Hi Folks!

As I’m sure most of you know, I’m now settled at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. Barring reassignment to another part of the region, I’ll be here for the next eleven months. Due to the time difference and the shift I’m working at the fighter squadron I support, I’m probably not going to be able to play too much with anyone else. Maybe a couple of you serious nightowls.

The internet in my barracks isn’t the best, but sometimes it’s not too bad. I just moved to a new barracks building and I think the connection might be a little faster. I’m hoping, anyway.

If my internet is good, I’ll probably mostly be levelling Kookla, since Korneelyoos only plays with his hawt GF.

Anyway, life here is tolerable so far. The worst part is missing Cat and the kids. Drop me a line now and again (send email to Kookla) and keep me posted on how things are going.

See you online!

- Shawn

Just for a little diversion this past week, seven of us (Cat, Capp, Stephen, Phil, Bert, Dan and I) went to Moonglade to try to take on Omen the Three-Headed Wonder Dog, Terrier of the Underworld. I wonder what we were thinking. Still there’s something to say for dogged determination, and he dogged us pretty badly. At 2000+ damage per bite, none of us could take more than a couple of chomps before we were done. After the first attempt, it was pretty obvious that it was a fool’s errand, but we kept charging in simply for the joy of feeling those mighty teeth upon us! After it was all said and done, my armor looked like the dog’s breakfast. Phil’s handy-dandy repair bot came in mighty handy. We were set up as a raid and even though it didn’t go ‘well’, it was our first guild raid. Yay us! Next week Capp wants to go after the Fel Reaver using pocket knives and rubber-band guns; he’s sure we can do it.

Everyone welcome our newest member, Matt (Betraed). Since he’s like the third ‘Matt’ or ‘Matthew’, we’re just going to call him ‘Bert’. He’s also brought two other toons in: Beefulo and Evilish. Say ‘hi’ when you see him and give him a hand where you can.

Speaking of helping out where you can: Phil is levelling Healy pretty fast to give the Guild another healer. Healy is fast closing in on 30, so think about how you can help move him along. In case you’ve never levelled a priest, it’s almost impossible to do as a solo.

Okay, that’s about it for this week. See you in Azeroth!

-Shawn

Well, four of the original five Intrepid Adventurers finally finished ST last night. And by ‘finished’, I mean ‘restarted from the beginning and played until after midnight to get the daggone thing done for once and all’. Unfortunately, Greg - the missing fifth Intrepid Adventurer - couldn’t finish because he was having some Father-Son WoW time (which is very, very cool!). However, Cat, Capp, Stephen and I ground our way through with the help of a very pleasant pickup named Betraed (Bert, for short). It was definitely easier to finish five levels or more past where we started it. Being ten or more levels over most of the mobs certainly didn’t hurt. Unfortunately, at L43, Bert was a very tasty snack. And, even with our advantage in level, we still managed to wipe. Yay, us! In any case, thanks to Capp for the leadership and heals; Cat and Stephen for the DPS and to Bert for actually putting up with us. Nice job!

The same four of the five Intrepid Adventurers tried Ramparts a few nights ago, and that went hilariously badly. Of course, we’re three or four levels below the mobs there, so not our fault they beat us like we owed them money. Still, we managed to work our way up as far as the first landing before we gave up on the mess. Thanks to Phil for lending a little L70 support to the operation.

Speaking of 70s, and now that we’ve finally put ST to rest (and resolved never to do it again with any toon, ever), it’s time to start thinking about other instances, BG groups or maybe a Guild Dueling Night. The Guild has a group of 70s, a clump of high 50s and a smattering in the 20s and 30s. Speaking for myself, I could use a BFD or SM run for Kookla. Think about what you might like to do or need to do, because I’ll probably be asking you.

Let’s talk about membership for a sec. We lost Erin this week. Speaking for myself, I really grew to like her in the few weeks she was here. She was great to have on chat and I’ll miss her humorous cynicism and sarcasm. I left her an open invite back, and I wish her Good Luck and Good Hunting. With that said: please be on the lookout for folks to bring into the family. You know the kind of people we’re looking for: polite, helpful, mature, fun, intelligent, exceptionally good-looking, good breeding material, etc. In other words, people like us. I haven’t extended many invites since we’ve been ‘organized’ into a Guild, but I’ve extended a few to folks I’ve played with that I wanted to play with again. And, ultimately, that’s the test: would you like to see that person and possibly play with them every day? If you run across someone like that, see if they’re interested in joining the family and we can extend them an invite. Just a reminder: the GM, AGMs and Founders have invite priviledges.

Okay, that’s about it for now. Thanks for letting BHDC be part of your WoW experience!

- Shawn

Discuss this in the forum.

Well, it’s over - for now. After three tries, we (Cat, Capp, Dan, Greg and I) finished Ramps. And with only five or six wipes. Just to set the stage: the first attempt (with Cat, Capp, Stephen, Phil (Baltina) and I) was an off-the-cuff - and very messy - affair, full of misstepps, bad pulls, vicious adds and party wipes. We made it through the first boss Gargamel (the same guy who terrorized the Smurfs, go figure) and we were within site of the second boss when we called it on account of it being late as hell.

The second attempt went down in infamy when Capp was called away literally as we were about to jump off. We attempted to run the instance with two off-healers (Cat and Dan) but it wasn’t meant to be. The second boss, Oomowmow, threw out so much damage that the healers together couldn’t keep us alive.

For the third - and so far final - attempt on Thursday we had all the pieces. A main healer in Capp, two off-healers in Cat and Dan, with Greg providing DPS and myself as main tank. Dan was also serving as off-tank and DPS as needed. Despite a few more missteps and bad pulls (mostly on my part as instance leader), we made it through the second boss and moved on to the final boss - a dual boss consisting of a humanoid and a dragon. It took three tries before we finally figured out how to (barely) beat them, but we did it. Ramps is now complete. (Tip: on the final boss, go down onto the platform and keep everyone but the main tank BEHIND the dragon to avoid his AOE breath weapon.)

However, we will need to go back again, because we have a big clump of low 60s and a few folks who I know need Ramps, including Stephen and John. So, if you’re in the right level range, you’re not off the hook yet. Ha ha!

Welcome to new member BloodyAmy, an L32 Rouge, who was recruited by Phil. Say hello when you see her and help her out if you can.

Sunday, I’m leaving home for a year-long deployment to CENTCOM. I will be in the States for at least three weeks for training and I expect to be active during that period. After that, however, I expect to be offline for several weeks while I travel and get settled into my new location. My availability after that is completely up in the air, since I have no way of knowing what sort of internet access I’ll have. I may literally be offline for a year. Hopefully not, but we’ll see.

During my absence, if you need anything please talk to the AGMs: Cat (Calli, Kairana) or Phil (Moctar, Baltina). You’re welcome to throw an email my way, contact Cat for the address.

First note: Last night Tanaris was rocking as BHDC and Eternal Purgatory littered the streets of Gadgetzan with skellies (both Ally and our own) for about three hours. If you haven’t noticed, BHDC often shows up to clean up XR when the Alliance comes calling, and EP is often right there as well. After last night’s XR incursion, we all went down the Tanaris to look for trouble and found all we could handle.

If you haven’t done zone PVP with your Guildies, please consider coming out if you’re L50 or higher. Believe it or not, getting killed repeatedly by toons ten or twenty levels higher than you is fun when you’re doing with your friends!

And a final, official thanks to EP for coming out to play: Thanks, guys!

Forum link for this topic.

Second note: By some measures, BHDC is one of the leading guilds on Eitrigg. See Phil’s post for details.

Final note: Please welcome Matthew’s new-to-our-server toon, Spero. Matthew’s guild, Ardent Blades on Eredar, was dissolved and he brought his main, an L70 Troll Hunter with years of experience, to our Guild. That means that it’s time for the L70s in BHDC to start thinking about serious raiding. Kara, anyone? If you’re interested, drop Matthew (Spero) a note and tell him to get something organized!

Hey, thanks for being part of BHDC and for letting me be your GM. I swear, it gets better every week!

-Shawn

We now have a set of rules for the Guild Bank. Please read the page here. All Guild Members are expected to work with these rules. Thanks!

We threw together a run into WC on Sunday afternoon with Cat, Dan, Phil, Erin and myself. It was going quite swimmingly until we missed the turn by Skum and ended up wandering lost for a while looking for Serpentis. But, it all ended well and everyone got what they needed, excepting a few deviate hides. It was lots of fun, thanks for playing, guys! (Spanky had a great time, too.)

We’re still hoping to resume ST on Wednesday at 8pm EST (7pm Server) and finish off the lower levels. The original group was Cat, Capp, Stephen, Greg and myself. Please pst or email me or Cat to let us know if you’re still in. If someone can’t make it, we can probably sub someone else in who’s in the low to mid 50s, except Capp - since I don’t think we have any other healers at that level. So, if you weren’t on the start of the run and would be available to finish the lower levels, let me or Cat know.

Our ST run last night to clean out the lower levels and finish what we started three weeks ago ended before it began. In his attempt to get a better signal and lower lag, Capp hooked a diesel generator to his Mom’s wireless router and blacked out half his county. The governor has declared a state of emergency and the National Guard, FEMA, the Red Cross and several international NGOs are being called in to help restore order and clean up the mess. Capp did manage to get out a desperate email from an emergency shelter just at ‘go’ time, but that’s been our only contact with him since the tragedy occurred.

But, in the spirit of fools rushing in where angels fear to tread, let’s go ahead and figure on giving it one more go. Same Bat time, same Bat channel. See you Wednesday in Stonard at 8PM EST (7PM Server) ready to roll.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Capp in this, his time of need.

Okay, as you may have noticed, I’ve frozen the money in the guild bank. First, let me make one thing very clear: I did not freeze the money because it was being misused. Nobody was misusing the money. But we never came up with any rules on when or how that bank money should be used. So, I froze it until we - as a Guild - came up with some sort of plan.

My concept for the guild money was that it would allow us to help folks who needed some temporary cash, with the understanding that it was a loan that would be paid back with some interest. So, someone who needed money for a mount at L40 or a sweet piece of purple armor on the AH could apply to the officers for a loan and, if approved, would pay back that loan plus interest.

We could also use it to enhance the bank itself, since our one bank slot is always full. It would be nice if we could have one slot for mats, another for armor and weapons and another for recipes and such. Bank slots cost 250G each.

But, in order to have a discussion with the Guild as a whole, everyone needs to register in the forums so we can have some discussion and come to some sort of consensus. So, please register in the forums and join the discussion so we can get this figured out together!

First: Phil and I monitor the bank almost every day to get a feel for how things are flowing and it seems to be working well. People are putting stuff in, taking stuff out and throwing in money. We have over 200g in there now and we should be able to pick up another slot soon. Thanks, everyone!

Second: Speaking of money, things seem to be more expensive, or maybe vendors are giving less. All I know is that my cash-on-hand is going down, which hasn’t been the case before with regular questing. It seems like Blizzard has made an adjustment somewhere recently. Has anyone else noticed this?

Third: I’ve had a couple people ask me what classes the Guild needs. Easy: Priests and Warriors. We need the healing and we need the tanks. A couple people have started levelling toons like this, Stephen is levelling a priest named PrincessVespa and Erin has a warrior named DeathRazor. I can tell you from personal experience that soloing a warrior is hard work - you almost have to have a medic along to get anything done. I can also tell you from close observation that levelling a priest is just as hard, if not harder, without someone to party with and beat up stuff for you. So, if you can, offer to help out anyone levelling a priest or warrior. If you’re considering what sort of toon to start and a priest or warrior just isn’t you, we could also use Paladins or Druids, who can heal and tank.

While we’re on the subject of helping folks level, let me just say that one of the true pleasures of being in this Guild is that everyone is willing to help each other out. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone say in chat “These mobs are giving me a hard time.” and the very next thing in chat is someone a continent away saying, “OMW”.

The point is: if you’re getting knocked around badly working quests, don’t hesitate to ask for a hand. And, of course, if you’re in a position to help, please do. By working together we improve our toons, build our friendships and strengthen the Guild.

Well, that’s enough this week. Thanks again for being part of BHDC and for letting me (nominally) be the Guy In Charge.

- Shawn

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