General Update - Aug 08

I realize over the past two weeks I have written 5 posts without a toon or guild update. And a couple of you may be wondering what is going on with me.

Graylo/Lastt Standd Update:
Graylo has been in Lastt Standd for 3 weeks now, and I feel like I am at a place where I can reasonably evaluate the guild. I think the transfer has been mostly positive, but there are a few things I don't like. I'll try and break my analysis down into sections.

Raiding: The raiding has been fairly good. I've killed two bosses (Gorefiend & Bloodboil) that I had not killed before. We have the first for in Hyjal on farm and the first 4 in BT on farm. The down side is that after killing bloodboil that once we haven't done it again. That is very frustrating. We also walked into SSC and tried to down Vashj over last weekend. Granted we had quite a few pugs in the group but I expected better from the guild. I'm sure we can get her if we put some real time into it, but I'm not sure we will put that time into it. Finally, attendance has been a little low lately. That is to be expected a little bit right now due to people going back to school and the holiday, so hopefully we will be back to normal soon.

Leadership: When I joined the guild I worried that they would be a bunch of jerks. I got that impression a little bit from the recruitment post. Luckily they are a little bit more mellow then I expected, which is good. However, the GM can be a bit of a hot head, and I think he lets his emotions get the better of him a little more then I would like. Over all they aren't bad, but I don't get the impression that they are a group of guys that are going to hold the guild together for years.

Personality: This is the one area that I may not have enough experience yet to really evaluate fairly. It takes a while to get used to a new guild especially when you don't know anyone in it. The overall personality isn't bad. It reminds me of FoC quite a bit, young, goofy, and male dominated. While I liked FoC and like Lastt Standd for the most part, I prefer old WA more. I am probably confusing my friendships with the guild personality a little bit but they are hard to separate. Some of the things I loved about WA was that its mentality was a little older. We had quite a few girls and quite a few families. While we were serious about raiding, the general atmosphere was a little more laid back and comfortable.

Overall I am content with my choice to leave. Things are not perfect, but they would not have been perfect at WA either. At the very least I am raiding, and that is all I can really ask for right now. I have gotten into every raid I was available for. To make a long story short, I am content. I won't guarantee that I will be in Lastt Standd for a really long time. A lot is going to change when the expansion hits, but I don't have any plans to move right now and I am not looking for a new guild.

Wandering Alliance Update:
I am not involved in WA much any more but I do still have a couple of alts there to keep in touch with friends and such. I logged into one of my alts last night and was surprised to see that WA is planning on transferring servers. Apparently the remaining leaders of WA are tired of the bad server and of constantly trying to rebuild the guild. Raiding hasn't gotten any better since I left and they they are having problems with new members getting gear and leaving. It doesn't sound like they are trying to rebuild or merge with another guild. It looks like they are just trying to find a better place to play until the expansion hits.

I have no clue as to what this means for me. It sounds like all of my friends plan on transferring. I also don't know if they plan on disbanding the guild. I could long in one day without a guild. Ultimately it doesn't really matter. Chances are once I am sure of where Graylo is going to land I will transfer my serious alts there.

The biggest impact to me is probably just the opportunity it provides in the future. If I do decide to transfer some time in the future their new server would obviously be a potential target because of the friends I will have there. It sounds like they are headed for the Garona server. It is a Central time-zone PvE server that is very alliance dominated. It doesn't sound like a bad place to land.

Graypal Update:
Dead in the water. Nothing is going on with him. I'm not really interested in him right now because I can't raid him, I don't PvP, and I would rather level my alts then do random quests with him. I really don't see much happening with him until the expansion. I haven't paid much attention the Spriest changes in WotLK, but my quick looks have me interested and worried a little bit. I may have to do a post on Spriest changes coming up.

Grayfel Update:
Grayfel is now about 8 bars into level 67 and things are going fairly well. He won't be 70 before the end of August, but hopefully it won't be to long. A while ago I talked about my spec. At the time I was 41 Affliction with 10 or so in Destruction. I wasn't happy with it because I was ripping aggro of my pet quite a bit and fears can be dangerous. After talking to some people in game and looking at some of the comments I got here I decided to give Demonology a try. I am currently 15/43/0. At first I liked it. I was killing things at about the same rate and I wasn't ripping aggro off the Felguard. However, I have started to go sour on Demonology. I may not be ripping aggro off of him but I spend a lot of time healing the pet. I guess I expected him to be tougher.

Anyway, I'm thinking of respecing again. The question is should I try Destro or go back to Affliction. Right now I think I'm leaning towards trying Destro. I'm obviously used to playing a nuker with Graylo. The really question is what pet I should use. Do I go for a Voidwalker tank, or more DPS from an imp or Succubus. If any one has a spec that I should try please let me know, also let me know which pet I should use.

Graysin Update:
You may be asking "Who's Graysin?" He is a Blood Elf Paladin that I started a couple of months ago on the Cho'gall server. If you don't know Cho'gall is a central time-zone PvP server with a very strong raiding community. It has three guilds that have cleared Sunwell. An Alliance guild is ranked number 10 in the world and the top Horde guild Death Wish is ranked 16th in the world according to WowJutsu. He is currently level 21 and spec as Retribution.

I created him for a couple of reasons. First, I created him when I was still in WA with Graylo and was having issues. Its nice sometimes to do something when no one can see you. I also had a desire to try out a PvP server and see some of the horde areas. I chose paladin because I have recently be come interested in tanking as a pally, and I figured that if I ever decided to raid with him horde guilds would need paladins much like alliance guilds need shaman. I never really expected to get him this high of a level, but I keep coming back to him every so often. I think it is because it is so easy to accomplish something when your toon is so low of a level. You put in a couple of hours and hour toon jumps a level or two. When compared to Grayfel that is lightning fast. I put 3 or 4 hours into Grayfel last night and only got him a third of the way through a level.

Anyway, I don't really expect him to be a serious effort but who knows.

One last thing. I have praised WoW-Pro.com before for its excellent and free leveling guides. I used Jamie's Alliance guide to take Graylo from 30 - 60. For Graysin I have used Snowflake's two blood elf guides 1-12 and 12-21. I highly recommend both. They are very well written with great maps and pictures. If your looking to level a bloodelf or just want to check out Ghostlands on your new little horde toon, check these guides out.

Graytom Update:
I had expected him to be my 4th 70 after Grayfel, but I now expect he will go permanently inactive like my warrior and hunter. I am still very interested in playing a shaman in general but I think he got started at the wrong time. I'm not going to pay 25 dollars to transfer a level 14 toon to a new server. Plus with most of my friends leaving Eitrigg there won't be much point in me hang around there. If I do deside to play a shaman again I will probably just start a new one on whatever server I have Graylo on.

Anyway, that is my wow life in a nutshell right now. To all of my friends that read this blog please keep in touch. It would be good to hear what is going on with you guys in the comments or in the email.