Funny old day

Had a go at Warhammer...not truly impressed. It's clunky. Nice ,though ,that they stole most of the movement/fighting/casting dynamics from WoW to make the playing transition easier.

Raiding guild has disintegrated apparently, the officers and a few raiders left in the past week. Today was an Old Testament exodus by the looks of it. Guild has called a halt to 25 man raiding.

Its an interesting dynamic to me how fast a successful raiding guild can implode. Server 5th/7th/9th, couple of bad weeks and they do a Deathnugget explode corpse routine.

I guess one thing is always true in raiding guilds. It is easy to put up with hand shandy merchants when you are all progressing. When progression stops, everyone suddenly realises there is nothing left to make them put up with the twats they have been playing with. Most of the raiding guilds I would have a look at have already been applied to by the twats, so the Boomdaddy is unsure what to do. My one real friend in the guild left today also, so there are no ties at all there now. With no 25 man raiding on the agenda for the foreseeable future, what is a Boomkin to do?

Do we swallow the bitter pill of Blizz's obsequious pampering of scrubs and come back to WoW? Do we apply to a top raiding guild? Do we go back home to the old lovelies? Or just call it a day and jog on.

Its trickier than the thorny issue of why Horde boomkins do not have antlers.....they are presumably the females and alliance are males.....that's just too much for me. I can't shag a moo cow.

RIP WoW- or death by patch 3.2

I really should not leave the country. I blame myself. A week or so away from WoW and Blizz seems to have gone completely apeshit bonkers. When I say that they are going mad, I do not mean they are going a little eccentric like your great Aunt Betty who smells of moth balls. No, I mean full bore window licking, diaper wearing, pant sniffing mentalist.

Yes Blizz, I am looking at you with my Boomdaddy eye of Mordor. Why are you systematically destroying everything that I care about in this damn time sink of a game?

What has got my goat? Patch 3.2 has. Most specifically, the proposed changes to the emblem and badge system.

ALL Heroic instances and Pre-Ulduar raids will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead of Heroism or Valor.

Heroic Daily and Daily Dungeon quests will also award Emblems of Triumph.



Ok, it seems that Blizzard is not satisfied with the already dumbed down product that WoW has become. Now it needs to feed T8.5 and T9 gear to the scrubs who cannot handle real raid content. I mean for fucks sake break this down.....lets say the average scrub plays for 3 hours per day Monday-Friday and 6-8 hours over the weekend. How many Emblems of Conquest can said scrub pick up in a good week?

Lets see...
47 Emblems per week from Heroic 5 mans IF they only do each one once per week. (if you ran CoS and Gundrak daily it would be 77 Emblems just for those 2 instances).

15 Emblems from a Naxx 10 clearence

15 Emblems from a Naxx 25 clearance

6 from VoA (10 and 25)

2 from EoE (10 and 25)

8 from OS (10 and 25)

So whats that , then? 93 Emblems (or 123 if you do CoS/Gundrak) without breaking too much of a sweat. Jesus wept. Throw in 14 Emblems of Triumph for doing the two instance dailies for T9 good measure, why don't you Blizz?

Which ever way you shake it, the worst players are going to have T8.5, T9 and Ulduar crafted gear coming out of their scrub arses inside 4 weeks. Yes Ulduar best in slot crafted gear! Why? Because all those Emblems means Runed orbs from heaven, like it was Christmas.

And what is all this about? Money. Top end raiders (that are now leaving the game in droves)make up 5% maybe of the customer base. Casuals the other 95%. If Blizzard lose the 500,000 raiders due to the homogeneous soup of shit that the game is becoming, so be it. The will replace them with 4 million more punters that want to be spoon fed content and gear, without having to put any effort in to learn their class or instances. The scrubs will be visiting Ulduar for the first time with gear that already outclasses the instance content. Its ridiculous Blizzard, totally gut fucking wrenchingly obscene. But its what the whiners on the forums want, and they are the ones that will pay your juicy bonus at Christmas time and fluff your share options.

It ain't much and will make no difference....but you are not getting my subscription money this month psycho Blizz. Poke it where it smells funny. I am going to have a look at what else is out there, starting with a 10 day free trial with Warhammer. Yeah, its probably shite but it is worth a look and a change of scenery. Its at 20% download right now and taking forever. After that who knows. If nothing grips me it will either be back to WoW or give up all this MMORPG non sense and concentrate on work, and my screen play.

In the meantime happy Booming.

Raiding at last

Its been a very boring 2 weeks for the Boomdaddy, running Naxx, VoA, EoE etc at weekends and such with guildies. The older content is starting to make my owl-eyes bleed. The process though, needs to be gone through. Why? Well,I have to show that my dps is good enough for a full raider spot. No one has said that these runs are all a little trial but it doesn't take a genius to work out that being top dps on Naxx 25 etc has helped my cause in getting a regular spot.

Hodir and Freya were on the menu last night. I wasn't picked for the raid but after a successful voodoo ceremony involving a virgin chicken, I got drafted in half way through. It was only the second time I had seen Hodir, so was nice to get him down first shot. More importantly i did beat a couple of the front liners in dps, yay for the Boomdaddy. Most importantly I did not die so was saved the indignity of looking like a noobling.

Seeing Freya for the first time was full of win. New content simply breathes life back into these bones. Ok we only had time for two quick attempts at her which ended in wipes but it was still awe inspiring. The location and landscape were a fabulous contrast to the rest of the towering structures of Ulduar.

BUT. There is always a but. I did not feel the same rush of excitement seeing these bosses as I had felt in TBC, seeing Hydross and Lurker for the first time. I do not know if this is because I do not feel part of this raid team yet, or whether I have changed, or whether Blizzard has messed with the game so much and dumbed it down, that I don't feel the right to feel proud or excited anymore. Maybe because things have become so accessible there is no thought or feeling of being special by completing this content. It is not the case now that only decent players got past Lurker and dreamed of seeing Black Temple. Its now a given, that it may take 3-4 months longer than the top raid guilds too see all content.....but you will get to see it. Good players and scrubs alike.

That makes me sad. The drive to clear SSC was partly to be one of the few who enjoyed the hospitality of BT. It was about new, challenging content that was a gear and skill check...but it was also about prestige.My old guild was ranked around 16-18th on the server when the nerf bat patch hit end game content in TBC and we were only 2-3 bosses into SSC. I think that tells a story when compared to guild progress now. I want to Cheer again when a boss goes down, not simply tick him off an achievement list. Am i wrong?

VOA- the duck is broken

Not sure how "broke my duck" translates in the many languages of the blogosphere. I think its a cricket related term, meaning if you are out for no score you were out for a "duck". If you break your duck, it means you have finally scored. A bit like 6 months of getting turned down by hot females and then suddenly pulling a corker out of the blue.If you don't know what cricket is, then the analagy will be completely wasted on you.



Long and the short of it is, the Boomdaddy has been faithfully slogging it out in VOA week in week out since it was spawned from Blizzards bottom. We have never had a drop there. Nothing. Nada. Nitch. Fat fuck all. It's become a joke between me and myself. However, after last nights 25 man Naxx run (which I missed due to work) we did a run to VOA and what do you know? Yup, first new guild run and the T8 legs drop. Two droods in party, other one roles 51....Boomdaddy trembles like a shitting grey hound......71 boooyah. Gimme gimme gimme.....happy dance....flying feathers!

Changing more than a Lightbulb

Yes, the BoomMummy is still here.  I've lived through the BoomDaddy leaving the guild (on good terms - well done to him!).  He hasn't murdered me, and nor have I disappeared completely into one of my many other incarnations.  What has happened is that real life building work on my house has messed things up rather a lot.  I still have no bathroom, and now wash myself before work while standing in a bucket by a sink downstairs.  I also now have no kitchen (the previous one annoyed me too much...).  Me and my partner now live in one room of the house - the only one we can fit into that doesn't have packing boxes or builders in it.  The good news is that give or take a couple of weeks, we should be able to start living properly again.  And yes, we do have new lighting everywhere!  It looks gorgeous!  So, anyone is more than welcome to pop round and play with my lightbulbs whenever they want!

Boomdaddy came round for a drinking visit before we started all this work, and we had a great time.  Boomkins should always stick together after all :)  He'll be round again once I can find more than one drinking glass.

Anyway, in honor of a time when I had slightly more hours to play games (and hopefully will do again soon) here is an early Friday Mage Joke.  I know you've missed them - I can just feel it in my water.  Enjoy! XXX

____

An angry moonkin was walking down the middle of the street, bobbing her head saying "88, 88, 88, 88."

Sally Fireball, our favourite mage from previous jokes, saw her and asked her why she did it.  The angry moonkin replied 'I do it because it's fun!' and continued walking, shouting back 'You should try it!'

So, the angry moonkin and Sally Fireball both walked along the middle of the road, saying "88, 88, 88, 88."

All of a sudden a huge truck came hurtling along the road at great speed and the angry moonkin jumped out of the way.

The angry moonkin paused, ignored the crushing, splattering sound, then continued her journey, saying "89, 89, 89..."

______

Ooh, that one was mean!  Lots of love, Boommummy XXX

Catching up

It has been a mix of a week, for the Boomdaddy.



The new guild appears fine and dandy, a few very friendly people and no one yet has found themselves on the Boomdaddy's shoot in the face list. As always with a new guild it is a fine line to walk, between being keen and friendly on one hand and being an attention whore on the other. So for now we are keeping our antlers down a bit and just doing our boom thing.



Raiding has been a bit hit and miss this week. As a "social" member I always knew that I would have to bide my time and wait for some dead mans shoes to fill but I still feel frustrated when i don't get the shout for Ulduar. Saying that I did get to join the raid team twice this week and saw Hodin and Thorim for the first time which was a nice taster of the harder Ulduar bosses. Came 5th, 6th, 8th and 10th in the dps on Thorim, so was mostly pleased for a first time up against the front line raiders. School report would say "OK but could do better".

We did a guild Naxx 25 over the weekend which was great for the boombaby as she picked up some professor plums and I came second on the dps overall, which was nice "pick me!!!" bait for the raid leaders and officers that were there on alts etc.

All in all, very happy with the move to the new place. I do miss my old guildies, but I also feel like a weight has been lifted off me and I feel like I am actually chilling out more and enjoying the game a bit more outside of raiding. Logging on has become more of a choice, rather than a necesity.

Old and New

Apologies if the last post was slightly esoteric. The guild of which I was an officer had decided to make some changes in the guild structure and ethos. The GM felt that it was time the give the members the choice of raiding or social membership, something that I put forward as an idea a year or so ago. After the Ulduar-lull and the general couldn't care bear attitude of many so called raiders, it was a good move and has galvanised the raiding team somewhat.It was good by fluffy raiding and hello serious raiding, hence the music clips.

Unfortunately, I had to bite my lip as many of the people who let us down in the lull were rushing to sign up as raider members and denied the fact that they play like socials. The frustration of having to go back to Naxx to gear up the players that had stopped raiding Naxx while waiting for Ulduar, was becoming intolerable to me. It is not easy to miss the irony of not being able to do Ulduar because so many were under geared as they had stopped raiding Naxx WHILST WAITING FOR ULDUAR!!!

So, the guild was probably lurching forward to a position where I would have been happier, in terms of the curve from social to hardcore raiding, but I was feeling increasing pissed off day by day. The new structure was to also bring in changes to the status of officers. Gone was the idea of elected officers,replaced by GM,deputy,recruitment and social member officer and a "raid council". While I was perfectly happy to see the streamlining of the officers (and step down), I had a troubling feeling about a whole new swathe of semi officers with their own chat channel. It felt like we were going back to the bad old days where we had around 15 or so officers.

As an officer, I did not have a clear role, as just like me, my GM is a control freak and likes to take the reigns on just about everything. I liked, and still like the GM alot, he is a great player and deep down a really nice guy, but it was coming to the point where all we did was argue and trade insults. That situation is not good for a guild and not good for anyone who is purporting to be playing a game. So I left, yup I simply downed tools and did the off. I perhaps should have made a farewell post on the forums but i honestly believe that it was just better to disappear. If people stand and look at a leaving post by an officer too long, they start to waiver and that is not good for a guild that I really do love to bits.

So what now? Well i took a week away to think what I wanted. I put a baby alt into a ultra social guild that I had been a part of in a previous lfe before raiding. I then looked at what to do with the Boomdaddy. Through friends and aquaintances I was asked to apply to 3 of the top 10 raiding guilds on my server. 2 were purely hardcore and one was a very progressive hardcore guild with a strong social side. I have been Booming alot recently with my lady friend and I wanted to be in a guild where I could raid seriously but that would also be perfect for the other half also. Due to work, she cannot raid as often as she would like.

So we decided upon the progressive guild with the strong social side, unfortunately their raid roster is full so I had to make a social application too. They know, I think, that my social membership to them is a marriage of convenience and some have tacitly implied that I should be raiding full time as soon as a place appears. In the meantime I am doing social guild runs into Naxx and Ulduar and a bit of ad hoc raiding with one of the 2 hardcore guilds I mentioned earlier. General Vezax was a complete blast last night, I must say.

So, thats the state of play with the Boomdaddy. Hopefully there will be plenty to talk about again soon.

Boom love.