Thank you to everyone who responded to my previous post. As expected by most of you, I was welcomed back, though it was amusing to see that when I logged on, my guild tabard was white. I had to be reactivated.

On the flipside, however, a misunderstanding with my GM led to some bruised egos — Hopping online to dink around for an hour or so before going to dinner with the wife was quickly refocused when an impromptu invite to the weekly MC raid came in. I joined, explaining I hadn’t been planning on the raid, and therefore couldn’t stay long. This was accepted as okay by the group. However, later on after the first failed attempt to kill Rag, repairs and summoning and regrouping was taking far too long and I had to sign off. The GM, not happy at all about this, started to lambast the mages in the guild because he was “very disappointed” in us. Another mage had left early as well, leaving only two to AOE the Sons.

I protested, saying over vent I hadn’t signed up for the raid anyways–

“You *never* sign up for raids!”

Perhaps the definition of the word “hiatus” had been lost on him. No matter, others jumped to my defense and still others whispered me to tell me that the run hadn’t been going well before I arrived, and that he was just blowing off steam.

I left, went to dinner, and enjoyed real life for the duration of the evening.

Monday, however…

Monday brought a new opportunity– the wife decided that the day would be spent playing on a brand new server, Demon Soul, and that she wanted me to come with. You mean, no chores as we had planned before, and now I get to play WoW all day? Score.

It was also laid into the plan that we’d be taking on Horde characters– something neither of us have done wholeheartedly without going back to our mains after an hour or two. But reading everyone else’s posts and listening to the bellyaching of Alliance characters had made me curious about just what was on the other side.

Of course, I rolled a Troll Shaman, after hearing numerous fish stories about just how uber they could be.

Nine hours later, I can honestly say I’ve been having an extremely fun time– the fact that i’ve been playing nine hours (and am writing this with WoW still going in the background) gives creedence to the fact that I’m hooked. I went into this with an extremely open mind, too — I am one to largely discredit any claims as to one side being obviously superior, and I constantly hear Horde players complain about Pallies and Alliance players bitch about Shamans. It goes deeper than that, obviously, into more ridiculous statements that are accepted as fact by many — “Alliance players are all ten year old whiners” — “All Horde do is gank and camp” — but I shrug those off and try not to stand up and disagree with the statement, so as to avoid having my face melted by the force of the ensuing flaming.

Still, I experienced Barrens Chat for the first time, and I have to say — Never, once in my entire WoW experience, have I had to leave General Chat. I’ve ignored many a player, and dealt with players spamming nonesense — but to see it with my own eyes, it was as if Blizzard had bottled the very essence of immaturity and injected it like steroids into the chat that was appaering before my eyes. I’ve never seen it like this in IF or Westfall (which I suppose would be the nearest Alliance equivalent to the Barrens), and yet there it is. Is it just because the server is five days old? Or is this the norm across the board? I leave it to the rest of you to offer a response. Of course, as you may guess from previous statements, blanket generalizations will be largely ignored without something to back it up.

I’m finishing up the day with 11 levels under my belt, 110 ranks in Skinning, and joined up with a guild that has its heart set on MC in three months if it doesn’t implode before then (I’m mentally setting the over/under at 1.5 weeks). Finding a guild on a brand new server is pretty much a crap shoot and I talked to three or four before feeling like i’d found one that was mature and had previous experience under its belt. However, there’s already been one public power struggle within the officers, and that never bodes well. We shall see, and I hope things hold together. I’ve already offered services as a webmaster, I’d hate to put hard work into a project like that and see the whole thing become for naught.

Until next time, keep an eye out for me on Demon Soul — my Shammy’s name is “Fark” and he can usually be found following around non-skinners for hours at a time, picking up their leftovers.