Hi there

Been a while. Good to see you again. Hope all is well. Talk soon!

Hello Guild Drama, my old friend …

I recently logged into my guild’s forums after a hiatus and what did I find? Guild Drama. Lots of it, actually. One topic in particular caught my attention. Most of this particular drama stemmed from emotional rants of people jumping on one word or one sentence of someone’s post and ignoring the overall point the OP was trying to get across. I typically do not post these type of things but this incident has me befuddled, surprised and a little grumpy.

One member has a hard time getting groups in guild and lists 5 reasons he thinks it may be the case, all of which in my eyes are valid and reasonable. One of those 5 reasons is people being in a “clique”. Over the course of the discussion, members of guild “cliques” enter into the fray and change the tone dramatically. The OP was just asking for advice on how to get more groups and help from the guild, but in my eyes not speaking disparagingly about groups of friends within the guild. I saw no finger pointing or blaming of specific people taking place. He even asked others not to get angry. He said he wanted civility. Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way. 4 pages of people jumping all over each other for a variety of reasons. Wow.

Now, with getting into too much detail, I will say that some of the OP’s reasoning for not getting groups were what I would consider unreasonable. Others have his same “issues” and are either content to solo, suck it up and make something happen with PUGs or quit the game. But the overall point the OP made is something that I can relate to and I feel is worth discussing. Truth is, when I was playing more regularly I actually stopped asking for help in guild chat all together. It was just too rare of an occurrence for me to get any guild group that I would go straight to level chat to find my help. I am very aware of the specific reasons why getting groups was difficult for me, the main one being my starting play time of 9pm MST. Others are typically already into the evening’s activities by that point.  And I suppose that is the difference between the OP and myself : I expect all this challenge in finding a group. It sucks, no doubt, but I still expect it. It was the same reason I stopped expecting to be slotted from standby on a raid. It just never really materialized. *Exception*

But I guess I am just not sure why various people have become so overly sensitive to being in a clique (aka group of friends) that responses to what I thought was a fairly non-threatening question came off so heated. OK, so you play with the same people every night, great for you! Your reasons for not assisting are valid – you are already busy doing something in a group! However, this does not change the fact that there are people around who genuinely need help and would prefer to find a guild group instead of taking the chance of having a 1:45 hour Scion run. And trying to find that guild group can be painstaking at times. Is it your personal problem? No! Do you need to drop everything and help a complete stranger? No! Maybe the initial post was not directed at you or your team. Maybe it was directed at people like me. Or someone else entirely. Consider it something just to be aware of, even if you never do anything about it. Perhaps you will be in a position to assist some night, great! It is all just part of being in a guild. 

Of coursecasual players cannot expect to be geared or have all their Masters like others who play nightly and with a steady group. That would be ridiculous. But I do think it would be great if there was a little more guildy assistance now and then. In all honesty, the issue really does exist.

 

Disclaimer: Everyone still appears friendly with each other in the guild – this incident doesn’t represents a major fracture. Really, this is a typical forum spat within a typical guild who have normal people playing a game that forces human interaction. It is nothing new or unique and this kind of discussion keeps cycling back around all the time. I personally just needed to vent since this is an issue I too have dealt with on and off, and in more than 1 guild I should add. I am also quite cognisant that I have made a lot of assumptions here. Frankly, I do not know if there was some direct incident, comment or conversation that prompted the post. There very well could have been. But still, the vitriol and venom expressed recently really makes me scratch my head. I have to think there must be something else going on because frankly I just didn’t think it was called for.

Bad news

It has been a tough week, personally. Hell it has been a tough YEAR. Just bad news followed by more bad news. Well last week was no exception; my grandfather passed away. He was a good, honest, intelligent man. A scientist for 50 years. A philanthropist and volunteer. My amazing grandmother is taking it in stride, saying it is for the best.

“At our age, you need to come to terms with death, and we have.”

R.I.P.

Loving summertime

I randomly logged into EQ2 the other night – mainly to patch the client but then just out of curiousity. I happened to check the research assistant and my Thunderbolt spell was ready! I guess take an extended leave of absence has its perks It also looks like the cost of many other spells has dropped considerably – cool. Nothing I really wanted to purchase at the time but I’ll keep checking back now and then. I tried to solo into City of Mist and got my ass handed to me badly. Good to see nothing has changed.

So Odus is the new expansion, eh? For some reason I had an inkling that would be the next area “uncovered”. Doesn’t sound like anything special to be honest. It was one of the areas in the original EQ that I just never went to all that much except to farm in the Warrens or tumble haphazardly into the Hole (again). Erudin was an annoying city and I died in Paineel too much to ever care for going back in. Meh.

Otherwise, life has been very busy and very fun. This past weekend saw me going for a nice bike ride on Boneyard, rafting Pine Creek and Numbers on the Arkansas, attending Mile High Music Festival and even getting some quality family time in. In addition, I purchased the Director’s Cut of Watchmen as well as a used copy of The Force Unleashed for the XBox. My goal was to try to finish it in a week but so far I am well behind schedule, hehe. Nothing new there

Ahh, summer at it’s best.

Pipeline – Eagle, CO.

More fun:

Eagle Biking

I have been getting some questions regarding our MTB trails here in Eagle. We have a ton of dirt to play on and most of it is still just local’s knowledge. Thus I present you with a map so that you can start somewhere. There are many more trails around than what is shown here, so it would be a very good idea to stop off in one of our local bike shops for more detailed info. We have what I consider to be some of the best trails in the county and similar in fun to some of the Fruita trails, minus the 100 degree weather. Hardscrabble Mountain is a virtual spiderweb and Boneyard on the east side of Eagle is one of the best runs around, period. Enjoy and feel free to ask any questions.

A Great Weekend!

Very very busy, very very fun weekend.

It started Friday night with my wife I vegging out and watching some random TeleV, drinking wine and laughing at totally random shit. One of those do nothing, kick off the weekend in style kind of nights. She crashed out pretty early so I went into our newly finished basement and rocked some Super Punch Out on the Wii for about an hour or so. Then a documentary on the Battle of Stalingrad. I am a WWII buff, in case you didn’t know.

Saturday began the craziness. We are dog sitting a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy for a friend and while he is cute as all hell he is also only 10 weeks old so he like to bark and whine at 5:30am. Getting woken up that early makes me grumpy, plain and simple. I am a night owl through and through. At least my 6 month old yellow lab puppy loves to play with him so no drama there.

A pic of Bodhi:

 

It was off to swimming lessons with the boys while my wife went training for her half marathon and then I got to go play on my bike for a few hours. I worked my way up Mayer Gulch to Hardscrabble Rd. and then grinded out about 6 more miles up to Pipeline, one of my favorite downhills. It runs next to an old (you guessed it) pipeline and has a few stream crossings, plus some fast and furious singletrack. That opens up to Third Gulch which is a doubletrack that, due to how overgrown it is, can act like a singletrack. Again, fast and furious. In total, I did about 16 miles round trip from door to door. A quick pic of Pipeline itself:

After a brief clean-up I rushed my oldest son to a birthday swim party for the next few hours. Saturday night was TeleV night again with the wife, who has recently become completely infactuated with vampires due to the Twilight and True Blood series. 4 hours later, we had finished two True Blood disks from Netflix. An undead marathon.

Sunday was equally as busy since it was my youngest son’s 4th Birthday party. Wow time flies. I have always equated children to being “bookends in life” because they give you real milestones with which you can judge the passing of time. I constantly think, wow has it been that long? And it has. Anyway, without going into minute details it was a very fun Spiderman party, complete with homemade Spiderman cake (my wife kicks ass in the kitchen) and Spiderman pinata (beaten to oblivion).

That afternoon I went out for another quick ride. Unfortunately due to numerous reasons, including sickness, a hurt knee, and 3 weeks of constant rain, my riding this season has been pretty pathetic. Thus, I was feeling a bit worked over and stiff legged from the day before. The solution? Shake off the pain with more pain. Yay for masochism! It was a great, quick loop around the Race Course with some added singletrack I found thrown in. Only about 8.5 miles but enough to get me feeling stronger as I grinded through the dirt. I love it.

Hope your weekends were as active and fun as mine! Always an adventure!

A month?!

Heh – a month since my last update. Not totally surprising, really. Warm weather gets me outside in my free time. Plus we just finished our basement so there has been a ton of little odds and ends to complete. The finished productcame out really nice but my contractor was a PITA at times. I cannot stand prima donna’s and he kind of turned into one. It is over thankfully, and now the boys have a place they can go crazy without screaming, jumping and wrestling a mere 3 feet away from us. I set up the XBox 360 and the Wii downstairs and also have plans for a “media server” where we can play games, watch movies and listen to music. Very fun.

With all the RL activity, I have not logged into EQ2 in a few weeks. I feel bad because I kind of went out in a somewhat sloppy manner with the guild. The last few weeks I played, I was pretty inconsistent with the raid schedule and raiding in general, which I know caused some issues for my raid leaders. I did post a brief ”apology” of sorts to mainly the raid leaders but my guildies as well. When my 3 year old went from having a bedtime of 7pm to 7:30pm and even 8 depending on his mood, that just killed being able to consistently log on at 7:15 to prep for the raid. Ah well, c’est la vie. I sure as hell was not going to ignore my child for my own personal pixel play. Lol – that sounds raunchy even though it isn’t.

I have been getting on my bike every now and then, but not to the degree that I would like. I went through a period where I was really sick (unusual), then got sick again (VERY unusual), then gimped up my knee doing … well, nothing as far as I can tell (I am getting older – bah), then it rained for 2 weeks straight (extremely VERY unusual). But this will all change and soon the magnificent pictures of my dirty escapades will flow from my camera to your eyeballs.

A teaser of my recent trip to Fruita:

Double Black, obviously

Mmm, Singletrack.

File under: steeper than it looks.

Always an adventure!

Master of Masters (for a day)

Oof – as tends to happen, life takes over in drastic fashion. The weekend was quite busy with family related activities, including dinners, brunches, drinking and a bit of XBox gaming with the boys. They are still totally addicted to Lego Batman and I have to admit that I do enjoy throwing Batarangs into the Joker’s face as well.  Next up is to try and get the boys to actually find all the secrets and for all intents and purposes, finish the game. This translates into me playing or coaching them along. Oh darn.

Unfortunately with all the stuff to do I have been unable to go see Star Trek. My typical group of friends either went solo or with each other this weekend so I am left with seeing it alone. I tried Monday and Tuesday night but neither were good options. Looks like Thursday night will be the best time to go since we have a raid this evening in EQ2.

Speaking of EQ2, I did get some entertaining sessions in recently! I decided to push my Moors quests along with Wildmoon since I feel like I have barely scratched the surface with them. Some of those quests are just plain annoying though. I’m looking at YOU, “Higher Purpose“! But the AAXP is starting to add up pretty well.

I jumped into a late night group with Anep and Begs on Monday in the Necrotic Asylum. I’ve never been in there so it was a fun run as all new zones tend to be for me. We died a bunch but it wasn’t that bad. I am normally pretty mellow about stuff like that unless it is due to idiocy or is ridiculously excessive and tonight did not have either. I won a Mystic master too, which is unique in that I never win masters. The last one was probably in November or December of last year. Yeah that’s a long time.

Last night Begs and I joined up again and put together a quick Deep Forge run. And quick it was! Otherwise nothing notable about the run.  Afterwards we all decided to give the DD Ravenscale Repository a shot. Yet another zone I had not been to before. Wooty for disco AAXP! We rolled through the first sections of the zone with no troubles at all. Killed a few named and laughed at their corpses. I defied all the laws of nature and won yet another master. Silliness. But that’s when our luck ran out. We struggled with the boss that has 4000 adds with him. Then we struggled with some other boss. Then with yet another boss. Ug. 0 for 3 and broken gear at this point. So we called it good, having managed 3 of the potential 4 shards in the zone.

So now I sit with 28 or 29 shards and am almost ready to break off the T3 helm I looted like a month ago. Lol that is sad. :p

Tonight we raid something somewhere. I think it is Switchmaster and I hope we can finally get over this hump. He really needs to die. By my calculations, we need some luck, a lot of attention and our pink rally robes. Now that sounds doubly sad.

Good luck to us!

The Road to Uber Continues

My theory was correct. With Energy Vortex on, my new surname (Whutzaheal) tagging behind me and a deliberate blind eye towards healing, I blew my latest high parse out of the water. I went from a top of 3800 last week to 4775 last night. That’s a 125% increase!  Wooty! Nothing close to those fully raid-geared, high-end Fury DPSers, but in the always close competition against myself it is certainly a feat!

My group was in Najena’s Hollow Tower and consisted of:

• Me – Fury
• Jiggidyjeff – SK
• Begs – Inquisitor
• Gheeto – Coercer
• Keanna – Troubador
• Gaah – Dirge

Frankly I never even looked at the group buffs I had on, but I was at least in my own full DPS spec and gear. My Zone Wide totals were a more grounded 1900 DPS and 320 HPS because I did need to throw in heals now and then. Bah. (lol I need to get the warlock leveled – I am getting too DPS hungry )

I did get a DPS cloak worth mentioning, both due to it’s stats and its awesome graphics, which look like a flowing, transparent waterfall. Ra’zhish’s Cloak of Flowing Power.

For another fun fact about the evening, our 5 man Deep Forge run (same group sans Gaah) was pushing 15k DPS. Impressive! Too bad we couldn’t fill that last solid DPS slot for Outer Stronghold, which was our original zone-of-choice.

Anyway, just had to share

It’s always an adventure!