Emer

The feeling’s been brewing for a while, since the end of BC. I was burnt out and resentful of the amount of work I put into the guild, tired of the drama, and consumed by a desire to just have fun again. In the past week, the drama has bubbled over from so many areas and I realized it’s done. The fuse has been lit and it’s only a matter of time before the drama bomb explodes. This will not end peacefully. My guild, my home — it’s not home anymore.

If I was in any doubt, the only officer with more history with the guild than me whispered me about one of the problems from tonight. “To be honest,” I said, “I don’t see a solution. We’re too big.” A pause, and he responded: “Yeah. I hate to say it, but we may have to split up.”

Split up. My guild. I never thought it would be possible. Not my guild, not this place that has nurtured me since I was a wee priestie on a boat in Feralas. Not my guild, with the dedicated officers, the close knit atmosphere. 
But the truth is, it isn’t my guild anymore. I don’t know half the names, and I’m on all the time. We grew too much, and we cannot keep everyone happy. Discontent is a disease, it spreads and festers. The only way to end this gracefully is to end it honestly. We’re sorry. We did our best. Good luck.

I don’t know how the other officers feel, but I’ve made my decision. I am teary about it, heartbroken, but my decision is made. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll announce it, explain myself, and leave on the best terms possible. 

And if I’m lucky, if I’m really lucky, I’ll find some place that can be home again, even if I have to drag the best parts of my guild with me. I can find a place that is fun to log on to, a place where I don’t have to watch guild chat for even the slightest signs of a fight. A place where I can look forward to raids, and screenshot funny comments, and make videos and be happy in. 

But for now, I’m just going to be heartbroken.

I love this expansion, and being focused on leveling and gearing myself up (up to Naxx 25 standards now, woot) has kept me from updating this. But a moment so delicious, so noteworthy happened yesterday, and I couldn’t not blog about it.

I’m running my first Naxx 10 tomorrow night, and we really want to do well and meet expectations. So I’m helping out the healers by fishing up some good food — crit, spell power, mp5. I’m fishing my new favorite spot, the Heart of the River in Scholozar. Green and lovely, it’s a pool underneath a waterfall, arcing rainbow included. 

I’m a lazy fisherman. I tend to use levitate and walk from node to node, ignoring the shore and its pesky mobs that might slow me down. I cast a line and notice a ruin priest land next to me. She’s staring, I’m ignoring her. I’m wearing a fishing hat and pole, so I’m at a pvp disadvantage, and I really just want to fish. She wands me to remove levitate, which makes me giggle. Wanding isn’t really an aggressive action, so I walk up to her and we just stare at each other. She waves at me, I shrug and wave back, and resume fishing.

But she’s still there, flying around the middle of the pool, never letting me out of her sight. This should raise some red flags, but I am focused. Until, of course, I see the netherdrake above and realize that she has called out Limitz. I know I’m KoS for him, me and Yoz both for many many isle kills. I deserved the kill I got then, and I was giggling as it happened, giggling as I sent the distress signal over vent (”OMG YOZZIE LIMITZ IS KILLING ME COME HELP NAO.”) I rez and let them kill me a few times to keep them interested until he arrives, which I assume was the plan all along. This is a mirror match, and Limitz hasn’t stopped complaining since day one that we never fight him if we’re not in a group. Untrue and hurtful Limitz, we kill you all the time, no matter who’s around! Even if you have thirty people with you we kill you and take the death from the rest!

Yoz arrives and they back up a bit, enough time for me to rez and mount. As soon as I get my gear switched out, Limitz lands and Yoz follows. The other priest and I land as well, and I binding heal yoz to get myself topped off. Now, a priest vs. a shaman is never a fair fight, and this priest was holy, so it was even less fair. She went down in about three shots, and was angeled (free healing for limitz, though!). I got a windshock on a heal, which made me giggle, and so when it wore off I pain suppressed yoz for breathing room and got him to full. It was quick and painless from there, with Limitz dying a few seconds later. 

I wish we could have stayed for longer, I adore world pvp, but friends were waiting for us at the Ampitheatre of Anguish. I posted on the forums — “Where I go, my shaman is sure to follow — wish we could have stayed for more, xoxo and all that”

Its times like this that I really love the smallness of my server. We see Limitz all the time — in Storm Peaks, doing Hodir dailies, in Wintergrasp, in Dalaran. While I know he hated us originally, I would like to think that it has mellowed to mutual amusement — I enjoy killing him, he probably enjoyed killing me. My @ post wasn’t a rude one, just amused.

And for the record, it wasn’t a real mirror match. I’m disc, the other priest was holy — she’s squishier, even if I don’t have reflective shield. Yoz is enhance, limitz ele — yoz has a clear advantage in PvP. But they started it, so I don’t care And while I am SURE Limitz is great at pve (he’s in the server’s best guild), he is not quite a pvp god. Pro-tip, all my hots and shields can be purged, yo. Even PS, the cd that I used that annoyed you. It wouldn’t really have mattered, but he should have gone after me while yoz was on his priest, I can’t defend myself against a shaman. Of course, Yoz is also really good at pvp and would have maelstrom insta healed me.

So, till next we meet, my friend Limitz, farewell

I has them something fierce. I felt better after talking to my trusted advisor last night, but today another layer of behind the scenes bickering was added and I just feel wrung out. I get this way sometimes, out of energy to deal with things, and I do what it takes to get through it — once I leveled a lock all the way to 61, for example. My shaman, a couple of horde characters, my baby druid — escapes all. And those are just the in game things. My playing time when I feel like this gets cut into tiny pieces, with me usually only playing once every few days.

But now I have additional duties and responsibilites, and I can’t just skip things the way I’d like to, so I’ll show up tomorrow night and do invites and get the raid together, and I’ll heal my little heart out as we (i hope) take down azgalor and maybe take our first shot at Archimonde. And it won’t feel good to take them down post nerf but at least we’ll be doing SOMETHING. And if I’m as unhappy at the end as I am today, I’ll ask for a couple of weeks off from any duties and go hide in a hole or something. I dunno.

I sat in front of the aldor bank, chatting in /say with one of my guildmates. “I want to see you and (fellow officer) and (raid leader) get really mad one day,” I said. “Like, troxed. YELLING and screaming.” The guild leader of the top alliance guild — a controversial figure, disliked by many — began emoting me, as he does often. I don’t know much about the guy one way or another, don’t dislike him or like him, but for a lot of reasons I tend to be a little wary. So I ignored him. As always. I am probably being unfair — he’s been nice to me since we began T6 content, offering to give us advice if needed and cheering when we downed bosses. I have a probably unfair prejudice based on things that I don’t know to be fact. Oh well. Sorry Naiad, it’s nothing personal.

It was a pvp day today. These are my favorites! We did dailies on the isle and wrecked people. After a break to get a pally alt and a lock alt their mounts, we went back to the isle just to have some world pvp fun. In addition to being a low pop server, Jaedenar is also hugely horde heavy — at one point we were outnumbered 8-1, but I suspect that’s more like 4-1 or 3-1 at this point. Still, the isle is not a place I go alone. Luckily, my raid leader and I tend to go together and wreck anything that moves. He’s a great pvper and I’m a decent healer, so unless we’re facing full brutal we can hold our own. He is responsible for my change from carebear to bloodthirsty.

Unfortunately, we still have not earned our first @post! This makes us sad. We’re not dicks — we don’t camp — but we do kill people every time we see them, mobs on them or not. I guess we’re kind of dicks? Whatever, pvp servers and all that. We don’t usually emote dead folks, although today yoz did to try and earn that post. We did get a shaman from the top horde guild to log onto an alliance friend’s character (in my guild, no less!) and bitch us out. Unimpressive. QQ’ing over pvp that is well within the realm of fairness (on the isle, we didn’t run to the guards, we didn’t play tricks) is sad. If you’re going to complain that you’re getting killed by four alliance folks, I’m going to laugh at you. The isle was crawling with horde. Use general chat, make some friends and group us to take us out. That’s what we were gunning for, anyway.

We took the bone wastes, went to nagrand and took halaa, finished both pvp dailies and raided garadar. Apparently you can’t kill Thrall’s grandmother. Whatever. We headed to undercity, messed with Lady S, laughed as we got wiped (well, there were only ten of us) and watched our main tank bubble hearth to fret over his gear choices in the patch. He can’t even play much between now and Wednesday’s BT raid, so he should be having a fun time of it. Personally, I’m running anything I get invited to tomorrow to set my spec and decide which path I’ll be following.

In the end, boredom ended up being fairly fun.

PS: I’m still a carebear on my own. I never kill lowbies. I steer clear of horde. I dance with the ones I like. But in the company of others, my innate bloodlust comes out. TROLL FORM HO!