Category Archives: WoW

Mar 21

Actual Guild Recruitment… I Know Right?!

So it’s official. I helped start a guild.

What started off as a handful of us lamenting on twitter about the frustrating aspects of various guilds that drove us away from wanting to be associated with them (some more severe than others, mind you) eventually became me sitting down with Nyxy and Aero and putting a plan in motion. Seerail acquired a level 25 guild and set the ball rolling to get GMship and get ready to transfer it over… but where?

I took a few days to look at a few core things that were mandatory and necessary for picking a realm. Not a single one of us were happy with our current realms and all of us were willing to go elsewhere. Once a realm was decided upon based on population, economy, and how many anal jokes and/or references to Thunderfury occurred in 30-40 minutes (none at the time when I was logged in) we started transferring toons over.

We decided on a guild name. We discussed some guild policies that were mandatory. We talked about days and times for raiding and the sort of atmosphere we wanted while raiding.

And I set about writing all of those policies up. I admit to being a bit of a control freak, but I was utterly grateful that Aero decided to take the helm of running the whole operation. Then Nyxy and I hit the final stretch to our quarters in school, her with having real finals, and me with having lots of papers to write, things were put on the back-burner. It also felt really overwhelming, to try to predict and decide how to make it all work.

But, in the end, we created <From Behind>, and as of now we are actively recruiting for people to help us fill all roles for a 10m team. We’re looking to raid from 6:30pm – 9:30pm Pacific (-8 GMT) on Tuesday and Friday nights for main progression type raids, and Sunday’s will be semi-optional previous tier/gear farming type stuff.

We really and truly want the person behind the toon much more than the class and spec they are bringing to the table. Definitely check out the guild site and don’t be afraid to chat with any of us on Twitter or in game!

We want to get started with raiding as quickly as possible, but this might mean we’re running some CRZ T14 raids in the meantime to get some gear. So come, join us, and have some fun!

Jan 16

New Adventures

I made some half-assed resolutions at the start of the year. Mostly having to do with my health, because let’s face it, I’ve been an utterly lazy ass and my body has decided to revolt against the tyranny of my laziness and demand I do something about it. It’s like my heart is the union leader demanding fair… health.

fitbit_standingsSo I purchased a Fitbit One, mostly to help keep me motivated to do something. I snagged a handful of friends both IRL and WoW/Twitter in an effort to keep me accountable as well. You can see your weekly progress as it stacks against other people, which I suppose I meant for it to help keep me motivated by appealing to my slightly competitive nature.

As you can see, I’m not doing too fantastically with regard to keeping up with the others. And the 4 you can’t see in that friend list? Well, they’re well into the multiple thousands that because I rarely leave the house, I find I won’t actually ever catch up.

<queue the acquisition of a treadmill>

I started looking on the local Craigslist for treadmills to see if there was a working and functional one within a reasonable price range. Remember, I want to move to Australia, so the spending needs to be pretty minimal. The reality is that I simply can’t afford a gym membership at the tune of $35-50/month, and it is extremely cold for this very lazy, and very unmotivated overweight person to go outside and exercise, even if it’s just walking. I don’t fool myself into thinking that my health issues, though in their infancy stages, are enough to motivate me enough to go out in very cold weather.

I was told to try to make a standing table/desk contraption to go WITH the treadmill (once it was acquired) and play WoW while walking! This is an idea of brilliance I’m not sure I would ever have put together, but lemme just say, it’s really a great damn idea.

Now you add to the fact that at some point in the last two days I decided I wanted an European (EU) WoW account. Considering the way I’ve been spending most of my WoW time on Hestiah, this seems to be the exact opposite of what I was doing – Grinding reps, getting achievements, farm killing for mounts, and pet battling. Even though I accidentally found out that you can use the same bnet information for both a North American (NA) and EU account, all of the account-wide achievements and mounts would not carry over to the EU account. After much battling with the internet (and google), attempting to avoid having to wait for a nearly 20 GB download and installation of a second WoW client, and the missing addon button for UI necessities, I have a working EU WoW account that uses the same login and authentication (authenticator) as my NA account.

It is almost perfect timing, that everything sort of just worked out the way it did. With my finding a treadmill on Craigslist, and deciding I wanted to venture down the path of “New Player” status (without the nearly 15,000 achievement points, 170+ mounts, and 300+ unique pets), that it would all sort of just work out just right.

I don’t plan on actually running on the treadmill, at least not while I’m playing WoW. I was graciously gifted a EU battlechest license so I can quest and herb EU Hestiah up to level 80. It just seems apropos… new Hestiah, new me.

Jan 2

Out with the old, In with the new

Every year I think about those things I want to do in the coming months. Each new years brings the hope for possibility. I generally don’t make New Years Resolutions, but a handful of things that have changed in my life that require me to do something about it. Mostly, my health.

So this year I am planning to make a handful of resolution.

1. To make great strides toward saving and planning to move to Australia. Even if I don’t meet the February 2014 deadline I’ve set, I want to want to at least make the time between now and living there permanently shorter.

2. Take food choices more seriously, and make better ones. I’m not a horrible food decision-maker, but I allow my moods to dictate what I’ll end up eating. I had made some good efforts toward cutting out fast food, only to pick back up the habit out of laziness. I need to change this.

3. Exercise more. I don’t have a weight goal, but at this stage any exercise is more than what I did in all of 2012. I picked up a FitBit to help track not only my activity, but also my sleep. Hopefully it will also help me stay motivated and help me feel accountable for these things.

4. Write more. I did a lot more reading in 2012 than I had the previous few years. That was probably the only goal I set last year. I reached it, but only just barely. This year, I want to try to write more. Whether it be here and about video games, or elsewhere and about life, or even fiction. Either way, I want to write more.

And with that, I wish you all a wonderful year. Blizzard, for the first time ever, decided to give me a nice surprise. As often as its trolled me with reputations, never giving me mount drops ever, and just general frustration with LFR or PUGs, WoW decided to grant me with Ashes of Al’ar.

Ashes of Al'ar