inspired_mind

In a couple of months I will hopefully graduate. As I am writing this, I am doing a research internship about Augmented Reality at a company in Einhoven. Having said internship means I have to travel daily by bus and train, getting up at 5.30 in the morning, arriving at 8.30. At the end of the day I leave at about 17.00 and get home at 19.00. Long days, with fairly often 30 min, up to 2 hour delays due to either technical malfunctions, or even suicide train jumpers. So yeah, I spend a lot of time waiting to get to my destination.

Years ago I would print out chapters from fanfiction websites or read a regaluar book to pass the time. Eventually the prints became over 900 bookmarks on smartphone. Nowadays I can download the fic from Archive of our Own as a PDF or show the entire fic on one webpage, no longer requiring internet during my travels. Reading said fics on my 7 inch tablet is a joy, being just the right size to hold is nicely in one hand. But videos were an iffy situation. I only have a limited data bundle on my phone and my tablet only has wifi. I could upgrade but that would be silly for just watching videos. I rather not use the public wifi of the train, being a paranoid IT person. So Youtube and Netflix were out of the question. I could watch pre-downloaded stuff on my laptop, but train seats tend to be fairly small so my 17 inch laptop is too bulky.

But recently I discovered the wonders of offline Netflix. On the app version of Netflix you can download the episodes in advance, staying available for 48 hours to view offline. As a result I have started watching Voltron: Legendary Defender during my train trips. Why Voltron? I felt like watching something anime-ish and not too heavy subject wise. Space battles with robot lions? Sign me up! it's a bit of a shame it only has English (and Dutch *shudder*) dubs, but I suppose the voice acting isn't too bad. I don't think has a Japanese version, seeing as it's an American animated web television series produced by DreamWorks Animation and the animation is anime-influenced, rather than being an actual anime. And each episode is about 24 minutes, allowing me to watch several a day. Unlike the 50-90 minutes of other tv-shows I tend to watch.

As for other tv series, finished Sherlock and Teen Wolf a while ago. It had its ups and downs, but since I am writing this post during some mental downtime at my internship, I have to keep it short for now =P

~*~Maru~*~

You know that deadline you forgot all about? Yeah, that happened to me. Yesterday I was all happy about finally having a week off (autumn holidays, hoo!), only to get a text message from a classmate, asking about the deadline of an assignment for Digital Publishing. I sorta assumed it was the Friday after said holiday, but turns out the deadline is tonight 23.59. Whoops? Thankfully I am almost done, just some minor tweaking in Photoshop, combining the stuff in pdf format and uploading said pdf online. But yeah, thank you classmate!

So here I am, taking a small break to sort out my thoughts. Too many ideas at the same time tends to overcomplicate my creative process in Photoshop/Dreamweaver. Need to take a step back and observe the current result, ya know? And also to make many snapshots of the entire process to see if I missed anything. Writing a LJ post tends to help a lot, even tho it's prolly not that interesting to read as an outsider. Might as well try to explain what I am trying to create eh?

For digital publishing we have to make an Epub for Paaspop, which is a music festival. To prepare for this, we need to do additional assignments. Research the layouts of magazines, both paper and digital. What's the difference, how do they deal with photos, texts and fonts? After doing said research, we had to make magazine layout examples in Photoshop, using pictures and quotes we like. As many designs/variations as possible. Teacher gave feedback, which was used to finetune the designs. For the final assignment we now have to use one of the layouts and turn it into a digital one for tablet usage. This also means you need to take into account that a user needs indicators how to browse through your magazine. So you need to add a menu bar/navigation stuff. The usage of videos, multiple pages, stuff like that.

Despite being complicated, I love it. While coding my own websites is quite fun, there is someting unreal about trying to tell a story through the latest IT means. Digital Publishing really is still in the stone age if you compare it to other IT-branches. It's too bad the classes can be so utterly dull. I am still torn if I want to be a full fledged Media Designer or if I want to specialise in Digital Publishing or a different innovation course. Thankfully I still got the entire school year to decide, if not longer.

Anyways, back to homework now. Apologies if the post is kinda boring (not that many read it to begin with =P).

~*~Maru~*~

A couple of weeks ago I hit a new age mark. I thought I would be utterly miserable about it, due to the whole social pressure stuff (get boyfriend, get a place to live together, marry, babies, etc.). You see, all my cousins/nieces of my age range got this stuff ages ago, which kinda makes you wonder if you are doing the entire thing wrong.  But then I realized I really can’t compare myself to them. I did most of my education at the highest level. Out of my 10 or so cousins, only one did HBO/University level education after High School. When they finished their education, I was still busy with mine.

Now that I got my propaedeutic diploma for IT & Media Design, I really can’t be arsed to care anymore what others think about my social status. I happy the way I am, what I have achieved in only 1 year and I can’t  wait to find out what I else I will learn in the next 3 years, till I can call myself Bachelor of IT & Media Design (or possibly IT & Digitial Publishing, if I decide to specialize in that course instead).

This mindset ain’t the only lifestyle change tho. It also has changed the way I spend what little free time I have left. One of my teachers wasn’t joking that studying IT kills off the drive to play video games. I used to play several MMO games, but nowadays the only game I really play is some short sessions in Diablo III. My World of Warcraft account expired a month ago and quite frankly, I ain’t really missing it. I barely had anyone left to play with, the raids I had with my guildies really were downright terrible. It just made me very annoyed that people couldn’t follow simple instructions and their performance was below average. So when I announced my departure from the game for the time being (I might subscribe briefly for the 10^th anniversary of WoW), barely anyone responded and simply left the guild to join a different one. So much for loyalty eh? I spend so many years trying to keep the damned guild alive (with the help of 2-3 others).

I just do not have the patience anymore to deal with idiots, so it’s mostly about single player games nowadays (or games that allow a single player, with the possibility of adding more players). Rhythm games are still one of my favorite gaming genres (currently very much obsessed with Love Live School Project on the tablet). I am picking up Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS next Friday as well.

Aside from gaming I am also spending a lot of time reading. Got myself a Goodreads account after a certain someone bullied poked me to get one, to remind myself I still got like 15 books waiting to be read (fanfics are just so delicious, especially since I discovered AO3). Been trying to finish this one Warcraft book for months...but ugh...it just is so blah to read. I am just too stubborn to give it up, as it's part of the Warcraft Lore. Yeah, despite having stopped playing the MMO, I still very much love the lore.

So yeah, maybe I am finally growing up =P

~*~Maru~*~

Just a quick post to prove once again I am still alive. Been having killer headaches the past few days randomly, so didn't really feel like updating my LJ, or doing anything besides lying down, reading fanfics on my phone.

Class has been random, occasionally frustrating after finding out half of my classmates has never seen The Matrix. Then I found out several didn't see Lord of the Rings either and one female classmate dislikes all superhero movies, except Batman ones (and only because of Heath Ledger).  Seriously, what's wrong with that generation? It's kinda mandatory to at least have seen the first Matrix movie as an IT student, especially an Media Design one! Bloody kids...

That being said, went to Amsterdam with aien_hime yesterday, for a double belated (hers and mine) birthday celebration. Saw Guardians of the Galaxy for the second time (which is AWESOME, my inner nerdgirl went squee at the air battle) and had sushi for lunch/dinner. They had some very yummy and original sushi variations. Had a great time, even tho Amsterdam really ain't my kind of city. Way too many tourists and retarded people getting in my way.

Well, back to enjoying my killer headache again.

~*~Maru~*~

Why yes, I am still alive, but the bloody warm weather is doing an excellent job at making me melt. My bedroom is at the top floor, just under the roof. The sun also goes down at my side of the house, so it becomes really warm around 6-8 PM. Window open at max, curtain closed and the fan on max, which makes the entire ordeal somewhat managable during raiding times in WoW. During daytime I am spending a lot of time downstairs tho, as it's a lot cooler over there. The humid weather is no good for my knees either, they ache like hell and recently my wrist joints have joined the 'fun' as well. Walking for 1 hour in the outdoors this weekend seems to help a bit, but it's really too warm today to spend any time longer than that, even with sunblock on. Not to mention all the people on bicycles being idiots, forcing me off the road. It's a shared road for pedestrians and bikers, darn it! I am even walking on the left side, allowing them to easily move around me, but noooo....

Am currently preparing for college, bought a brand new laptop (it's required to have one, as they ditched all PCs at the ICT building, because people all had their own laptop anyways). Most people declared me mad for spending so much money on it, but my 5 year old PC is slowly dying and this laptop has to last at least 4 years of ICT classes, some requiring Media Design software as well. So I got a laptop whom can play MMO games on high/ultra graphics now (instead of low/medium a best), while also able to handle all the software requirements I may need in the future. It's a win/win situation for me really.

My first WoW 25man raid on Raid Finder was unreal. I have been so used to spell effects toned down, that seeing all those spell effects at high detail was causing a visual overload, distracting me constantly O.o It also made me realise that Blizz needs to tone down some of the spell effects that come with trinket/tier set procs. Back in earlier expansions I could still see myself when standing in melee range. Nowadays there is an overkill of pets or spawned mobs that fight for you for 10-30 sec upon proccing.

Been to the Manga exhibit in Rotterdam with aien_hime, which was awesome. Beautiful drawings, a nice summary of its history. I actually learned some new stuff. I especially loved that they mentioned how some of the artists were inspired by Dutch artists. Never realised that COBRA inspired so many people. Ended up buying the art book with pics of the exhibit. I just had to get it.

Also visited a good friend of mine. There is currently a weekly summer fair/market in his city and I just had to check it out, as they sell many books, games and toys. Found 6 gen 1 ponies! Sadly some had their hair cut, but I just couldn't leave them there. I actually only own one of these, so hurrah for new ponies! Also found one of the Thea Beckman books I have been looking for. My friend found the first part of the trilogy 2 weeks ago, the book I purchased is part 2, so the only one I am missing now is part 3. I really should read them again, but still so many books to read.

Ended up watching Pacific Rim with said friend too. The mechas Jaegers were simply amazing, loved the way they were controlled. Really, the possibilties of this world/future are endless, I keep daydreaming about it during chores/work. The choice of music was nice too, not over the top, despite the heavy use of electric guitars. The characters were alright, not amazing like Marvel ones, but that's not too surprising, considering the Marvel universe got a vast background story (thanks to the comics and the movies), not to mention various well known actors. But the plotholes and the decisions some of the chars made, it was pretty bad. Me and my friend ended up facepalming and lol-ing several times XD. Despite those silly moments, it was an entertaining movie which I will definately get on Bluray at some point, if only to squee at the awesomeness of the mechas/tech.

I could write some more about my recent MMO adventures, but I'll save that for a future post. These LJ entries are getting way too long =P

~*~Maru~*~

Another LJ entry? Madness! Blame work musings inspiring me and dusting off a 10 year old Elisabeth musical OST cd. Been on repeat for the 3rd time now, singing along loudly. Stanley Burleson and Pia Douwes, you are awesome. I may prefer English versions of musicals nowadays, but the Dutch classics of said musicals are the ones that introduced me to this wonderful genre, so it's hard to dislike the version you grew up with. I can pretty much dream the lyrics of Elisabeth and The Phantom of the Opera in Dutch =P

Anyways, as Rift has gone free to play, I reinstalled the game, moved my chars to a new server (as my old server got turned into a Trial Server). Plenty of people around, already had random guild invites from people, resulting in promptly turning on 'decline all guild invites', as random invites out of nowhere are annoying as hell. Seems I got various gifts for being a veteran player with 3-4 months paid subscription. Hurrah for a free horsey, saves me quite some platinum for a faster mount. Also got myself a cosy lil' house in some desert location, with an oasis. It's quite fun to decorate it with all kinds of stuff. It's pretty interesting to visit the creations of other people too. Some spend hours/days building entire docks/bars!



My two main characters would be these ladies. Why yes, I like dwarves. Most of the humans and elves are too dull in design. Female dwarves are so cute and cuddly!

There is my rogue, whom is specialized as a Battle Bard. Playing tunes, keeping up various buffs/debuffs. Stealthing around when needed, bashing mobs with my regular weapons when they get close or even with my bow and arrow. It may not be a huge dps role, but for group play in instances, rifts and battlegrounds, it's awesome. Recently got myself a second spec that focusses more on ranged dps with bow and arrow and a pet as support, but haven't tested it yet, aside from setting up the spells on my interface.

My other dwarf is mage, specialized as a Chloromancer, which is basically healing by damaging mobs with nature spells. It does have some some direct healing spells, but they tend to be single target or got a pretty long cooldown. It's a challenging spec to master, especially in battlegrounds it feels like I am terrible player, but can't be arsed to worry about that, as I am only in the level 30 range anyways, so many talents haven't been unlocked yet.

I got some other characters in the the level 20 range, but still experimenting with various specs. That's what I like about Rift, there are so many talent builds to try. I am pretty sure that at the max level there are some popular raiding talent builds, but since I am unguilded and no plans to try raiding atm, I am not too worried about that either.



There are various ways to level up in Rift. You got questing, which is fun for those whom like lore and exploring new areas. Nowadays it's not the fastest way to level, but it does give plenty of gear upgrades, reputation and money. While questing, you will often run into rifts. Said rifts come in many varations, all the elements are present, each offering their own kinds of mobs and challenges. The minor ones can be soloed if you play smart, the major ones got elites mixed in, requiring group play. Rewards for closing a rift are some planarite (a common currency to buy blue/purple quality gear upgrades) some consumables and some experience. You can avoid these rifts if you want, but they can be pretty fun to break up the monotone gameplay of questing. Especially the giant rift invasions that take over the entire zone can be quite epic, resulting in 10-30 man raids, depending on how populated the zone is at the moment. And you don't even need to ask for an invite, it goes all automatic with a button popup if you wish to join the raidgroup.

There are dungeons, which can be queued for with the help of the looking for group tool. It can be pretty interesting, but the wait times for damage dealers can be up to 1 hour, making it a rather unreliable way to gain experience as a solo player. The quality of said groups can also vary. Said zones tend to be nicely designed tho, so it's certainly worth checking it out.

One of the newer ways to level is through Instant Adventures. You queue for a random adventure, get a popup and then you simply get teleported to the zone, where you follow the instructions on your screen on what do to. Kill some mobs, plant some flowers, catch some cows, kill a big nasty enemy...the map shows you where to go, it's pretty much a nobrainer. It's fast and random, awards the best experience out of all leveling options and completing the final objective of an adventure awards a lootbox with a random greenie/blue for your class and other potential rewards.

The final way to level is through Warfronts, aka player versus player battlegrounds. It may not be for everyone, as the group you end up with can be either people whom actually know what to do, or end up with a bunch of braindead monkeys, making you want to ragequit. Winning your first 7 random Warfronts each week awards you an equipment box with blue quality gear tho, so it's a pretty nice way to get some gear, if you are unlucky with dungeon drops. You also gain some valor to buy gear from pvp vendors. The experience from winning a Warfront is quite high too.



Now you may wonder, with so many ways to level, won't you level up too fast? Yes, you certainly level too fast in the 1-50 range. However, there is this wonderful Mentor tool nowadays, which allows you to lower your level (all the way down to 10, if you wish) simply by rightclicking your portrait and selecting said option. It allows you to still do that level 15-20 dungeon even if you are level 40, your stats and attacks will be scaled down to a proper level, while still keeping all your abilities and keeping your gear. For Instant Adventures you even automatically get scaled down to a proper level the moment you arrive in the zone, while still gaining rewards for your true level. It keeps stuff fun and challenging.

The last 10 levels to 60 however, are slow. I haven't hit said level range yet, but on the forum there seem to be many people complaining how long it takes. Supposedly level 50 to 60 takes just as long as 1-50 does. Heaven forbid that it takes more than just sneezing to gain a level! Kids these days are really spoiled. Why the need to rush? There are so many zones to explore, treasures to collect, puzzles to solve. The zones are gorgeous, not surreal like Aion, but got a certain realism instead. The colors tends to be more muted, but at least they actually got a day/night cycle and weather changes, unlike some MMO.



Er...realism as far as it goes, with elemental rifts, spraklehorses and fairies =P

And for the multitaskers among us, there are plenty of professions to level. The basic gathering and crafting professions, some secondary classes like fishing and cooking. Only 3 primary professions are allowed, but you can purchase more through the Rift Store. It's not really a musthave, but at certain profession levels you unlock titles. So yeah, it all depens on how badly of a completionist you are.



The eating animation is rather adorable, btw. Speaking of titles...the game has achievements as well. They award all kinds of things. Completing artifact collections also award coins, which can be used to purchace some pets and mounts. In other words, questing and exploring is certainly worth if you love achievements!

So, what's the deal with the Free to Play status? What are the limitations? Well, surprisingly it allows you to play the entire game (as far as I can tell, it's hard to check the difference when you got a Veteran status yourself). It seems you cannot sell on the auctionhouse (but you can buy and you can use the trade channel to advertise your sales), you got a limit on the amount of currency you can have, you can only have 2 character slots, only 3 bag slots. By simply purchasing goods worth 5 euros in the Rift store, some of these limits are gone tho. Purchasing the original game for 20-25ish euro unlocks all except the Storm Legion expansion classes.

In other words, this is one of the best free to play MMO games out there, with barely any limitations. If you feel trying out a new MMO, do give this one a try. There is no unwanted pvp. While there are two factions, which was a pretty big deal on launch day (story wise), nowadays you can group up with the opposite faction to do stuff. I have been told that you can even join each others guilds, but haven't personally tested it. You just cannot enter the city of the other faction without getting murdered by the NPCs, nor will the NPCs of the other faction offer you any quests in most zones (50-60 range is neutral for both factions tho).

I really should stop writing these huge posts, it takes hours of editing it over and over again (I hate being a perfectionist sometimes). Sorry for the wall of text, but it didn't feel right to hide these posts behind a LJ-cut. Not many interesting MMO left to write about tho!

~*~Maru~*~

With the announcement of a new expansion patch for Aion in August, introducing new content, including 2 new classes, I figured it was time to reinstall the game again to see if my chars were still around. The moment I entered the big city, my chat immediately got flooded by /yell gold spammers. Home sweet home, gold sellers included.

I didn't really feel like playing the actual game (even tho Chanter class is one of the best designed classes I ever played in an MMO), due to being it so grindy at the higher levels, but just admiring the gear people are wearing is just as fun as well. Despite the fact the game is several years old, some of the designs are simply gorgeous. And it's also quite interesting to see the differences between the two factions, Elyos and Asmodian.


Look at that shirt, isn't it purrty? This would be my Elyos chanter.

( Elyos and Asmodian comparison pics )

Seriously tho, the Bard class, I HAVE to try it out when 4.0 is released. It's so cute and sparkly!
Gunner seems interesting as well, even tho the huge guns and the more Trigun themed outfits seem sort of out of place in as game like Aion.

Expect other Videogames Revisited posts soon, I sort of got bored.

~*~Maru~*~

My sister is the kind of person whom loves going to wellnesscentres. Usually she does this stuff with one of her friends, but since one of her fave places had a nice discount for a 2,5 hour Skinfish Spa thingy and mothers day was coming up soon, she suggested we should do have a mother/daughters day. Now I have always been one wanting to try some sort of Spa thing, but it tends to be too expensive...so yay for discounts! So today at 13.00, there will be teeny tiny fish omnomnonomsing my hands and feet, while enjoying a nice cappuccino with apple pie and a smoothie. And some sort of massage chairs/sofa thingies apparantly.

Also finally decided what school I'll be having my 4 year ICT Media Design course. Already signed up and got most of the paperwork done. It's quite amusing to see how the whole signup stuff went from snailmailing stuff to the uni to just uploading everything online 10 years later. All that is left is an actual meeting, where they try to find out if the course is right one for you and some other stuff like being motivated, which is also something new, but not too surprising with the changes the government made concerning the high fail rate of uni/college students.

I am actually quite excited to go back to college, doing something completely new. Life hasn't been too interesting lately, with my current job cutting away my working hours in favor of younger employees, not to mention lowering my salary.  It's just not worth it. The downside is that I will have to pay for college myself now, no government moneys to compensate. I will also a need a laptop. Not just any laptop, but one that will last some years, high performance...and those are expensive. But it will be so worth it. My 6 year old pc just can't handle the graphic stuff anymore. Tera loves to randomly crash on me, whenever I do 25man raids or a world boss in WoW I need to put various graphic sliders to low, just to make it somewhat playable...and even then some bosses are a slideshow for me. Thankfully my guild does 10man raids, which are still doable, aside from the game occassionally freezing on me randomly. I won't fully retire my pc (I love my Logitech MX518 mouse and G15 keyboard way too much), as it's still working fine for older games and Photoshop and watching anime.

Oh dear, look at the time. I better get ready for the fishies!

~*~Maru~*~

Figured it was time for a new layout again. Sadly most of the layouts for free users are rather dull. I miss being able to make one myself, even tho the earlier homemade versions were rather newbish. At least it was more 'me' than these generic ones. Ah well, this will have to do for now. It will take a while to get used to it but at least I do not have to worry about pic sizes anymore, as the new layout has a bigger area for text and pics.

The Elf Fantasy Fair was lovely as usual. Getting there on my own by car was an adventure on its own! Borrowed dads Tomtom and moms car, as I am not used yet to driving my Twingo yet. Did I even mention yet I now share a car of my own with my brother? O_o It's lime green, brother calling it fondly Lemon Tree or Lemon for short. The ride to EFF was rather fun, 1 hour and 15 min tops. If I had taken the bus and train, it would have taken me 2,5 hours. Not to mention sitting in a train in full cosplay wasn't really something I had in mind =P The weather was quite nice, tho a tad windy, so I had to dig up two shawls for me and aien_hime. Overall, it was one of the best EFF we have been to so far for sure! It was rather relaxing not to have to worry about 3 or so others, constantly getting lost. The layout of the area was also slightly improved, making it more comfortable to walk around to check everything out.

Dressing up all medieval-like was interesting. Managed to find some matching boots to deal with the issue of the length of the dress. Found two bags that somewhat fit the whole medieval setting for me and Aichan. Thanks to mom hoarding all kinds of shawls and ponchos (to keep us warm during the yearly Xmas Fair in the store), even the shawls matched our dresses rather nicely. They served well to sit on too while resting on the grass. Made some pics of the area, tho not really that different from last years EFF, might end up uploading a bunch in the near future. Also did some posing in the dress, which turned out to be rather hard. I am a terrible model! Should poke Aichan for them, still haven't seen them properly (made with her awesome photocamera instead of my average camera on smartphone).

Speaking of pictures, I have started walking in the area again, making lots of pics. I now officially have pics of each season! I am considering sorting them and uploading them in 4 different collections on Flickr, one for each season. Showed some to zeikfried999 on yahoo and he liked them, so I guess they aren't that bad, especially since they are made with a smartphone.

I rather enjoy the 30-50 min walks (depending on the route), with only my mp3-player or occasionally radiostream on phone to keep me company. I actually get restless nowadays if I don't go out for my walk at least 2-3 times a week. In 5 min, I am all out in the nature. A couple of years ago they even build walking/biking routes, planting trees and such as well. It's finally starting to grow to size where one can call it a foresty area. Tho there are still plenty of open areas where the view is simply lovely. Having seen said area in all 4 seasons now makes it even more awesome.

I had plans to write even more, but seems I ran out of time. I have a oven pasta dish to prepare. I'll try to update faster next time, but no promises.

~*~Maru~*~

When I started playing MMO's years ago, the idea of meeting random people in the open world seemed awesome to me. In Phantasy Star Online, it meant you either hanged out in one of the many lobbies or you would create an open game, which 3 people could join if interested. I mostly ended up duoing zones with zeikfried999 in a password protected game or with a bunch of people from my Team (PSO version of a guild). Maybe I was just too antisocial, but I never really felt like there was much of a community. About 75% of the created games had a password on it.

Eventually I started playing WoW, mostly with with aien_hime, tho did end up in a bunch of guilds. When they realised I was a female, several would spaz out and be all amazed, what it was like to be a female gamer. I wasn't aware we played games differently. In the early years, most of those guilds had the ambition to raid, but would disband after some months due to not having enough people (40 were needed back then!) to do so.

The first expansion came out, had mostly fun with my IRL friends. Eventually joined an actual raiding guild, learned a lot from the people in there as a complete noob, which I am still grateful for, even if I ain't in that guild anymore. The server itself was at its best, it was one of the younger servers, but with quite some active guilds. Community meant something if you truly wanted to raid. If you were an asshole, it generally meant you would have a terrible time finding a guild to raid with. So you either had accept that, or get a name and race change, or transfer off the server altogether.

Two or so expansions later, I became the Guildmaster of my current guild. Seriously, someone up there really has some weird sense of humor. One day I was just the administrative cleric of the guild (note to self: do not request a promotion, wanting to help out to keep the guild site updated!), the next morning I find an ingame mail from a Game Master, telling me I was the new Guild Master of the guild. Apprantly one of the officers made a ticket to ask to demote the inactive Guild Master, whom hadn't logged for months and it turned out I was the next highest ranked person after that.

I had no intention to stay GM, but now, 2 or so years later, I am still the boss. I do what I do best, administrative stuff. I take care of the site, the guildbank funds, clear out the inactive players, I poke officers to remind them of their tasks. I can live with such responsibilities. No raidleading, no talking on Ventrilo. Just guiding the healer team, assigning some tasks midraid to them.

The guild itself went from 25man raiding during the 1st expansion and most of the 2nd to 10man raiding in the 3rd and 4th. Occasionally I miss the epicness of such a big group, but it certainly is a lot more relaxing to lead. My guildies are a friendly bunch, some of the original members are still around, tho we also had many new ones join us. Pretty much the usual circle of life when it comes to a guild. People get bored of playing a game for so long, move on to new ones. Or join a guild that has better progress in raiding. Or you know, grow up, get kids, a real job.

The guild had its ups and downs, been on the verge of collapsing several times due to no new progress, but we managed to get back up. We are no longer one of the top guilds, we actually lag a bit behind when it comes to killing the final bosses of each tier, but you know what? I can live with that. And apparantly the other guildies don't have issues with it either, else they would have left ages ago.



We only got this bosskill this week, but it feels nice to finally have killed all bosses of this tier. Back to wiping endlessly in the new raid! Not to mention the lovely trash leading to said boss, woohoo.

The community of the server went downhill however. Blizzard introduced a Dungeon Finder tool, allowing to queue up for a random dungeon, ending up with 4 random people from various servers. While it certainly helped to get a get a group even in the middle of the night, it also meant you rarely interact with anyone outside your guild. No more calling out in the general chat for a tank, healer or damage dealer. No longer having to worry about your reputation, as the people you meet in the dungeon finder, you will most likely never meet again. A year ago the Raid Finder also got introduced, allowing you to queue for a simplified 25man version of the recent raid instances. People get to see the content, get some loot. It's ideal for those whom don't have time for raiding at set times. Depending on your role, you will get into a group in 5-50min. You could even do chores while waiting for the queue to pop.

Guilds are falling apart left and right as a result tho. Not happy with your current guild? Make your own! Even tho it will likely collapse again in a couple of months. There are so many guilds around, there is no sense of community left at all. Ofcourse it's also because the game is over 6 years old, people getting bored of it. The game lost some of the magic for me as well, but it's the people in my guild that make the difference. If this guild would fall apart, I would likely just quit playing, as I don't really feel like investing in a new guild community anymore.



When I browse boss kill screenshots like this one, it still makes me proud to call these people my guildies. I may want to strangle you lot at times for going afk at the most annoying times or dying at the silliest times, it's you whom make the guild alive. I tried a more hardcore raiding guild, it felt so silent and unpersonal, I didn't even last a month in it.

I am not sure if you can truly find a community in MMO anymore. Not when there are tools like dungeon/raid finders. I tried more recent games like Rift and Guild Wars 2, but even in those games there didn't really seem to be any community outside guilds. But as long as I can find a bunch of people with the same mindset as me...I am alright with that.

Maybe I should try an RP server, people generally seem to be more involved in the community. A lot more drama at least, if the WoW realm fora post are an indication XD

~*~Maru~*~