Initiate Blues

Things To Do While Waiting on the Bench

Read a book.

Read forums.

Cheerlead.

Research your class.

Alt-tab another game.

Play with yourself.

Dance like no one is watching.

Cry for eternity.

-Avia.

Making friends in the military starts with your sub-unit.

What it felt like:

 

There were plenty of people in our battalion but only a few of us in our platoon. Three warlocks against the forces of Orgrimmar defending their corrupt warchief. If that's all the lieutenant thought we needed to succeed in our mission, then so be it.

A little away from us, the healers huddled around a pile of complicated charts and graphs, their officer briefing the new priest recruit on his assignments. The tanks seemed to have their strategy set and were sitting quietly, keeping an eye on the enemy that marched in the distance. Meanwhile, one of the death knights had fallen asleep, and the other melee were taking turns teabagging him. How ironic.

"You alright?" asked a fellow warlock, sitting next to me.

"Yea," I replied, a little too quickly. My fortified rations sat unmoving in my stomach.

He patted me on the back with a heavy hand. I felt some of the anxiety dissipate under the pressure. "Just do your job," he said, staring off in the same direction as the tanks. "It's important to get the mines down before they reach the ranged troops. Just kill the mines, and if you're still alive at the end... Well, that'll really impress the officers."

"Ok," I said. "Got it." Just stay alive. Stay alive.

"Ready check!" yelled the lieutenant.

We all leapt to our feet, the death knight swatting away someone's crotch as he did so. I adjusted my staff and my shoulders with shaking hands.

"Get into positions! We engage in twelve seconds!"

Falling in line next to the other warlock, I looked over at him. He caught my gaze and smiled before turning towards the boss, a potion at the ready in his hand. I clutched mine too and faced forward.

It was time to prove myself.

What really happened:

 

[warlockchannel] Fellow warlock: Just stay alive.
[warlockchannel] Me: Kk.

-Avia.

Exciting Times in a New Guild

Guess what? After all those Braveheart theatrics last week, the priest and I found a new guild anyway and transferred off.

Yea yea, go ahead and try to say that we abandoned them, but believe me that almost all of them are simply relieved to not have to endure Blackfuse anymore. Now they can finally go off and farm D3 and chase tail all they want without dragging themselves begrudgingly to raid and alt-tabbing Hearthstone the whole time.

Why do I say "almost all of them" are relieved? Because there is always that one angry guy who feels betrayed, but it's not because we left the guild during progression. Actually, he thought that the three of us were going to find a new guild together. Now, for some reason, he feels entitled to be all emo mad like a hypocrite when we saw him applying for guilds by himself a week ago. Caught.

Anyway, the new guild is 25 man, and it is a huge adjustment after raiding with a close-knit 10 man group of RL friends and people who have played together for years. It's daunting to now have to get to know people in a 25 man setting. I'm finding it difficult to approach anyone, and I can't even look at that list of names in Mumble and think of opening my mouth and putting the spotlight on myself. Unfortunately, I also feel a pressure to get noticed and stand out as more than just a number on a DPS meter since right now that number isn't so great. You try being thrown into H Garrosh and killing him without ever practicing phase 4. I was so nervous, my stomach figured I was being chased by a lion on the Serengeti and stopped working.

It's still early, so hopefully OG Priest and I will settle in with time. That OG stands for "Old Guild" by the way, not "Original Gangster."

Maybe it's both.

-Avia.

Server Merge Scheduled. Party Hats On.

On Thursday, my crappy little realm is getting its first server merger, and I cannot wait until our piddling pool of players finally expands. Yes, in two days time, there will be a whole mass of new people from which to choose for competent raiders, alt content, and pugs of every kind. The auction house will fill with items that we usually never see, and the economy will boom as more and more buyers flood the market to spend their gold on our crap. Never again will we be left begging for a tank, any tank, LF 1 tank we don't even care what your ilvl is or if you click all of your action buttons just please help us. And if we ask for a port or transmute in trade, someone will actually answer besides trolls! Oh it will be a glorious day, this Thursday!

Is it all positives? Of course not. Already I'm cleaning up my ignore list in preparation, because I'm sure I will be putting a lot more new names on it. Soon, my carefully tuned trade chat void of all the worst offenders will be hosting plenty of new individuals vying for the role of biggest talking anus, and it will take time to sort out who is just excited about the merge and who will spew mind-dulling garbage out of his/her hands every time s/he types. It's a big job, but with these changes come new responsibilities, and if it's not determining which characters are capable enough to bring to alt runs or forging alliances with other guilds, it's figuring out who are the token asshats and auction house undercutters of our newly-connected realm. We're a community after all.

And I'm on neighborhood watch.

-Avia.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AHHHHH!!!!

For our raid team, the new year brought new management. Yup, there has been a bit of shuffling around in the ranks, and our disc priest turned raid lead started off last night's Siegecrafter attempts with a speech so full of confident assurance of our future survival and stern beratement of our past mistakes that there was much moisture from the members of our team; and I don't mean tears. I guess there is truth in the old advice about men being attracted to inner-strength and confidence though I never had the fortune of experiencing it in action until I saw our hunter getting riled up Braveheart-style last night. There's nothing like an impassioned, uplifting speech to inspire the troops and turn them on... to raiding. ^_~

-Avia.