Weekend - (6 Nov) "Sista"hood

Weekend - (6 Nov) "Sista"hood

Sista had center stage over the weekend. She quested through Swamp of Sorrows and added to her Cooking profession through farming zesty clams. Sista admits she's a bit tired of clams. Still, the work was good enough to get her to level 55.

From the Swamp Sista went to the Blasted Lands. That was fun and pretty easy as well, but she did have a little extra excitement. She was out killing basilisks and boars and was making very short work of them thanks to the gear from those dungeon runs. The Mrs stepped into the room for a minute and Sista stood by while we talked. I had barely taken my eye off the screen when Sista died. What the? Oh well.

A few minutes later I retrieved Sista from the graveyard and checked Recount to see what had killed her. Something called TidalFury Earth Shock. It sounded familiar but I couldn't believe that these 50-ish mobs had anything that could wipe Sista out that fast. Ok, so I'm a little slow, but I was really just focused on killing things for the quests. I even wondered if this had something to do with a Deathwing visit. Not seeing anything, though, Sista went back to work.

About ten minutes later Sista suddenly died again. Ok, I'm slow, but I do come around eventually. Since the area around Sista was devoid of life, Sista took a look at the sky. Aha! The was a horde shaman flying about. Did he kill her? Sista shook her fist at him, but of course he couldn't see that since Sista was dead. He wasn't around when Sista got back to her corpse, but I figured he wouldn't be far away.

I'm still not sure what was used on Sista. I tried looking up "tidalfury" but Wowhead didn't have any information about that. "Earth Shock" is definitely a shaman spell, of course, but even a level 85 shaman shouldn't have been able to one shot Sista using Earth Shock. Under Deaths in recount, "Tidalfury" is what recount shows as the killing blow, which took Sista from 92% health to death instantly (she has a little over 4k health, and the blow hit for over 5k). The horde shaman never returned. Sista went about her business, and made level 56.

Over the course of the rest of the weekend, Sista did Battlegrounds. I'd like to says they were exciting battles, but they were all uniformly boring. Every battle was an all or nothing affair, with one side totally slaughtering the other. I think Sista got into every battleground that she was eligible for, including Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, and Eye of the Storm. We won the AV match 1600 to 375. We lost the AB battle with the horde holding five bases to the alliance's ZERO. The WSG was a complete rout and a warrior on our team really angered Sista. That warrior asked Sista to pocket heal for him. He was only a level 56 in the 55-59 bracket, but had impressive gear, and he wasn't a death knight (which almost every other member of the team were). Sista agreed. On our very first charge across the field he broke away from the main group (heading for the hill that leads to the upper entrance to the horde base) and headed for the ground level base entrance. Sista followed the warrior and dropped off ehr horse to heal when he was attacked by a rogue. The warrior escaped the rogue and then fled, leaving Sista to get slaughtered. He never got a another heal from Sista. Sista may have set a record for dying, though. She died 14 times. The horde had three rogues, and they targeted Sista every time she came out to play. Sista even went cat and stealthed into battles. Every time she became visible, a rogue would get her. Even the Eye, which we won easily, was boring. Most of the fight Sista protected a base with one lone mage.

The positive, though, was that the gods of experience were very giving. Sista once went from 34% xp to 80% xp from one BG. It's still only Sunday and Sista is level 58.

Wild is starting to see some progress in guild raiding. The Mf Mon/Tues raid had their sign ups in place last week and as of Monday morning we had a full ten signed up to go, including Wild. Guild leader Bd and Wild talked a bit over the weekend and he said they were actively seeking new members who wanted to raid. I'm already seeing some new names pop up in game. Lady Hunter also has a raid sign up for this week. The bad news is that she just posted it on Sunday, but the good news is that someone finally took Wild's advice and changed the raid days so that two raids didn't overlap on the same day. Lady Hunter's Tues/Wed raid is now scheduled for Wed/Thurs. That should help with attendance at both raids, assuming we actually have 20 guildies who want to raid Firelands. As much as Wild loves Lady Hunter, I'm going with Mf's raid as my main raid.

Of course, all that changes if Patch 4.3 drops tomorrow. Odds are it won't, though. The Blizzard gods have gotten pretty sneaky about slipping in the downloads for patches, but I don't recall seeing downloads big enough to be a major patch like 4.3. But we'll see.

"Services" and "Fees"

Blizzard has announced new guild services that are sure to make some players happy and others angry. These new services are now available on all North American realms:

- a Guild Master (GM) can now change the name of his guild
- a GM can now change the faction of the guild - yes, that means a horde guild can be changed into an alliance guild
- a GM can now transfer his guild to another server. That includes the bank, and the guild gets to keep it's guild rank

All three of these services cost real life money, of course. If a GM does all three, it'll cost him $65.

So, let's say that Happy wants to move his guild to, say, Boulderfist, and change the guild's faction to Alliance. Here is what happens:

GM Happy gets a free character transfer to Boulderfist along with his new guild name, guild rank (level 2), and assets.

Back on the old server, the original guild still exists. Happy has to name a new GM for the guild before he transfers. That old guild is reset to level 1 (even if it was level 25). Of course the guild bank is empty (it went to the new server). Oh, did I mention that guild members do NOT transfer with the guild? They don't. Any members of the guild that want to transfer with the GM must do their own character transfer ($25). The positive side of that is that guild members get to keep their guild rank/rep, which you can't do if you change guilds today. However, it also means that if you have ten characters in the guild, and want to transfer all of them to the relocated guild, that's $25 per character.

What if everyone in the guild besides the GM wants nothing to do with changing anything about the guild? Too bad, the GM owns the guild and he can do whatever he wants with it. That sounds harsh, but in fact GM's already have the power to do anything with their guild that Blizzard allows, up to and including selling off every item in the guild bank, booting everyone in the guild, and eliminating the guild.

Personally, I'm neither for or against these new features. Players don't have to use them, and any GM that would make such changes without the majority support of their guild probably aren't the sort of GMs you want be associated with. I do think that guild name changes should be free, even if limited, but then Blizzard is adding revenue sources to counteract subscription losses - it's a business, after all.

It certainly changes the guild drama scenario, too. Typically, when guilds start to come apart, there is an exodus of players from the original guild to go form a new guild. With these new services, it's the guild itself that could leave it's unhappy members.

Speaking of revenue sources, a new companion pet can now be purchased for $10. It's called a Guardian Cub, and the unique thing about this pet is that it flies with the character when airborne - this is the ONLY companion pet that can do this. Ten dollars for a new pet that can fly? What's the catch? Pets normally cost $20-25! Of course there's a catch. With the exception of the Guardian Cub, all companion pets are account bound. That means that you buy it once, and every character on that account gets it. The $10 for the Cub buys it for one character only, not the whole account. The cost for all ten characters to have the Cub would be $100. I expect all future pets will be single character purchase only.