September 25, 2009

Brewfest Spewfest

Exciting news! Brewfest is in town and I got not one, but TWO Great Brewfest Kodos. I got the first on my priest a few nights ago. Then I got one on my mage last night. I had seriously contemplated not rolling for it, since I already had one on my priest, but I decided what the heck? I was in the instance unwillingly -- I had been told we were doing the heroic daily and all I wanted was Triumph emblems -- but then I was suddenly summoned to BRD. So I figured I didn't have to be magnanimous when the mount dropped. And honestly, I didn't expect to win the darned thing.

Please, Universe, don't tell me by winning two Kodos in a row I've used up all my good luck for the near future. I beg of you!

Besides doing that daily, I haven't been doing much else related to Brewfest other than getting a Wolpertinger. When I've been in the Brewfest area the huge number of people there amazes me. I really don't understand why I don't get into these seasonal events like other people do. I look at them as annoying distractions from my overall goals. I recently posted about the frustration of having to choose only one toon at a time to play since I want to progress aspects of so many of them. Things like Brewfest make it even more difficult. Time spent doing Brewfest activities is time not spent furthering my goals. Ah well, that's the good thing about this game. There's so much to it that everyone can find the activities that appeal to them personally.

Oh and...I did get the Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart achievement when I got my Wolpertinger. So, at least that Brewfest activity gave me something I had been working towards.


I'm a Spoiled Brat Sometimes

An ugly side of me reared its head the other night. One that I'm not very proud of. Luckily, I kept myself in check and only had a momentary lapse of judgment. On Wednesday night I checked my calendar from work to see if any raids had been planned. Since the new Onyxia raid had been released as part of Tuesday's patch, I assumed my progression guild would try it out. But, nothing was on the calendar. So, I stayed later at work than usual, content in the knowledge that I wasn't missing anything exciting in WoW.

Well, when I finally did get home and logged in, the first thing I saw was that 8 of my guild members were in Onyxia's lair. It wasn't just a random 8. Most of them were from our core 10-man group. WTF??? I was so ticked off by that. Why were they doing a progression run without advanced planning? If they had been in there on alts, I wouldn't have been annoyed. But they weren't. They were on their progression mains. After a few minutes of total silence while I stared at the screen brooding, I saw the achievements start popping up. They downed the dragon. Grrrr...

I took a deep breath and congratulated them. Then, after giving ample time for them to distribute loot, I asked in Officer chat if that was a guild run or if there had been PuGs. The answer was that it was an ad-hoc run and, since there weren't enough guild members on at the time that they started the run, they pugged two spots. Of course I knew that there had been only 8 guildies in the run, but this confirmation pissed me off even more. Why had they gone at all?

I suddenly felt I understood my warlock friend's complaint about the guild before I joined it. He told me it was frustrating because they rarely invited him to runs and they seemed to do them all ad-hoc and within a small clique. My experience has been completely the opposite. Well, not completely. Almost immediately after joining the guild I was elevated to raider status and became a part of the core 10-man team. On a weekly basis I have received regular invites to our raids. My luck with getting in with the "in crowd" is surely because I'm a healer (and a darned good one at that!). My warlock friend was right and wrong. Right in that only a small group (core 10-man team, which he saw as a clique) was guaranteed raiding spots. Wrong because the raids were actually pre-scheduled, but he was not part of the core 10-man team, so he was just not getting invites.

The problem with all that was communication. The raid leader should have explained the raiding policies. Other guilds designate core teams and clearly explain what non-core members should expect. Unfortunately, our raid leader does not do that. So, for us core team members, it seems like an organized, well run raiding schedule. But for non-core members, they just don't understand what's going on. I've seen it on several occasions when we're in Ulduar or ToC10 and non-core members are lamenting in Guild Chat that they didn't know we were going. If the raid leader would only explain how we do things, these people would be less frustrated.

So...fast forward to Wednesday. I logged in and see that they're in Onyxia and there's no invite. Suddenly I felt like my Warlock friend. My first reaction was to get pissed and bitchy about it. I did that for a minute or so, prompting the raid leader to ask me to get into Vent so he could explain. His explanation made perfect sense...since we didn't know Onyxia was being released this week and the guild and raid leader would actually not be on for our regular raids this weekend, it seemed that, at least for this week, Onyxia was not going to be on our schedule. So everyone could do Onyxia with any group they wanted. And...that night's run was not organized by the raid leader. Instead, it was organized by another officer who does have the tendency to ignore the calendar and start arranging runs ad-hoc. Just this past week we were scheduled to go to Ulduar 25 and that officer was trying to convince people to do a Naxx Undying run at the same time.

So, the explanation made sense. And, when I calmed down I realized my true source of annoyance. It wasn't really that a run had been made ad-hoc. The honest truth is that I was upset because I felt like I was suddenly not part of the in-crowd. I like being special. In that guild I'm special. I'm part of the core raiding team. I'm the second best geared healer. I'm an officer. The guild master has said that I'm the only one he would trust assuming the GM role in his absence. I like all that attention. So, when I'm suddenly not so special, I get upset like a little child.

I hate when that happens.

Onyxia

So...onto lighter subjects. I went to Onyxia last night with my mage's guild. It was a fun, though unsuccessful, experience. I think we all knew going in that we weren't going to down her, so that made it not as stressful as it could have been. We got through the first phase easily. The second phase, though, was our doom each time. We did progressively better each attempt, which was encouraging. But, after 6 or 7 times, we called it. Not because we're not willing to keep trying, but because some people had to go. One thing is for sure, though, we didn't have much of a chance because of the gear level of several of the people who were there. One had just dinged 80 this week. Others were just not even Naxx geared yet. My mage isn't nearly as well geared as my priest, but I still topped the DPS chart with decent 4k+ and was one of the last to die on each attempt. So, I know I contributed respectably to the success of the raid.

Perhaps the geared team that goes for the "official" guild run this weekend will be more successful. I wish I could join them! But, I'll be raiding on my priest.

I think that's about it for now.