a few a ton of mistakes as I learn how to really tank (and not just hold agro by healing myself), but with more than one decent priest in the guild I guess it’s for the best.

…

/sniff

This will probably be my last post in this series, at least for a while.  Like Part 2, it’s a collection of short snippets of advice.

• Don’t vendor your greys!  Well, OK, vendor 99.999% of them, but there are a few grey items that can actually sell in the AH – mostly level 15-16 shoulder armor, like the kind that drops in Deadmines.  Low level (20-30-ish) grey head armor can sell too, but I’ve had better luck with shoulders.
• If it’s white, try selling it at least once.  You never know.
• Keep quests in mind!  Silver bars sell faster in stacks of 3, because there’s a gnome in IF that asks for 3 silver bars as part of a quest.  Even if someone else is selling a stack of 20 silver bars for a smaller price per bar than your stack of 3, people are more likely to buy yours because the out of pocket expense could still be higher for theirs.
• Remember how many times you’ve posted something.  Reposting an item once or twice makes sense, but if you keep seeing the auction expire you might as well vendor or disenchant the item and save on your AH deposits.
• To that end, be careful with quest items.  They might sell for a lot if they’re not soulbound, but if their only use is “Quest” then Blizz may have made sure it has a high enough drop rate to make it worthless.  maybe not, but be cautious.
• Fish.  That’s right, I said fish.  According to some it’s one of the most inane, boring professions in the game, and that’s a good idea to promote.  Some of those fish are also mats for Alchemy, and the more players who think fishing is dull, the less competition and more demand you’ll have for those Oily Blackmouth (or whatever else) you keep catching.  Just look the fish up on WowWiki after you catch it.  If it can be turned into something that will give someone a decent buff, then there’s a demand for it in the AH.
• Keep holidays in mind.  Every Winter Veil the price of small eggs and wool cloth goes through the roof.  Why?  Eggnog, cookies, and outfits.  Sure, people could just farm the mats themselves, but they’d rather be raiding.  Their convenience is your profit.

So there you go.  I’ll add more if I think of them, and if you have a few ideas feel free to add them in the comments.