Janitorial Adventures

Posted by incomprehendium on

So now I’m a guild leader.

This is weird.

I am an enthusiastic observer of social phenomena, and I think guilds are interesting little petri dishes. I’ve seen great and awful and, mostly, so-so. I know what I want a guild to be like. I know what “great” is for me. But I don’t know that I have the ability to make that happen. Part of that is me, part of that is just the luck of the draw with people.

A great guild experience, for me, happens when people start doing things together. Some of them become friends. Little friend-groups start asking people in guild chat if they can help run a heroic to get some piece of transmog gear, or saying we should each roll a gnome with “bolt” in the name and go on a spree. Greatness happens when it’s easy for people to fall into random activities, and when a group wants to do things together because they’re always fun, whether we wipe or faceroll.

I could be wrong, but it seems like now that so much content is solo-only or soloable (dailies, transmog and pet runs, mount runs) I feel like fewer people are choosing to do things with guildies. LFR and LFD are terribly convenient when people all have different schedules, but I dislike pugging and will do only the absolute minimum unless I can run with guildies.

How do you make my kind of guild happen, I wonder?

I can hope that things turn out right, I can do my best to attract like-minded people and encourage them to do things together. What actually will happen, I don’t know.

The Perverse Number Generator

Posted by incomprehendium on

After the last week, it is no longer the Random Number Generator.

I ran Direbrew. For trinkets. I ran it a time or two each day at first. In past years you’d run it a few times, the trinket you wanted would drop, everything would be peachy. On Friday I started getting worried. I ran it five times. Nothing. I got pretty tired of seeing the tanking trinkets drop over and over.

Saturday I ran it five more times. I was starting to get annoyed that the RNG was going to keep me from having the ilevel needed to do LFR the next week. (My guild’s not yet ready to start MoP raids together.) I’d spent an absurd amount of time leveling and grinding gear and rep since the launch–I’d done all this tedious stuff only to get barred from the part of the game I actually like by the RNG? Really?

If you’re keeping track, I’ve now run it about 20 times. Sunday I got up and queued and–the healer trinket dropped.

I wish I had been happy, but it was more like my disappointment with the game abated. I agree with Blizzard that randomness in loot is more exciting but actual randomness is sometimes going to screw people over and leave them with no option but to be bad at the game. My rogues have been ridiculously unlucky at getting weapons. I like the class, but I have no choice but to be awful at it. Liar’s Tongue? Never dropped. Heroic ICC axes? Hunter weapons. Steelbender’s Masterpiece? Druid took it the one time my rogue saw it drop. Trickster’s Edge? Only dropped when I was on my casters. No-Kaled? Never won a roll.

So after I got the healer trinket, I switched specs and queued as DPS to try for the DPS caster trinket. And the healer trinket dropped again. And again. And again. Five times that day.

sigh.