I've handed in my notice

Greetings gentle readers, sorry for not updating recently. The summer and the normal soul-crushing grind of trying to get people willing to raid have kinda sapped my enthusiasm. Again.

Patch 3.2: The Stopgap Whilst We Work On Icecrown has been released. Demand for heroics has increased about 400% and Ulu's tanking her pretty little ass off most nights. I've also finally got over my cockblock on the Argent Tournament quests and I've been doing those daily when I can.

But all in all, I need a break from the game. Leading the guild, whilst rewarding has also been emotionally and intellectually taxing. Added to that, the care and attention in this tier of content has left me cold.

Ultimately, I've informed my guild that I'll be cancelling my subscription in September, and I've started trying to help them take steps to ensure they can continue raiding after that time.

I Hate Summer

I have massive hay fever and a propensity for wearing black, so I'm naturally ill-disposed to the few weeks of the year where the sun dares to shine on the Northern Hemisphere. In recent years, my annoyance has been compounded by the fact that it also means that people I can otherwise rely upon would rather be outside than playing.

Now before you call me a total no-life jerk, I'm not suggesting they stay shackled to their desks when the sun's blazing, but it baffles me that they're mostly unwilling to spend 3 hour a night 2-3 times a week indoors.

I'd hoped that this year, with the guild in place the situation would be mitigated, but it appears my hopes were in vain. Sign-ups are in the toilet and conservative recruitment during the busy times has lead to a deficit of raiders. We've had cancelled raids several times in the last few weeks and this is a pattern I can see continuing.

Ultimately, i don't see a way out of it. I dislike resenting people for enjoying the summer, but damn it, if you can't be where you said you'd be then why did you say it in the first place?

All in all, I've pretty much had enough of it.

Are we "done"?

So I looked at yesterday's official Paladin Q&A and I was struck by one thing: there was barely any mention of Tanking.

There was a lot about Retribution and Holy in PVP and PVE, but there was barely anything about Protection. This annoyed me a wee bit until I had a think, and I asked myself "well what needs to be done to us?"

I'll admit I could think of some nitpicks (another low-cooldown interrupt would be nice, some kind of gap-closer as well) but ultimately I think Paladin Tanks are in a good place when compared to other tanks. 3.2 gives us another "cooldown" in the reworked Ardent Defender, Blessing of Sanctuary gives Stamina so I never need to choose between it and Kings, and there's a Demoralizing Shout effect in easy reach with the reworked Vindication. Our cup runneth over.

It's a weird feeling to have nothing really to moan about. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Faction-Switching coming soon!

Well on the back of Ulu's adventures in Character Re-Customization, I awoke and read this Blue post this morning:

We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.

Up until now you've only been able to change non-gameplay-affecting elements of your character. You can change your character's hair style and coloring in-game, or change elements like your gender, name and even server via account management for a modest fee.

The prospect of changing your faction throws up all sorts of interesting questions. Will your race change as well? (If so, will this lead to people being able to alter their race whilst remaining in the same faction?) Will the option be limited based on the current faction balance of the server you're on? How does this affect people on a PVP server where you're limited to toons of one faction or another?

It's a weird one all right...

Smart Casual Recruiting

I don't normally like doing this, but I figure I'll throw this out there and see if it attracts anyone:

Well Summer's upon us, and like a lot of guilds, we're sufferring from people losing interest or going on holiday. Since we're currently working on Yogg-Saron in 10-man, we need bodies to keep up momentum.

1 Tank (We currently have a Warrior, Paladin and DK MT team and a Boomkin who offspecs Feral, so we'll consider most decent tanks).
1-2 Melee DPS with short-CD interrupts (Yep, we're thinking about General here.)
1 Holy Priest (Our healing team's relatively well-stocked, but it lacks a full-time dress-wearer)

We may also consider 1-2 ranged dps with good gear.

What we expect:

*Gear ready to start Ulduar 10. You should ideally be in at least full Naxx10/Heroics gear as a minimum. DPS should be hit-capped, Tanks should be uncrittable with about 28k health minimum. All gear should be enchanted and gemmed to a decent standard. Decent offspec gear is a bonus.

*A decent standard of written English. We understand that for a lot of people in the EU, English isn't your first language, but that's no excuse to use txt/l337 speak!

*Attendance: We run three progression raids per week from 19:30 to 22:30 server time, invites go out at 19:15. You should ideally be signing for at least two of those raids.

*Guild Membership: We ask that any raiding toons you have join the guild. You're welcome to keep any alts in whichever guild you want.

What we offer:

A fun, friendly atmosphere to raid ten-man content. I know the requirements above sound strict, but to keep the group effective with our casual hours, we need everyone giving 110%.

If you're interested in applying, please head over here and read the "Read this first" thread.