Post by Frozengrip on Aug 23, 2020 19:42:18 GMT 1
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What is your character name, what class do you play, and what level are you?
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Frozengrip, grey bearded priest, level 52 as of this writing.
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What hours do you typically play? (Cite time zone as well.)
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I live in CEST/CET and my gameplay mostly center on the evening, after 18:00 ST. However, due to my RL circumstances, I can sometimes be spotted playing at even the most odd hours of the day. And night.
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What is your experience with World of Warcraft? (How long have you played, were you a raider, role-player, etc.)
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This one may take a bit of explaining, as the answer heavily overlap with the next question, that of why I wish to join Nighthaven in particular.
Back in August 2007, during The Burning Crusade, I started playing WoW. I was slowly solo levelling my little, dwarven priest until one day in the Hinterlands I ran into a small group of people. After a fair bit of chatting that day, we ended up playing together quite regularly over the coming months. Eventually our little group of adventurers ended up in first one guild, which was shortly after integrated into another.
On December 31st 2007 at 15:59 on the stairs outside Black Temple I finally hit level 70, and for quite a while life in WoW was truly wonderful. Dungeons, heroics, Karazhan, ZA, Gruul & Maggy provided plenty of opportunity to band together and have some fun with spells, swords and axes. It was all (mostly) casual, except for what I only later realised was the snake in paradise: The BC Heroic dungeons.
Our little guild (small enough that we had to cooperate with another few guilds for the 25 man mini raids) didn't really have a tradition for talking openly about any issues that people might have. It was all a super happy group of people, as long as everything went well. Which eventually they didn't. Because due to the roughness of the TBC era Heroics, we only had a very limited number of ways we could make a viable heroic group. If people wanted to come (due to the siren song of getting purple gear, eventually, from badges), then they had to perform, regardless of their role. And not everybody was able to do that.
Over the early summer '08 things got a bit out of hand, and eventually and with a very heavy heart I decided to leave the guild, despite all the amazing people in it. Most of the time I wasn't even entirely certain what was happening behind the curtains. All I knew was that I was one of only two healers (plus an alt) in the guild, who could pull off healing a heroic. As such people were (quietly) fighting over my services.
Alas, I din't quite understand what I was giving up, and I left and joined one of the large raiding guilds on my server, thinking these people must all know what they were doing, and indeed they did. With them I quickly got up to Illidan in BT. Yet the magic of the community had vanish for me. We hardly talked internally in the guild outside of raids, and what talk there was, was mostly raid preparation and strategy.
In about three short months I had burned myself out on WoW and stopped playing. It had all descended into an eternal grind for the next purple, with little else to show for it. The game no longer served its purpose for me as a social platform.
After a while, when WotLK was out, I decided to try the game again, and met up with the people from my first guild. But by then the social magic had completely vanished from the group, not the least because three of the key people had been forced by external circumstances to stop playing. But alas, I did get to see a bit of Ulduar, ICC, etc.
Ever since then I have played Retail on and off, mostly seeing the important bits of every expansion, but I have never found that original atmosphere from those 8-ish months again, anywhere. All the people I met seemed wholly caught up in the grindmill of whatever new gearing system Blizzard had devised for the expansion of the day. Chatting and having some casual fun with friends? No-one got time for that. "We need to clear this M+ in less than X minutes..."
Last year, when Classic launched, I dropped playing Retail like a hot potato. Originally I rolled this character on Hydraxian Waterlords, the European RP-PvE server, hoping that would be my best option for finding a vibrant, social community. Unfortunately that was not to be, or maybe I just didn't manage to meet the right people.
The old community spirit was there in spades for sure, but people didn't seem that interested in keeping it up. The most fun I had, bar none, was impromptu PUGs for open world content while levelling. People actually seemed to not mind chatting.
However HW was not one of the most populous servers, and I soon rerolled an alt on PV, that I also actively levelled on and off. Unlike on HW there continue to be a lot of people levelling in the open world here on PV, and much PUG fun was had.
My alt is now a social member of a large guild here on PV, and they are nice people for sure. Yet... it is the same old story. Raid logging, a problem made worse by the world buff meta. Even when a lot of people are active on alts there is hardly any activity in /g, nor on Discord. Trying to get a regular dungeon group organized, perhaps a few days in advance? The response is like watching tar flow...
Somewhat recently I decided to server transfer this character over from HW, as people are still levelling en masse on PV. I am please to report that the open world PUG fun is still to be found here. However, I still don't feel I have managed to find the right group of people to play the game with, long term. But at this point I have stoically decided that I will keep looking, for however long it will take. For eternity? "So be it, Jedi."
Which brings us to...
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Why would you want to join Nighthaven? (Please note, we ask for your reasons for wanting to join -this- guild, not just any guild.)
****
I am looking for a guild, where the game is the excuse for people to work together and have some casual fun in a relaxed atmosphere. Boss kills optional. At least as seen from the outside, then Nighthaven sounds like the place I have been looking for since I stopped playing during BC. A community that I expected to find on a RP server, but didn't.
I am encouraged by the fact that in addition to a guild calendar, you also maintain a forum, where at least some of your members seems to be very active. (700+ posts by just a single person!) I believe most forms of communication complements each other within an vibrant social community, and even an active Discord server cannot supplant an old school forum. In my world they serve different purposes, both important. This strongly suggests to me that your guild leadership does indeed care a whole lot about the guild, and wish to support your little sphere of online friends in any way you can.
****
Which qualities do you have to offer, and - what do you expect of your guild?
****
- I would like to be part of a drama free guild, where people consider and care for each other. A place, where the social part of the game has priority.
A community, where grinding for gear, gold and materials is the excuse for supporting and doing ingame activities with each other, and not a hollow goal in its own right.
(I still vividly remember all the bog lords I had to kill in Zangarmarsh in order to craft my Primal Mooncloth set back in TBC, but the effort was totally worthwhile when we began running Heroics together.)
A community, where dungeon runs and raids are not being blitzed as quickly as possible, just to grab some gear. I am absolutely not a card carrying member of Blizzard's Team GoGoGo!
- I like to believe that I am always receptive to constructive criticism, if people feel it is warranted for any reason. Both in game and IRL I maintain a personal policy of trying not to step on other people's toes, if it can at all be helped. But I doubt that I am perfect in this regard.
- It would be super nice if people saw fit to organise for instance dungeon runs just a little bit in advance. An alternative to just logging in at a random point in time, expecting everybody else to drop what they are currently doing in order to help run said dungeon. This could also be of immense help to people, who may only have limited time to play due to RL commitments. Keywords: Your guild calendar.
- Perhaps a new friend?
****
Where did you hear of us?
****
I was researching a different guild, which had been advertising in general chat, and Google brought me to Blizzard's official forum for Classic. Here I spotted your cozy, little recruitment thread (which is currently about a week from being locked, I dare say), and the green annunciators started flashing with all the right kind of vibes.
****
Do you know any current or former member of Nighthaven (if so please cite the person)?
****
As far as I am aware, no.
****
Anything else you would like to add to help us know if we´d be a good match for each other?
****
- Even though I generally have plenty of time for playing, I tend to be a bit unpredictable in exactly when I play. And when I do, I often take breaks for a few hours in between gaming sessions. So organising for instance dungeon runs and other social activities in advance is a huge plus, if people would like for me to take part.
- Due to RL issues I am not always super talkative while playing, and this counts double if I play at very odd hours, like in the middle of the night. But I do very much like to chat and connect with other people, given the opportunity.
- I know this is not a requirement for membership of Nighthaven, but I would actually like to have a solid excuse for getting a (working) microphone/headset for talking on Discord. This has been my Achilles' Heel in all the years I have been playing WoW, something I'd like to correct some day: I'm a bit microphone shy.
- I am kind of known for writing long forum posts. Some might say excessively so...
What is your character name, what class do you play, and what level are you?
****
Frozengrip, grey bearded priest, level 52 as of this writing.
****
What hours do you typically play? (Cite time zone as well.)
****
I live in CEST/CET and my gameplay mostly center on the evening, after 18:00 ST. However, due to my RL circumstances, I can sometimes be spotted playing at even the most odd hours of the day. And night.
****
What is your experience with World of Warcraft? (How long have you played, were you a raider, role-player, etc.)
****
This one may take a bit of explaining, as the answer heavily overlap with the next question, that of why I wish to join Nighthaven in particular.
Back in August 2007, during The Burning Crusade, I started playing WoW. I was slowly solo levelling my little, dwarven priest until one day in the Hinterlands I ran into a small group of people. After a fair bit of chatting that day, we ended up playing together quite regularly over the coming months. Eventually our little group of adventurers ended up in first one guild, which was shortly after integrated into another.
On December 31st 2007 at 15:59 on the stairs outside Black Temple I finally hit level 70, and for quite a while life in WoW was truly wonderful. Dungeons, heroics, Karazhan, ZA, Gruul & Maggy provided plenty of opportunity to band together and have some fun with spells, swords and axes. It was all (mostly) casual, except for what I only later realised was the snake in paradise: The BC Heroic dungeons.
Our little guild (small enough that we had to cooperate with another few guilds for the 25 man mini raids) didn't really have a tradition for talking openly about any issues that people might have. It was all a super happy group of people, as long as everything went well. Which eventually they didn't. Because due to the roughness of the TBC era Heroics, we only had a very limited number of ways we could make a viable heroic group. If people wanted to come (due to the siren song of getting purple gear, eventually, from badges), then they had to perform, regardless of their role. And not everybody was able to do that.
Over the early summer '08 things got a bit out of hand, and eventually and with a very heavy heart I decided to leave the guild, despite all the amazing people in it. Most of the time I wasn't even entirely certain what was happening behind the curtains. All I knew was that I was one of only two healers (plus an alt) in the guild, who could pull off healing a heroic. As such people were (quietly) fighting over my services.
Alas, I din't quite understand what I was giving up, and I left and joined one of the large raiding guilds on my server, thinking these people must all know what they were doing, and indeed they did. With them I quickly got up to Illidan in BT. Yet the magic of the community had vanish for me. We hardly talked internally in the guild outside of raids, and what talk there was, was mostly raid preparation and strategy.
In about three short months I had burned myself out on WoW and stopped playing. It had all descended into an eternal grind for the next purple, with little else to show for it. The game no longer served its purpose for me as a social platform.
After a while, when WotLK was out, I decided to try the game again, and met up with the people from my first guild. But by then the social magic had completely vanished from the group, not the least because three of the key people had been forced by external circumstances to stop playing. But alas, I did get to see a bit of Ulduar, ICC, etc.
Ever since then I have played Retail on and off, mostly seeing the important bits of every expansion, but I have never found that original atmosphere from those 8-ish months again, anywhere. All the people I met seemed wholly caught up in the grindmill of whatever new gearing system Blizzard had devised for the expansion of the day. Chatting and having some casual fun with friends? No-one got time for that. "We need to clear this M+ in less than X minutes..."
Last year, when Classic launched, I dropped playing Retail like a hot potato. Originally I rolled this character on Hydraxian Waterlords, the European RP-PvE server, hoping that would be my best option for finding a vibrant, social community. Unfortunately that was not to be, or maybe I just didn't manage to meet the right people.
The old community spirit was there in spades for sure, but people didn't seem that interested in keeping it up. The most fun I had, bar none, was impromptu PUGs for open world content while levelling. People actually seemed to not mind chatting.
However HW was not one of the most populous servers, and I soon rerolled an alt on PV, that I also actively levelled on and off. Unlike on HW there continue to be a lot of people levelling in the open world here on PV, and much PUG fun was had.
My alt is now a social member of a large guild here on PV, and they are nice people for sure. Yet... it is the same old story. Raid logging, a problem made worse by the world buff meta. Even when a lot of people are active on alts there is hardly any activity in /g, nor on Discord. Trying to get a regular dungeon group organized, perhaps a few days in advance? The response is like watching tar flow...
Somewhat recently I decided to server transfer this character over from HW, as people are still levelling en masse on PV. I am please to report that the open world PUG fun is still to be found here. However, I still don't feel I have managed to find the right group of people to play the game with, long term. But at this point I have stoically decided that I will keep looking, for however long it will take. For eternity? "So be it, Jedi."
Which brings us to...
****
Why would you want to join Nighthaven? (Please note, we ask for your reasons for wanting to join -this- guild, not just any guild.)
****
I am looking for a guild, where the game is the excuse for people to work together and have some casual fun in a relaxed atmosphere. Boss kills optional. At least as seen from the outside, then Nighthaven sounds like the place I have been looking for since I stopped playing during BC. A community that I expected to find on a RP server, but didn't.
I am encouraged by the fact that in addition to a guild calendar, you also maintain a forum, where at least some of your members seems to be very active. (700+ posts by just a single person!) I believe most forms of communication complements each other within an vibrant social community, and even an active Discord server cannot supplant an old school forum. In my world they serve different purposes, both important. This strongly suggests to me that your guild leadership does indeed care a whole lot about the guild, and wish to support your little sphere of online friends in any way you can.
****
Which qualities do you have to offer, and - what do you expect of your guild?
****
- I would like to be part of a drama free guild, where people consider and care for each other. A place, where the social part of the game has priority.
A community, where grinding for gear, gold and materials is the excuse for supporting and doing ingame activities with each other, and not a hollow goal in its own right.
(I still vividly remember all the bog lords I had to kill in Zangarmarsh in order to craft my Primal Mooncloth set back in TBC, but the effort was totally worthwhile when we began running Heroics together.)
A community, where dungeon runs and raids are not being blitzed as quickly as possible, just to grab some gear. I am absolutely not a card carrying member of Blizzard's Team GoGoGo!
- I like to believe that I am always receptive to constructive criticism, if people feel it is warranted for any reason. Both in game and IRL I maintain a personal policy of trying not to step on other people's toes, if it can at all be helped. But I doubt that I am perfect in this regard.
- It would be super nice if people saw fit to organise for instance dungeon runs just a little bit in advance. An alternative to just logging in at a random point in time, expecting everybody else to drop what they are currently doing in order to help run said dungeon. This could also be of immense help to people, who may only have limited time to play due to RL commitments. Keywords: Your guild calendar.
- Perhaps a new friend?
****
Where did you hear of us?
****
I was researching a different guild, which had been advertising in general chat, and Google brought me to Blizzard's official forum for Classic. Here I spotted your cozy, little recruitment thread (which is currently about a week from being locked, I dare say), and the green annunciators started flashing with all the right kind of vibes.
****
Do you know any current or former member of Nighthaven (if so please cite the person)?
****
As far as I am aware, no.
****
Anything else you would like to add to help us know if we´d be a good match for each other?
****
- Even though I generally have plenty of time for playing, I tend to be a bit unpredictable in exactly when I play. And when I do, I often take breaks for a few hours in between gaming sessions. So organising for instance dungeon runs and other social activities in advance is a huge plus, if people would like for me to take part.
- Due to RL issues I am not always super talkative while playing, and this counts double if I play at very odd hours, like in the middle of the night. But I do very much like to chat and connect with other people, given the opportunity.
- I know this is not a requirement for membership of Nighthaven, but I would actually like to have a solid excuse for getting a (working) microphone/headset for talking on Discord. This has been my Achilles' Heel in all the years I have been playing WoW, something I'd like to correct some day: I'm a bit microphone shy.
- I am kind of known for writing long forum posts. Some might say excessively so...
