Do guild applications still work?

I ask this because lately it seems that a ton of people get into guilds without the officers first checking them out on a personality level. What good is an application if you are just going to type “ACCEPTED” after one is posted?

People seem to want to be able to recruit on the spot, open invites, even if the player may be a hard core power gamer that does not mesh with the views and attitudes of guilds I tried to lead. It amazes me how many people you talk to in game that refuse to visit a message board. These people can visit day in and day out to talk trash to developers on the WoW forums but at the same time these people cannot stop by a guild’s boards to post a simple “HELLO ALL THIS IS WHO I AM” message.Not hard is it?

Lets look at World of Warcraft. How about applications to raiding guilds? Useless now or still quite a good thing to weed out the chaff (like 90% of the Deathknights)?

You can tell a lot about a WoW player that wants to get serious at end game by simply searching them at the Armory. In fact some players that apply hide their gear when they log out. Some players that want to join at level 20 are simply scammers wanting to get into your guild bank. Some players are alts just looking for a title over their head. Some people could give two shits about your guild and simply want to gear up an 80 alt that their actual guild won’t allow in a raid.

All of these arguments are good for World of Warcraft guild applications, but it can also bite you hard if a good player is simply too lazy to take the time to stop by and post an application so you can get to know them. What do you do then?

MMO players are a fickle generally EMO bunch. They get so touchy about the dumbest things. A lot of them refuse to communicate in person as well and would rather type out these long goodbye messages because they feel they were “internet wronged” when we linked them our charter and policies (which they SWORE they read when they joined ya know!).

We wanted social people that are fun to hang out with on Vent or Skype or whatever and just want to play games to get away from their daily hassles in life. I have grown a thick skin in all my time playing MMO’s and I just let those people go now. I have given up trying to kiss their asses. I am here to play games and have fun.

Personally I still think that guild applications are a good way to gauge someone, but the guild officers and leaders need to follow up on voice chat and in game.

And don’t even get me started on these people that refuse to use a voice communication tool. Guess what, looks like you don’t want to raid. 1999 called and Everquest wants its text macro raid encounter explanations back.

Busy week thus far with raiding

Well my raiding on my priest has been non stop since Tuesday when we went into 25 man Trial of the Crusader.

First that night we got all the way to Anub’arak but time constraints and a wipe forced us to log out so we are going back tonight. During the rest of the week we tackled Onyxia 10 and Trial of the Crusader 10, both of which were wiped clean in one night of work.

I haven’t really had the chance to do any dailies or too many 5 mans but I have been knocking out the daily 5 man each night then getting ready for raiding. That leaves Friday of this week as the only night I will have to relax and just make some money in game.

Since I have shelved the rogue I have been focused on the priest of course and over the last 24 hours he has picked up 4 upgrades which is insane considering the rut I was in prior to entering this new guild.

Last night I picked up:

Icehowl Binding

Legwraps of the Demonic Messenger

Lightbane Focus

and all those boss kills bumped me up to 54 triumph badges which let me purchase this this morning:

Mantle of Revered Mortality

However I have not been slacking on my warrior either, and over a span of 2 heroics and some 5 man ToC runs he has improved his gear in nearly every slot and become a competent arms DPS machine. So as you can see busy week this week and very little time to post or blog about it. Hopefully things slow down over the weekend and I can relax and watch some football and play some more Dragon Age which I haven’t really touched since I got it. A devoted MMO player that is looking to excel usually doesn’t have the time for other games. For the price WoW provides all the entertainment I need.

The casuals that quit the game and leave complaining that they have nothing to do at level 80 have not looked under the hood. There is plenty to do and with the new patch coming up grouping and upgrading gear with badges will be made even easier. Those that are anti social and refuse to join guilds or attempt to see at least 10 man content need to ask themselves why they are even playing an MMO in the first place. For you, Dragon Age beckons.

Patch 3.3 has begun downloading in the background and as of this morning I had finished it 100%.

What a weird night: C’Thun and more

Last night was one of those odd nights in WoW that are fun but strangely fast and like a blur. I started by logging in my level 80 arms warrior who I have been gearing up on the side when my Priest had run all his dailies and got an invite to my new guild. I hadn’t really run any instances on him since his gear was so bad, but since this guild I was in was pretty cool and the daily heroic was ToC, I figured what the heck. I ran the heroic first on my priest (main before alts is my credo) then some guildies needed it again so I grabbed my warrior.

Well this turned out to be a good move. Not only did my priest get his FINAL upgrade out of H ToC, the Kurisu’s Indecision cloak that some douchebag shaman outrolled me on the last time it dropped. Ah well, I lost the roll fair and square right? I would not have been that mad had he not also taken CLOTH BOOTS FROM ME. Water under the bridge.

So I log out the priest and grab my warrior, who after this weekend had gotten significant gear upgrades, and trot him off to the Argent Tournament Grounds.

Sure enough, Edge of Ruin drops as do the Legplates of Relentless Onslaught. Score on both accounts, and I have to respec my arms setup now to go to axes. I was using maces as it is generally a consensus to avoid swords. This also sets me up rather well to dual spec Fury and use a Titansteel Destroyer and Edge of Ruin.

After that I ate dinner and logged the priest back in to send the warrior some enchantment scrolls and it turns out the guild is taking down C’Thun. Well I never ever cleared all of AQ40 back in the day so I jump all over that and get summoned there.

Talk about flashbacks. Anyway about 20 minutes later (after I die the first time when I get put in his stomach and had no clue what the hell was going on) C’Thun goes down and I score myself some awesome ITEM LEVEL 88 GEAR!

Well ok big deal but still funny.

All in all a strange night. Tonight is 25 man raiding and I will post a report on that later.

Thoughts on the new Prisoner series

The Prisoner was ok, but I found it lacking in terms of the Village itself. In the original series the Village was a pivotal character and took on a life of its own. I can understand that by shrinking the series to 6 hours they have to not include a lot of ideas of the original series, but I think that not fleshing out the Village takes a lot from the show and the ideas that the first series try to focus on. In the first series there were elections, a ruling body, sports and all sorts of strange and odd things. In this new version it seems just a pale backdrop.

As for this idea for Number 2 I am not sure I like it. Number 2 never had family, if the current number 2 failed to convert 6, a new Number 2 was always brought in. The thing that made the original Prisoner series so great was the constant struggle between 6 and the CURRENT Number 2. If 2 failed, he would be ousted by Number 1 and replaced with a new Number 2. The 2’s never wanted to fail and that was a great thing about the old show. How could 6 get the Number 2 removed and who would win that battle?

In the new version of the series, 2 has a family and is rather well planted in the Village. Also we have not heard 6 even question who “1″ may be which is a little bit strange. Overall with the editing and odd cuts I really did not follow the second episode at all as it tried to be a little too “spooky and mysterious” it seemed to be confusing and not able to tie up lose ends.

So far I give the show  2 1/2 stars and I hope it integrates things a little better or it could end up being a let down. I understand that they do not want to simply recreate the old show but I do feel like they passed up a good chance to really shine by not updating the old classic but making it more streamlined which is the direction I would have gone with it.

The Prisoner debuts tonight on AMC!

Folks, the PRISONER has been remade on AMC.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner

…but now it is being remade and they have lined up Gandalf himself to play Number 2.

Though it ran for a mere 17 episodes, the sci-fi spy drama THE PRISONER is one of television’s biggest cult hits. The brainchild of star Patrick McGoohan, the series followed the adventures of No. 6 (McGoohan), a former secret agent who is being held captive in a highly secured village, the location of which remains a mystery throughout the series. This groundbreaking and innovative show reached an unfortunate end as TV bosses got cold feet following low ratings and increasingly strange story lines. But McGoohan himself took control and steered the show to an ending that continues to cause great debate among THE PRISONER’s faithful fans.

Very fast gathering of achievements last night

First night raiding in a new guild as a healer and right off the bat I was dragged to an Onyxia 25 man raid. We managed to fill 17 spots with guild members and we simply pug’d the rest. The majority of the key spots were filled by my new guild (like tanks, healers and the best DPS etc etc) and we went in and fought the revamped dragon.

This was my third “new” Ony raid and my first 25 man effort. It went well despite one unfortunate event where the fear caught us with mistimed fear wards and the dragon turned and tail whipped some people but we recovered nicely and took her down. I didn’t die, which is more than I can say for my melee oriented rogue. Of course Ony dropped the Priest helm, which I promptly lost the roll on. In fact, I lost on everything but with 25 people there what can you do right?

After this the Horde won Wintergrasp so ready or not I was whisked off with the raid to hit up 25 man Vault of Archavon. These fights were a little more chaotic, but I was given my healing assignment and I just did my thing. This was a little bit odd being on the other end. I had no idea what the boss was up to health wise and just focused on my healing target and hoped the rest of the raid did their thing. We only wiped once, but came back and after that cleared the place with minimal effort.

Once that was done I figured I was finished for the night but this was not the case. We shed out PUG’ers and then reformed as a 10 man unit to go in and knock out 10 man Archavon. All of these were achievements I did not have on any character not even my rogue.

So by the end of the night my achievement tally was rather impressive. I gained the following:

Archavon the Stone Watcher 10 man
Defeat Archavon the Stone Watcher on Normal Difficulty.

Emalon the Storm Watcher 10 man
Defeat Emalon the Storm Watcher on Normal Difficulty.

Koralon the Flame Watcher 10 man
Defeat Koralon the Flame Watcher on Normal Difficulty.

Heroic: Archavon the Stone Watcher 25 man
Defeat Archavon the Stone Watcher on Heroic Difficulty.

Heroic: Emalon the Storm Watcher 25 man
Defeat Emalon the Storm Watcher on Heroic Difficulty.

Heroic: Koralon the Flame Watcher 25 man
Defeat Koralon the Flame Watcher on Heroic Difficulty.

Got My Mind On My Money Loot 1,000 gold.

Onyxia’s Lair (25 player) Defeat Onyxia in 25-player mode.

Not too bad for a first night out as a raid healer. Definitely more engaging than my rogue that is for sure. No idea what the weekend will bring. Overall I fit in much better with this guild. They are mature older players that do not berate or brag and that is a refreshing change of pace. I also feel like I can talk to them in vent without talk moving to frat boy like topics. They are also very knowledgeable and fair in terms of raid progression so it looks like the months of waiting to be guilded with my priest paid off.

Lots of Icecrown loot reveals this week

Websites have been booming about the revelations of Icecrown 5 man loot as well as Emblem of Frost gear that can be purchased.

If everyone remembers Emblems of Frost will be the next big currency for dungeon rewards and a list of gear was published on MMO Champion. MMO Champion also has the latest 5 man loot as well. Not to steal their thunder the links are here:

Icecrown 5 man dungeon loot

http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/icecrown-5-man-dungeons-loot

Emblem of Frost rewards

http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/emblems-of-frost-rewards

For ease of my web surfing and to link to friends I will post some of the info here on my blog.

A few nice daggers in there for DPS types which is nice to see. The item levels for the emblems are 264 which is insane when I think about how far behind I am. Already I see a sweet robe I want.

Meteor Chasers Rainment

http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/50974/meteor-chasers-raiment

In other news I have officially shelved my rogue, hung up the daggers, put the DPS out to pasture, said goodbye to the stabby stab or just plain switched mains.

More on that as the week goes on.

Everyone wants me to “come back” but I refuse

There was a reason I left your games in the first place remember? They stunk.

Now you can play Age of Conan again for 14 days completely FREE of charge! This offer does not require any purchase as long as you act before November 27^th, 2009

Head back to LOTRO and play for free from November 12-18, 2009! You don’t need to do anything except log into LOTRO and play your old characters, or even create new ones.