Love and Honor

This time of year is a perfect time for paladins.

Why do I say that?

We have Love, where the Bible has a full chapter dedicated to it. (1 Cor 13)

As we celebrate Valentines Day and the Love is in the air, we need to remember we have a God that loved us more than we can imagine.

Next we have Honor.  Paladins are all about Honor.  In World of Warcraft we are celebrating the Chinese New Year with honoring the elders.  While this is more a form of ancestor worship concept and against what I stand for, I do think it is important to honor and remember those that have gone before us.

So as Paladins, we should be all over this, being Honorable and Lovable today.

Two blogs in one day!

Yup, blogging again, but this time about balance issues.

Blizzard is having a poor time trying to balance end game play.

Here is the problems they faced -

Original WotLK was supposed to cap the item level at i245.  Instead, it capped out at i284.

Ya, so some things scaled out of control, like Paladin tank health.

So we got a nerf, I am sure you have read about how blizzard just snuck it in and caused major server lag issues when they did it during normal prime time game play.

I am not really upset about the nerf, it was needed.

But now they have boosted warlock damage back up so they went from the worst dps class to the top dps class.

Other pure dps classes still fall behind hybrids.

On top of that all this stuff was rushed in because of Arena.

So here is my hope for the next expansion pack.

BALANCE.

Fix the game.

Get rid of Arena or make special Arena realms and servers where it is balanced around arena and not pve.

And I like pie.

A new era

Once again, I find myself blogging this Saturday morning, keeping my promise to try to blog once a week on the weekends.

My guild is transitioning into a new era.  We have two new officers, a new strategy for raiding that is focusing on 10 mans.

My only concern is that since we started the transition, more people are coming out of the woodwork, originally, when we started we had just enough for 2 teams.  Now it looks like maybe 2 and 1/2 to 3 teams.  But the balance is wrong, cause it looks like we are lacking tanks and healers, so we will end up having to sit some people during the week.

Now one of the big transitions back to doing 10 mans is we could not get 25 people together to perform the raid content.  Even now, with the spreadsheet I have made, I see that we do not have a single night that we have 25 people on to do the raid.

Also many people just could not handle the 25 man raids, they would lag out, DC, etc.  Others just missed the fellowship that 10 mans provide.  We were falling apart as a guild as people focused more on gear than having fun and fellowship.  We were no longer Raiding for the Glory of God (our guild catch phrase), but raiding for self.  At least that is the way it felt.

So now we embark in a new era.  10 man teams, running at different times, having fun and fellowship.

Weekend Report

Sticking to my promise, blogging on the weekends.

So what has happened?

Eternity Matters got some firsts in 25 man Ulduar this week, with Iron Council down, Kolgram down, etc.  The Cat lady stopped us.

Then quite a few of us last night got Saurafang the Younger down in 10 man ICC.

But I am still seeing the trend of loosing players in the guild, to the point we can't support 25 mans.

So I am looking at other possible things for us to do to keep moving forward.

Have a great weekend.

Mid Week Blog

So I find myself in the rare situation of being able to blog today.  That it is because of being sick with a stomach bug at home, ya, ick....

Anyway, I wanted to do a quick chat with you all.  We are seeing more and more people stop playing the game.  Now, Eternity Matters I transitioned into a Christian RAIDING guild, and yes, the loss of people make it harder to raid.  But the flip side of the coin is we still are Christian.  And each member to me is a family member, be it a brother, sister, grand parent, son or daughter, they all hold a special place.  And it was getting sad for me to see them all go.  Well, after lasts night's raid, God tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me about what it means to live for him.  We had in another channel on vent my wife with a couple of others listen to one of our members pour out a struggle he was facing.  I joined them after I had completed a quick 5 man random for other guildies.  We encouraged this young man and prayed for him.  A reminder not to forget those that are still with us.

So while I dearly miss all of you who have stepped away from the game for one reason or another, I am encouraged that God can still use the individuals in EM to minister to each other in their time of need.

Happy 2010

So I admit again, I am fail at blogging.  I even promised myself to blog more this year.

Things preventing that are restricted access at work, too much to do when I get home.

Well today, I have the afternoon off.

I wanted to touch on a couple of things.

We are seeing good people leave the game, because the focus has changed.

It makes me sad to see the various people leave.

My wife covered it quite well in her blog - The Hour of Our Discontent

So here are some of my goals -

Gear is pixels on the screen, I am not going to buy into the non personal game style that is dominating the culture right now, but make every effort to be with people (even though I am not very social myself).
I do not want to hear people say they are lonely in game no more.

I am going to encourage that attitude in others.

From a pure game perspective -
I am going to finish all the raid content from Wrath down to generic wow before we get the next expansion.

I am going to focus on the fun things and the positive things.

All while trying to balance this with my family.

To my faithful readers, thanks for reading!

I hope to blog now every weekend.

Merry Christmas

Wow, it is Christmas time already.

I have been so busy as of late not really much time to blog or what not.

This has been an interesting experience this whole blogging thing.

But I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and maybe I will do some more blogs in the future.

Wrathgate - Therigwin's story

Many of you know Therigwin back when he was pre BC, BC, and pre wrath.

He was sporting brown hair in the monk cut with a full beard.

After experiencing the Wrathgate questline in game, I changed Therigwin's hair to what it is today, grey hair, scholar, with the duelist goatee. Why do you ask, well here is a story (not as nearly polished as my wife's various stories) of what happened.

Wrathgate - Therigwin's Story
It had been 3 months since the day Therigwin and the paladins of EM squad had descended on Light Hopes Chapel to assist Tirion Fordring in protecting the honored soldiers that had defended the land.  The squad just missed the final confrontation, but Therigwin was able to dispatch his once pupil and brother of his banker, Tiorin and put him at rest.  This was a great comfort to Druin and Merla that finally their brother was out of the Lich King's grasp.  He was one of the few that did not turn and Therigwin blamed himself.

Now he stares out at Naxxramas, wishing he could take care of that place and rid this town of its filthy presence.

"Sir Therigwin, you have been requested to report to Bolvar up at Wrathgate." said a soldier delivering official papers.

"For that is Holy, we have this floating thing here in the city and they want me up there?  Tell me why, there has been no indication that we can even breach those walls yet until we take care of this threat."

"Just read this note, it is from your wife."

It had been two months since he last saw Daraia.  SI-7 had sent her to the Borien Tundra, while his commanders had sent him to Howling Fjord.  Therigwin quickly scanned the letter.

"My Dearest Love, I have been assisting the Dragon Flights and they have agreed to assist us.  Bolvar is ready to attack the Wrathgate and confront the Lich King.   Make haste and join in the battle.  I have asked Bolvar to authorize you coming.  Make haste.  I miss you. Daraia"

"This changes everyting, I ride out immediately."

"Sir Therigwin reporting for duty sir."

"Ahh good to see you again.  Today we confront Arthas and demand justice.  I will lead the first squad.  Therigwin, you will be part of the second charge.  Commander Daraia, I want you to wait back and make sure our Horde Friends don't do anything rash."

Therigwin turned when Daraia was mentioned and embraced his wife. "Daraia, I have so missed you."
She kissed his bald head and "Now is not the time, we have a battle husband."

They made preporations and Bolvar approached.  The Horde joined in and they were finally at the gates.  Scourge warriors pushed back.

Therigwin and his troups were at the back and the Lich King came out.  He killed the horde champion.

Then the horde betrayed them.  A plague of barrels dropped from the sky.  Therigwin heard the call for retreat and began directing his men backward.  He saw Bolvar, go down.

"Retreat, Retreat!" Therigwin coughed, but already he was breathing in the green plague.  "If I can just call on the light....." and he passed out.

The red dragon flight came and burned away the plague.  Daraia was able to get Therigwin away and got Merla and Syyiand working on him right away.

"He should recover my Lady, he only got just a little bit of it and he is strong in the light." said the dwarf priest to her commander.

"I must go and talk with the Dragon Queen" said Daraia.

Daraia left and was then sent with Bolvar's shield back to the King.

Therigwin awoke.  He learned all that happened.  He had aged that day.  The combination of the light and the plague had bleached his hair grey and caused it to grow. 
"Imma liking your new look mLord" said Merla.
"Thank you.  I will wear my hair this day forward as a reminder of what transpired here.  We will get the Lich King yet and find out what happened to Bolvar."




Thanks for reading.

Patch 3.3 First Impressions

While I did not play overly much last night, I did like the following -

Updated Map with Quest Information (Good Bye Questhelper)

Quest query system (Hello EveryQuest Mod with Loremaster Mod) - I will finally find the last 99 quests I am missing for Kalimdor.

Things I did not like was a broken scrolling combat texts, bugged raid instance (Ony still flying with 1 life? AHHH), broken xperl and minimap and the constant prompting of bugs in my bug catcher and my bug catcher not fully working either!

So ya, I fought with mods mostly, but found a good replacement mini map, it is sexymap.

I got rid of a couple of mods and I helped my wife out with her computer and mods as well.

So game play, didn't see much.

Hope to see it all tonight!

Oh, and the Core Puppy is so cute!

The Slumps

There has been an interesting trend happening right now.

You see it in various blogs from my wife's to my good friend's (Enok) to other guild members, former guild members, and the basic Wow blogging community.

People are going into the Slumps, burn out, etc whatever you want to call it.

For me I see it as a natural cycle of the game. Even though we as a guild have not accomplished all our goals, the game is getting boring for many, myself included.

I have to admit, this past weekend we dusted off Sims 3 and I have been playing with that, raising up my little sim families and we have the expansion pack for sims 3 arriving at our house today.

But that all being said, it is a cycle, and we will see things kick back up with the Holiday festival in game along with the up coming patch.

Happy Gaming!

Proof is in the pudding

Ya, my blogging skills and consistency are incredibly lacking, but today I felt like blogging once more.

Last night I was faced with a tough or maybe easy decision.

We were doing Ony 10 and I had one of my new Off Tanks in there that I had been running with on instances on my shammie. He got himself to be crit capped and I thought sure, he can off tank Ony 10 with me, it is a simple enough fight.

Our first attempt I had him on the adds and well, the aoe threat was not there in his gear to compensate for the threat of the heals, etc. So I had him take over doing the single add.

We downed Ony and then the decision time came. The tanking Judgement Helm dropped. I will still sporting my T 8.5 helm, but my other tank had the crafted i200 epix tanking helm. Being that this was his first raid with us, he only had 2150 EP, so I easily out rank him on the priority list for loot.

So, eating my own message and doing the right thing, I gave him the helm. Then I promptly cut him a meta gem and epix gem to socket into the helm.

It was the right thing to do.

Life is a journey

So today I am going to be all over the place in my blog.

We discovered recently that our Kitchen floor was rotting out from underneath us. We had a contractor over that is a good Christian man that has done work for some of our relatives to find out the damage is gong to cost us the entire kitchen floor and dining area. the only thing keeping thing up at this point is the slate tile floor.

So our next battle is with our insurance to see if they will cover any of it and ask your prayers in this matter, cause otherwise we have no idea how to pay for it.

So life is a journey of ups and downs. A testing of ones character. Just when you think all is good, these things happen.

So I am attempting to stay positive and up beat for my wife, but it is going to be interesting for sure.

So lets move to in game news.

Recently, my Guild Eternity Matters has downed some new content for the first time. From ToC 25 man. Tonight we are going to attempt to finish off the Valkery Twins and Anuberak.

My Shammie got to go heal Nax 10 for the first time this weekend in an alt run and she came away with her Tier 7 helm! I almost have her fully epixed out in item 200s or higher. I still need an off hand and trinket replaced, but that will come with time.

Last bit of musing from me today during my lunch is back on the topic of ministry and criticism.

I find it very easy to criticize others for trying to do the right thing and then not doing it according to my standard. I recall growing up this phrase or question, "Why is that Christians only put on their armor to beat on other Christians rather than the true enemy?"

I had all but given up on ministry of any type this weekend because of the guild drama. My recent blog posts shows my shift in my thinking in that my guild was not a ministry. Well, God bless my wife and she challenged me on that. I had re-written the What is Eternity Matters section numerous times and finally we came up with one that we could both agree on.

This jist of it was Eternity Matters is not a church and it will never be one. It is not a street preaching ministry virtually in the game.

It is an organization of Christians that play world of warcraft to succeed in end game content. But being that we are comprised of Christians, it is a place of ministry among those Christians. God can still use us, despite ourselves.

I look at it this way, you get a bunch of believers together and you get 1 of 2 things.
If they are in tune with God, you get ministry because it is a natural part of their life. They just bless people by encouraging them, etc.
OR you get fighting, because everyone is entitled to their opinion and their is no harmony.

The problem I was facing was trying to overtly be a ministry and raid, and we could not do both, because of the perception of being uncaring that raiding guilds bring.

The question then became, Does God care that we play this game? That we raid? That we succeed at raiding?

I have been told that he doesn't care one way or another.

I happen to disagree. If God cares enough to keep track of the hair on my head, he cares enough about what I do with my time and how I spend it.

So I guess I am saying, that yes, you can Raid for God's Glory. That attitude is one of self sacrifice and not being one after the loot. And yes, Eternity Matters can still be a place of ministry, even with the changes it has had.

Thanks for Reading!

A better understanding

I meant to blog at lunch today, but ended up reading a good book.

That aside, I just wanted to follow up from my previous blog.

Me and my former guildie has come to an understanding and I hope can still be friends.

We don't see eye to eye, but that is ok, diversity is part of God's creation.

That all being said, I think we have both moved on, both made some mistakes, and are both better for it.

For one thing, God has been working in my heart and mind about the concept of what ministry is.

For many, minisitry is what the church does, what a mission group does, etc. For a while, I thought my guild in a way was a ministry.

I have come to understand that is not the case. Ministry is not an organization. Ministry is what God has called us to do. That includes the simple things such as taking care of someone needs to the more blatent telling people that Jesus loves them. It is supposed to be our way of life, the way we give back to God.

So what is the Church? The Church is the place God uses to energize and equip his people for ministry. This is going to be my topic on next weeks Ventrillo Guild message for my guildies that are interested.

So my guild in all senses is just a group of like minded people, but we have the opportunity as individuals to do ministry, but its purpose is not ministry, but an organization for a game.

Now there are some legit ministry organizations out there, but they are not ministry, what they do again is similiar to the church, the equip the individual to do ministry.

Anyway, I will go more into that this up coming Tuesday, in my Vent Study on God's gifts to the church, how some minister.

As to fun game news, my main just got a new shield and tanking ring.

Therigwin is looking pretty good!

Have a great night!

Drama Queens

I have always tried to be real with people, both online and in real life. What you see is what you get.

I am blogging today to sort out what just happened in the past day.

Recently I announced that I was going to change things in the guild to better accommodate things for me cause I was starting to burn out.

Now let me state this first, we have had little to no guild drama in the past few months. It has been really nice.

Ok, the major change I announced was I was no longer going to be doing the in game devotionals in say chat on Sunday. The primary reason for this is we started a Tuesday Prayer and Bible Study in Ventrillo where I feel I could do more. On top of that, the last Sunday Bible time we did in game, only 1 person showed up, while the Ventrillo meeting was getting a good following of people. But I believed both were sufferring in that I did not feel I had the time to spend on both. Now the Sunday Devotional used to be covered by 3 people taking turns. Jon and Chris cofounders of the guild helped out and they were the ones that suggested it. Well, they have left the game and left it entirely to me. When no one was coming any more, I felt it was time to stop.

Most people were encouraging to me. One person was not. They posted a nice long response basically accusing the guild of not caring about people anymore. It went to private PMs between my wife and him until it came down to a he said, she said. At that time, I had enough. This person was someone we had kicked from the guild once before because he was a problem and he was becoming a problem again. So with the agreement of our officers, we suspended his web account and put him in Time Out rank.

He then used his facebook page to post a picture of my avatar with a Hitler head and called my wife a female dog (b word). This was reported by one of our retired officers. At that point, the rest of the officers, even those that had met him in real life and liked him, called for him to be kicked from the guild.

We kicked him and in his spite, he continues to attack us.

It makes me sad.

All I ever really wanted to do was play the game and be a Christian at the same time. People have different ideas on what that means and I guess to them I am a hypocrite.

I got an email from him asking that I remove all his artwork from the guild website. So I have decided to do a full website purge, cause in honesty, the guild has changed, the members have changed, and he was one of the few remaining members that caused drama. He is now gone and I find it time to start over, move forward and not look back. The EM website will be a blank slate that the current membership can make their own, rather than having the negativity of the past cloud it.

To the member I kicked and his clan of supporters, I do wish you best. I do forgive you for the hurtful things you have done constantly and the misguided lies you believe to be truth. I respectfully ask that you leave us alone.

All Grown up

I have a secret.

I have an alt that is NOT a paladin.

On top of that, it is a girl... ya, I am a guy playing a female avatar...

Well, I refer to her as my baby girl. She is all grown up now. I got her to level 80 this week.

It is my Shammie I am talking about. Myriah. She has become my healer. As a tank, I love my paladin healers, but as a player, I love playing a shamman healer. The challenge is there to if I riptide, chain heal, or do that awesome healing wave.

I have healed a couple of heroics, a bit shaky at first with a couple of deaths occasionally, still learning the mana management, but overall, she is a nice break from all things Therigwin.

Speaking of Therigwin, he is going to be getting hit with a nerf bat in 3.3. They are taking away 20% of dodge to tanks. Kinda stinks since the librim I just got gives dodge and the T 10 set bonus gives dodge. Hope they change those things.

Anyway, my little break at work is over, have a great weekend!

RL Weapons

So, as every boy knows, they love swords, maces, etc in real life.

In college I purchased my first sword. A nice Knight's Templar 1 Handed sword. The balance was great and I cut up a many a pumpkin, trees, etc.

When I got married and we had our first kid, I got rid of the sword because it was just not safe to keep around the kids without having a secure way to keep it (which we did not have).

Now skip ahead to today, I would love to get a paladin mace for Haloween to go with my renfair garb. Well, Blizzard today announced Musem Replicias had real life WOW stuff from Frostmourne to tabbards, etc. What was not said was the weapon was made of Latex.

And I found this cool hammer there, so my desire to have a paladin hammer in real life will soon be true come next year when we get some spare cash.
LARP Paladin Warhammer - MuseumReplicas.com

Brains.....

Brains....

Me want brains!!!!

Ya, it is 3 AM, Sunday morning and I am waiting on a DBA at work to finish moving a database to hook up, so writing this blog about...

BRAINS!

Or Zombies.

Tons of Zombies.

This past week, I helped some guildies get the Zombiefest achievement.

Basically, you tank the second boss in the inn for about 4 minutes allowing all the zombies to spawn again, then kill the boss, go kill the third boss, then come back, gather the zombies and bring them to be killed in one swoop, this grants about 80 kills, then go kill 20 more in the remaining part of the instance and bam, achievement.

Here are some pics I took -

4 set awesomeness

So yesterday was a great day in that I now have all 4 pieces I need for my T9 four piece bonus!

This bonus is great in that it reduces Bubble Wall to a 1 minute cooldown. This is very nice to have in some fights, taking the load off the healers.

But it got me thinking about T10 set bonus and again, I am not very excited. Dodge seems like such a poor thing to give as a bonus, sure it is lots of dodge, but what about those pesky spell casters.

I much prefer my T9 bonus of bubble wall every minute.

I was told.....

I was recently told I don't blog enough.

So while I was on a process for work, I decided to write a blog.

This is on the new T 10 paladin gear.

I love the look of T9. It is allaince, it is gold and shiney, it screams classic paladin.

I dread T10, because they will try to toss that undead theme into from Icecrown. COME ON! I AM A HOLY FIGHTER FOR THE LIGHT!!!! I DON'T WANT SKULLS ON MY GEAR!

That being said, I was pleasantly surprized by T10. I still like T9 better.

T10 has the good old red, purple, pink color scheme again, because don't ya know, the majority of paladins are BELF Chicks.

But overall it doesn't look too bad and the Judgement helm could work with it.

Tell me what you think?

Blogging once more, guild dynamics

So work had turned off access to Blogsites, but quickly found that many in the company have need it. So once I got access, I am now blogging again as it was a lunchtime activity for me. Yes, I could have written it in email and sent it on that way, but ya, I didn't.

So it has almost been a month since I blogged and I wanted to write about interesting dynamics of a Christian based guild.

This came up with our raiding week. We had a raid with 10, count it, 10 paladins in it. Talk about pink power!

When looking at the guild make up, you will find we have more paladins than pretty much any other class.

What are we missing? Warlocks.

Now I find it an interesting dynamic. Christians are warned in the bible against demonology, the occult, etc. And while warlocks scream all of that, it is just a game (though I would never play a warlock myself). I think it is for that reason, Eternity Matters doesn't have many warlocks in the guild. This hurts with raid composition and the utilities they bring to raiding, but it is understandable.

Now paladins are the big protectors of light, the crusaders and angels (avenging wrath!) so it makes sense that Christians are attracted to this class. So it is kinda a light/dark issue :-)

So just a random thought as to why Eternity Matters guild is out of class balance with these two particular classes. What do you guys think?