A Response

I was wondering what I would blog about today since I didn’t do hardly anything in game last night. Luckily, a comment to one of my other posts filled the need quite nicely.

I started Comment Moderation when people started using my comments to advertise websites. As recently as this week, I’ve had to reject comments that were nothing more than an add for a Power Leveling service.

In the year plus I’ve run the blog there has only been one comment that I haven’t published, and even in that case I did publish it, but then deleted it.

I say all that to preface this post. I have chosen to not publish a comment I received as a comment. Rather, I’m going to reprint the comment in this post so that I may respond. I would have preferred to address this with the writer of the comment privately, however that wasn’t possible. This comment was left by Anonymous. I understand some people don’t want to be bothered with having to register for a site to comment, but you could always sign your post at the end as Fredykin does.

So with the preface out of the way, let’s move into the comment itself.

“You left Heroes when YOUR gear progression stopped.
You left Mal Katai when YOUR gear progression stopped.
You left Dominion when YOUR gear progression stopped.”

This is absolutely and patently untrue. I have no problem with people disagreeing with me or even making comments that are critical of me. However, these statements are not truthful. You might want to talk to the leaders of Heroes (Ferth) and Mal Katai (Dora/Brindall/Raistilan)because I’m sure they will tell you these comments are untrue.

I left Heroes still needing many upgrades out of Karazhan. In fact, we had just gotten Prince into single digits on my last run with them. The following week a kill was likely and would have seen our first Tier 4 helm.

My gear progression had not stopped.

With Mal Katai, the very last raid I did with them saw a progression kill on Leotheras and our first Tier 5 gloves. Knowing I was leaving, I passed on them, despite having the most DKP at the time. I also still did not have my T5 shoulders from Void Reaver despite Mal Katai killing him a couple of times.

My gear progression had not stopped.

My last raid with Dominion was our first go at Brutallus, which Dominion would get a kill on the next raid. I didn’t have a single drop out of Sunwell and still needed a couple of drops out of Black Temple.

My gear progression had not stopped.

I'm sure that in each case there were alot of little things that moved you toward the decisions that you made in leaving that you never blogged about.

This is absolutely true. In an attempt to not criticize my raid and guild leaders anymore than I had already done, I didn’t publicly blog about the other ‘little things’ that moved me to change guilds. I can’t tell you how many posts I wrote complaining about those ‘little things’ that upon further reflection I chose not to publish.

I can assure you those ‘little things’ played a far larger role than gear.

However, from this reader's perspective you are pretty much all about getting loot.

Then I have done a poor job of communicating what I’m all about, and for that I apologize.

Perhaps I’ve made too many ‘I got loot’ posts. But I got comments that readers actually enjoyed hearing about a new piece of loot I’d receive so I included them. Methinks thou dost protest too much.

I think anyone who has known me for very long knows I’m a lore fan (I’m also a Lore fan, but that’s not really germane at the moment). Lore is the driving force for me in the endgame, not loot, but they are connected.

Loot is what is needed to turn the page to get to the next chapter of the story, to continue exploring the lore. At first, it was just raiding. In order to continue to pursue the story lines and lore of the Burning Crusade you had to transition from quests to 5 mans to Raids. Then loot was needed to transition from one tier of raids to the next.

Who will you blame when you are the driving force bringing the loot into your guild?

I’m really not sure what this question means. I’ve designed a loot system for my prospective guild, which I’ll follow if I decide to go that route.

AoS is a well established server at this point. Which means that if you recruit from established guilds, the people coming into your guild are looking to step up from where they are... that means progression kills.

It is not my plan to recruit out of established guilds. I’ll be looking for ‘free agents’. I’m sure if my guild provides what people are looking for, people from established guilds will contact me.

You want progression kills, you need a raid leader who is online an hour before raid start time and then online a half hour after raid time to deal with all the BS that came up during the raid. How many nights a week can you commit to? Three? that's not very much to the really hardcore raiders... but its way too much for the casual raiders.

I believe there are many quality players who are looking for just that: a progressive guild with a limited time commitment.

I really don't know what might be best for you.

I don’t either. I wish I did, it would make making a decision so much easier.

Judging by the amount of critical thoughts you have for your past guilds, you would be better off leading your own guild. And by the same token, depending on your expectations of what your guild will be about... all your critical thoughts may very well doom you to failure.

I’ve never been truly happy with the way any of my former guilds were run, and I’ve made it known on my blog. There is a level of commitment that I need to make to the 14 to 20 brave souls who would choose to ‘follow old Obi-Wan on some damn idealistic crusade’.

I can’t go forward until I’m confident in my own mind that I will be willing to see this thing all the way through, to build and rebuild the guild more than once if necessary. This is why I’ve taken the better part of a week to try to come to a decision on this move.

I may decide I'm not willing to make the commitment of time, energy and emotion necessary to run a guild, but I may very well decide that I am.

I just need to get off the fence and make a decision.