Monday Plus (12 Sep) - Sleepy Hollow

Monday Plus (12 Sep) - Sleepy Hollow

I'll be checking down the days until the pre-launch on the 18th and the full launch on the 25th. There will likely be several days between posts because, frankly, there is very little going on.

Happy has filled every corner of his warehouse with goods and is having to push stuff off on other family members to find room for all the excess. Profits are still trickling in even with all of the buying, but overall the marketplace has gone into a half slumber. Happy is mostly just checking for the insane bargains instead of just lower prices. He had one such find on Monday morning, when a foolish player dumped 200 volatile air on the AH. Even at the depressed prices, volatile air still sells for 9-10 gold each, which would put a price of 1800-2000g for all 200. Happy bought all 200 for 100g. Happy would have paid five times that much, easily. Happy still has eternals (Burning Crusades version of volatiles) that continue to sell even now, so Happy is sure that volatiles will still be selling long into MoP.

Beyond Happy's work, there isn't much else going on in WoW-world. There should be some stirring in the Wild family as the Theremore Falls battle draws nearer (a week from Tuesday). That is a three player scenario - maybe Sis and Daeth/Sin would want to team up with Wild and company to run it?

Once the battle is fought, that final week could be truly quiet. Or, hopefully, there will be some surprises to experience in that final week before launch. One such surprise has already happened. A contingent of envoys from Pandaria have come to see Warchief Garrosh. No Wild family member has been around to see them, but they do walk around in the Valley of Strength now and then.

Maybe this lull is a good thing. I still have Major League baseball to watch and now have the start of the football season in full swing.

Tuesday - Guild Reputation

Patch 5.0.4 changed guild reputation: "The cap on weekly reputation gains has been removed. Furthermore, guild experience gains from quests have been increased from 25% of quest experience (17350 guild experience for most level 85 quests) to a flat 60000 experience for every green or better quest and nothing for gray quests. Since guild reputation from quests is based on their guild experience yield (1 reputation per 360 experience before reputation bonuses), this dramatically increased guild experience from quests, from ~48 at level 85 (and significantly less at lower levels) to 166-167 (before reputation bonuses) at all levels. Guild reputation doesn't automatically reset to Neutral on joining a new guild, now only drops to next level down, Exalted->Revered, Revered->Honored, Honored->Friendly, Friendly->Neutral."

For players who want to change guilds, the news is good. Players leaving a guild no longer lose ALL of their guild rep when joining another guild. Now they only lose one level. I think that's the right balance. Guild hoppers will still take increasing hits to their rep, while those who don't change guilds frequently will be able to regain their lost rep relatively quickly with less impact.

If I decide to level any of the family's languishing younger toons, I'll have to decide whether to leave them in Happy's Rank 2 guild, or move them to Wild's Rank 25 guild and the gain the benefits of that. This doesn't affect JB, who is already in Wild's guild. It would certainly affect Philly, and to a much lesser degree, lower level toons. Since I don't plan on leveling any of the level 85s right away, I'll just leave things as they are for now.

As for the other lower level toons, I think I'll let them stay in Happy's guild and see if their activity can make any kind of dent in the guild reputation. It'll mean a slightly slower leveling pace, but then no one is in any great hurry, either.

Patch 5.0.5 arrived this morning. Surprise, surprise, I didn't know there would be another interim patch. It's all bug fixes and tweaking, though, no major new developments. Based on the comments on the WoW website, there are still a lot of problems to be fixed.

Wednesday - In news from the non-Wild family side, Sin and DB continue to pound the alliance in pvp battlegrounds while hunting achievements. Sis has been trying to get resettled and back into action after taking a hiatus, but has been meeting some technical difficulties.

As for the Wild family, I'm becoming more sure of what I want to do once MoP launches. First off, there will, of course, be Naithipe's "project," which remains shrouded in secrecy. Suspicions and rumors are rampant about it, some of which might even be accurate. Second, I am going to focus more on the lower level toons, giving them time to do some leveling, some pvp if they like, etc. With many achievements now becoming account-wide, some family members may choose to chase some of those, too. Those goals may not be as sexy as running raids, which may still come later, but Wild and JB have made it clear that while they are available to help out in any way they can, raiding is just not on the table for now. Both Wild and JB will remain in the MM2 guild, keeping tabs on the progress of the guild.

Special Section, "Order of the Dragon"

As we wait for the world to change, Happy continues his role with the Auction House, and leadership of the family guild, "The Order of the Dragon." However, there is serious consideration toward changing the name of the guild. Why? Well, it takes a look back at the history of the guild to answer that.

First of all, the family member who should do the explaining is not Happy, but JB. The date was 9 April, 2007. JB wanted to get to the Outlands, but was still too young and un-credentialed to be allowed to enter through official channels. JB wanted to get her Masters skill in herbalism and alchemy, and the trainers were in the Outlands. So, JB was lobbying for a mage to teleport her there. While waiting, JB got into a conversation. I'll let JB take up the tale.

9 April, 2007
A very nice level 38 asked if JB would sign his guild charter. I said yes, because I know how hard it can be to get enough signatures (10) to start a guild. But I told him that I would quit the guild after it was formed if that was ok. He said he would rather get sigs from those who wanted to stay. No problem, JB told him, good luck with your guild. Later on I got another whisper from him asking if I was still interested (he couldn't get enough signatures), and said it was ok if I quit once the guild was formed. Sure. JB signed up.

The level 38 managed to get his guild started, and JB got a message welcoming everyone to the new guild. After those who were staying and those who were leaving were sorted out, the new guild, "The Order of the Dragon", consisted of a grand total of 8 members, with JB as it's highest level member by a good margin (JB was level 50). Quirky JB decided to stay in the guild. But I warned them that I did not play much and as the guild grew they could ask me to leave any time. We'll see how things work out. By the way, JB has already been promoted to High Council, second only to the Guild Master. I feel more important already.

17 April, 2007
JB's guild remains at around 20 members. There is now a level 53 rogue in the guild, so JB is not the highest level anymore. But there aren't any other members higher than level 45, and most are under level 20. Despite getting in game several times, there were never more than two other guildies online. Even if all of the highest level characters were in game at the same time, we could not form a functioning group.

29 April, 2007
JB and the Guild Leader (GL) had one of those rare periods where we were both in game at the same time. We were both in Org. We were both in the AH standing 5 ft from each other. Another guildie was also in game. Three at the same time. Hard to believe. Anyway, the GL and JB started chatting and JB was asked if I could join the GL in the bank.

Of course, JB replied, Why? Well, he said, I can't repay you for the 14g you gave me, but I wanted to show my appreciation somehow. JB really didn't want anything, but it was clear he wanted to do something and felt that JB had done him a huge favor. In the end he gave JB a swiftness potion recipe which would sell for several gold on the AH. It was the most I would take from him. He was very happy I accepted and I was very glad he got his mount.

We chatted some more and sort of out of the blue he said that he didn't think he was getting the guild anywhere and wondered if I was interested in taking over. He didn't want to leave the guild, but really didn't want to run it anymore. Not that there is much to run. We talked some more. I gave him reasons why JB likely wouldn't be around enough to be an effective GL. But then again not many of the current guildies were around much either. It was becoming clear that the GL was going to give it away to someone, so why not JB? I accepted.

When I agreed to sign the charter in the first place I intended to leave as soon as Ab (the GL) got his guild formed. Then JB decided to hang around, liking the idea of having a guild tag which discouraged folks from asking her to join their guild. I even conjectured that if the guild failed I might try to take it over just to keep a guild tag. And now here I am. JB is the guild leader. And I find I don't really want to just let the guild fail without some attempt to see if anyone other than Ab is even interested in more than having a guild tag.

3 May 2007
JB made her first changes as Guild Leader, posting a note in the Guild Information section with a set of questions for guildies to respond to. JB also simplified the rankings among the members. There are members who haven't been on in more than 20 days. JB is going to give members through the weekend to turn up, and then remove non-playing members from the guild. They likely won't even notice. I expect that in a week there will be only 8 members in the guild.

8 May 2007
JB removed four members from the guild. All had been missing in action for at least 21 days. That leaves the guild with ten members.

25 May 2007
JB found a letter from the former guild leader, Ab, when JB checked in. Ab has left the guild, disappointed that the guild didn't expand as he had hoped. The letter was very polite and JB was thanked again for helping Ab afford his mount. I'm sorry it didn't work out for Ab, but for JB it doesn't really matter. I've got a guild tag and the remaining 6 other guildies seem to like things the way they are. One of those guildies has now been absent 22 days, so his days as a guildie may be numbered, though. Even Hidden, the most active of the guildies, has been missing 9 days now. Maybe it's JB's perfume? Hmm, when was the last time JB washed under her arms? Let's not think about that.

12 June, 2007
JB's guild is down to four.

5 July, 2007
JB DINGED! to level 53. JB can now claim to be the highest level member of her guild, a guild of three now, counting JB. This guild thing is easy; why do guild leaders claim its such a bother?

9 Nov 2007
The one surviving member of the guild other than JB is clearly an alt, and has never leveled past level 53, which is what he was when he joined the start up guild. No problem, he is on every three of four days, and as long as someone is using him JB will let him stay. So it was kind of ironic that a day later, who should JB run into but the original guild leader, Ab. He was still a level 46 (same as when he turned the guild over to JB). He plays mostly on another server, and it was never really clear why he even bothered to come back here. He asked how the guild was doing, and I guess still felt some attachment to it, but I told him it was basically just JB now. We chatted for awhile longer and then parted ways.

16 Nov 2007
One of the major new additions with patch 2.3 is guild banks. Now here comes JB. JB has a guild of two. She is the guild leader, so she can set up a guild bank. Of course, JB did not give the other guild member access to the bank.

20 Nov 2007
So now JB has her guild bank all set up and the other members of Wild's family have been asked to ensure that shared stuff gets placed there. Happy, still struggling a bit with the new AH addon, wants a better way to get the stuff there other than sending it all through the mail. How about adding me to the guild and giving me access to the guild bank? Happy asks. Wild is still pretty careful to keep the personalities and lives of all of the "family" separate. Collecting them all in a single guild did not really give any advantage in the past, so I never considered it. It would be very, very, convenient now, though, with a guild bank. There was just one small additional thing JB needed to do. The guild's "other" guildie would have to go. JB then began sending invites out to the rest of the family, and now has a nice little group of guildies.

The End - So now you know the whole history of how the Wild Family wound up with a guild called "Order of the Dragon." I have to admit that when I started researching past posts for information on the origin of the guild, I figured it would be a quick job. I would not have believed that JB would have taken the family that long before filling the guild with family members. On the 9th of April, when JB joined the guild, she was a level 50. JB held the guild more than seven months, and made it to level 61 before opening up the guild. The key to the whole thing was the creation of guild banks, though. The only thing I didn't find was when the guild leadership changed from JB to Happy. I was just too tired to research that, but it had to be when JB moved over to Wild's guild. I think.

For a very long time, guild names could not be changed, but that restriction has gone away, many patches ago, and now all it requires is cold, hard cash. The old name served the family well, and perhaps there is no strong reason to change. But, because we can, I'm thinking about what that name might be.