Respect

That's something that is almost impossible to have online.  Why?  Anonymity.  It's the internet, nobody really knows you unless they already know you in real life.  So...be a jackass online, no repercussions.  Unless you are in EQ.

If you are reading this, you either know me in real life or in game as a guildie.  And you also know Cillie, my wife, the gm of the guild.  You know how hard she works to get people into raiding, be it flex or heroics or normals.  You know she cares about her rep and the guild's rep.  She is openly friendly, puts together fun events, does give-aways, and is an all around fun person to play with.

You may also be aware of her kicking out one of our former members because they had a history of being very juvenile to others in WoW.  Or maybe you didn't, but you do now.  Or how she kicked someone for raging over the BMAH.  Both were good raiders.  But attitude and personality mean more than posting good numbers in a raid.

So it comes as a little surprise when three people from the top 10-man ally guild hop onto their horde alts and give her shit.  I'm not talking about trash talking.  I'm talking about abusive language.  Trying to instigate a fight.  Belittlement.  Slander.  Real fifth grade kind of crap.

And for what?  Yeah, our main 10-man team was only 2 bosses begind them.  Some would say that it's close, but not for the bosses that we were up against.  Siegecrafter and Klaxxi.  Fights that take a lot of pulls to figure out.  Harder for us when we had a tank that had the raid awareness of a toothpick.  We're close, closer than anyone, but still a ways off.

Which really makes me wonder why the malicious trolling?  Yeah, we showed up all of a sudden with 4 heroic 25-man kills.  Big woop.  The other 25-man guild is at 12/14.  Why all the hate for us?  Why all the hate against Cillie?

Maybe they were just being little kids?
Maybe that's how they have fun?
Maybe they actually feel threatened by us?
Maybe they are salty when we turned them down for a merge for Mythic 20-man in WoD?

At the end of the day though, they are strangers over the internet.  All I can do is control myself, and to an extent my guild mates.  I won't ever tolerate anyone in my guild treating others how they treated us.  Like I said, Cillie has cleaned people out for crap like that.

But you better understand that I'll defend any of my guild mates, from a recruit to the gm, against anyone being an assclown to any of us.

I'm going to call back to some of my earliest posts, where I talk about 'coming out, guns blazing!'.  I'm getting that feeling again, like it won't be that hard to do.  We're always recruiting, we're always looking at how we can improve ourselves.  Watch us, you might see us get further than anyone else some day.  And it's going to be a great day.

You're the reason I'm a travelin on!

We've all been there, in a random dungeon, or LFR, where you get matched up with total clowns.  People you seriously wonder how in the world they ever managed to turn their computer on, much less go through the complex series of inputs to get a character to 90 and qued as your tank/healer/dps with you.  People that, if the human race depended on them for survival, you are fairly sure that our species would be, in totality, fucked!

Well, Blizz has heard us.  Hopefully.  With some of the info coming from the french and korean press events, it looks like Blizz is planning on making people get through at least a silver proving ground for a role on each character before queing up for the random dungeons, unclear yet whether it will be for all dungeons, or just the heroics, we'll have to see for sure about that.

Blizz, I'd kiss you all if I could right now.  Please don't make silver proving grounds face roll through, mkay.  Also, put in that kind of gating for LFR too while you are at it, maybe even a gold for getting into that que.  Yeah, it might be a hassle for the individual, but then you don't have the Benny Hill episode that some LFRs turn into right now.

There is already an ilvl requirement for dungeons and lfr's, might as well give everyone a skill check to complete also.  I don't think it's too much to ask, quite the opposite.  I think it's been needed since the beginning, and I can't wait to see it implemented.

On another note, one day away from when EQ goes 25man!  I know that Cillie and I, and all the officers, are really excited to see what we can all do together.  Hope everyone else is too, core and new comers.  Man it'd be a kick to get 25man Garry killed!

Those were the best days of my life!

And now the times are changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone



Group one ended their raid week last night.  More importantly, it was the last official 10 man raid that the core team, that has existed in part since around the time when Firelands tier came out, will ever get to do.  Because EQ is officially going 25's until WoD puts us into 20man Mythic.

The raid comp has changed over time, people dropping out, leaving, reforming under a different banner, struggles to find the right person at times to fill key spots here and there.  It's been a hell of a run.  Getting our first heroic kill in Firelands.  Me walking off heroic gunship just before spine, which we got our first heroic kill on Blackhorn that very pull.  That feeling when our raid team starts off an entire expansion at the very start together, all of us playing, leveling as fast as we can, chatting on Mumble while we play.  Then getting our first dogs kill in Mogu Palace.  And then later killing the Disco Dogs.  Making a hell of a run through ToT where we decidedly took the lead as the number one horde raiding team on Eldre'thalas.  Then SoO, where we stomped all our competition, and even made a second 10man team that also stomped the competition and is the second best horde team on the server, not that far back from ourselves.

To the ones that have stuck with us, those that have had to leave and have been able to come back, and to the newer members that have joined us in MoP, I want all of you to know, it has been a pleasure, an honor, fighting by your side.  We've done some truly heroic deeds, shared in the glory, taken down some of the toughest stuff Blizz has ever thrown at it's players, and we've beaten them.  You are all amazing players, true raiders, and I feel privileged to have been able to play with you.

Thank you.


Oh, when I look back now,
That summer seemed to last forever.



We go to 25man starting next week.  There still are things to iron out.  Still some decisions to be made.  We grow, become bigger, stronger, meaner, faster, all those things.  Before long, I'm predicted maybe three months from now (feel free to call me out when Mythic doesn't hit around the end of May*wink*), we'll be seeing stat nerfs, and what their vision of 20man raiding will be, and then not long after that, they throw us into WoD.  But until then, the Equilibrium banner will fly a little higher, as both cores add in a few more, and we see how the team works with a lot more people going at these bosses at once.

It's been a really fun past few months, getting our second team ready, for this very purpose.  We've had a server merge with Korialstrasz, and that has been pretty fun too, picking up a LOT of really good players from that server that, frankly, were not being utilized at all.  Which leads me to my next bit.

Leadership.

This is something that I think Korialstrasz and Eldre'Thalas have been missing.  I see other servers where there are many many progression teams, and I see these two servers where there are very few, almost none horde side, and a small handful on alliance.  Well, we, EQ, have proven that there are leaders out there.  We can get a group, several groups, together, and do some serious work with them.  But it goes beyond that.

I'll tell you what it takes to make a real progression minded guild to work though.  It takes someone that can foster relationships with everyone.  That can take time to get to know people, not just raiders, but general gamers, people that you want to play with, spend your time with.  Cillie, and our officers, you are the most amazing people finders in the world!

The meat and potatos.

When you are looking for solid raiders, you aren't looking just for those types of people.  You are looking for everyone, good personalities, friendly, sociable.  You are looking for people that want to just fly around and hunt rares, who like to farm crafting mats, people that play the AH, the BMAH, people that pet battle, people that pvp, rbg, people that theory craft, people that play other games even.  A raiding team is not built out of just raiders.  It's built out of everyone.  Some of our best raiders are friends of friends in the guild.  We absolutely never would have had the teams we have right now if it wasn't for all the cool, fun, "non-raiders" that we have in our guild.  That's all you "fill ins", members, etc.

All of us, not just the "raiders", make these teams.  You are all part of this experience.  Any of the achievements, our progression, our kills, we owe it to youguys and gals as well.  Every person in the guild contributes, daily, to it's success.  All of you, from new members to our GM, are the reason why we're where we are today!


WoD is going to be coming soon-ish.  We're supposed to be getting an info dump fairly soon, which means beta access starting to filter out to the masses not too long after that, with a quick road to launch behind it.  I'm going with about a three month time frame from when beta starts, to launch of WoD.  That's when a new era of raiding starts, and I know we're going to have some of the best people ever on our raid team, and in our guild playing a game we all love.  Here's to you, my guildies, my friends, and our future together!

For the Horde mon!

So, you want to be a Mythic raider huh?

It's coming close, closer every day, when Blizz will flip the switch and turn on Mythic rule sets in SoO.  We, Equilibrium, have been getting ready for it in a big way.  But we've got a lot of people that may be new, either to the guild, or heroic raiding, or maybe even both.  And some of those people may not know what raiding culture is like.  Maybe I can give some insight.

First off, this is a team sport.  Sure, you have your individuals; tanks, healers, dps.  You also have your raid leader, callers, assists, and other people giving out orders or calling mechanics out to the raid.  And while each individual needs to be the best they can be, the group needs to be better than the sum of the individuals.  At first glance, reading that sentence, you may be inclined to think that it's a really dumb statement.  I can break it down for you.

Our competition, Midnight Reverence, has highly skilled players raiding over there.  Arguably some of the best on Eldre'thalas, able to put up numbers better than almost everyone playing in our neck of the woods.  However, the group, has been very far behind in progression.  Now, I don't know all the particulars, but when one team beats another, and then gets a second team going and that second team beats them as well...there's something to notice there.

So what can make a team so good?  Well, I see a lot of different things.  The very first thing is leadership.  And it starts at the guild leader position.  To be very successful with a progression guild, you need to be able to lead people.  Now that goes beyond just telling someone "do this or else".  No, your guildies need to want to see the group succeed.  That takes work, finding those types of people.  Sure, everyone wants to be successful, but not everyone wants to share the glory, or put in more effort in return for less personal recognition.  Finding those types of players can be daunting, nigh impossible feeling sometimes.  However, a good leader finds those people, either directly or indirectly, and fosters relationships on many different levels.

But it also goes beyond the guild leader.  In our case, I'm just the raid leader.  I engineer fight strategies, take a look at comps, strats, mechanics, watch videos, read forums, look at logs, and come up with a play book.  But then all those strategies need to be communicated to the group.  That communication can make or break teams sometimes.  If the group is just banging their heads into walls for weeks on end without any new kills, people will leave.  That job falls on the raid leaders shoulders.

Officers have a part in this as well.  The guild, and not just the raiding teams, should have a particular type of culture that makes everyone there feel like a part of something great.  This is a social game, with all the "really cool stuff" taking a group of players to do.  As such, the general environment that everyone shares should be one that everyone enjoys.  If people aren't having fun, they won't stick around.

Beyond that though, there needs to be consistency.  Sure, people are going to get upset over things, sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not.  The great guilds will have some sort of system of consequences for dealing with those that want to ruin the fun for everyone else.  And that isn't limited to just inside the guild itself.  Really successful guilds will have a "presence" on their server, or even cross server.  People will take notice, and when one or many from that guild lash out, or otherwise tarnish the guild's reputation, well, they better be dealt with.

This may seem like a lot of nonsense for someone just looking for a raiding team, but it's not.  Each player in the raid team, even the guild in general, need to fully understand that they are part of something beyond themselves, that all of their actions, and even inactions, matter.  Once your team realizes this, you'll start to see some really amazing things happen.

Sure, your dps need to have their rotations down, healers able to keep everyone vertical, tanks perfecting boss positioning and cd usage.  But everyone needs to get along as well.  Sometimes that's much easier said then done.  It takes a lot of hard work, constant vigilance, and dedication to make happen.  For some teams/guilds that are going to try to make the move from 10man to Mythic 20man, I hope they are ready.  It's not going to be something that you just jump right into on day one of the next expansion.  It's something that a lot of people have to get used to.  Remember, not everyone agrees on everything all the time, so doubling your size is going to be a wild ride.  Hope you've been working on some good shocks for your guild when it starts growing.  It's going to be a real rough ride for most.

So when you are out there spamming for a team, or getting ready to suit up and slay bosses for the first time with a new group, keep those things in mind.  Yeah, you should be good at the game, but you also need to be good at life.

A few tips, be coachable.  That may sound real dumb, as if I'm acting like some highschool football coach that thinks he's still in the NFL.  But it applies to things other than sports, or games.  It applies to every part of your life.  There will be people that can provide tips for being a better husband or wife, for being better at your job, how to study better, or take tests better.  Be able to receive those criticisms and apply them to yourself.

Be agreeable.  That doesn't mean to let people walk all over you.  But at first glance, when someone asks something of you, and it just feels like it's an imposition upon yourself, sometimes there may be a reason for it that isn't perfectly clear, but there could be benefit for the group.  Example, having your raid leader sub you out for a fight for someone else.  They may want to try certain comps for a fight, and people need time to experiment and discover.  They may end up scrapping that idea, or you could learn the idea and work with them on it, even though you may not be the one to execute it.

Be aware.  Know what is going on around you.  I'm not just talking about "don't stand in fire", although that is very important.  But know when to communicate to others, and when to be quiet and listen.  Understand all the information being presented to you and manage it intelligently.  If your raid is dieing, and you are just a pure dps class, figure out why.  Sometimes you might be the one with the answer.  I can't tell you how many times someone in a different role will look at what is happening, and after a wipe, have what seems like a crazy idea at first, but when later implemented, gets us through something that was road blocking us before.  That isn't to say that you should just throw any retarded thought into the mix.  Instead, be able to make use of information and use it correctly to help others, and yourself.

At the very least, be friendly.  Most people aren't going to enjoy playing these games with total assclowns.  Even if you aren't the absolute best at something, as long as people enjoy spending their time with you, they'll want to do more things with you.  You'll get to experience and enjoy far more of this game with that type of mentality, I guarantee it.

So, each of us needs to be very well rounded people, in general, in life, to succeed, and that includes success in WoW.  That's what we look for, and when we find it, well, we do some pretty cool stuff.  Come join us if you fit what we're looking for, we promise a great time!

Knee deep in the hoopla sinking in your fight, Too many runaways eating up the night.

We built this city!

So, the devs have released some of their thinking behind the artwork for Garrisons.  Honestly, how much thought Blizz has put into this feature, I can't freaking wait!

This takes me back to something I heard Lore talk about quite often during one of his videos during Dragon Soul, where he was talking about how the story wasn't about us, but about how we were the sidekicks for Thrall and the Aspects...that sounds like a band name....  We get these cut scenes, bits of story, and it features a bunch of NPC's, and not any of us that are actually fighting these bosses.  It makes you feel like you don't matter.  And yeah, we all know we are never going to be as strong as Thrall, but our group is at least!

And I've noticed how Blizz has realized that desire in the player base.  All through MoP, everything is focused on us, the player.  Garrosh, and Wrynn, during the quests that came mid expansion down in Krasarang, the "pvp area", relies on us, the player, the super agent that has been out in the field.  The scenarios, the pandaren rely on us to free their beach of the Hozen menace.  Even the cut scenes in ToT and SoO feature us, our actual characters, making the charge at Siegecrafter, or Tortos's bridge.

And in WoD, we're going to be the one that builds the forward outpost, the city, the stronghold out in the wilderness.  The story, while still having lots of Alliance vs Horde, is going to be even more so about how we, individually, shape the world, literally.

I really like where Blizz is going with this.  And they aren't just doing stock building artwork for this stuff.  Which they totally could.  They could make it the typical Stormwind/Orgrimmar building look, just slap the same textures/models down in the wilderness, and solely focus on what the buildings do for us.  But they aren't.  They are making it, while still being true to the Stormwind/Orgrimmar, unique.  There are tons of detail in just the tiniest of things, like the book cases, the random bits of crafting mats on the floor, and then as the buildings "level up" they get cleaner, classier, bigger, badder!  It gets pretty fucking cool!!

If you haven't seen any of what I am talking about, go check everything out on MMO-Champion.  Do it!  DO EET NOAH!

Seriously, this game is going to let us design our own freaking town.  We get to build it all how we want.  We're freaking rock stars!  I've never been more excited about something in my entire gaming life as this.  And I really do hope that Blizz puts it in so that if you group with someone, or raid with people, everyone can go to the group leader's city, that'd be really cool.

This makes me think of stuff I read in the book "Ready Player One", where you have your own planet, or asteroid, stuff like that.  Or the private chat room that Aech ran where you could invite people in to hang out.  It's those types of things that I find very cool.  Where you can show off what you like, your interests, and just hang out, immerse yourself in what you enjoy.

You can go the distance...do it for your name...be a champion...on the walls of the hall of fame

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk48xRzuNvA

It's a good song, if you need something to get you going.

So, this morning's thought was sparked from a conversation going on at MMOC about how, at four months out from the start of SoO, how less than a quarter percent of the major raiding player base have killed heroic Garrosh.  http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1436187-0-23-of-Players-Defeated-Heroic-Garrosh

A low number.  Sure.  So what?

Some people want to make issues out of it.  Things like 'the game is in decline, less people even caring to raid', 'not enough incentive for people to try', 'it's too hard if only 0.23% of the players can finish it on the hardest difficulty'.

For me, being a heroic progression raider, I say all that is total bullshit.  People whining, making up excuses, crying, wanting things handed down to them.

My wife takes pride in having played almost all the Halo games through the campaigns on the hardest difficulty levels.  All of them.  I can't do that.  Sure, I'm pretty decent in pvp on that game, not great, but my wife, Cillie, our guild leader, in the campaign, she makes me look absolutely stupid.  She's good.  Zen-fucking-zone good.  She memorizes the games subconsciously.  She knows the stories, all the characters, everything.  She gets into that entire series like nobody else I know.

And that is bad ass on a level most people never experience.  My wife is amazing at that game, and I take ridiculous pride in that.  My guy coworkers brag about gaming, and I get to knock them all way down by telling them that my WIFE can smoke all of those games.

Now if she and I were to play something like WC3 or SC2, yeah, I'd roflstomp her like crazy.  Love you honey, but yeah, I own RTS's.

But back to the point.  Game difficulty.

Let's go back, old school.  You idiots today think you know game difficulty and beating a game completely?  Oh man, kids these days.  I'm like...giddy!

May 22, 1980.  Pakkuman gets released to the public in Japan by Namco.  October it finally hits the US, as Pac-Man.  Now, Pac-Man isn't hard, by today's game standards.  Not hard at all.  Little yellow guy, move in four different directions, up, down, left, right.  Eat pellets, dodge ghosts, get power up pellets to go apeshit on the ghosts for a brief time.

Easy concept.  Sure.  It has a finite amount of levels, and a maximum score.  Three million, three hundred thirty three thousand, three hundred sixty points.  3,333,360.  THE perfect score that all old school gamers know.

From when it was released, to the year 2009, only six confirmed people have "beaten" that game.  TWENTY NINE YEARS PEOPLE.  You want to talk about game difficulty, you start there.  Complaining about how somewhere between 5,000 to 17,000 players have been able to beat heroic Garrosh in four months, oh come on.  Grow a pair.  By Pac-Man's standards, we're all a bunch of mouth breathing idiots spending our time running into padded walls without the full use of all our limbs trying to play WoW, and still "winning".

And don't even start on me about differences in how people and gamers think today versus 1980, or any nonsense like that.  Records, and achievements in human history, are there for a reason.

So only a tiny fraction of the player base have "beaten" the raid content for this expansion so far.  So what?  It's funny, people's opinions and perspectives.  If that number had been ten times higher, people, probably the exact same people bitching about it being "too hard" or "a waste of game resources on something only a tiny amount of people get to do", would be bitching that the devs made the game too easy that anyone can finish.

Get your head out of your asses.  One of the other posters in the thread said my same thoughts quite well, and quite simply.  "I don't feel like I'm entitled to the kill.  If we get it we earned it."

I really feel like more and more people are starting to lose the inherent value of earning something.  Of working your ass off, a long time, with a lot of failure along the way, to finally get to a goal.  I really do feel like a lot of gamers, and expound this beyond gaming into the "general world", that more and more people fully expect certain things they do, or want to achieve, to be really easy for them.  That the idea of failing, over and over, for a very long time, at the same thing, be it a game, their job, a hobby, and working your ass off to finally get it right, is lost on a lot of people.  Like it's been chemically bred out of people by the government through our water supply, or it's in the air we breath, the meat/cheese/bread we eat.  You are all turning into a bunch of crying little whiny bitches, and it's gross.

Six people in twenty nine years share the hallowed spot of completely beating Pac-Man.  Six, out of BILLIONS.  Those are some fucking gamers right there.  The rest of us are just the spectators, eating our cheetos and drinking our beers while we watch the gladiators perform.

Just like major league sports, or entertainers, or doctors, lawyers, politicians, a very small fraction of the human race is able to perform at that level, and an even smaller fraction of that percent are going to be considered "the best".  It's how our entire race has been since the beginning of time.  Work for it, trust me, whatever it is you are really looking at and thinking, "man, that's so cool, so hard, I wish I could do that", work for it.  Struggle with it, fight for it, have the fucking will to fail over and over and still keep trying and learning and adapting and working new ideas and thinking about it constantly, every day, until you get it right.  Because when you do get it right, and see yourself at the top, with very few people around you, they'll know, and you'll know just what it takes.


And it will feel glorious.

New years is a horrible time sometimes.

A wonderful family member died around four in the morning on New Years day.  My father-in-law's nephew's eighteen year old daughter was shot by another college student, presumably on accident, as a party was winding down.  My cousin, her daughter, they both were the happiest of people, able to lift a room up just by showing up.  They are the type of people that always have a great story, a fun life-loving approach to the world, people that you want to be around and have in your life.  The thought that this has happened, that such a bright, energetic, fun person is gone, that she won't get to add any more to this world is horrible.

I won't go into any details here, it's not the place for stuff like that.  If I get around to telling, I'll come to you personally and tell you.

I have all these thoughts in my head, like how will the judge actually sentence this guy, the killer.  I wonder how the town will react to everything as they hear and learn about it.  I wonder if people will use the situation for political reasons.  I wonder what my own views about gun laws and stuff like that will change.  How does the saying go?  Something like "it's always different until it happens to you"?  I'm missing the actual wording of the saying, but it gets close to how I'm feeling right now.

This isn't the first time I've lost a family member.  I've lived through one of my grandparents dying to old age and Alzheimer's  and my mother having to travel across the whole country and Canada to take care of things.  I've had to live with my wife losing her grandmother just a day after New Years to cancer.  I had to live with a close friend in my high school band dying in a traffic accident.

But this, someone dying to another person's hands, this is new to me.  I see so many people come together because of this, all of us heartbroken, some of the people that were actually there unable to speak because they are so distraught that all they can do is cry when they came to visit the family, and it tears me up.  She had a big impact on a lot of people's lives, and that won't ever happen again.  Ever.

And then I think about how I would feel if that were my mother, father, my wife's parents, any of my brothers and their families.

My wife.

I have to force my brain to think of anything else, do anything else, because if I let that thought stay, I break down.  And it's just a thought.  I can't handle the thought of this happening.

But my cousin, his wife, his two other kids, both boys, they have to deal with this right now.  This impossible thing.  It isn't a thought.  It's now their lives.  They have to deal with this unimaginable pain.  There isn't any way we can take this pain away.  It stays, it washes over all of us, them most of all, in ways we never thought could happen.

This changes lives.

Forever.

That's something that I hate most of all.  Will my cousin no longer be the wonderful, happy, life loving man he always has been?  Will I ever be able to joke around with them?  Or will we just see each other and know that the brightest of us isn't around anymore?

And this is just my side of things.  The kid that shot her, his family, they have their own level of pain and suffering to deal with.  To know for the rest of your life that you took something that can never be replaced out of this world, how does that change a person?  To know you've caused so much pain and suffering in the world for so many people, how does that eat away at you from the inside, out?

I don't know what else to say or do, so I'm just going to stop here.