Preparing Cataclysm

As we were flooded with pictures at MMOChampion from the newly and supposed closed Alpha of Cataclysm expansion, and with the problems I have been going through with my guild, I began to think about what I want to do during the next expansion, how and with whom. So many people talked about the changes in raiding announced, gave their opinion that it would be yet another post about it. I’m not interested in doing that. I prefer to think it over, pounder it, discuss with my friends about their projects and try to decide what I want to do in six months.

I want to raid seriously

Raiding is my first love in this game. I like the team-play. I’m raiding in a pretty hardcore fashion these days and quite like it. I don’t want to go back to more social or casual guilds with my raiding toons at the moment, having experienced what a dedicated raid can be.

I want to play with people knowing their class, tuning their characters, aware of their surroundings in raid, coming to raid prepared and on time with their consumables. I don’t want to have to tow people through raids, everyone should carry his own weight. I’m not a baby-sitter.

I’m a perfectionist. I tend to expect from everyone to be one too and I’m often disappointed. And I’m not only talking about our toons. Every wannabe HC raider has a very well tuned toon. I’m talking about in their attitude. For me, being a good raider is not only using a perfect toon, but also having a good team-play, be prepared, not being selfish and think about the group first. I just don’t understand people who only think about themselves, are late, are careless, we generally end up fighting each other via forum or guildchat.

I want a friendly environment or at least a respectful one

I don’t want to spend my evening eyes in the eyes with the  boss. I’d like my raidmate to be there not only for the boss, not only for the competition, but also for the guild, for the people. I’ve made friends on the servers I’m playing on for two years and some of them are damn good players as well as good friendly guys. I’d prefer to play with them, if they are still here when Cataclysm launches, than with strangers whatever these strangers’ skill could be.

I’ve met quite hostile players in my raids and guilds. I’m still dealing with some of them and feeling hostage in my guild. You can’t like everyone, but you can’t ignore the asshats either… There is a minimum of respect to give to people, and to expect from people. I will not stay in a guild with those people, when a new start will be given to everyone when Cataclysm will launch.

Less quantity, more quality

I’m raiding 5 nights a week at the moment. Because I keep the 2 remaining evenings for RL meetings with friends or watching DVDs, or RPing with my troll. I saw some pretty good guilds raiding only 3 days a week, but being first server and going pretty far.

Actually, I think it’s too much. I’ve done that for one year now and I’m pretty tired and I’d like to play my other toons a little bit more, or just do something else sometimes.

It’s as simple as that, you can raid 3 nights a week and do some awesome raiding and achievements. I could do that too.

Guild leadership and me : no more lazy officers

I’m someone who needs to be involved in things. Being active in guild is natural and becoming an officer is often a follow-up to this attitude. During my time as an officer and member in my WotLK raiding guilds, I learned a lot. I have been guild leader and created my own guild with friends, but my goal was too hard-core, too demanding for those people who joined and I failed. I failed to be in phase with the other officers, in fact, I didn’t chose them and of course it ended up badly with one of them. I could call them lazy, but it was more a different point of view in term of expectations.

Then I found a new guild, and loved the people, became very active myself but the activity in the guild declined and I found myself, along with my boyfriend, leading raids, doing basically the officers job while they were away to keep the guild running. At the same time, a friend we had in the first guild of the server had heard we were not happy raid-wise in our guild. He talked to us and convinced us to apply in his guild where he was an officer. At first, I admit it frightened me (us, as my boyfriend came too). But there, I discovered what hardcore raiding really meant. And I met some fantastic people, especially among the officers : awesome players, educated people, smart, with a view of gaming and raiding I loved. It was a nightmare when the guild disbanded causing a diaspora of those people.

I transferred and it was not easy. I fought for my raiding slot and was ready to leave when the guild changed lead, then settled, and a few months later, I was promoted officer and the hell began. I will blame other people of course, even if maybe, I have my bad sides, my expectations were deceived and so on. I just got no recognition from the other officers. At first, former officers, whom I disliked a lot, had still access to the officer forum and they kept doing nasty comments, denigrating my work and my opinion. My GM and the rest of the team let it go and never stepped up to help me. Then the guildies began to treat me like that, some even insulted me in guild chat with no consequences.

Recently, I’ve been demoted : « People don’t take you seriously, it’s not your fault. You were a good officer and did a great job, but I need to replace you. » Sure, whose fault then…

Where I am going with all these old stories ? To Cataclysm. I won’t follow a leader whom I disagree with in term of raiding but also in term of human resources. In Gods of War, the leading team had the balls to kick players when they were pure asshats. Even if they got the top gear. Even if they were skilled. Even if they got lots of friends in the guild. Even if that means you will have to find new recruits. I loved that spirit. I trusted them. It may be hard what I’m saying, because I really like my current GM who is a great guy and works a ton for the guild, but I feel like he’s being lazy and a coward. Even if I wanted to, I can’t trust him. If you’re in charge : take charge !

(For those who may wonder why I’m staying in my guild, let’s say I’m lazy… Actually, I don’t want to face a new server, a new training period, so I enjoy my alts, I raid and try to ignore the 2 or 3 bastards of the guild, I talk to people I like in private chans or in /w… Until Cataclysm…)

My toons

My main is a night elf hunter. Nefernet is so much more for me than just a bunch of pixels. It’s a name, it’s a story, it’s lots of effort, time, sweat in getting better at playing her. It’s a ton of fun too. It’s tears and laughs, it’s memories. I want to go on with her in Cataclysm. I don’t know what to think about the hunter’s changes, I’ll wait and try it by myself. Hopefully, BRK who is back will make the waiting more fun.

I love my other toons, especially those with a story : my night elf druid, my troll shaman. I’d like to level the shaman and the priest to 80 and maybe gear them if I find the time. Maybe level an Alliance shaman too, shaman is fun levelling.

So what then ?

There are several options I’m considering for Cataclysm.

I could look for a 25-man raiding guild. An old one with mature members, maybe on an English server, with strong leadership. I’d love to go on raiding in 25-man but the changes they will make will be some hard blow in the head of 25-man guilds. The guild will have to be pretty solid, the member focused and knowing what they want, and the officer team well-organized to keep their members. A 25-man guild surviving to Cataclysm (I don’t think my current guild will survive it with this kind of leadership) would be pretty strong and trustworthy.

I like raiding 10-man too, but have currently no time. In Cataclysm, there will be a choice to do. It will be 25-man or 10-man. A 10-man guild could be the chance to match the « less quantity, more quality » point, not only time-wise. The gear will be the same, meaning that if I ever want to go back to 25-mans, I could keep up in term of gear.

You have to know that many of the people that I cared for in Gods of War joined Ascendance. Some are raiding, some are socials, but all of them are friends. They are the only reason why I’m still in my guild or I would have left at the launching of ICC I think. At the moment, every time something bad happens in guild, I joke with my friends about launching a 10-man guild with only friends. It’s not serious at the moment as no one knows exactly what he will be doing then but some ideas are recurrent.

That’s actually pretty serious ideas we have. A 10-man guild enabling light leadership, as every one of us have been an officer for a more or less long time and don’t want to deal with the logistic of a 25-man guild at the moment.  A hard-core guild : people really dedicated to their toon(s), very good players, no compromise with this, we all have had to tow bad players through guild runs, it’s a pain. Three raids a week, because we know we are good players and can afford that and still be competitive with the other guilds. Like-minded people, because we all got our fix of asshats in previous guilds. The idea of having at least one geared, raiding and well-played alt came to our minds too in order to be able to mix our raid comp if necessary.

The biggest advantage of this kind of guild would be to stay on Elune with my friends. My friends from GoW, my friends from Ascendance, because I realised recently that only a minority of people made my life a hell here. Many people liked the job I did as an officer, and are great people, good players. I will need to install some addon to deal with tells because with the farmed content we are doing now, I can afford to talk with people in raid and some addon would be quite handy…