My Thoughts & What I Need

[mjdoom]

"If it's a time constraint thing, why not just step back and rest, the move to another guild just because of time constraint issues doesn't make much sense to me."
SoD told me of being asked to wait 3-4 months ago.  Sure it looks more imminent, but I made the decision that I'm just not prepared to wait a few more months to gear up/get organized for MC just to wipe countless times before I even see a named.  I choose to play one character, that's how I want to spend my 15 a month, and IA DEFINITELY fits me better.  They discourage alts to encourage the loot getting used for maximum character progression.  Lurkers tend to encourage alts on the other hand... just too different.
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I'm pretty certain that this comment was directed toward Hillary and her mention of her new job (and thus not having as much time to put in to try to herd people around). Lissa also directly quoted my paragraph related to Hillary and Ab. He said earlier in his post that he could understand the desire to see end game content and raid more consistently in your case (as well as SoD's).

While I'd like to think "a few more months" is a very pessimistic outlook at this point I still respect the decision you made and wish you the best. (My understanding is that even IA hasn't defeated a 2 firelord pull. I'm going to guess that they died to it a few times before formulating effective strategies)

- mjdoom

[LochnarITB]

Wow, so much in this thread. I'm just going to reply here to various things.

60s-in-waiting:
I think I'm the original 60-in-waiting. Being the 6th 60 in the group, and the second mage, there was not a place for me as the 60s moved into BRD and beyond. As I've said before, as in real life, I don't ask for help. I see it as bothering other people going about their business. I have patiently (or not so) waited for more of our members to move into range to join them for log clearing. This may be foolish in that it appears that another close knit group will move together through into caphood. I saw Skan's thread as a great attempt to organize peoples needs to make it easier to coordinate similar needs without having to "beg for help". However, it slipped off to the second page and probably will not get much more attention.

helping others progress:
For quite some time, my signature has contained "Any Lurker party, anytime, anywhere". The key word there is Lurker. I see most Lurkers as tolerant and understanding. I don't feel so bad screwing up in front of them. I don't expect them to run out into general chat and announce "OMG this n00b tried sheeping a corrupted". I don't see them worrying too much if I AFK for a couple every hour on the hour. If I see people looking for help for which Lochnar is significantly overleveled, I don't offer. However, if asked, I would almost certainly go, barring RL concerns.

Lurkers raiding high end content:
I do believe we can get there, even if it is with the help of fillins. Bleeding of high end players will kill this possibility. I thought we had made a good initial step with that. I saw comments about us not being able to handle an initial pull. I expected we would have problems. If we didn't, it wouldn't be a challenge. We went in and tried working out a strategy to handle it. If someone had given us a playbook and said do A then B then C, again the challenge is taken away. After the run, I thanked Flyn and congratulated him for "herding Lurkers which must be harder than herding cats". It's funny seeing people mention herding cats in the thread. It just seemed to fit the situation and I thought he did well for a first try, especially given that discovery was added to the mix.

60s leaving the guild for greener pastures:
I have been very disheartened to see the Stormrage Lurkers hemorrhaging 60s. I can understand wanting to see everything but I didn't think leaving Lurkers was the way to do it. I thought it would have been better to find guilds that would welcome regular non-guildies to their regular events. People progressing in that way would not only have gotten the content they wanted but served as ambassadors for the Lurkers and paved the way for others to do the same. When these people have left, it is generally while expressing "I'm just a whisper away". This may be the best intention but best intentions rarely work out. People going to other guilds get wrapped up in the new guild business and schedule and can't make time for their old guildmates, at least to the extent of running an instance. That doesn't mean that I don't contact them when I get a chance. A couple nights ago, I ran into Tribade and we talked for a while. If it wasn't for Tutelin, many of my alts wouldn't be carrying bags labeled <Bags by Tutelin>, the WoW version of Gucci.

Bolty and NSD:
I did not witness the exchange in question. Bolty can be very forceful in expressing his opinion when he works up a head of steam but I do feel sorry for him being judged differently for his opinion. He has long been saying that he is not the voice of the LL and that his role is very background. He needs to be allowed to have an opinion. Also, NSD, by his own admission, is very good at pushing people's buttons. I am sure the blame for any blowup can be quite equally placed on both sides.

overly sappy personal stuff:
RL has not been real good for me for some time. WoW and my fellow Lurkers have provided an excellent release for me. Several of the Lurkers, or at least their online persona, I consider friends. Turmoil like this makes me sad. While it is probably true that good rarely comes without pain, I don't do adversity well. I hope that no permanent rifts have actually been made. I would like to see people stick around, perhaps by finding alternate means of regular raiding. However, if they can't see their way to doing that, they will be like people I have cared for in RL, always in my heart, just not always on my mind.


[edit] Oh, I get it! This has all just been a Friday the 13th joke, right! Oh, wait....

[Mirajj]

Kan, I want you to know that I'm there for you. I'll do ZF and ST with you and Tris and the other 40s who want to and we'll get it all done.

Same here. I love the temple fight, and I absolutely loved fighting Gahz.

Thanks, to GG, it looks like I'll have done ST after Tuesday. Tough and confusing instance, but the nice part is you can do it in stages. So maybe I'll know a bit about what we have to do. I loved ZF, and providing it's not a 10 pm start, I'll be there. (I'm old. I crap out early and become totally useless.)

I have all day off both Mon and Tues, and will likely be online then. Call on me, I'm always more than happy to help out if someone needs a hand.

There! I wonder how many otheres are thinking just that. I know I think it a lot! I know Mirajj does too. Tris, clearly! Those are the people we as a group need to stand behind and build, IMO.

Exactly. This is the second main reason my priest is seeing action. Just the other day, I spent 3 hours in rest bonus state just grinding on mobs in Winterspring to hit 55. It took me 3 HOURS to grind 15% of my experience bar...but I did it. Because I want to get higher, and all my quests are elite, or instance elite. So grind I do. But even I get bored of that. Thus my priest comes out to play.

As well, my priest has a tank in Aranea. You never notice how much you need to level when you are enjoying playing. But if you are hard grinding solo...you noticed just how slowly it can move.

So my take on all this...I've made and fully intend to keep a great bunch of friends, regardless of the tag over their toon. Period.

Also, I am of the rare breed that doesn't care if I'm getting exp or not. I'm more than happy to help out anyone, with any quest/instance/whatever they need.

[Sabra]

I'll tell you what makes me sad, Loch.

I'm not a big poster, as some of you may have observed. I admin-ed a D1 community for years and burned out on this form of communication long ago. But I crawled out from under my rock last night and took the time to put up what I hoped would be a postitive, potentially motivational post for this group, maybe even a call to arms in a stupid way.

I wake up in the morning to find that my hopeful offering for the good of the group has been thrown totally off topic and high jacked into a festival of self-absorbed gobbledeegook. Some like GG and Kan have made wonderful contributions, but mostly everybody's either pissed, hurt or disgusted. Neat!

So now, with a mind to the fact that all of the people who posted in this topic are quite dear people, and full in the knowledge that if I were the Admin on this fourm, I'd take a flame thrower to this thread, I tender the following suggestion:

If you decide to leave Lurkers, take a page from Tutelin's book and do it quietly. It's not necessary to take the whole place down with you. Show some class. Show some humility. Show some consideration for the rest of us.

Does that seem fair?

[Tal]

&nbsp; Lurkers tend to encourage alts on the other hand... just too different.
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Correction. The only thing we encourage is for players to have fun.

[NotSoDarklord]

(My understanding is that even IA hasn't defeated a 2 firelord pull. I'm going to guess that they died to it a few times before formulating effective strategies)

Nah, they did it the next day and a couple times since and absolutely manhandled it. They just prefer to go single.

[Chaerophon]

Am I ever glad that I have never gotten involved in this game...

If you have a family and job, this type of schedule is not realistic and conducive to your health. Most of my guild is made up of 18-24 year college students who have unlimited time at their disposal.

What the #*$* college are they going to, and do they live next to a money tree? Sorry, that's not a hobby, that's a problem. Been there, done that, not going back.

[Wiz]

As far as the Basin is concerned, yes, we did have a few 60's leave a while back, for reasons very similar to those stated here. We had a great deal of discussion about it afterwards, also very similar to the discussion here. Since then, there's been a lot of effort by a lot of people to organize raids and do end-game content.

The Basin is not a raid-till-you-drop guild; our motto is "play nice and show some class" -- although we do have folks whose personal motto is "we're gonna do it till our armor turns red." :D However, we do have a fair number of people: 57 guilded level 60 toons on SR, and 41 more between 50 and 59. Give us a couple of months and I've no doubt we'll have well over 100 capped toons. Organizationally we're catching up to the kind of things the Basin does on Tich -- and those folks are raiding *something* 5-6 days a week.

Lurkers have always been welcome in Basin groups. Feel free to stop by and join the party, the welcome mat is out.

[Quark]

(My understanding is that even IA hasn't defeated a 2 firelord pull.&nbsp; I'm going to guess that they died to it a few times before formulating effective strategies)

Nah, they did it the next day and a couple times since and absolutely manhandled it.&nbsp; They just prefer to go single.[right][snapback]77417[/snapback][/right]

So, unless we were being lied to, they only handled 2 Firelords after they had already killed Onyxia, Azuregos, Kazzak, and others? Seems to me the group tactics would have advanced past ours at that point.

Edit: sorry for being testy, but SwordofDoom's post implied that since we couldn't get past the 3rd pull, we'd never get anyway. I did a lot of reading the day after MC, and there was tons of posts of people who had cleared through the first boss, then one time got stuck with a 2 Firelord pull and couldn't get past it.

[Sword_of_Doom]

So, unless we were being lied to, they only handled 2 Firelords after they had already killed Onyxia, Azuregos, Kazzak, and others?&nbsp; Seems to me the group tactics would have advanced past ours at that point.

Edit: sorry for being testy, but SwordofDoom's post implied that since we couldn't get past the 3rd pull, we'd never get anyway.&nbsp; I did a lot of reading the day after MC, and there was tons of posts of people who had cleared through the first boss, then one time got stuck with a 2 Firelord pull and couldn't get past it.
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I apologize for making a statement that can and is being construed as a cheap shot. Getting into Molten Core is a great achievement and in no way should i have diminished it in any way. Unfortunately i was using that statement to make a greater argument not realizing that it was going to upset people.

[Catlyn]

Catlyn hasn't been around so much lately either.&nbsp; My understanding is that she has been playing with friends in other places because there are not as many opportunities for Catlyn to play currently. - mjdoom

Catlyn's in class 4 nights a week preparing for her PMP Certification exam. She's also not been on when people were putting things together, often showing up avter a group has already gotten together and wandered off someplace... This has happened twice in the last two days. Right now, she's parked on the steps of Scholomance, hoping the group that was origianally scheduled to go at 4pm server, then rescheduled to go at 1pm server, will be running late 'cause she can't be there at 1pm server.

Not sure how I feel about being used as an example in this.

[Alarick]

Mongojerry has said that the developer's vision for this game is item progression, not character progression.&nbsp; Thats why there is tier 1 Epics in Molten Core and eventually there will Tier 2 epics in Blackwing Lair.&nbsp; To get these said items does require great amounts of time.&nbsp; Levels 1-59 are very casual friendly, but 60 is a whole different ball of wax.&nbsp; It pretty well is a different game at 60 and from what i can see, very few people will ever get to see.&nbsp;

Unfortunately there is two parts to this game, hardcore (EQ defined because of Tigole and Furor) and casual (that includes hardcore elements.&nbsp; These two playstyles are worlds apart and do not mesh, at best they conflict.&nbsp; I am not certain Lurker Lounge wants to do the above.&nbsp; Why is there so much angst about that.&nbsp; I see a lot of Diablo 1 and 2 expectation where great gobs of time were not needed to accomplish end game things.&nbsp; This is whole different species to that.&nbsp; It does require huge chunks of time which realistically very few people have.&nbsp; Tackling Onyxia once a month would mean it would take the the Lurker Lounge 1.5 years to get to Blackwing Lair.&nbsp; By then, my guess would be that WoW would be on Tier 4 gear.&nbsp; Anyways, those are some random thoughts from me.
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Sadly, this is exactly the thing that I don't like about the game, and what is starting to push me away.

A game should not end with item progression only, because there is no way to balance item progression between hardcore and casual players. Make things too easy, and hardcore players get bored and complain. Make it too hard, and you alienate the portion of the playerbase that makes a good amount of subscribers.

I was drawn to this game because I could do so much in short periods of time. I don't want to sit in front of my computer for hours on end just to get a single piece of gear to make my priest ever so slightly better.

Blizzard needs to move in some definite direction. They need to choose a group and stick with it and advertise the game as being that way. There can be no more of this "WoW is casual friendly!" with the hidden note that this only applies for the first 3-4 months until you get to level 60.

Casual gamers need some method to progress their characters the same as anyone else, and making alts is not the answer to this problem. There either needs to be content available that's worthwhile or an admission from the devs that casual gamers should just quit because no content is coming.

I realize this is pretty off topic, but it's something I've been thinking about for a decent amount of time now, and is the single largest factor in the fact that I will probably be ending my subscription for the summer in the least. I hate to say it, but the "character progression is item progression" thing is exactly what has made it hard for me to even log on as of late, and it will take a huge change in the game for me to keep playing.