Hack Attack!

You might have seen via Twitter on Thursday evening that I suspected a guilidie had been hacked. It turns out Hege had been hacked but she's now back and her account secure *phew*. It was quite the experience for me having not known anyone to be hacked since I've played with them (some had prior to me knowing them). So, here'd what happened...

200th Blog

Yep, you guessed it - this is my 200th blog!

Back in March I posted my 100th blog, just 5 months after starting my blog. Here we are in August, 5 months after my 100th blog and 10 months into the blog as a whole. Which means we're very close to my 1st blogiversary. And also that writing about 100 posts in 5 monts is average for me, or so it seems. In my 100th blog I did a sort of mini review of things so far and I've decided to do that again plus a few little extra things here and there.

One major game change for me is raiding. In April I took part in my first LFR and much to my surprise found it wasn't the horrendous tortuous experience I had expected! I have since tried to do on LFR a week. Initally I was working through the various raids going up a tier (I think they're tiers) each week. More recently, I have been doing the Terrace of Endless Springs more often than anything else as I really like it! Plus I'd quite like the gun (Taoren, the Soul Burner) from Lei Shi - who I should point out I love.
Note: I got the gun during tonights LFR night :)

SWPD Update

Just under two weeks ago I posted that me and a few WoW friends had decided to go our seperate ways from our then guild. In the 11 days since that post Stormwind Police Dept has made some real progress and so I thought I'd update you on whats been going on.

Members
Initially we started with the five founder members which quickly progressed to six. The sixth person was a real bonus to the ranks for a number of reasons; he has two legendary weapons, he's a great guild/team player and he happens to be a real-life friend of mine from undergrad.

#WoWscreenshotaday Day 18

Day 18: Someone you spoke to today...

Disguised as Hozen.

Disguised as Trolls.

Here's a couple of screenshots I took with my guildies Jason & Rob. We did some scenarios together this evening whilst chatting on mumble.

#WoWscreenshotaday Day 13

Day 13: Fast

This part of a screenshot shows two different things relating to 'fast'. The first being the progress that my new guild, SWPD, has made in the week since it was formed. We've reached level 3 unlocking the perk Mount Up. I have also recently gained the ability to use flight form on my druid which makes traveling around and questing a lot faster.

The Big Reveal

Last week I posted that my guild was having some issues and that the GM had essentially gone AWOL. I had a fair few responses, both on here as comments and on twitter. I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to put in their 2-pence worth - I really appreciated the fresh, outside opinions on the matter. A lot of people suggested the idea of myself and the more active players forming our own guild. This thought had crossed our minds already but I guess we were a little apprehensive and hoping the guild would pick up.

A day or so after my 'Leaderless' post the GM logged in, all be it remotely, and he actually spoke. I initially thought 'shit he's read my post' and that he was online to kick my ass about what I'd said. But no. He asked how things were and I said we were coping fine despite him vanishing. He replied with something rather blasé about not realising he'd vanished. To me this was him saying that he feels his irregular logging in and lack of interest is completely fine. It also made it clear to me that there is no reason for his absence other than he can't be bothered.

Leaderless...

Warning: This post is a rant and contains starred out words!

The past 2 to 3 weeks my guild has been largely leaderless. Our  Guild Master (GM) has quite frankly f***ed off with no warning. He logs in for a few minutes here and there at weird times (according to real ID). When I say weird I'm talking at times of the day when we all know the guild will be dead. You might even be inclined to say he's logging in so it doesn't get to 30 days when somone can take over!

Nostalgia...

I've been wanting to write a blog post about in-game nostalgia for some time now. I have however struggled to work out a way of writing down my feelings without sounding like an arse. But, WoW Insiders Matthew Rossi has inspired me!

Firstly the inspirational article in question. Matthew Rossi posted an article about The living game and the end of nostalgia which I highly recommend everyone reads (especially if you intend to read further on). I think that he has hit the nail on the head repeatedly throughout his article. It's well balanced, well written and most of all sums up how I feel.

Anyway, I have decided to jump right on into the deep end so here goes.

Breakfast Topic Thoughts: How Did You Choose Your Guild?

Todays WoW Insider Breakfast Topic, asked by Elizabeth Harper, is "How did you choose your guild?".

For me this is fairly simple - I didn't really choose. I've been in the same guild since I started playing in February 2012. It's the guild that my boyfriend (who has yet again returned to blogging) was in. At the time I started playing WoW properly he was an officer in the guild. I knew maybe one or two of the people from when I'd been allowed to play on the boyfs account. So it seemed a fairly locigal step to join the guild, atleast until I'd found my feet in Azeroth.

Running into a brick wall!

I'm sure I'm not the only person who sometimes feels like their running into a brick wall - whether that is in the real world or in Azeroth. Having said that I've always been determined to never allow WoW to make me feel like this - as far as I'm concerned WoW is a game and something that I enjoy and it shouldn't be a chore etc. The same feeling extends towards this blog. Anyway, you'll (hopefully) be relieved to know that I'm not writing this as a way of saying I'm giving up either. Rather in the last week I have expereinced hitting that Azerothian brick wall head on and fortunately wasn't permanently injured!

There are some nice walls in Azeroth - Shrine of the Seven Stars, Panndaria.

Thursday I'd had a pretty long and not particularly successful day at work. I guess you could say I had hit a fence already that day. So, when I logged onto WoW I was immediately invited to a group with no prior warning and some very limited greeting (the odd couple of hellos). In the past I do know of other guild members who have got a little riled by the immediate invitations to something that you're unaware of and are virtually forced to accept to know what's going on. Anyway, I accepted - probably my first mistake. It seemed that some people were running old raids (I thought) but first they were in Firelands farming for some gear. In the mean time I just pottered about mining, pet battling etc. 

Ironforge.

And then the summons came. Apparently we were going to 'BoT' which it turns out is The Bastion of Twilight - a Cataclysm raid. I had no idea that it was a Cata raid or I can safely say I wouldn't have bothered! I, stupidly, trusted a guildie who said it would be fairly easy and we didn't need to know tactics - second mistake. There was six of us, all level 90 - including one healer and two tank/damage. Now, I am in no way saying it was anyone in particular's fault -  I don't blame the healer for not being able to cope or anyone else. But we wiped about 4 times simply through not knowing what we were doing - so, we did need to know tactics! I then learnt that it was a Cata raid, that gigantic brick wall appeared and I smashed into it. (I left thr group).

The Mage Quarter, Stormwind.

I guess I felt like I had been lied to. Maybe I simply misunderstood, but I had not expected us to be doing an old Cata raid with 6 people (not even enough to get the achievs) in an impromptu manner with no tactical knowledge etc. I'm someone who likes to be organised - events on the in-game calendar should be up atleast a couple of days in advance so that people have time to prepare and hopefully avoid the issues that we suffered on Thursday. Some people might say that I should have taken some time to read up on the tactics anyway - and to be honest I probably should have. I am not a raider so I generally don't know any raid tactics (either current or old content) but if I ever were to raid I would pride myself on being organised and knowledgeable of the encounters which brings me to an slightly different guild-related issue that I will be writing about later in the week.
I realise this is the first time I've written a post like this - I guess you could say it's a guild-related rant. But it feels good to get these things off ones chest.

Rant over!

When Virtual Life Meets Real Life...

Today me and the boyfriend went to meet a fellow guildie (whom I will now refer to as P). P was on holiday at a relatively close sea-side town and so I took a day off work and we got the train over for a few hours. It was only a short visit, a matter of 3 or so hours, as the boyf had to get back for work this evening. Slightly annoyingly another guildie was visiting the same town this bank holiday weekend and has come down a day early (this evening) but we weren't able to stay around a meet him.

For me, and the boyf, this was our first experience of meeting a guildie as such. Obviously, I live with a fellow guildie (the boyf) but he was my boyfriend long before I started to play WoW. Similarly, I have friends from university that play WoW, several of which are in my guild, but again I knew them in real life first. More recently, a work colleague of mine plays WoW and we do occassionally do things together in Azeroth.

Our sand castle version of Stormwind post-
 Deathwing's attack.

I built this sand castle :)

I really wasn't sure what exactly to expect. I have known P ever since I started to play the game casually on my boyfriends account. When I got my own account, Feb 2012, he was currently away from the game but once he got back he really helped me get to grips with my hunter etc. The boyfriend has known P for a number of years - I'm not exactly sure how many but I'd say we're esily talking 3 years. So, what I guess I'm trying to say is we both know P pretty well and could be fairly sure he was not in fact a she or likely to be awkward to meet / chat to.

We spent the day at the beach building sand castles (as you may have guessed from the pics). I'll point out that P has a son who was a brilliant excuse for such activities. Whilst we were chilling out on the beach we spoke generally about WoW, the guild and real life stuff. Our guild is very family-esque and everything is discussed including real life so todays conversations were nothing out of the ordinary. I guess if I'm honest it was just like the conversations we'd have on a normal day playing WoW. But this normalilty doesn't mean that it wasn't a big day for all involved.

I really would love to meet more of my guildies! Unfortunately me and the boyf are pretty far away (geographically) from most of the UK guildies which makes things tricky. Not to mention those that live abroad in places like Holland. I think it's a great experience to really meet someone that you spend many hours a week with in a virtual world.

Naxx & ICC Guild Achievement Runs

Last night me and my guild did a few old raid runs. We stared off with Naxxramas which I've done a number of times whilst trying to get the pets for Raiding with Leashes. I saw the Stitched Pup drop for the first time but sadly I didn't win the roll.

We then moved on to doing an achievement run through Icecrown Citadel. We managed to scrape 8 people together and had a pretty good run. I wasn't sure if I'd been to ICC before but it turns out that I had and had a few of the achievements already - nonetheless I still got a fair few.