i'm holding my own leash

[pauraque_bk]

Summary: I organized a group to do something hard, overcame wank and self-doubt, succeeded, and got something cool.


Of course, as with everything, there's a bit of a story behind it.

The challenge is to kill the first four bosses of a certain area within 45 minutes. Going at a leisurely pace this would take 60-90 minutes, depending on the group. If you succeed you win a bear you can ride. If you fail, you can't try again for three days.

In my guild that broke up, we almost did it; we missed it by about 1 minute on the best try. This always irked me, and it irked a friend of mine too -- the friend with whom I'm planning to form a new guild at the next expansion. Wouldn't it be great, he said, if we could gather all the best players from our old guild and our new guild and make a dream team to do it. So we started asking people.

Then the power supply in his computer died and he had to take a break from the game, meaning I had to organize it by myself. Which was alarming, because I don't think of myself as good at leading things. But I went on anyway and dealt with contacting people, working around their schedules, replacing people who flaked, etc.

It was interesting when we started because half the people didn't know the other half. They all just knew me, so I guess it took some trust to agree to come to a group with strangers solely on the basis of my promise that they were good.

The first time we tried, we fucked it up almost right away, and then someone disconnected from the game and we had to stop. During this, someone in my new guild noticed we were all in there, and began to make a huge stink about not being invited, accusing us of making a secret elite group to exclude... him, I guess, causing others of course to say things like "It's pauraque's raid, you should take it up with him". D: So I had to exercise some diplomacy and smooth over hurt feelings and reassure everyone that it was okay to try again. This was scary and made me doubt my ability to co-lead a guild when the time comes to do that.

The next two attempts were close failures. Bear Keep in mind we were only doing attempts once a week, because that was how people's schedules worked out.

Then, well, we did it. Everyone did an amazing job. We made very few mistakes and we did it with time to spare. I was very, very happy. That alone was enough for me, I didn't care who got the bear or expect to get it.

You only get one bear at a time, winner determined by random roll, and there are 10 people in the group. I rolled a 95 and won.

I might perhaps have squealed incoherently over voice chat about how I couldn't believe I won and I never win anything. It's a bit of a blur, but everyone was very nice and congratulatory and had the personal bigness to suggest that as the leader of the group it was right that I should have it.

Well then.




The group: Zoloxx (far left), Oskaar (shadow), Shrubz (tree), me + bear, Emoisha (tiny redhead), Erifnoom (jumping lazer turkey), Niemals (sitting), Arthurdents (looking bored), Adamian (best pal), _hannelore (♥4lyfe).

I never noticed how many trolls there are in this group. Key to victoly?




Me (right), a stranger with the same mount (left), Erifnoom jumping around in bear form (middle). photographer: _hannelore


eta: the tusks on the armor make it hard to fit through doors.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

Wait, I thought that was Scarlet Monastery? :P

We overcame times of great diversity and prevailed. I also forgot to mention last night that I was wearing my lucky whale socks. Clearly another key to victoly. <3

[pauraque]

i heard in the xpac there will be whale mounts

[bowdlerized.livejournal.com]

I am happy for you! Your bear looks fierce! What were you riding before and what happens to it now?

[pauraque]

Before this I had the same mount for a couple of years. It was a reward for enduring many valorous battles against enemy players (while wearing my lady's colors, of course) but not for any one dramatic act. It's a zombie horse.



The way riding works is you get an item that magically summons the mount out of nowhere (a whistle, a horn, etc), so nothing happens to unused mounts per se. I guess they just stay in the ether or wherever it is they hang out before you summon them. Hopefully a dark gloomy pasture with various attractive zombie mares.

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

(i seem to have missed several days of lj, not sure how)

Hot damn! That's awesome. Very good work on the raiding, and even more impressively, on the organization and leading. You did totally deserve the bear, and it's great that random happened to be right this time!

Also, trolls are always the key to success! Almost every dungeon I've ever succeeded at, I've had 4-5 trolls in the group. Oh, wait... I always play with 4-5 trolls in the group :p

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

also, you're group composition by races perfectly points out that 10 is a triangular number!

(0 orcs)
1 forsaken
2 blood elves
3 tauren
4 trolls

[pauraque]

In my old guild that broke up, there were only two trolls (or only two troll raiding mains, anyway). Me, and a female troll warrior. Only two, in a guild of 30-35! The joke was that she and I would have to repopulate the race, except that wasn't too likely as she and I didn't get along very well.

In retrospect the fallapart can probably be chalked up to a voodoo deficiency.

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

Female troll warrior... wow. The rarest of all combinations. I've only even seen one female troll in plate. Every time I see Adriamarie I stop and go "wait... what? Oh, Adriamarie."

So, naturally I made one. But I got distracted and I haven't gotten her past about 32.