He very quickly and dutifully collected all the materials for the Sulfuron Hammer through multiple MC runs and helped his blacksmithing friend to get the recipe for him. Within a couple months, the hammer was created and all he needed to complete it was the Eye of Sulfuras. An item that has a 4% chance to drop off of Ragnaros.

Months went by and the want to run MC dwindled with each week for his guildmates (including myself), and there were times when poor Kazi had to run the whole place by himself at level 80 as this was back in Wrath. The Eye would not drop.

More months went by and Kazi had done so many MC runs that he had become exalted with the Hydraxian Waterlords. The Eye would not drop.

Even more months passed. Kazi was feeling like he would never see that Eye. The launch of Cata and its huge stats increase made running the raid much faster and easier, and so I was more inclined to help him and encourage him to continue. Almost every week, we ran through Molten Core, sometimes just the two of us and other times with friends. The Eye would not drop.

This past Sunday, we were joined by Ivi, a druid that’s part of our regular raid group. She came because she still wanted some mog gear from there.

We went through the motions of killing all the bosses and then making our way to Ragnaros. The big fiery dude dies and Kazi loots automatically like he’s been doing for the last 2 years.

This time…the Eye does drop.

There’s an explosion of congratulations between Kazi and I talking over Skype, and then in raid and guild chat.

Well said, Ivi, well said.

Kazi loots the Eye and then actually asks if he should make the mace now. He is answered by a chorus of “HELL YES!” on all sides. He quickly pops his Jeeves and grabs the hammer that had been sitting in his bank for over a year.

He then goes and gets himself a congratulatory beer.

So after two years of trying week after week, Kazi finally got his shiny mace and our guild its first legendary. Lord knows he deserved it after such dedication. His character wears it well too.

"IT TOOK 2 YEARS BUT NOW IT'S MINE!"

Time to smash the heck out of some squirrels

Taken in the Cleft of Shadow next to Lil Rag so you can see how much it glows

*raises a glass* Here’s to you, hon. Your long and arduous quest is now complete and the rare treasure is all yours.

Ragnaros, Big Fiery Dude (from wowwiki.com)

So this weekend, my raid group headed back into the Firelands. We were on Alysrazor from last time and it only took a new tries to get her down, with surprisingly few deaths. For us, killing a boss is a win. Killing a boss with everyone still alive is a \o/ MAJOR WIN \o/. I quite enjoy that fight because it’s interesting and kind of challenging at the same time. Plus if our mage is having technical difficulties (or dies yet again), I get to fly around and pew pew the big fiery bird. >.>

Then it was back to Lord RNGolith, which made everyone groan. There was a wipe on the gauntlet on the way to him because we wouldn’t be Bloodriver if we didn’t wipe on trash about as often as we wipe on bosses. Once our tank (who had never tanked this before) figured out the best way to pick up adds and how to place them, the big guy went down fairly fast and easily. I can only hope that we will never ever have to kill him again.

Majordomo Staghelm was up next, which was exciting because he was the second last boss and hey, what Hordie doesn’t love the sound of a dying night elf? It took us only one wipe to fully understand the strategy, with the problem being too many people running out at once to deal with Burning Seeds and making him shift back to cat form before we were ready. Our second attempt had him dead. It…was almost disappointingly easy.

I forget the name of that trash mob on the way to Ragnaros, the one that summons random sections of lava on the walkway. Either way, we sucked at that dance, except for Kazi on his blood DK who ended up soloing him for most of the fight. Got to love those self-heals.

Anyways, we eventually got through and standing before us was Ragnaros. As someone who has run Molten Core many, MANY times in an effort to help Kazi get the Sulfuras lengendary (which he still hasn’t been able to finish by the way), I hate this guy. I really do. And meeting him again in the Firelands has not changed that opinion.

We managed to make it to the first transition phase once but for the most part, we’re still have problems in the first phase. Our melee seems to enjoy either being squished by the giant hammer or dying to the subsequent waves from it. It’s a work in progress in other words.

Oh yeah, our rogue pointed out that with his hair/horns/? like that, he looked like Dee Dee from Dexter’s Lab.

WHAT IS SEEN CANNOT BE UNSEEN!

Holiday Sundries

So I had an overall quite nice holiday, having spent it most of it with Kazi and his family. I’ll say one thing though, I don’t know how you people in warmer climates put up with a non-white Christmas. It was downright depressing to look out on Christmas Day and not see a single patch of snow on the ground. It was just…so wrong.

Of course now that I’m back in Canada, it’s bloody freezing outside but hey, there’s lots of the fluffy white stuff and what better excuse to stay indoors to do things?

Good thing that I now have so many things to do inside. There’s a bunch of books that I’ll need to wade through, including the entire Hunger Games set. I also received a Kindle, which had only been put on my wishlist as a last minute “oh this might be neat” thought, but it’s turned out to be completely awesome. I went on a bit of a spending spree and have bought about 10 books for it so far, and I have plans for much more. I made the mistake of finally taking a look at Goodreads and I now have over 2 dozen books lined up to get. I’ll be poor but I’ll be one happy reader.

And then the games, oh my the games. I got Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2, Fable 3, AND Skyrim. Considering I haven’t even finished Dragon Age: Origins and Fable 2, and I haven’t bought the first Mass Effect…my butt is going to start taking root in my computer chair.

Skyrim is almost evil for me because I MUST EXPLORE EVERYTHING! I was level 9 by the time I even got to Whiterun because I was continually distracted by shiny objects along the way and would end up wandering in a completely random direction. It did however lead to me uncovering the first word of a Shout for calling animals to my aid, one that no one else I know had found yet. When I told him, Kazi commented, “You know, it has to be fate that the first shout you ever found was THAT one.” I simply grinned and nodded knowingly.

WoW, I’ve been busy (I made a funny)

On the WoW front, raiding’s been going along nice and smooth. We managed to finish the first tier of Cata raids before they released the Dragon Soul, so we actually got to head into the Firelands once or twice while it was still “current” content. We’re still in the Firelands but I’m cool with it because we’re making progress. Everyone’s decided that Baleroc is kinda cool, Beth’tilac is pain and agony, and Lord Rhyolith is the bane of our [insert long stream of profanity here] existence. We’re working on Alysrazor right now to avoid Lord RNGolith for the meantime. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve seen these people put so much hatred towards a boss.

I’ve managed to solve most of the issues I’ve been having as raid lead. People who are signing up pretty much show up on time now. I’ve also been able to make sure that everyone signs up by posting the next raid on the calendar at the end of each current raid. They all just sign up immediately and we go on our merry ways. Breaks are also becoming a lot better now thanks to a suggestion from the guild leader. I give them a 15 minute break every 1 hour and a half or so, which gives them time for a bio and/or snack.

Strats are still a difficult point for us. I’m the sort of person who learns something by doing it, so without actually having tried these bosses before…I just sort of read strats off WoWPedia. Which at times has lead to a lot of confusion due to the verboseness of them. If anyone knows where to find some excellent point-form “never been there before” raid guides, I would love to see that link.

Let it not be said that we don’t have a fun time in there however. Everytime we face Beth’tilac, we have to convince one of our DKs to go in there yes one more time, because he’s terrified of spiders. All the raid members throw everything from gentle coaxings to joking threats at the poor guy.

And then there was our first attempt at Alysrazor where we had just finished clearing the trash. I hadn’t even begun my explanation before the event started, because our rogue simple COULD NOT resist clicking the shiny feather lying on the ground. I yelled out “Oh shit!” over Mumble and began throwing out orders as fast I could. It was of course complete bloody chaos and everyone was like “I don’t know what’s going on!” and I was like “I don’t know either!”. We eventually ended up wiping but everyone was laughing by then so it was all good. So now forever after, that shiny feather will be hung over the rogue’s head. At least until she does something else silly.

Oh yeah, and a big announcement

So I suppose this is kind of important and all…everyone knows Kazi, yes? The long-distance boyfriend who very occasionally posts on here, sometimes plays a shaman and sometimes a DK, my partner in alt leveling, gaming, tabletopping, and crime in general?

Well, he proposed to me when I went up to visited him. I said yes. So we’re engaged and all that.

And when I tell people he proposed and they ask, “Did you say yes?”, I try to keep a straight face as I say, “No, I just thought I’d take the ring anyways because might as well put it to good use, right?”

I’m evil like that.

I’m going to visit Kazi for the holidays in less than 2 weeks and he’s been itching to play a tabletop game with me during that time. When I mentioned the possibility of a Serenity/Firefly one, he immediately took to the idea (we both love the show). We’ve been talking about it quite a bit lately and the one thing that he keeps asking me is who my character will be. I’m not terribly good at making up new characters without knowing the exact setting or being able to make it up myself. So my answer have been vague and I’m sure rather useless so far. I knew I wanted a female mechanic…but no details beyond that. I just couldn’t seem to form anything more distinct.

That is, until last night when an idea popped into my head. I realized that my problem was that I didn’t know my character’s voice. And the way that I figure that out is by thinking of them as part of a story, rather than a character sheet to be filled out. I remembered the sort of “twang” that Kaylee had in her speech and from that, my character began to rapidly form. I simply knew that her story had to be from her point of view, rather than the third-person view that I’m most familiar writing in.

So without further ado, I present Evaline James, in her own words.

Name’s Evaline James, but only my ma calls me that, and that’s only when I went and done something real bad. Everyone else calls me Eve, unless they’s want a bullet in their back in which case they call me Eva.

James is my ma’s last name, ’cause no one knows who my da was, and I did like to keep it that way. I got no time for old men that be runnin’ around knocking up whores.

I was 7 years old and knee-high to a grasshopper when my ma caught me messin’ around with old junkyard parts for the fifth time. This time instead of yellin’ at me, she just looked me straight in the eye and said, “Eve, you’re more stubborn than old Sam down the street and you know how he won’t take no bull even from them drop sellers. You also have a good head on your shoulders and being a mite pretty don’t hurt either. And since in you don’t mind my words anyways, I’m gonna tell you this: You want something in this world, I know that you’re not gonna let anyone get in your way. So I want you to take it and do yourself right. Just remember what’s good and bad and don’t push anyone that done nothing to hurt you.”

Now, I think my ma musta thought that I’d get a good education and such many years down the line. But for once, I took her words to heart right away. The next time her john came around sniffing for creds and started hitting her again, I pulled out the pistol I’d been working on and shot him in the leg. Now that gun probably couldn’t kill a man if it tried and couldn’t shoot straight worth a damn, I was lucky to even hit him. But it made her john bleed real good and I guess the sight of a little brown haired girl pointing a gun at you and tell you the next bullet is gonna be in your skull is enough to make a cowardly woman-beater run out there like a bat out of hell.

My ma took all the creds that her john had left behind and bought us one-way tickets off of Persephone that night. I could see that she was as proud as a peacock for what I’d done, even if she was scared white that her john would come back for us.  The ship, a good old Trans-U,  took us all the way to Beylix and being true to my nature, I stuck to the mechanic like a leech and pestered him to show me every nook and cranny of the old clunker. I ain’t never seen a man so happy to see us land.

We squatted in an abandoned shack near Blueport, a small town next to a damn big junkyard. I spent most of my time wanderin’ around there, creating all sort of little machines from scraps I done found. Sometimes my ma would find old repair manuals and use them to teach me my letters and numbers, ’cause I’d only be interested in any book that had a schematic in it. She always tried to teach me how to speak all proper like and not much of that stuck, but I can use it when it’s useful. When she wasn’t teaching me, my ma was working as a cook at a factory nearby. Who would of known that an old hooker can make a mean grilled cheese?

Around when I was 14, I started lurking around the shipyards in town, bullying the mechanics into showing me what they’s be working on and by the time I was 22, I was the one telling them what’s right and what’s not. A bear of a man named Rex finally offered me a job at his shipyard to shut me up, figuring that I’d be better served actually fixin’ his ships instead of telling everyone else how to do it.

I was still working there when the Alliance came sniffing around, looking for some bodies to come fix their ships in some war they were fighting. I didn’t like their beady little eyes and the way those men looked at me from the get-go, so I snuck out while they was busy arguing with Rex.

Damn rats had the gall to come to my home to “talk” to me that very evening but I wouldn’t have none of it. So there I was arguing with them and my ma was trying to be all civil, even offering them our expensive tea in this nice china my ma bought with a whole month’s wages. Then one of them got to his feet and knocked her hand aside, causing the hot tea to spill all over her nice dress and causing her to scream in pain. Now, I promised myself when we left Persephone that no body would ever hurt my ma again. Well before those rats even knew what’s what, I got my handy shotgun pointed on them, telling them to get the hell out of my house. And unlike my old pistol, I made damn sure that this one shoots nice and straight and packs one hell of a punch. Right about then, them Alliance decide that I’m more trouble than I’m worth and rightly so. I make sure they get all the way out of sight before helping my ma clean up the broken china.

Few days later, I hear another knock at the door and I get my gun ready, thinking the rats are back for me. Turns out instead to be one of them Browncoats, a serious looking woman who looks down the barrel of my gun like it’s an every day thing for her. Seems she heard about my run in with the Alliance and gives me a counter-offer: work with them instead to make sure them rats can’t hold us under their thumb. She treats both my ma and me all respectful like so I took a shine to her right away, and since I want to help teach those rats a lesson, I sign up that night. My ma’s scared for me, I can tell, but she doesn’t try to stop me, just like how she hasn’t tried to stop me for the last 18 years.

The Browncoats give me a new pistol and show me how to shoot it proper like, ’cause I left the shotgun for my ma to protect herself and made Rex promise to look after her. They also show me how to fix someone up a little bit if they done got shot or blown up. Turns out that I’m not as good as fixin’ folks as I am at fixin’ ships but now I know enough to keep them alive until a real doc gets around to them. I then spend the next 3 years fixing up the ships that have been riddled full of bullet holes or blown half to pieces. After a while everyone comes to know that I’m so good at it that they all want me working on their ship. The rats even try to raid one of my workshops and I take a few down before one of them gets me in the shoulder and I’m down and out for a while. I’ll be damned if I didn’t ignore my doc and was back at work just a week later. Tore my wound open a couple times for my troubles.

Before I know it, it’s all over and the rat bastards gone and won anyways. I come back to Blueport to find my ma and Rex have gotten all cozy together, but he’s taken good care of her so I don’t mind. He offers me my old job back but now that my ma’s all looked after and I got a taste of excitement, I turn him down. I got some creds saved up so I buy myself a ticket to Beaumonde after being restless before the month’s out. I’ve been travelling from place to place ever since, looking for a ship that talks to me just right and can keep me from getting bored again.

Talon King Ikiss, the end boss, hits the dirt pretty fast and coughs up a shiny plate belt.

I’m still wearing this belt.

Since this has a nice chunk of stamina and those gem sockets, I naturally assume that it would be perfect for both my dps and tanking sets. The other DK and I both roll need on it and I win it. Little did I know that this was where the fun would start. I’ve provided a screenshot of the conversation (with handy annotations!) for your viewing pleasure.

I almost feel sorry for the guy. He was either truly convinced that the belt was solely for a DPS, or he was just a very poor loser. I wonder if he realizes that he’ll be replacing all his gear with Wrath greens in a couple levels…

Anyways, let me start at the beginning. I began by scraping most of the requirements that I had listed previously and wrote up a simple macro to spam in General chat.

Want to raid but don’t want to leave your non-raiding guild? Tired of PUGs and want to raid at the same time every week? I’m putting together a regular raid group for people who want to have crazy fun while killing big bad bosses. PST for more info

I was actually surprised by the turn out that I got. After using it irregularly for only two weekday evenings and a Saturday, I got 7 people who were interested in the idea as well as the weekend raiding times. So I set up the first raid for that Sunday and between them and my guild, I had 16 confirmed players.

We ended up clearly all but Chimaeron and Nef in BWD on the first time. I had to sheepishly admit over Mumble that I hadn’t read the strats for half of the bosses because I didn’t want to go in with high expectations in case we failed, so I had assumed we wouldn’t get this far this fast.

Chimaeron proved to be a thorn in our side as it took us 3 raid nights to get him down. But every night everyone agreed that they wanted me to carry over the raid lockout so we could make our attempts again and again. It was a relief for everyone to finally see him die.

It was still early in the night and everyone was in high spirits so we continued onto Nef. This also took us several tries for several reasons: switching which tank goes on which boss (hey, maybe a pally would be better for Ony since she has a shadow debuff!), switching out players because my healer fell asleep mid-pull (WTF?), a tank learning that you need to constantly be moving when kiting the adds on phase 3 (oops, my bad), etc. Because of the player switches, I ended up bring Saraku to tank, which I was perfectly happy with because Niqora had already gotten the achievement anyways.

Each time we were making progress though, until he finally keeled over and gave up his dragon-flavored loot. Which was a good thing too because Kazi (who had been healing me) had died and I was out of cooldowns. I <3 Kazi’s shammy heals. Plus I think he died because I dragged us through Nef’s flame breath but THAT’S BESIDES THE POINT.

We have killed the dragon! ...Again. Was Blackwing Lair merely a setback?

So now that BWD is done and over with, we’ll be continuing to BoT this weekend and see how far we get. I suppose it’s back to reading strats for me.

Things that I’ve learned from this:

• MS/OS/Greed rolls are the way to go. If only the items that dropped were useful for anyone. (Cloth drops when we have a single mage who’s geared to the teeth. Why, RNG?)
• Generally I’m pretty open with varied strategies but sometimes I need to set my foot down. On Chimaeron, I was originally going to go with a Break tank and an offtank that takes the Double Attacks. The tanks didn’t like this idea because of all the taunting and wanted to try taking 4 breaks/switching or taking 1 break/switching. That didn’t work out so well because the tanks kept dying. >.< Eventually I insisted on my strat and it worked out. Not to say I R RAID LEADER, I IS ALWAYS RITE because lord knows 9 heads can be better than 1.
• I can’t multitask. Or at least not very well. Trying to call out when to taunt on Chimaeron, calling out when to collapse for System Failure, and dpsing at the same time does not work. I have to let others take responsibility sometimes.
• Everyone will be whispering me when it comes to raid invites. EVERYONE.
• I’m expected to know everything about every encounter, including trash. What, do I look like some sort of leader to you people? >.> Unfortunately with my poor memory, it’s impossible for me to retain all the information I just read and we will be essentially winging it the first time. Once I know how to “do by doing”, life gets a lot easier.
• I’ve never been nitpicky over talents and gear, and I will generally bring anyone who wants to fill a slot. However, I have found some limits. A death knight tanking in all PvP gear? Sorry, no. A warrior tank alt in blue gear because “this character could actually use the upgrades”? Also no. Maybe it seems callous and I shouldn’t be picky but what I’m worried about here is the fun AND success of the raid as a whole. Wiping over and over again because of bad gear is not going to get us anywhere.
• You can find some freaking awesome people this way. There’s a healer who insisted at the beginning that she wasn’t geared enough and should probably be replaced, but she has been fantastic at her job and a pleasure to play with. She has also signed up and shown up on time for every raid so far. I want to keep her forever.
• Our mage refuses to die, even when I order him to just wipe it. Except when he’s kiting adds, then he dies all the time! (Still love you, Keys.)

Things that I still need to work on:

• I may need to get better at scheduling regular breaks and making sure people know that there shouldn’t be AFKs in between. Or I at least need to get people to TELL me when they’re going AFK. Seriously, is it too hard to type “brb bio” or “brb baby”?
• WHY U NO TELL ME THAT UR SO TIRED, UR FALLING ASLEEP MID COMBAT?
• Getting some folks to sign and be on time is still a bit of a trial. :-/ Unfortunately (or fortunately), I haven’t had any people warming the bench to take their places. At least it hasn’t lead to any drama yet.
• It can be really hard at times to keep everyone’s spirits up. What can I do short of breaking out into a comical song about how we should keep trying again and again?
• I’ve had both non-guild and guild members who have signed up multiple times and not showed altogether. I should probably just not invite the non-guild people again but what about the guildies?
• I’ve got to learn a better way of absorbing strats. So far Tankspot videos have not been cutting it.

As a side note, I’ll be participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time ever so I think it’s safe to say that I won’t be posting here much, if at all, in the month of November. Nice to know for once that I’ll be busy ahead of time, eh?

Does this mean that the Twilight books can be summed up as “QQ moar, Bella”?

So here’s the deal

I’ve read blog after blog saying how difficult recruiting for a raiding guild has been this expansion. I’m certain that it’s partially due to the fact that players are more reluctant to leave an established guild, what with perks and reputation and achievements. It makes me wonder how many of them are like me, wanting to raid but unwilling to make the move to a new place with new people and all that rep to grind again. I love my guild and I like my place in it, but there’s still content I want to see, and somehow seeing it with a pug is worse than not seeing it at all. Funny how I can easily throw myself into random dungeons but stay away from pug raids like the plague. >.>

Bloodriver has attempted to get into raiding but something always happens to mess it up, even to the point where it was partially the cause of my long break. So we’re not going to try anymore, and that’s fine. We’re going back to our RP roots, which I fully support. But I know that within the guild, there are still folks who would like to raid, Kazi and myself included. That got me wondering how many people were in the same situation in other guilds, especially on an RP server like ours.

So I’ve decided to make a change

It’s always been easier to me to help the person in charge of something rather than take charge myself permanently. Our guild leader can tell you just how many times he left the guild in my hands during his breaks, and then as soon as he returned, I would immediately be shoving it back towards him, yelling “TAKE IT BACK!” But a guild officer, that I will happily be. This idea however is going to be my baby. I’m going to cast my shyness aside and declare myself the leader for it. I won’t be waiting on someone else to give me directions, all the decisions and responsibility will be mine. And it’s kinda scarey. O.o

It’ll be just like the title says

A raid group that has no guild association. One issue we’ve had before is guild members feeling they have some sort of entitlement for a spot simply for being in the guild. It won’t work that way this time.

I imagine the hardest part is going to be selecting the members. The requirements that I have in my head are rather…nebulous. One of the nice things about forming a guild raid is that you already know what kind of personalities you’re going to get. We all make the same crazy jokes and fooling around so we know that no one’s going to be offended by those in the raid. With strangers, you’re never sure if something is going to rub them the wrong way.

Here’s a quick brain dump of some of the possible requirements

• Sense of adult humor (doesn’t get scared away by boob jokes)
• Is more interested in seeing the content/story and having fun
• Isn’t going to be a loot whore
• Signs up for the raids and then actually shows
• Shows up on time
• Comes with necessary consumables (maybe on this one, I’m not a stickler for it)
• Is good at playing their respective roles (how it’s done doesn’t matter to me at all, we’re just not going to carry people. This is also one of the more ambiguous requirements)
• Understands we will wipe. A lot.
• Has Mumble installed (at least to listen, although talking is always encouraged too. I’m too lazy to type strats )
• Knows the fights ahead of time (maybe?)
• Is willing to dedicate several hours a week to raiding on a certain day(s) at a certain time. I don’t want people who are going to show up once and then leave. That’s what pugs are for >.>

“Being a team player” basically sums it up. But everyone has a different view of what that is. For some, it’s just “Not punching the other guy in the face”. But I want more than that. I want a raid TEAM, the kind of group that works well together, both tactically and personality-wise. But I also don’t want to scare people away from having too many requirements. So that list above will need some refining.

Loots and stuff

I want to start on the first Cata raids (BWD/BoT/TFW) so I’m hoping that will limit the amount of loot whores and elitest that show up. My biggest worry right now is that all the people who want to be carried through the content will come out of the wood works. >.<

I haven’t definitively decided on the loot rules yet but it’s between Suicide Kings and a simple need/greed roll. I’m going to make sure that either myself or someone I really trust (Kazi’s my default trust-y person) will be loot master of course.

I’m hoping that enough people will like raiding Saturday and Sunday afternoons (or maybe Friday evenings instead of Sundays), because raiding after work for me isn’t all that great.

If I’m really really lucky, we’ll get a full 10-man with a few subs to rotate in/full spots of players that couldn’t make it. If I don’t get enough interest, then oh well, I gave it a shot. If everyone and their mother wants to join, I’ll probably be overwhelmed and have to scramble for some sort of solution fast. But, I’ll have to see the response first.

Feedback, I would love some

This is my first time really trying to organize something outside of my guild so I would love it if the blogging community could give me some feedback or tips on this idea. Every blogger is so intelligent, wise, experienced, and not to mention drop-dead gorgeous after all. /endflattery

What loot system would you recommend? How should I try to advertise this idea (word-of-mouth/ realm forums/in-game global channels/contacting respected guilds/etc.)? How should I weed out the undesirables? What requirements should I keep or should I have none at all? Am I out of my flipping mind for wanting to do this? Any and all suggestions/tips are graciously welcomed.

Afterthought: The Have Group, Will Travel ability doesn’t work across servers for raids right? Because it would be completely awesome if it did. Blogger raids!

The strangest thing of all was that I had really wanted to play my baby rogue. Yep, I came back because I wanted to play an alt. I’ve barely ended up spending any time on her since, as the rest as been filled with all sorts of other activities on other characters.

I realized how much I missed my characters. When I went on hiatus, I sort of thought of them as taking a break too, that they were world-weary like me. But then I came back and discovered that my quiet, gentle Niqora had become angry and was pacing like a caged animal. She wants to shoot things in the face, particularly Deathwing and Garrosh. Saraku’s gone to new levels of awkwardness. Aroqin is hitting on everything that’s male (okay, that’s not new but it’s happening a lot more often). Niqo’s son Tuyok is growing up, getting stronger and bolder. Here I thought they were all resting peacefully but it turns out that time as been marching by for them as well.

I’d missed the familiar sights and sounds, the music, the lore I know at least marginally well. I missed the crazy roleplaying and the silly jokes. But most of all I had missed my friends and was elated to see that they had missed me as well. It was kinda awkward coming back to the guild I had been a part of for 2 1/2 years and see a bunch of people that I didn’t know. But I think I’ve found my place in it again.

ALL HAIL THE LEADERSHIT

Yep, making immature jokes at the expense of my guildmates (especially the guild leader). But hell, that’s what ALL of our jokes are like and I love it!

So, this is letting everyone know that I’m not dead (yet) and that I’m truly enjoying my play time. And all while still playing Minecraft on the side (ghasts are the bane of my existence).

So let all know that Faeldray has returned and that my new warcry shall echo throughout the halls: FOR THE LEADERSHIT!