Read it, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like it, I'll post it on the website.
Feel free to suggest revisions.
Guild Charter of The Voltron Force
I thought of writing this in the style of an old 17th Century colonial charter—you know, like the Pilgrims on board the Mayflower wrote. But then I thought that you didn’t want to read old English or pious declarations of how God had blessed them with starvation and a big freakin rock. That and we’re nothing like the Pilgrims. We openly practice witchcraft, and we find debates about the purity of the Anglican Church to be trite and dated.
The only similarity we have to the pilgrims is that we’re a group of people that has come together for reasons that have something to do with shared values. Despite our laid back, fun-loving, and often irreverent attitudes, those of us in the Voltron Force believe in more than the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter and long, slow, deep soft, wet kisses that last three days.
Oh, the Pilgrims didn’t believe in those things either? Well, they damn well ought to have. But yeah, we’re nothing like them.
What we are like is a bunch of relatively young (think 20 and 30 somethings) goofballs that have fun playing World of Warcraft. Pretty much all of us have jobs or are students. Some of us are working on professional degress, others are on a six year plan. We have aspiring lawyers, opera singers, engineers and AV geeks. Some of us are hopeless enough to root for the Chicago Cubs, while others were dumb enough to buy into John Madden’s 1990’s garbage about the Dalls Cowboys being America’s team. No more than one of us believes that Rex Grossman will turn into a good and consistent NFL quarterback.
We’re very open and welcoming. We’ll listen to you bitch about work, the incompetence of your favorite sports teams, your hangover, or whatever else is on your mind. Odds are, we can empathize… or are desperate enough to need someone to make us feel better about our day. Either way, we’re happy to listen to you in /g.
We also do fun things in game. We PvP together, and we even have healers who heal in PvP. We ninja the arena trinket in STV, even when other guilds devote the better part of their full resources to getting it. We taunt alliance toons into world PvP. We run instances at least 3 nights a week, and we laugh when our noob priest, main healer, and Guildmaster wipes us in ways that were previously thought impossible. We actually help each other with quests and shit. We even have Vent to coordinate our exercises in hilarity, ownership, or futility. It just sorta depends on the night.
A lot of us have a good amount of experience. We’ve been there for Nef and Twin Emps first kills. (And second, and 30th, etc.) We got tired of the raiding as grinding, consumable farming, six night a week commitment it got to be. We saw how it could polarize a guild between the hardcore and more casual players. We saw how raiding systems that gave priority to officers and how bad DKP systems could alienate casual, but loyal and committed members. We’ve lived, loved, wiped, one-shotted, grinded, swore at five consecutive weeks of time lapse on Chromaggus (yes, five weeks), and hopefully through it all, learned a lot.
We want to build on that past experience and eventually get to Kharazan. We want to kick the teeth in of whatever Medivh left behind. We also hope Blizzard will allow for chess matches between raid members on Medivh’s chess board. But we aren’t going to break our necks to do this. We even want to move beyond Kharazan and kill some Nagas, Gruul, etc. But again, our pace, our terms.
If you join this guild, you can expect a fun environment. We’re casual, but we want to win. We will PvP. We will arena. We will Kharazan. We will raid. We will treat you fairly. We all do selfless things for the better of the guild. We all accept that we have to sacrifice more often than not (you are just one person of many), but we’re all very grateful when everyone does something nice for us. This is the glue that holds us together (God knows it’s not my humor). There are no officers, no ranks, no hierarchy. Instead, you get sweet ranks like “Lion Force,” or “Evil General,” or “CTU Tac Team,” or something you make up and want to be called.
We need druids and warlocks badly. But even more importantly, we need good people. If this is you, please, come join us. Type “/Who VF” and ask one of us about the guild. Everyone has /ginvite privileges. Who knows. You might get one.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Monday, April 9, 2007
Like Always... Evil Lackeys Lack Evil
It's so difficult being evil these days... what, with that spoiled Prince turned Regicidal Lich holed up in that frozen glacier up north and all... Who died and made him Oedipus Rex? Or that vain, Arayan Blood Elf that's pretending to rule that hunk of rock known as 'Outland.' God knows what he's doing, playing the vain magical mad scientist out there... He's probably melting the heads off of female Blood Elf dolls and frying lost dranei with magnifying glasses. But you know it just has to be pure evil if he gets his own patch and fortress replete with multiple winged dungeons. That's evil to the third, or fifth, or however many wings he has.
And here we are, wandering around Azeroth, trying to get a level 10 Dranei Shaman to cower at our feet. The people we beat up for lunch money are lucky to have two flipping silver on them. One of our biggest evil accomplishments to date has been killing three vikings who fell off the pages of Cunegonde' s Astreix comic book and landed in Uldaman. Our evil, denoted by the same symbol that will mark Barry Bonds' eventual home run record.
And we didn't even take steroids.
Well, we had an opportunity for some real, pure evil tonight, when level 20, Princess Peaches stepped into the free-for-all of the Gurubashi Arena with evil lackeys--or lacking evil--Hunk and Sovain to get the treasure chest and the +5 stamina trinket. Giving this reward to a level 20 Paladin is funny and evil in its own right.
But it's not nearly as funny and evil as then killing said paladin until her res timer exceeds her level.
A failure to see this is what separates the evil lackeys from the evil geniuses. At a time when so many evils are diverting the world's attention from us, we could've used some cheap publicity--a screenshot of the level 20 Paladin attmepting to bubble hearth out of the arena and away from her own guildmates.
That's the sort of evil that you can't teach. That's the sort of evil that the world respects and admires with awe. That's the sort of evil that takes names like 'Illidan' and 'Oedipus'... er 'Arthas' off of people's tongues and puts yours on it.
Unfortunately, it seems that's the sort of evil that only I am capable of. Evil help, it's just so hard to find these days.
And here we are, wandering around Azeroth, trying to get a level 10 Dranei Shaman to cower at our feet. The people we beat up for lunch money are lucky to have two flipping silver on them. One of our biggest evil accomplishments to date has been killing three vikings who fell off the pages of Cunegonde' s Astreix comic book and landed in Uldaman. Our evil, denoted by the same symbol that will mark Barry Bonds' eventual home run record.
And we didn't even take steroids.
Well, we had an opportunity for some real, pure evil tonight, when level 20, Princess Peaches stepped into the free-for-all of the Gurubashi Arena with evil lackeys--or lacking evil--Hunk and Sovain to get the treasure chest and the +5 stamina trinket. Giving this reward to a level 20 Paladin is funny and evil in its own right.
But it's not nearly as funny and evil as then killing said paladin until her res timer exceeds her level.
A failure to see this is what separates the evil lackeys from the evil geniuses. At a time when so many evils are diverting the world's attention from us, we could've used some cheap publicity--a screenshot of the level 20 Paladin attmepting to bubble hearth out of the arena and away from her own guildmates.
That's the sort of evil that you can't teach. That's the sort of evil that the world respects and admires with awe. That's the sort of evil that takes names like 'Illidan' and 'Oedipus'... er 'Arthas' off of people's tongues and puts yours on it.
Unfortunately, it seems that's the sort of evil that only I am capable of. Evil help, it's just so hard to find these days.
Monday, March 26, 2007
An Open Letter to Frenzy Battlegroup Alliance
Dear Alliance Players in the Frenzy Battlegroup:
Please, allow me to offer you a laurel and a hearty handshake for a job well done. You know how to lose battlegrounds like champs. For that, I, along with the rest of the Horde in the Frenzy battlegroup, am truly thankful.
Watching you guys futilely attack our flag carrier in Warsong Gulch as I heal them, while leaving me alone never gets old. The same goes for when me and one damage class hold a node 2 v 4 in Arathi Basin. I admit, your failure and ineptitude, even when the numbers are even--or you outnumber us by one or two--is so mind boggling that I'm left with more questions than answers. Some of those questions include:
What is it like to ride the short bus to the battlegrounds? Do the few horde it occasionally drops off make it really crowded? Or is the 'short' bus the price humans and night elves pay for their alliance with the dwarves and gnomes?
When during the Obama administration do you expect to get your first PvP epic? Is even money on Frenzy alliance winning 10 Warsong Gulch's that I'm in (you have two, and I PvP a lot) before the US withdraws from Iraq too generous to Alliance PvPers?
Can I talk you into making characters named after infamous pro wrestling jobbers? Seeing toons with names like 'Brooklyn Brawler,' 'Barry Horowitz,' 'Villano V (or III, or IV),' 'La Parka,' 'El Dandy,' 'Barry Darsow,' 'Lenny Lane (did he ever give his Loverboy CD back to Chris Jericho?)' and the like might leave me laughing hard enough that you'd get a flag cap or two.
And finally, one simple question: Did you eat paint chips when you were a child?
Thank you for all the easy wins and honor. But please, I'd rather have fun in the battlegrounds, not mocking you outside.
Sincerely,
Zarkon
Evil King, The Priest Who Heals in Battlegrounds, and Leader of the Voltron Force
Please, allow me to offer you a laurel and a hearty handshake for a job well done. You know how to lose battlegrounds like champs. For that, I, along with the rest of the Horde in the Frenzy battlegroup, am truly thankful.
Watching you guys futilely attack our flag carrier in Warsong Gulch as I heal them, while leaving me alone never gets old. The same goes for when me and one damage class hold a node 2 v 4 in Arathi Basin. I admit, your failure and ineptitude, even when the numbers are even--or you outnumber us by one or two--is so mind boggling that I'm left with more questions than answers. Some of those questions include:
What is it like to ride the short bus to the battlegrounds? Do the few horde it occasionally drops off make it really crowded? Or is the 'short' bus the price humans and night elves pay for their alliance with the dwarves and gnomes?
When during the Obama administration do you expect to get your first PvP epic? Is even money on Frenzy alliance winning 10 Warsong Gulch's that I'm in (you have two, and I PvP a lot) before the US withdraws from Iraq too generous to Alliance PvPers?
Can I talk you into making characters named after infamous pro wrestling jobbers? Seeing toons with names like 'Brooklyn Brawler,' 'Barry Horowitz,' 'Villano V (or III, or IV),' 'La Parka,' 'El Dandy,' 'Barry Darsow,' 'Lenny Lane (did he ever give his Loverboy CD back to Chris Jericho?)' and the like might leave me laughing hard enough that you'd get a flag cap or two.
And finally, one simple question: Did you eat paint chips when you were a child?
Thank you for all the easy wins and honor. But please, I'd rather have fun in the battlegrounds, not mocking you outside.
Sincerely,
Zarkon
Evil King, The Priest Who Heals in Battlegrounds, and Leader of the Voltron Force
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Forums, Level 40 and More
A few things to take note of... Aquitane/Silvanesti is setting up forums for the guild at www.voltronforce.freeforums.org He doesn't anticipate having them working until Thursday night or Friday, but you can head over there and register now.
Last night's run through the armory was good--we got a crapload of greens and some more of the Scarlet Chain set... and we had the boss killed, save 4 mobs running in out of nowhere and causing just a bit more havoc than we could handle... and then turning a 2 pull into a 6 pull on the way back. We also learned a bit about tanking and level requirements...
Which brings up the point of level 40 and that some of us are getting very close to hitting us. With a lack of lively PvP most of the time, it does leave us with few options-especially since tradeskills are going very well.
I'm not sure what to do about this dilemma... Farming gold is always a good option, though boring as hell, and those crawlers still give you some experience... Logging outside of an inn or city to avoid rest exp is a decent move too, I suppose. To avoid the more exp that comes with instances, we could spend Wednesday night helping Hunk do a bazillion quests down in STV in an hour or two and get our tank up to a healthy 35 or so.
The last thing to note is that our guild needs some class balance at a few key spots... First, we need a druid. I was hoping for (and still am, eventually) my brother to play this role. It really hasn't worked out like I had planned. We also could use a warlock. Some RL stuff has come up for Allura, limiting her playing time.
If you get a chance to play with a druid or warlock and you like them, and they're unguilded, let me know. We'll basically look mid 20's to 30's. This isn't a priority--but it would be nice as TBone is leveling to have the option of getting 2 groups going like we had last night and keeping them balanced. Our rogue-heavy runs have worked well, but eventually sap won't work... :-) And when it doesn't, we need to be ready to adapt.
Last night's run through the armory was good--we got a crapload of greens and some more of the Scarlet Chain set... and we had the boss killed, save 4 mobs running in out of nowhere and causing just a bit more havoc than we could handle... and then turning a 2 pull into a 6 pull on the way back. We also learned a bit about tanking and level requirements...
Which brings up the point of level 40 and that some of us are getting very close to hitting us. With a lack of lively PvP most of the time, it does leave us with few options-especially since tradeskills are going very well.
I'm not sure what to do about this dilemma... Farming gold is always a good option, though boring as hell, and those crawlers still give you some experience... Logging outside of an inn or city to avoid rest exp is a decent move too, I suppose. To avoid the more exp that comes with instances, we could spend Wednesday night helping Hunk do a bazillion quests down in STV in an hour or two and get our tank up to a healthy 35 or so.
The last thing to note is that our guild needs some class balance at a few key spots... First, we need a druid. I was hoping for (and still am, eventually) my brother to play this role. It really hasn't worked out like I had planned. We also could use a warlock. Some RL stuff has come up for Allura, limiting her playing time.
If you get a chance to play with a druid or warlock and you like them, and they're unguilded, let me know. We'll basically look mid 20's to 30's. This isn't a priority--but it would be nice as TBone is leveling to have the option of getting 2 groups going like we had last night and keeping them balanced. Our rogue-heavy runs have worked well, but eventually sap won't work... :-) And when it doesn't, we need to be ready to adapt.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Back at it, at least for a day...
Hey kids, just a quick update as the weekend winds down in Pittsburgh... It's been a fun weekend for me--I was in Buffalo on Thursday to watch Pitt win its first round game, spent over 12 consecutive hours in one of three bars on Friday watching hoops, the Penguins and never quite getting drunk with a lot of different friends...
Saturday, I slept until 2 and watched hoops and celebrated St. Patty's day by nearly having a heart attack as Pitt blew a 19 point lead in the 2nd half to win in overtime. But a win is a win. I saw even more friends... and today, I watched more hoops and hockey... and was disappointed, but also excited for the Penguins when I went to the arena store to find they were sold out of every single jersey. My road white Jordan Staal jersey will have to wait.
I'll be back in Chicago for a day and night tomorrow before heading home to Iowa to spend time with my family. I'm hoping to maybe head up to Yurack's place on Wednesday to play too, but we'll see. Pitt plays out in San Jose this Thursday--I trust that you'll all be watching!
I'm hoping to hit up Scarlet Monastery tomorrow, one, if not two wings. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone--and I made sure to click off everyone's /gkick ability--so if you tried to play a practical joke on me over the weekend, I outsmarted you!
Saturday, I slept until 2 and watched hoops and celebrated St. Patty's day by nearly having a heart attack as Pitt blew a 19 point lead in the 2nd half to win in overtime. But a win is a win. I saw even more friends... and today, I watched more hoops and hockey... and was disappointed, but also excited for the Penguins when I went to the arena store to find they were sold out of every single jersey. My road white Jordan Staal jersey will have to wait.
I'll be back in Chicago for a day and night tomorrow before heading home to Iowa to spend time with my family. I'm hoping to maybe head up to Yurack's place on Wednesday to play too, but we'll see. Pitt plays out in San Jose this Thursday--I trust that you'll all be watching!
I'm hoping to hit up Scarlet Monastery tomorrow, one, if not two wings. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone--and I made sure to click off everyone's /gkick ability--so if you tried to play a practical joke on me over the weekend, I outsmarted you!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Mr. Moneytroll's Shell(fish) Game
Want to have your mount at 40? Don't mind an hour or two of drudgery here and there? Have I got the game for you.
No, this doesn't involve a dollar, a crane that couldn't hold a baby hamster without opening its jaws wider than fans after waching a Sidney Crosby shootout goal, a string of profanity and an unimpressed girl. In other words, this game makes you richer, not poorer.
Go visit Mr. Moneytroll in Desolace. There's a troll who tells you about his shellfish traps out in the sea around the dock and such at Shadowprey village. You swim down, open the traps, and you either get 1 or 2 shellfish, a mob, or vendor trash. For every 5 shellfish you get, he gives you 55s. It's infinitely repeatable, best I can tell. I've turned in about 100 shellfish. That's 11g.
I was doing this with an underwater breathing pot. You need to. I can make them and will farm the blackmouth to make a bunch. Just send me an in-game mail requesting a few. If you can send me blackmouth too, that'd be great.
I was making about 10-12g/hour. It's not fun, but hey, it pays the bills.
Go play Mr. Moneytroll's shellfish game. Everyone is a winer.
No, this doesn't involve a dollar, a crane that couldn't hold a baby hamster without opening its jaws wider than fans after waching a Sidney Crosby shootout goal, a string of profanity and an unimpressed girl. In other words, this game makes you richer, not poorer.
Go visit Mr. Moneytroll in Desolace. There's a troll who tells you about his shellfish traps out in the sea around the dock and such at Shadowprey village. You swim down, open the traps, and you either get 1 or 2 shellfish, a mob, or vendor trash. For every 5 shellfish you get, he gives you 55s. It's infinitely repeatable, best I can tell. I've turned in about 100 shellfish. That's 11g.
I was doing this with an underwater breathing pot. You need to. I can make them and will farm the blackmouth to make a bunch. Just send me an in-game mail requesting a few. If you can send me blackmouth too, that'd be great.
I was making about 10-12g/hour. It's not fun, but hey, it pays the bills.
Go play Mr. Moneytroll's shellfish game. Everyone is a winer.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Skills/Professions
In looking at Hunk's comment about being held up for ransom for heavy leather on the AH, I thought that I'd take the chance to remind everyone to use in-game mail and their comments page in game under the guild tab to list skills/professions.
If you need leather, hit up a skinner. I know that Ertai and Lucin have lots of heavy leather, and I think that Silvanesti is getting to that point too.
If you need health/mana pots, and I'm not on, send me an in-game mail. I'll get whatever you need. I can make a lot of other pots too.
If you need gems to level jewelcrafting, let me know. I'll do my best to get those funneled to you.
Basically, lets try to leave the AH for selling our stuff and taking advantage of good buys from others. I think that we have enough trade goods and such in-guild to make sure nobody goes without something that they need. And if it's something that nobody can make or has quite yet, we can figure out how to get it.
If you need leather, hit up a skinner. I know that Ertai and Lucin have lots of heavy leather, and I think that Silvanesti is getting to that point too.
If you need health/mana pots, and I'm not on, send me an in-game mail. I'll get whatever you need. I can make a lot of other pots too.
If you need gems to level jewelcrafting, let me know. I'll do my best to get those funneled to you.
Basically, lets try to leave the AH for selling our stuff and taking advantage of good buys from others. I think that we have enough trade goods and such in-guild to make sure nobody goes without something that they need. And if it's something that nobody can make or has quite yet, we can figure out how to get it.
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