[WoW] Thinking on coming back, how much has it changed?

[Genjiro]

That's sort of the reason I'm not so much giving a shit about progression, finding a good guild and so on. I think if you wanted to play and take arena seriously, which seems like it could be fun with a good partner or three/four, you could casually raid, do 5 mans, and just pvp whenever and not have to worry so much about all the typical bullshit.

[Mythas]

To be honest, as having knowing one of the first Horde Paladins and first alliance shaman you have to be FAST. Not just hey im moving but you play for the first 24 hrs straight and catch up to everyone else. That is the only thing that will separate you from the rest of the "flock". The people that prove themselves early to be a dedicated DK will have a good word of mouth. If you can catch / be slightly ahead of the "bubble" when it comes to leveling you will make those social circles.

Another thing i can tell you is to know the class very well. Remeber you will be playing with / against people who have played xx class for years. Know the good specs for tanking / dps -- don't have a retarded lulz ima dk spec.

Case in point. I was in zuljins resident horde uber guild Transcendence. They broke up a short time before TBC dropped and reformed. I didn't like the drama so i didn't join back up. TBC drops and I stay well ahead of the bubble. I get everything done early. Im the first horde mage to 70 and from all the hardcores that are leveling up I'm grouping with them almost exclusively. I get my kara key done before the bubble hits 70. I do kara with the one or two guilds that have enough members to do runs but need mages.

I guess to make that long story short is you can't be in that 1000's of DKs. You have to be above them. If dk is the class you want to play you have to show people you are better than the 999 other mouthbreathing dk's out there. To do that you are gonna have to make some sacrifices to get your name out there early! Otherwise it will just get lost in the masses.

P.S I would tell you to suck it up and roll a hunter plow to 70 and start doing dailies. Pick up some good twink lewt along the way and buy lots of potions. Transfer all that + any of the money you have left along the way over to the dk to get a good head start.

[Kasi]

Originally Posted by Genjiro

That's sort of the reason I'm not so much giving a shit about progression, finding a good guild and so on. I think if you wanted to play and take arena seriously, which seems like it could be fun with a good partner or three/four, you could casually raid, do 5 mans, and just pvp whenever and not have to worry so much about all the typical bullshit.

That would work if I didn't find the solo game worthless and the 5 man game initially fun but ultimately repetitive and boring. Yeah my wife and I quit the game early last year and we came back with that mindset. Just play for ourselves, don't worry about stuff, don't get involved in stuff. It only worked until we drained the content dry.

[Tenks]

So basically to ensure that you're in a hardcore raiding guild so you don't have a life is make sure not to have one before hand

[Genjiro]

Re: Mythas

I don't think that applies to these people who are talking about playing mostly casually. You would have to be living in your moms basement or take vacation time (lol at that) to be one of the first DKs leveled up since a ton of people who can play WoW all day will be leveling DKs up then too. It will sort itself out in time who the best players are, even if they're slower. I don't know how many times playing in the resident uber guild in whatever game, playing an alt with guildies etc we get a pug player who blows us away (obviously very skilled) and we get them to app later on etc.

Be good at your class, the rest would take care of itself usually. The hard part with WoW is there are SO many fucking people it's harder to get in those groups. Personally, with the low raid limit I'm hoping to get a small group of excellent players I've played with over the last decade and tear shit up. Every good/top guild I've played in has been very small and a tight bunch, eventually it's like ESP you know what everyone else will be doing.

[Draegan]

I know that strat, except it's the time. I'd have to take off work to do that.

On the server I play on, Garona, I have a 69 Priest, 70 T5ish Shaman both Alliance and a fresh 70 BE Prot Paladin. The one thing I'm thinking about is that I may take advantage of the DK starting a 55 to roll on a PVP server if they allow that (and I think they are).

Trust me, I spend plenty of time theorycrafting and min/maxing every class I play. That's not an issue, its usually schedule. I don't want to commit X amount of hours a week to play. I usually play a lot after work, but I don't want to HAVE to play. I got other things that go on.

I'll probably get the expansion going and rolling a DK and take off of work (half day on a friday or something, not full days!) and race through everything and see what I can do. Good thing about DKs is that you don't need gear to tweak since you get that from quests. But it's just the cash to buy a epic mount that I don't have lying around.

I'm looking forward to finding a guild to run all the 10 mans with.

Rambling now.

[Mythas]

that was mostly in reference to dreagen. It seemed like he was worried about climbing above the masses so he wasn't just some a_random_dk_999.

I really hate the notion that you have to not have a life to be in a raiding guild. I have been in hardcore raid guilds and yeah progression tends to eat more time 3-4 hrs a night or so 5 nights a week, but once you "progress" you are doing nightly clears and have 4 - 5 days off a week. Keep track of how much time you waste on forums as well as watch tv if you add it up odds are you have enough time to be in a hardcore raid guild. You are just substituting one form of entertainment for another.

Genj- I know you can always build a reputation slowly over time, and many, many people do. However in my opinion its actually easier and more efficient to get that early jump and get your name out in those wow social circles. If you are in the first few of your class to hit 80 your name is already out there and your work is done. After you hit 80 and all the other dks are still working thier way through the 70's you can retract your play time and group with the early birds who are usualy those guys / gals in the good guilds and see which one fits with out much competiton.

Just like with alliance shaman and horde paladins there were alot of great people at the class, but because it was new and shiny there were alot of horribad people there too. The good ones that didn't get out there early enough had to wait for that group to notice thier skills or for the right people to find out who they are. Did it make them any more / less good than the early birds? Not at all. However, they had to play the "I hope some good people notice my skills" for months because there were just sooo many to choose from.

[rangoth]

Originally Posted by Mythas

First: you all admit you are casual, which by nature isn't condusive to getting 10 people in the same place at the same time. This leads to problem number two

Second: Since problem one exists you need more people to fill the roster to account for other said "casual" people because you can't depend on them to be on.

Thrid: Because of one and two you are increasing your sample size and decreasing the average skill level. This is the reason why "casual" guilds of small size never really work. The good players that have above avg play time get tired of waiting on everyone to log on and they just go join a hardcore guild.

I dont agree with that, but I guess that is because it is a semantics argument.

I am "casual". That doesn't mean I don't play alot, 4-5 days a week for me. I understand this varies with everyone's definition however.

My problem is that I have no desire to be part of a, keyword, RANDOM 25 man guild. What I mean is a bunch of my old EQ buddies made a guild and wanted me, or I met 25 co-workers who didn't completely suck, I would join a 25 man and progress. I love raiding and I love wiping and learning new encounters, that IS fun to me. My problem is I dont want to apply to "Spirestone guild #13", which let's face it....is the same pile of fucking losers that were wiping halfway through BWL two years ago. Now they are stuck at 6/7,8/9 or whatever the fucking ratio is and they've been like that for months.

What I would do however is be part of a "casual" guild of skilled players who raid and progress, maybe 2-4 times a week, consider 5 if it was crunch time or awesome fun. The expansion makes this dream for me a possibility!

Now while I probably won't end up joing Sharmai and Draegen(though the offer stands). I assume they are people like me. I already have a huge friends list of good people and about 4-6 skilled people in my current guild I like. And come expasion I believe some of the members of the "so-so" guild that have to sit out might be looking for a new home now that there are other options. Maybe, maybe not. The point is that right now it was impossible to make and hold a 10 man guild of small, tight knit, skilled players because they got bored, there wasnt shit to do. They wanted more and 25 man was where to go. But in the expansion that same group could push through the same as a larger guild. If we finish all 10 man's...maybe merge with another 10(not offically but just for raids) and do the 25's(Im sure each guild has 1-2 extra to fill last spots).

Here's to hoping anyway. The result of my long-winded pointless banter is that I enjoy being with PEOPLE and I also enjoy progressing in the game....and I'm too old and too hard-headed to give up either for the other.

[Kasi]

Its not that easy Mythas. Being in a hardcore raiding guild means commiting 4 nights plus a week to being there. Which means you can't make plans. Sure you can say its on farm, I only raid 2 nights a week. We did that between BT and Sunwell. Guess what we did? Older dungeons, partial alt raids where you're pretty much required to go, stuff like that. And even if you don't, you never know when fail is going to get infectious and your 1 day BT clear turns into a 2.5 day one because people forgot how to step out of the fire. Or that your plan to finish everything in the first two days gets messed up because its farm, people don't come, and suddenly your thoughts of finishing the raid on Wed/Fri gets pushed to Sunday and yeah. It's a job.

And then of course once you get back into content well its back to the real grind. The truth is that only a few top guilds have such a well oiled machine. Even though the guild I was in was tops on our server, it certainly never was like that. It was 4 nights a week for 8 months with a little bit of a relax when farming. We only did 4 nights a week. By hardcore standards that isn't very hardcore. But it was just too damn much. 4/7 of my nights being subject to being online at 8pm to be in a raid is not casual to me by any stretch.

[rangoth]

Originally Posted by Kasi

Its not that easy Mythas. Being in a hardcore raiding guild means commiting 4 nights plus a week to being there. Which means you can't make plans. Sure you can say its on farm, I only raid 2 nights a week. We did that between BT and Sunwell. Guess what we did? Older dungeons, partial alt raids where you're pretty much required to go, stuff like that. And even if you don't, you never know when fail is going to get infectious and your 1 day BT clear turns into a 2.5 day one because people forgot how to step out of the fire. Or that your plan to finish everything in the first two days gets messed up because its farm, people don't come, and suddenly your thoughts of finishing the raid on Wed/Fri gets pushed to Sunday and yeah. It's a job.

And then of course once you get back into content well its back to the real grind. The truth is that only a few top guilds have such a well oiled machine. Even though the guild I was in was tops on our server, it certainly never was like that. It was 4 nights a week for 8 months with a little bit of a relax when farming.

Agree with all of that.

And I do not expect to have the best gear or be #1, I just want to progress and I am ok with it being slower than big boys.

Everything I've heard and read about WotLK says that I will get this...now to just find my small pack of 10-13 that are good!!!

[Mythas]

Ran i totally get what you are saying. I guess i was more or less playing up the "casual" side a bit more. If you can get a roster of about 15 - 20 people who you KNOW some group of 10 will be on nightly, then yeah that shit would rock.

The difficulty lies in getting the right people to log in nightly. You have to have a tank or two and you have to have 2 - 3 healers on. Yes i agree that pepoles deffinition of casual varies greatly. Yours seems to be the I play frequently and enjoy raiding but slamming my face in bleeding edge content for weeks farming all day to raid all night bleeding edge isn't my thing. To be honest thats mine too. I still twich when people mention Heigen and Thaddius for that reason, and to a lesser extent 4Horsemen.

However in attempting to start a few of the guilds you have in mind in my time I can tell you that when people you don't know all that well say they play casually...You can usually expect 2 nights a week. So to field that 10 man roster nightly you have to have like 50 people, which is a far stretch from what you are looking for.

[Draegan]

There needs to be a definition between casual and hardcore.

I get the general vibe that casual is 1-4 nights a week, mostly 2 for an hour or two at a time. I got this from running a guild in AOC.

Hardcore was explained easily a few posts ago.

What do you call someone who plays 3-6 nights a week depending on their social life who has the knowledge of a min/max'er and plays as good or better than your average hardcore player, but doesn't stick to a consistent schedule. Because this is what I am. I play games when I'm at home, and don't really watch TV. So in between coming home at night, making dinner, I'm playing. I'm in my late 20s, have my own apartment and a regular job, but when the call comes that my buds are hitting up the spot I'm out. I can't tell them no because my Guild Leader says I have to heal tonight.

[Kasi]

Part of the issue for me has to also deal with my personality type in how I approach games. Very much a completionist and a min/maxer. I play to win (well as much as my skills allow, which wasn't so great in arena sadly) and if my raid raids for X days a week, I go for all X days. I hate missing out on stuff so I'm always a 100% attendance guy. Which means WoW could be fine for me if I could find people like myself who wanted to do stuff on 2 nights a week. Fat chance me finding such a group of players with that mindset and who I get along with.

[rangoth]

Originally Posted by Mythas

Ran i totally get what you are saying. I guess i was more or less playing up the "casual" side a bit more. If you can get a roster of about 15 - 20 people who you KNOW some group of 10 will be on nightly, then yeah that shit would rock.

The difficulty lies in getting the right people to log in nightly. You have to have a tank or two and you have to have 2 - 3 healers on. Yes i agree that pepoles deffinition of casual varies greatly. Yours seems to be the I play frequently and enjoy raiding but slamming my face in bleeding edge content for weeks farming all day to raid all night bleeding edge isn't my thing. To be honest thats mine too. I still twich when people mention Heigen and Thaddius for that reason, and to a lesser extent 4Horsemen.

However in attempting to start a few of the guilds you have in mind in my time I can tell you that when people you don't know all that well say they play casually...You can usually expect 2 nights a week. So to field that 10 man roster nightly you have to have like 50 people, which is a far stretch from what you are looking for.

Yea, what you said is spot on for me. And as you said, the right people would need to log on, etc....and honestly, I am ok with missing a night due to flucuations in playtime as long as the avg in the end was 2-4 nights a week for me, of course excluding Fri/Sat(fellow boozers out there?).

And actually you're a bit off on me. I have no problem with farming consumables, wiping 5 days in a row to the same shit, any of that. Where my beef is, is that I don't want to join a random guild full of some good players, some scrubs etc, just to get 25 man. I don't want to be in a large guild with some assholes that I hate just to progress. I would 100% without question join a 25 man raiding team and guild if it were people I liked(I used the example of my old EQ guild, or a set of people I knew in RL etc). Of course the higher that number gets, the harder it is for it to be a fun and friendly environment.

In my perfect world, which will never happen, my guild would be 12-15 players of which 8-12 were on any given night. We would schedule maybe 2-3 nights a week to raid that were decent times for everyone. On the other days the people that were on could do stuff together, towards the start of the expansion it would be 5 mans....at what is now in the expasion it would maybe be going back to farm an older 10 man, whatever....maybe even try progressing in the current one.

But all of those people would be decently skilled people whom I enjoy being around. Recently(few months back) I wanted to get into BT and such, so I joined the 25 man guild on my server that was appropriate for my gear level etc, to progress with them. I hated it, lasted 3 weeks. It had nothing to do with wipes. It's because it was 13 or so good people, then 12 fucking idiots, constantly the same people wiping everyone. It was also full of people that don't like eachother and couldn't handle loot intelligently or easily(god I love officer decisions, it's always best for the guild excluding corrupting).

In a 10 man of mutual friends and understanding you can just decide on loot like adults, if 2 people want something, guess what, well come back for you.

[Mythas]

Dude i was in a hardcore raid guild from MC to Naxx. And before that EQ for 3 years. I mean i guess my wow guild was a well oiled machine, we had very few memebers we "put up with" due to ties and or longevity, but they only got to play during farm time.

When we had bwl on farm we did bwl one night and mc one night, thats it. Anything "alt" related was done on your own time and through other memebers volunteerism. Nothing required. AQ comes out, We did that shit till we had it down. Then it was bwl one night a week and aq took us 2. Naxx hits the stage and well we just did that, still maintaing two off nights a week. Like i said progression can be a bit draggy, but if your RL's maintain off nights *critical for progress and against burn out* and maintain defined raid time "the train leaves at 7 and stops at 11 or 12 what have you" it shouldn't feel like a job...

At least if 20 hours a week feels like a job well perhaps you have never had a job...I mean i know plenty of people that watch 20 hours of tv a week, again we are thinking of this on a week basis. 20 hours a week, out of 168. Certainly they don't feel thier tv habbits feel like a job do they? Vent convos and socializing all while playing a game that people have fun playing isn't my idea of a "job" in the negative sense...but hey thats just me.