Sometimes you just need a shave and a haircut to jump-start things.

It would not be a stretch to say that my writing has tailed this expansion. In the past my adventures through the latest tier was detailed on these pages moments after the pixel dragons hit the floor. Looking back over a fight and documenting your struggles is both cathartic and educational. You leave a blueprint for yourself so that the next obstacle is toppled even more quickly than the last.

Cataclysm has been an adventure and a half. My first expansion as master and commander of my guild’s ship. We set sail for Tier 11, but the passage has been rocky at best.

After spending time battling recruitment, hard boss fights, and wavering commitment from your ranks, sitting down to relive those experiences isn’t something I wanted to do.Slow progress with nothing to report leaves you sitting and looking at an empty draft window. No synapses are firing.

Dabbling in things non-WoW eventually brought me back to here. An engineer by trade, a need for a constant hobby is a requirement for occupying a brain that never wants to shut down for a moment. You  hear tales of kids pulling apart their Tonka trucks just to see what’s inside. My brain never worked that way. It was software, not hardware.

Video game design, film editing, web design, all of it has always fascinated me

I stared intently at the bits that comprised the framework of my WoW thoughts for the previous 2 years. How does this work? If I wanted to make one of these, could I do it? And just like that a new hobby was born.

Starting a project with little to no information means you build, destroy, build, destroy, and build again until it’s just right.

I wanted it to be simple and to the point, reflecting where my roots as a raider were really born: Tier 3. Orange, Red, and a little blue (just a little). The first big decision that befell me occurred in the halls of Naxxaramas. It was the first time I encountered real resistance as a raid leader. The current leadership (I raid led, but could not be an officer. yes, really) did not want to move forward with Naxx. It was too hard.

A switch flipped somewhere deep in my brain. It was that connection you can’t explain. It connects you to your possessions, your guild, and your raid group. The switch was flipped off, and I realized that these were not my peers. Missing content and not even attempting to move forward was in direct contrast with not only my goals, but my general attitude towards everything.

And so I moved on to Blood Red Moon. The 5th hunter on a 4 hunter roster. “Always accepting exceptional applicants.”

I kept this theme simple. It’s just supposed to be a place to read, not one to display fancy widgets. I’ll likely grow it and expand it further. I’ll likely add new doodads and designs, but I wanted to claim this piece of the internet and take control of the content.

WoW, lately

The true war that’s been fought in Cataclysm to this point have been between raid leaders and their disinterested raiders. Now that Summer has rolled into town, it’s easy to blame it for your attendance problems and recruitment struggles. It’s not. Not this time, and not most times. Our best raid month ever (Tier 8) occurred in July.

The people that can only show up one day a week, one and half days a week, or every other week need to be let go. Those people aren’t actively saying “I don’t like this raid leader and I want to screw over the raid.” It doesn’t even get to that level, and maybe that’s why it bothers you that much. Some people just don’t want to commit time to raiding and that. is. just. fine. What isn’t fine is if they want to maintain a raid spot, but not make the commitment.

You can’t do both, and my advice is to be honest with those people and with yourself (you know who they are): Let them go. Give them a casual spot, take their raid rank and keep recruiting. Calling a raid sucks, but you’re holding those raid spots and not recruiting into them. You have 1 Warlock, not 3. You have 5 healers not 8.

If those that want to stay and contribute are not performing to your standards, tell them. In a small amount of words tell them exactly what you want.

My post on The Raiding Bubble is becoming a little more true than I had originally intended, but it’s happening. We’ve seen 3 25-man raiding guilds fade since December with none spring up to replace them. It will continue to happen until raiding guilds are once again comprised of players that want to raid.

Plan For the Blog

For now I plan to blog about our remaining charge through Tier 11 and our Firelands progress as a guild. Also, I want to write an after-show blog post based on this week’s Matticast topic (have you subscribed yet?). I enjoy writing, I just need to find the time.

I hope the new look is as enjoyable to read and browse as it was for me to make. If you use IE, I’m sorry.