Memoirs of a Rogue

It's funny how fate can just kick you in the face sometimes.

The last few months have been a double whammy. I'd never seen it before now, but my gaming life and real life were reflections of one another. There's much to write, as there's been much going on. I'd been meaning to write things out, but my time has been so limited lately that I haven't had the chance to. I'm sitting down now, though, to at least crank out things on one reflection - and perhaps I can crank out the other at a later date.

I've mentioned WoW in the past, I'm sure. But I doubt I mentioned any of the social aspects of it. I can already hear some of you thinking, "Social? It's a computer game! It's anti-social!" While that can be true, anyone who has truly been active in a clan or guild will know that it can be false too. Especially for the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs). I haven't gone quite to the extremes of socialism as some I know (a pair of my former guildleaders met playing Everquest and are now married), but I've made acquaintances and friendships. Those type of games end up being about teamwork and trusting one another in order to succeed. It's as simple as that.

It took a while to really nail that into my head, though. I'm sort of stubborn that way. I'll go to great lengths to help someone, but I usually won't seek help myself unless it is the last option put before me. So when I started WoW in January, I never put any thought into joining a guild, and the only reason I even joined one was because I got that random invite while traipsing around Goldshire at level 10. That was my first encounter with Kenji the (female, despite the male name!) warrior, who was then a whopping level 20 - which seemed high at the time, but as I said, I was a noob. I stubbornly stuck to my no-help guns, and it was just me and TamaKameKami (Hodeb) for a long time. We only did what the pair of us were capable of, which meant dungeons were a no go. We attempted the Deadmines every few levels past 20, which is a long haul for a warrior/rogue teamup, and eventually scraped by finishing it around level 30, when the rewards were no longer worth the trip. There was Hodeb, suggesting we find a group, and me stubbornly saying, "we don't need help, we can take it on with the two of us".

I'm not sure how long that hammer was pounding until it finally sunk in that I'd have to expand my horizons. And by that, I don't mean how the guild changed as the first one exploded, the second one changed leadership, and how the third and fourth were the same guild with two different names. It meant that I realized I couldn't go it alone.

I mentioned the guild changes already. Literally two days after Kenji brought me in, my first guild blew up. Kablooey, all over the place. One evening, an officer logged on and just started randomly kicking all over - stopping to leave only us low levels. When the guildmaster came on and found out what had left, he more or less threw in the towel. That could have been the end of my guild life, but Kenji had ties to another guild through a character I later met as Tyrith. I later learned the two are a couple, but at the time I had just thought Tyrith a sympathetic person who had heard of what happened, and was willing to take on refugees. The most familiar players to me today in WoW were in that guild - the crew of Nathyn, Aluriel, and Linak.

And things shifted again, as the leader of that guild, Annashi, moved on. Kenji stepped up to the plate as the leader and it was re-formed from Shadow of the Phoenix to Steel Angels. The same core players were there. I didn't group with them as much as I would've liked to - the biggest barriers being that 1) Myself and Hodeb had passed them in levels, so there was imbalance there; and 2) They usually already had a well-balanced group of five without us. I did get those rare groupings in, though. And we got to know each other better through our conversations in guild chat - not the most intellectually stimulating content, and even a tad dirty at times, but overall on the good side.

There was shifting in guilds, and when I hit my way to the top, there was a paradigm shift in the game, too. I leveled to 60, and suddenly there was nowhere to go. A major factor for my enjoyment of an RPG is setting a goal for myself and shooting for it - and it usually ends up being self-improvement. For Hodeb, that goal had always been that number and racing to that next level. For myself, it included that to some degree, but it was also honing my character in skill to be the best I could be. I remember rushing to spend my hard-earned gold at every level, scanning the Auction House for the next upgrade. I was always geared up as best as I could - and if I couldn't afford it, I farmed stuff into the ground until I could. It's kind of silly, since every level or two I'd be tossing out a piece of armor only to buy a new piece I'd abandon a level later. But I was always in top shape as a result.

Hitting 60 was like the finish line to Hodeb. For me, I wasn't so sure the race was over. I'd heard of endgame, and I'd seen the items there - the kind of stuff that makes that average gamer drool. When Hodeb's interest waned, I carried on, spending that one or two hour a night spamming up the LookingForGroup channel until I got into a pickup raid group to those "easy" endgame instances - Blackrock Spire, Scholomance, and Stratholme. I'd been so far ahead of my guild in level by then (Hodeb had pushed the pace), that we were the few 60s in a mess of 40s and below. I knew they would catch up, since I had hit the endzone with no further advancement, so I stuck things through with the group that had taken me in. Night after night, I joined pickup groups for that shot at a piece of the blue class set. I tell you, if I wasn't so persistent, I might have given up on the game entirely. Pickup groups are a mixed bag and in no way a guarantee at anything - there were nights we started putting a group together, but never ended up leaving the gates of Ironforge for lack of healing, maging, or whatever; there were groups that had completely careless members who would continually wipe the entire raid. Mind you, there were also groups that worked completely great - and those were sweet for ripping through an instance, when that rare event happened. I ran the pickup groups. I ran and ran and ran with them so long that I knew the places inside and out and could tell when Blizzard added or subtracted things from them in patches. I ended up with 6/8 shadowcraft through a few months of pickup nights.

Kenji and the gang caught up. At that juncture in time, the pickup madness in no way appealed to them. They wanted to run these dungeons with reliable groups - guildies. Through luck or fate D), Kenji had come across the guild she thought would be right for us, and we subsequently merged into Fates Rebellion. Fates was run by Daemek and Llwynn, the pair I mentioned many paragraphs ago for my more extreme example of the arguments that games can be social. They were an established guild, like us, only more sizable, and it took a short while for us Shadow Warriors (our guild had been rebranded for a few weeks) to really feel accepted. It was a great move for me, because I was getting sick of endless BRS, Scholo, and Strat - I wanted to at least have a shot at the real hardcore instances - namely Onyxia and Molten Core (Blackwing Lair was out, but it was more of a future horizon - and Zul'Gurub would only appear in a ptch later on). The triple threat of BRS, Scholo, and Strat didn't end - but the experience doing them was very very different in a guild setting than a pickup raid. Things were done "by the book", and I learned this early on when I ran off ahead of the pack to kick-pull a summoner and was reprimended afterwards for not letting the hunters do their job with mana draining. There was more strictness, but as a result, things were more organized and FR had the "triple-threat" down so pat, I seriously think many of us could do those runs with our eyes closed.

I may not have entered Onyxia's Lair, but I got to see Molten Core. And well, hell, even in MC I never saw anything past the "trash mobs". Our failing performances in MC shook a number of alliances we had. The problem was the discrepancies between guilds, and if it had been possible, FR would have gone it alone. But MC is a demanding instance, and it takes 40 skilled players who are dependable - and FR had the numbers to maybe supply 25-30, tops. When allying with other guilds became such a pain-in-the-keester, Daemek set his sights on expanding our numbers again. It was what I felt was the next logical move, and what I would have tried to do were I in charge. Pardon me, Mr. Spock, I'm afraid you'll have to check your logic at the door...

We had another merger, and it became a disaster. When the Shadow Warriors were assimilated into FR, it was kind of an uneasy situation. Their veterans didn't know us, and we didn't know them. It was like taking two office teams and moving them into the same building on the same project. While there was no longer any obstruction between the two groups (which were technically one group), there was a sense of division for some time. It took some time, but we all became FR in the end. However, the second merger was met with the same sort of lazy eye from those veterans, albeit on a grander scale. Think of it like testing a rope a few times. It's used to supporting a given weight. You decide one day to try hanging some extra weight on it. At first it looks like it might snap, but it ends up coping with that weight you added. It seems like it took that alright, so you decide to add a little more, only it isn't ready for it, it snaps, and everything comes crashing down. The veterans of FR were like the rope, and in a sense couldn't handle all the extra weight that was added. In response, they quit the guild.

I never quite could empathesize with Dae and Llw when the event happened, because I'd not been abandoned in that way (yet) - they did have my sympathy. The players that left were those the two had been with since the guild was formed, and for them to deciding to jump ship for what seemed like personal interest (had heard they didn't want to have to fight so many others for item drops) - well, it sounded a little selfish to me. Of course, I don't know the entire story, so I'm not passing judgment, but to make a long story short - it crushed Dae and Llw's interest in running the guild any longer.

Kenji stepped up to the plate, but it seemed like confidence was already failing. Members continuously streamed out over the period of a week, leaving us more or less where FR had been before merging with anyone - sizeable enough to whack down the "triple-threat" instances, but too small for the big leagues. I was resolute. I'd finished off those trailing two pieces of shadowcraft before the second merger, and I'd continued to lend a hand with the triple-threats because of how they were beneficial to the guild as a whole and its endgame. "What made one of us stronger, made us stronger as whole," had been my philosophy. At this point, the guild no longer offered any personal gain - especially when Kenji took over and we were set back greatly. The big instances were set to the horizon, and the focus was helping the existing members grow and achieve their individual sets in hopes that the guild would grow in preparation.

I didn't want to abandon those I'd known since my newbie days, and I continuously looked ahead thinking that contributing to the guild would push things forward, that it would take time, but we would grow back into the former glory that FR had for that period of time where we were tackling UBRS as a cakewalk and we were slowly strategizing our way past each new ZG boss encounter. I figured that it would take some effort, but it was achievable. I ran the raids, I made the efforts to arrange events to help out those who needed specific pieces. I did my 101st run through Strat, or Scholo, BRS, despite how boring and routine they've become. I weathered it all for the "future".

What a pipe dream.

Real life struck, as it has done the past few years. Work picked up to the kind of overtime that had me shelving all else, and I was forced into WoW hiatus. I perhaps logged on once in an entire one month period. I just regained my leisure time a few days back.

And lo and behold, I'd been abandoned. I was faced with a guild list of inactives, alts, and a few players I barely knew. I got the tells, I got the mail. I got the concerned relief over the fact that I hadn't died. I got the story of how the active and faithful crew had moved on to another guild, and I got the instructions of who to contact and what to say to get moved over.

I got the sense I hadn't been in the right place at the right time.

I hadn't been moving on because I was sticking to my guns, my loyalty, my friends. I was helping to roll a boulder in an uphill struggle by my choice, hoping it would pay off in the end. What I guess I didn't realize was that I was so focused on the act of rolling the boulder that I lost sight of the goal of reaching the top. Everyone was working with that burden against their progress - and I guess they found a way to the top without needing to push any longer. Without the help, with just me on the boulder, the uphill struggle was over - in fact, the boulder has brought me all the way down the hill again. We're not just talking pre-FR, but all the way back to those early days to where there was no guild, to where there was just me.

It's odd feeling alone when you sign on in a world with a thousand other players walking around, but that's how it has been. FR was just a mysterious stranger to me anymore, so I did what I maybe should have done long before - I jumped ship. It's quiet without that green text. It's harder to make use of that friends list than it is the guild roster - you have no clue of current events, and you have to send a tell to see if someone's busy, which is hit or miss.

Why have I not just followed them on in with the merger?

For one thing - WPWT - Wrong Place, Wrong Time. I'm not the only one who got left in the dust, as a few of the others are players I know. From my best gatherings, the merger happened inside of a single day, and some players were not ported over during this period for whatever reason.

And even that wouldn't be a factor if not for - WCTYVM - Wrong Class, Thank You Very Much. If it were a true merger, would it have mattered if a few members straggled in behind? Hell no. Do you want to know why it's an issue? It's an issue because of how lopsided FR was, which is really a representation of how lopsided the WoW population is. FR at merger was heavy on rogues and warriors, and low on casters. If I was a healer, you can bet your own bottom the new guild would have scooped me up even if I came on all the way out in March and said I was away and former FR and was part of the merger. Guess what, though...I'm a rogue, and already taking in FR's heavy rogue population, the new guild is overstocked. The same for those unfortunate warriors who didn't get in at the opening pass. I can fully see their side of the story - they've gone past their quota and there's heavy competition already for runs, and the subsequent guild drops. And it may be presumptuous of me to state it, but the merger seems more slanted away from merging and more towards the new guild taking in members of classes they were short on.

I caved in the first day of being guildless, and shot a tell to the guild leader. After seeing my class and level, he already broke out and spoke how he would have to let the rogue group decide because of how numerous they were. I almost gave up right then and there, but banking on the slim chance that the merger might grant me some slack, I again caved in and wrote out an application. I got some great supportive replies from the people that were in SW/FR, but as soon as one of the existing rogues spoke out in advance to the group, I knew things were going to be shot to hell.

"What I'd propose at this point, given our surplus of rogues, is this. Would you be willing to join the guild but give up spots in MC / BWL more frequently than normal. That is, if there's an abundance of rogues hoping to get in, do you mind being at the bottom of the list for invites? I feel crappy asking cuz I know it would suck but it would also probably set a lot of our fears at bay."

In other words, I could get in, but I'd be the absolute bottom-barrel-feeding fallback solution. Factoring in that the guild uses a DKP system in those instances (Dragon Kill Points - a system developed to allow item drop bids with points gained from participation), it doesn't take a genius to realize that I'd not only rarely be given a chance to join the raid, but I'd also have less opportunity at getting anything out of those chance opportunities. I don't know if a similar suggestion was slapped onto the FR members who merged in day one, but I'm betting it wasn't.

So there's definite support to bring me in, and it would mean being with the old group again...but...it would be like being standing on the outside of the circle. I'd be in, but really only in for the sake of being in. I could surely play the persistent part again and work slowly at things, stepping in those rare occassions where they reach the "bottom of the list", but would I just be entertaining a pipe dream again? I made the mistake of putting in my own time and selflessness to guildies in hopes of things working out, only to be left in my current predicament now. The problem with banking hope on the future is that you can't predict what will happen tomorrow. Perhaps it is time I cease looking at the future and focus on the now...?

Overpopulation is a problem all over, and not confined to me, I'm sure. I consistently see guilds advertising for new members with the added "rogues full" line. When I was running in the pickup group circles, I had my share of denial because I was a rogue. All punishment for choosing to play the class I enjoy to play. It's left me homeless, so to speak.

 

It's not as bad as my rant seems to make it out for the casual gamer.
For anything past that (what many label as the "hardcore" part of the game), it gets more difficult to do anything. It's usually fairly easy to get a group to anything pre-60, and there is a lot of content to play with that doesn't involve raiding in large groups. I've been wowing for a while now and covered almost every other aspect of the game, so I apologize when my text sounds bitter.

 

Just as a quick followup:

I joined up with some former friends who had signed up with a guild called "Holy Circle" a few days after this rant was posted. It worked out perfectly, as they were exactly at the same stage of the game I was - beginning the Molten Core. We've been making some great progress. In five weeks worth of attempts, we can take down the first six bosses without difficulty. And I earned myself a Gutgore Ripper. I <3 my purple dagger of awesomeness. ^^