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I am trying to to revive my blog, as well. There will be exclusive content in the future, don’t you worry! Feel free to subscribe and whatnot.

Thanks, guys!

Toto, we’re not in Wrath of the Lich King anymore. Blizzard has shifted gears again. This time, in Cataclysm, you are encouraged to join guilds and play consistently with guildmates as opposed to relying on pick up groups (PuGs). In Wrath of the Lich King, we were accustomed to being able to pick random players of any class and blast through heroics and a lot of raids. With the difficultly bar raised in Cataclysm and the perks of being in a guild, there really is no reason why you should not find a group of like-minded individuals to socialize and play with.

Friends

This is a online multiplayer game, afterall. Go out and meet people, or better yet, get your friends to start playing. If you have trouble socializing with people in-game, you can probably find a guild by advertising yourself in Trade channel. I did this on one of my alt characters: “Looking for social leveling guild.” I got a response instantly. By just joining a random guild, you can make new friends. If the guild members schedules are different from yours and you cannot play with them, it may be time to find a new home.

Also, try the World of Warcraft Battle.Net forums. Even if you are non-raider or still leveling, you can create a forum post stating that you are looking for a guild. State exactly what in the guild you are looking for. If you do not mind transferring your character or starting a new one, create a post on the “Guild Recruitment” forums, but if you want to stay on your current server, make a post on your server forums.

You could build friendships that last a lifetime. I have met people in World of Warcraft five years ago that I still talk to.

Guild Perks

The guild leveling, achievement, and reputation system is probably the biggest reason why people are looking for guilds now. Both are earned by questing, killing, leveling characters and leveling professions; basically, anything you do while in the guild increases your guild levels and reputation.

Guild reputation allows you to access items at the guild vendor. Some items also require you to have a certain guild level before you can purchase them, as well. For example, if you join a new guild that is level 12, you start at Neutral with the guild. You may want the guild standard, but you cannot purchase it from the vendor until your are Friendly with the guild.

Guild achievements also give you access to items from the guild vendor. Guild achievements are earned by completing raid and rated PvP content with your guild, as well as guild profession achievements. Such as, gaining access to the new fish feast recipe after the collective guild catches 5,000 fish.

Guild leveling is probably what is going to impact you the most. Each level provides its own perk. The perks increase substantially as your guild gains level. The perks include increase in leveling and reputation percentage, increased mount speed, decreased durability penalties, increase material gains from farming and mass resurrection.

Content

See more, do more with your guild. Whether you are an avid PvPer or raider, joining a guild with people that are passionate about the same things you are means your chances of progressing are higher; you’ll be guaranteed to have more fun, as well. People complain about PuG heroics all the time, put that in the past. You do not have to PuG if you don’t want to. By, as said earlier, joining or creating a guild with like-minded people that play at the same times you do will solve a lot of your problems. Progressing through content with a guild, especially one where you really get to know the people or you have been in for a long time, is more rewarding than joining a PuG raid looking for someone with a “leet” gearscore.

Shameless Pageview Plug

Look for posts in the future.

<3

Keep checking back as the site unfolds into something glorious (ok that was bad, but I’m in a rush).

EDIT: For now you can catch some of my writing at Spawn Kill

Some hints of what’s to come:

-Daily updates (maybe themed, maybe not. I haven’t gotten that far.)

-I will still talk about WoW, but Gurl IRL will no longer be a “WoW fan site”. It will cover all sorts of games and other hot geeky topics.

-Possibility of hosting my blog. DUN DUN DUN!!

Well, those are just a couple of the ideas I have right now. You’ll notice the changes as they come since I can’t really deactivate the site or anything.

I’ll start chatting it up again when this all is over with, you’ll see me promoting it on Twitter, etc. I just hope you all will enjoy the final product!

Cheers,

Astrella

A handful of us from Bad Mojo transfered to Horde last week to just do some 10mans for a bit, then we were going to start applying to guilds on Mal’Ganis. As soon as we transfered to Horde we had an offer from the top Horde guild to possibly join up with them and give them a bit of a boost in raiding. That was total failure. Half their raid can’t stay focused or take what they’re doing seriously. We were attempting ToC Heroic 25man Northrend Beasts Sunday and the group of us left early because there was just too much bullshit going on for us. We told them as we were leaving, “Let us know when you’re ready to get serious about raiding.” From there we went on to do ToC normal/heroic 10man.

After some talk on the forums we all pretty much agreed that the game hasn’t been the same since the end of our hardcore raiding days in BM, and that we’re all interested in looking at different options right now.

Basically, we came to the decision to have 1-2 scheduled 10man nights in WoW. We all want to continue to play WoW and experience raiding, but we want to do it on a more personal, casual level. We’ll be raiding with just friends, and extremely talented players. What about the other nights of the week that we’d normally be doing 25mans? Well, a bunch of us bought Aion! We’re in no rush to level or do end game (if we even become interested in end game there), but we’re making it more about the experience of leveling and grouping with our friends. This also gives us time to do more stuff outside of MMOs with friends if we want to. Also, don’t forget about console games! I know I just bought a DSi that I’m itching to play, and I have like three console games waiting for me!

I think overall I’ll like the more casual side of WoW. I’m just afraid of “purple jealousy” and boredom. If I get too bored I might want to start filling time with 25mans or the fact that I won’t be able to get THE BEST gear available in the game may really, really start to bother me. My friends and I are just testing the waters, getting our feet wet. We’ll see how it all turns out!

The toon that I’m leveling through AV is a horde rogue; it’s also my only horde toon. I’ve neglected her somewhat. I’ve had her for about a year and a half, and only leveled her in small spurts here and there. I never got her to 70 before WotLK came out. After patch 3.2, and the introduction to leveling through BGs many people in my main Alliance guild started talking about how crazy the XP is in AV in the 71-80 bracket. And so it is pretty damn crazy! Over 18k XP per cap, and I haven’t taken notice, but I read on a site that each win is about 43k XP.

Next part, some of you may not like so much. I AFK in AV. Yes, I’m “that guy”. I’m a rogue so I’ll stealth on our base and pretend to defend, but I’m really not paying attention to the BG. What’s my excuse? I use that time to get other stuff done. Example: Right  now. I’m stealthed in Drek’s room on my PC, and I’m typing this on my lap top. I can get XP and honor while I’m being productive in other areas of my life. I know, I’m a horrible person. If I’m going to be in a BG I should participate, yadda yadda. Who cares. I hate PvP. I want to level easily on my 3rd toon.

A couple downsides of this is that I’m not leveling my weapon skills, I’m not getting any gear via questing/dungeons, and I’m not making gold. I usually wait until I hit max level before doing any crafting, so I’m discounting that (I’m even still in the 200s for lock picking). It’s not that big of a deal to me though. After I hit 80 I’ll just go back to do the “green” quests. I’ll blow through them while leveling my weapons and making more gold from them then I would have below 80. With the gold I make from quests/dailies I’ll be able to buy mats for crafted gear. I also don’t think it will be a huge issue finding some normal dungeon groups for gear and rep before I start doing heroics.

I’m definitely making out with the greater end of the deal. I’m sorry to everyone else in my AVs. I also don’t condone AFKing in BGs. I’m ashamed of it, but not afraid to admit it. Don’t fret. I’m almost done leveling, and you won’t have to deal with me in your BGs anymore.

Inc PvP flames.

I don’t agree with the badge changes. Hell, even casuals I’m friends with don’t like it. They tell me they feel somewhat guilty or shameful just getting handed Conquest/Triumph badges for practically nothing.

“Oh, Astrella! It takes so long to do enough heroic dailies to get a Triumph item. I should be rewarded for my time.”

NO YOU SHOULDN’T! I don’t care if it takes you a year to get that one piece of Triumph loot. What you’re doing for it is considerably easier than what I had to go through to get it. Going to a Naxx pug with my alt and seeing some horrible, terrible tank with his T8.5 helm and a mix of poorly  gemmed blues/heroic epics enfuriates me to no end.

I do think though, and this might sound hypocritical, that my alts deserve the Triumph/Conquest badges. I did my time. I trekked through the ahlls of Ulduar wipe after wipe. I bested the Champions in the Trial of the Crusader. I think I’m still pretty damn deserving no matter what toon I’m on because I already worked painstakingly hard at it before.

Yes, again, I’m an entitled bitch. Take it as you will, but let me reiterate something I said in my “Ins and Outs” page about this blog: I’m not a casual hater, I’m a “downie” hater.

/rant

Issuing reputation for kills, and turn-ins for raiding made running the dungeon doubly rewarding. The more you ran the instance and got the necessary items, your guild would stand itself apart from guilds just starting out, as well as the gear that gradually opened up for you as your rep increased. You were regarded as a seasoned veteran of raiding if you had all three Cenarian Circle rep pieces, or the Brood of Nozdormu ring. Even in Burning Crusade, having the exalted Scale of Sands ring, or the Ashtongue Deathsworn trinket made you a cut above the rest (even if the Ashtongue trinket sucked for the most part). This is not to mention all the useful crafting patterns these raiding reputations would give you so you didn’t have to look out of the guild for a rare enchant.

The total lack of anything like this with the WotLK raids really does make raiding feel like and in and out process of getting your epics and calling it a day. It all seems very…empty to me. Just think back, for anyone who raided in Vanilla WoW or Burning Crusade. Remember the excitement you felt when you finally got exalted with The Violet Eye for your uber ring? Remember how satisfied you felt, jewelcrafters, when you got exalted with Scale of Sands and had access to all the epic gem patterns exclusive to Mount Hyjal raiders (I do realize they changed this, don’t worry)? Working towards an additional goal while raiding a particular dungeon made running it a million times over all that more fruitful in the end.

This is why TBag-Shefki was suggested to me a long time ago by my fiancé.  One word of warning though, it is a bit resource heavy.  I don’t personally mind this because of how much the mod has to offer.  The best thing about this mod is not that’s just a “one bag”, but it also automatically categorizes your items for you so they’re very neat and simple to find.

(Please follow the image link to see it full size.  I had to make them small to fit the page.)

As you can see in the picture below my bags are all sorted.  You can also view your bank any time, anywhere!

There are other visible features right from the get-go.  There is the “Lock” button which will lock the window in place.  There are also the “Highlight New”, “Edit Mode”, “Toggle Bank”, and “Reload” options.

“Highlight New” is pretty self explanatory.  “Toggle Bank” is in the first picture.  “Reload” reorganizes your bags for you while they’re still open, otherwise you can just close your bag and reopen it to find everything in place.  “Edit Mode” (see below) is a customization mode that lets you dictate where you want the categories of items to go, how you want to sort them.

Another cool feature is having the ability to view any character’s bank or bags on your account from the character you are on.  Just select the drop down menu in the top left!

There are also different slash commands for TBag using /tinv followed by what you want to do.

I think the most important command is the configuration command.  In there you will see alot of slide bars to set up columns, scaling, spacing, etc.  You will also see options to “Assign Cats” (or category) and “Add New Cat”.  So you can manually go into this configuration mode and tell TBag the name of categories, what it will hold, and where in the bag it will be (determined by the number of the category that can be seen in the “Edit Mode” image).

I will say that I have never had the need to open the configuration and change anything.  I like it as is, but the option is always there.

Last, but not least, I made a short video demonstrating some of the features of TBag that I just talked about.  Enjoy!