A month and a half into SWTOR has seen NGD establish a solid foothold in Bioware's galaxy far far away. Overcoming the fact that the GM forgot that he wasn't in the first few rounds of invites (who exactly made this guy the lead?), the guild has made steady progress thru the game. As of this date, nearly fifteen players have reached mac level, with many more in their forties. Every four man has been successfully completed, PVP has been fully engaged, and apparently Stavi created a demand for a class nerf entirely on his own.
Having done all of that, it is ripe for the next stage of the game to open up. Starting next week, We will commence 8 man raiding in The Old Republic. As more players reach 50 and gar out, our objective is to begin and maintain raids at a 16 man level. Given our current numbers, this objective is both reasonable and achievable.
As SWTOR evolves, we will continue to focus on the new challenges, new opportunities, and new diversions of the game. As always, it is the members of NGD who make this guild the place to be for actually ENJOYING the players you group with. As we move into the next stage of our evolution, this one factor will be the source of our succcess and the reason we play together.
We can has server?
We have successfully completed the pre-launch process and been assigned to a server. In a totally fitting turn of events, we have been assigned to the server Mind Trick.
It's been said that most of us have the mental strength of Bib Fortuna. I, for one, have been compared for many years to Jabba, so I expect no ill effects from this server selection.
That same strength of intellect fogot to prepromote our early access players to officer rank, meaning that guild invites are, shall we say, stagnant if you weren't pre registered. Oversight on my part, please be patient for the time it takes us to get rectified.
Closing the book on Firelands and beyond
So, as we move into the holiday season for 2011, and with many major changes coming in the gaming world, it's time to say adieu to Firelands. This raid tier provide some interesting challenges for us as a raid group, and I'm still convinced that if we had one more week before the big nerf we would have gotten Rag down on normal. Unfortunately, the big nerf also trivialized the content to a great extent, and that lack of real challenge has made raiding to be much more of a grind than the real fun days of progression. Hopefully Blizz will realize that this one time mega-nerf is not really in the best interest of the game. We'll close out the tier happy that we got thru all the bosses, and had some fun with heroics, but it's a victory that felt a bit hollow in the end.
That being said, we have some major changes planned for the guild in the upcoming months. December 20th marks the release of Old Republic, and the free to play weekends have shown that it is a real competitor in the MMO field. A guild meeting is planned for November 22nd at 8 EST to discuss Old republic and our plans for NGD in this new game.
The gaming world is kinda flush at the moment- Skyrim has basically taken over the internet; FPS is perhaps at its highest point in a decade with the near simultaneous release of MW and BF; just over the horizon, both Diablo and Starcraft are coming this way. It's a good time to be a gamer, and a good time to be part of a gaming community like NGD.
South Side Honor!
First up, big congrats to our newest officer. The one, the only, Raevlyn. She's been one of the few individuals who over the years has worked hard to prove that she'd make a good officer. There were some bumpy roads but her commitment to earning the rank of officer never diminished. It's that resolve to become an officer that eventually made us ignore the overarching premise of greed that often accompanies someone seeking to be an officer amongst our refurbished and broken ranks. I'm sure everyone will welcome her with open maws and should you have some issue that needs officer attention, don't be afraid to approach her with it. She's meek on the outside and she'll likely pretend its a mistake but you've all seen the same song and dance from the other officers. So if you're buying into the tale Rae's telling, boy do I have an investment opportunity for you!
On the WoW front we killed some big zombie dragons. Everyone loves to kill zombies right? So killing zombie dragons was practically orgasmic, if I do say so myself. I'm sure there is a poorly taken picture floating around somewhere, but you've all been bad children so far this year so you don't get to see it! Now sure, its late in this content cycle to be getting a kill. But I had to think back to Yogg-Saron to come up with a boss that we did an equal amount of attempt grinding on and for that reason, if no other, it was a strikingly satisfying kill. I'm also a bit impressed we managed the kill after the interest in the current content patch had petered out some. Either that bodes well to some efficiency within the guild or poorly for our ability to waste lots of personal time playing video games.
In closing, Godamnan, else!
Landmarks
February flew past as we continued our grind thru the first tier of Cataclysm raid content. We've reached a milestone of sorts in our progression: with the defeat of Chimaeron on Sunday, we've now beaten all of the "preliminary" bosses in each of the first three raid dungeons. Cho'gall has actually been a target for the past couple of weeks, and now Neph himself is back in our sights. With 4.1 content starting to appear on the PTR, the challenge for us is to close this tier down completely before Ragnaros emerges in the Firelands or the Caverns of Time open up once more.
We've added a few new folks to the roster over the past couple of weeks, mostly thru personal connections with existing members- Norpse has offically assembled his own mafai at this point, and we've even have a friend from as far back as Shattered Hand days decide to join us. Last night saw us hit a major milestone as we successfully fielded 2 complete 10 man raids which killed multiple raid bosses simultaneously. With a few folks pushing their comfort zones, both raids were able to clear thru Maloriak in BWD and finish with the djinni in Throne before calling it a night. 20 guild members seeing 4 raid bosses down in one night is a solid accomplishment, given that we haven't been actively recruiting to fill up a second raid. Special thanks go out to Shuka who came in on his tank to seal the deal on the second raid's viability, sacrificing the chance to earn gear and points on his main. With the continued development of our raiding base, we hope to be able to get the vast majority of the guild experience in the content offered by Cataclysm.
Spider/Caterpillar/Dragon
Well, you know when I put up that joke about Magmaw in last week's post? Well, that will teach me to make my posts topical. We went back on Sunday and knocked out Omnitron and the aforementioned roadblock in one solid night of raiding. We don't understand exactly what Magmaw is- it's got eight legs like a spider, but two eyes like a dragon, and a body that looks like an annaconda humped a millipede. Then you shove a spike thru its head and it responds by boiling half the room. It's also a bit awkward from my part, as a major part of the fight involves him swallowing Mac, which I'm pretty sure is a violation of our marriage vows (but does give him an indigestion debuff).
On news that doesn't involve me being the victim of criminal domestic violence, we've reinstated an EPGP loot system similar to what we had throughout Wrath. After a few weeks of raiding without a defined system, we all agreed that we weren't providing the right kinds of incentives to people who were on standby. More info on that can be found on the private forums. For any non guildies who happen to read this, there is some info on the system in the FAQ part of the Recruiting forum.
A view from the end of December
Well catclysm came roaring in on December 7th, and a few weeks out from the release, lets take stock of where we are as a guild:
38 level 85 players,l several of whom hit level cap on the day of release.
Guild level 7, with the daily guild levelling cap met each day.
Every heroic dungeon cleared multiple times by a wide cast of players.
Our first 10 man raid kill coming in Baradin Hold 10 days after release (and would have come sooner had the Horde been able to actually win a Tol Barad fight in the first week.)
2 bosses cleared in the Bastion of Twilight.
Magmaw eating our lunch on multiple attempts
Its been a solid start to the new expansion. Raiding has begun quickly, as planned, and its been a real change from the Wrath release when we wandered into Naxx in green questing gear and were succesful in downing bosses. The mechanics of the fights aren't that different, but the designers have made the basic requirements of stamina, resources, and execution very demnding. We've farmed heroics just to get the base gearing to do the new fights, and beaten our collective heads against the walls to batter our way past the blocks.
And its been GREAT. Unlike most of Wrath, where any PUG group could be successful, there is actually a sense of challenge to the fights, and a feeling of accomplishment when we've been succesful. It reminds me of the heady days of Sputnik and Gagarin...well, more like MC and BWL when each fight was learned painfully and beaten by raw tenacity. We've even seen a few old timers re-up their subscriptions and come to a raid or two...
As we head into the new year, I feel confident that NGD will continue to grow and continue to prosper. We've already seen some of the flash-in-the-pan guilds formed at the end of Wrath begin to wither. As always, the enjoyment of playing together and having fun keeps us going strong. Happy New Year to all our friends and members, and here's to continued success in 2011, our 7th!! year in WOW.
In case you are blind.
We've got a new design for the front page. We fired our old webmaster and hired a professional, one of those super genius 5 year olds or something.
What else is new? WoW's in the throws of the "end of expansion blues" as general interest and activity goes into something of an Ice Age. Soon there will be about 5 active players on the entire server, all huddled together to ward off the cold and dark. But don't worry, Cata will fix it.
Also, SCII has stolen the soul of several people and even now whispers in their ears like a ghostly lover.