Welcome to the second episode of know your guildie. This month we’ll gaze towards the stars, where the Draenei’s came from. On board their spaceship was a shaman, whom I met up with in the middle of Dalaran. His name? Shamatic!

The first question that came to mind was when this particular shaman started on the shamanistic path that has led him all the way through Azeroth, back to his homeland, and now to Northrend, to help out people, that’s not his own.
“I started playing wow in September 2006! First off before 2005 which was during my secondary school days, I pretty much never had played a MMO game and very little PC games in general. My fellow school friend Dwayne (Aka Genfist or Slientblade as his now called) introduced me to a MMO game called “Guild Wars”. Eventually I picked up my own copy of it and started playing with him online. It was pretty addictive and I ended up having five characters at lvl 20 (that was the highest lvl at the time), as my first MMO it was a good starter aswell. Although after a while Genfist started playing another MMO game called “World of Warcraft” that he constantly mentioned during and after school, saying “It’s even better than GW’s”.  One day, I actually went to Genfists house after school and played around with his lvl 54 Paladin in Darnasus – I think it was. After seeing how big the cities where and how you could actually ride mounts in the game (you couldn’t do that in Guild Wars), it interested me enough to go and create a Trial account.”

I’m amazed on how much this being likes to talk, and I try to keep up with my notes, while he just keeps talking. Guess that’s what a long space trip does to you. Anyway, because I’ve done my research I know for a fact that this shaman haven’t always been on the shamanistic path. So of course I have to dig further into this.
“When I finally finished installing WoW and all the patches which took me a few hours (Seems like nothing has changed since then xD) it was already midnight. I was getting tired so I thought I’d just log into the game for a bit with this newly made trial account.
In Guild wars I enjoyed classes that could do both healing and damage at the same time. Genfist told me that a Priest might be a good choice for me then, especially if I specced it “Shadow”. When I was at the character screen I originally was looking at making a undead priest, but seeing as Genfist was playing Alliance side I came across a equally cool race called “Night elves” that could also be priests.  As I said earlier it was midnight and I was getting pretty tired, so the first name that popped into my head was “Neversleep” (I thought it was quite appropriate at the time lol).
So Neversleep, a Night elf Priest was my first character in WOW. Although when TBC came out I eventually made a Draenei  Shaman called “Shamatic” that I lvled up as my second 70 character. I found myself enjoying/playing my Shaman alot more and I ended up making him my main character when Arisen was just starting to raid Serpent Shrine Cavern (SSC).”

The shaman joyfully tells me about his experiences in this world, and since I’m in my good mood, I let him go on:
“I’d have to say I enjoy my Shaman the most. Majority of my time is spent on him than any other character I have. Which is probably why I have a higher achievement score than most of you altoholics in this guild :P.
I enjoy my Shaman the most simply because of the play style of the class. I love classes that I can both heal and dps as and the Shaman class lives up to that and more in my opinion.”

Alright, time for me to stop the ever talking shaman and ask him some more questions – after all, I am the interviewer. There’s plenty of people who need help in Azeroth, but are there anything in particular you enjoy the most?
“There are a lot of things I like about wow but if you were to ask me to sum it up in one word, I’d say “Variety”. There are just so many things you can do in this game that you just can’t do in console games or even other MMO’s. I think the multiplayer in MMO games like WOW is amazing, there’s so many people you can choose to play with and there from lots of different countries.”

The reason we are having this conversation is because of the involvement in Arisen. When and why was Arisen chosen?
“I joined Arisen towards the end of Vanilla (a few months before Burning crusade came out). Both I and Genfist used to play on Darksorrow-EU, it was where we started our characters. When I was lvling up my priest, Genfist moved server to Hakkar-EU to join a Raiding guild. Darksorrow was full of Swedish and Danish players, despite most of the server speaking English, a lot of the good guilds Alliance Side would often require you to speak either Swedish or Danish depending on the guild.”
Being Danish myself I feel a bit offended, but I’m trying to hide this face, since Draenei’s are a bit larger than the average human :S
“When I was getting towards lvl 60, Gen was telling me about his new raiding guild “Arisen”. My guild on Darksorrow went bust after a merge with another guild, which was a shame since it was the first proper guild I was in and Guild chat was ALWAYS active. I got bored of being alone after becoming guildless and decided to move to Hakkar to play with Gen. After I got there I made a application to Arisen and hoped I would get into the same guild as him.
I waited about a week and a half for a reply (You lazy bastards xD), then one day I just turned up to one of Arisen’s outdoor raids, which was “Ysondre” and started raid healing outside of the raid group. A member called “Rose” noticed my help and tossed me a Raid invite and told the other officers to get their fingers out of there asses and invite me, which they did.
Now here I am :P”

Again I’m offended. I’m not a lazy bastard. I’m briefly thinking about stopping the interview, but then realize that I wasn’t that active an officer myself back in the days, so I let it go and continue. 4 years of WoW must’ve given a lot of experiences, but are there anything particular that comes to mind, that’s worth mentioning?
“To be honest, most of my favourite moments have happened within Arisen.  Like Downing a new boss for the first time or randomly doing stupid crap in game.
Although I have to say, one of my favourite moments in game was when I was levelling my priest around lvl 25. I was in the barrens one day (don’t ask me why because I don’t know either lol) and I was being chased by two Horde characters that were the same lvl as me. Back then you couldn’t get riding mounts until you reached lvl 40. So I was being chased on foot, I ran from the cross roads all the way down towards “Razorfen Kraul”. In the distance I saw a large Dwarven encampment just before RFK and made a dash towards it. I went deep into the building, knowing it would take the Horde quite a while to kill all the friendly dwarves before getting to me. My hearthstone was on Cooldown still, so I had no way to escape for now.
The Horde managed to clear the first lot of mobs and were heading towards the room I was in at this time. I thought I was going to be killed by them for sure but in my last attempt at avoiding them I used the ever useful “Shadowmeld” and stood still in that room. Funny enough both the Horde ran straight through my body without even seeing me, both of them started to clear the other room of dwarves while I quickly ran back out of the encampment and escaped the thousand needles. I was later laughing so hard at their failure :P”

While he blabbers along about horde failures my mind drift away and I start to think of some lyric from a song. “It’s the end of the world as we know” my brain sings, and I realize that the R:E:M song actually fits pretty well on the Azerothian universe. Cataclysm WILL change the world as we know it. So what is your take on the up coming expansion?
“I like what I see so far, despite it still being in Alpha stage. When I watched last year’s Blizzcon, I especially enjoyed the developer panels for Cata. I do have to say though; I think some of the announcements were pretty strange. Like making Worgen a playable race. Although after they brought the Draenei, who had very little story as “Broken” into wow, I reckon they can pretty much make anything a playable race. Seeing how they had to write a lot of new lore to support Draenei, but I thought it turned out pretty well to be honest.
The other weird changes are the announcements of some new class combos. Some probably should have been here from the start and others I think are just plain wrong. Orc mages? Gnome priests? Dwarf mages? And Tauren Paladins of all races…….please.”

What’s wrong with a holy cow?

“I look forward to playing in the old Azeroth zones again, especially after seeing some of the screenshots of the updated zones. Hyjal I’m looking forward to the most since we haven’t ever seen what it looks like in game, despite it being a zone in wow since the beginning.
I’m also looking forward to things that blizzard haven’t even been clear on yet as well, like Shamans in pvp. As someone who loves to do PVP when I can, I’d like to know if shamans will finally be “in-line” with some of the other classes since at the moment we have next to no defences or “oh-shit” buttons.
The lore is another thing, like the murder of Cairne Bloodhoof, how the Worgen are tied to the Night elves, Rise of Garrosh, Malfurion Stormrages return and also Med’an who is suppose to be the saviour of Azeroth with his Human, Draenei and Orc heritage, suppose to be the reason why Thrall has taken absence from the Horde.
So I’m looking forward to quite a bit, as you can see!”

Alright alright, enough of all the in game nonsense! Who the hell is this talkative person behind the Draenei mask?
“My real name is William and I’m currently Eighteen years old!”

Sweet eighteen, a young man like you must have loads of hobbies then!
“Haha, the question should have probably been “What hobbies did you have before WOW?”
One of my hobbies is modifying game consoles. Before I started playing MMO’s, I was a main poster of a forum called GBA-TMW. There I used to spend my time posting “How to” guides, or just helping random people who wished to mod there consoles and spending my time on the IRC channel there with all the other avid users and moderators.
Also like most other people my age I tend to be a fan of watching Anime and reading Manga. I even go to the Anime conventions that are hosted at London excel once a year with a few of my real life friends!”

You obviously have met Genfist in real life, but what about some of the other nutters in Arisen?
“I have met Genfist and Dramier in real life, but that’s simply because we went to school together for five years. Asides from my friends, I haven’t met guildies or anyone that I’ve met exclusively on World of Warcraft before.”
So the big question remains. Do you actually want to meet anyone of us?
“I’d like to meet alot of the core people from Arisen, Alot of you guys are from different countries though and travelling at this point in time, isn’t really an option for me.  So having some of you on Facebook and msn will suffice for me, for now :D”

That nearly concludes this months guildie – but in the end Shamatic is telling a bit about some of the useful mods a shaman must have – ah, what the heck, even though you aren’t on the shamanistic path, you can give them a go too!
“As a experienced WOW gamer I use quite a few add-ons nowadays, but the two I have used from as far as I can remember is Atlas loot and CT map mod (For coordinates). CT map mod in conjunction with Thottbot is what I used to use before the days of the quest helper add-ons that recently came into fashion this expansion.

I use add-ons for many different things and some that would just provide no benefit to others, but I can recommend;
Prat – Chat add-on that lets you customize your chat text a bit more as well as let you copy and paste whispers and even Links (that’s always useful :P)
X-pearl – gives you way sexier party bars and the ability to customize them a bit more than the default UI ones. I mainly like it because it gives you 3D portraits of your character and your party members, rather than the crappy blizzard race artwork.
Atlas loot – Probably the most useful add-on there is, although it can be a pain having to update it more than other add-ons. It lets you view/link all loot that drops from instances and tells you from which boss it drops. It also has a very good profession tab, which tells you the mats to craft items and the skill at which you can learn how to make them.
And of course the Arisen essentials like Deadly boss mods for boss encounter timers and CT raid Assist!”

But we kept running into problems, like setup for proffessor/council, unlucky nights on the before mentioned bosses or other stuff. So we never really got to play with the dragon.

But this raid lock out, we had an extra day in ICC10. So we spent all sunday night on the tactics – and we got phase 1 under control, but never managed to control phase 2.

But today we went back for our revenge. Most of the night was used on tweaking, and in the end, luck was finally on our side.

So I present to you: Sindragosa… dead!

First up we got a long time member, Nolwenn.

So a cold april morning I met up with her, in the shattered lands of Shadowmoon Valley – a natural place for interviewing a warlock, since it was here the dark magic started.

The answers come quick, and you can see that this warlock knows all the answers. But this interviewer wont give up that easy!

But let’s start from the beginning. When I ask when it all started, the answer come straight away. “I started playing WoW the same year as I joined Arisen, haha. So it must be 2005… or 2006 maybe? Haha”. The amusement is big, my first question already shook the lock at bit, but I soon find out I wasn’t promised a win yet.
“I started in vanilla, and joined when Nolwenn was level 48. When I applied to the guild, i originally applied with my druid Arume, since Nolwenn just got into another guild called <Rush>. But that guild split right after I got in. It had nothing to do with me though”, she quickly adds with a smirky grin. “So now both my characters was guildless, but luckily Arisen let me in. I asked if my 48 warlock could join too, and Lightreaver was kind enough to throw me an instant invite”.

I sense that I might have a story here, so I try to change my tactics regarding the lock. Maybe a more direct approach would work. So my next question would naturally be if she joined Arisen to split it up, just like with <Rush>. “No, of course not. I wanted to get into a guild to meet new people, get some friends to play with, since I was pretty noobish back then. I remember when I got the guild invite, and I started to look at the chat and all the things you guys were talking about, and I thought to myself /gasp “so much to learn”. But luckily it all turned out pretty well”.

The big question still remains though. Why Arisen? And the answer to this is actually pretty simple. “I did some research on guild on Hakkar, but found out that most of them were italian guilds, and they usually required you to be italian to join them. Then I found Arisen, and I liked the name. Don’t ask me why”.
Naturally I had to ask her why!
“Well, it was short… and cool, haha. It just sounded promising”.

So apparently a short and cool name can get even the most evil of warlock to join a guild. But why start playing WoW at all? “A friend gave me 14 days of free trial. I never played this kind of games before, so it was all kind of new. I created Arume as my first character, but then discovered the might of warlock. So the decision to change was pretty easy. And then I just got hooked. It was a bit confusing finding my way around at first though. And people need to remember that this was before the built in quest helper, and we didn’t have coordinates either”, she laughs. Indeed I do remember those days, where every little exploring experience counted.

So as stated there’s more to Nolwenn than her warlock. She got her boomkin Arume, so the next question come pretty natural. They are both casters, what’s wrong with melee? “Actually I’ve recently started to enjoy Luaine a lot. She is enhancement, and my first melee dps. I’m starting to get used to being up front, but I’m not sure if I suck at it though, haha”.

So what is it about the game that is so interesting and keeps a busy warlock playing one might ask… so I did! “Well, I like the social part a lot, even if I didn’t go to the irl meeting, haha. I like to meet people and talk, but also the variety of things you can do in game. Different quests, dungeons, raids, pvp, arena, bgs. My best friend plays Lineage, but I don’t see that amount of variety in their game. Good graphics just isn’t enough for me”.

So apparently there’s a lot of stuff to do for this particular warlock, but what is it she enjoys doing the most? “I like raiding, now more than ever. In the beginning I was too scared of being bad at it, haha. I know I’m not super, but at least I’m not that shy anymore. But I also enjoy doing some arena. I guess it depends on my mental state, haha”. Afraid of getting a shadowbolt throw after me, I have to make sure what mental state she is in right now, but she ensures me that arena is only happening on sunday mornings, and she continues: “Besides, who dares to do our beloved guild leader harm? *cough cough*”· I think she is trying to trick me, so I quickly move on.

The game has evolved a lot since start, and so has all the addons you can get to the game. So it is naturally to ask if there’s anything in particular a warlock would need. Nolwenn got her favorites. “Necrosis! It tells you when you get an instant shadowbolt, since you can’t always see that little black thingy around you, when you are in the middle of a fight, and all kinds of spell effects goes off around you. So this dark voice tells you when it’s up. It even comes with an evil laughter when you try to fear an immume mob”.

There’s an up coming expansion on the way, and it seems that the warlock class will get a good over haul. What’s the thoughts about the new way of warlockism? “I’m excited to see the result! I do hope the changes are for the better though, haha. I guess it will be like playing a new caster, since it’s really gonna change. But I’m also looking forward to play a goblin. Because time is money, friend!”, she says while she looks at her clock.

That covered pretty much the in game version of Nolwenn, but who is actually in control of the keys? Ana is Spanish, originating from a lovely town called Vigo, but lives in Barcelona. When asked about her age she replies: “Haha, I’m never gonna tell that, not in this economical crisis, where everyone is searching for jobs. I’m having trouble finding one, and my age isn’t helping the situation”. With the risk of getting another shadowbolt thrown at me I ask her what age we should go for then, and she replies: “Well, I’m not sure myself anymore. I stopped celebrating after my 700th birthday, haha”. I’m not sure I understand this form of warlock humor, but my personal guesses must be that she is around 29, and she nods in acknowledgment: “Let’s just say that”.

As so many other places, find a job in Spain isn’t easy, but if Ana can choose her own job, what would it be? “Something related to languages. Like tourism or translation. I love to learn new languages, and I don’t mind teaching others too. As long as it’s small groups, and not like a whole class, haha”.

One could imagine that playing WoW doesn’t leave much time to other hobbies, but Ana also loves to watch movies and read books. “Currently I’m reading War of the Ancients, the WoW trilogy. But I also read other kind of books, like thrillers, adventures, comedies”.

Arisen is known for meeting up, and have adventures in real life too. So how about Ana? Has she met anyone? “Well, I talked a lot with Satura/Skitty. He suggested me to talk to Teddy since I wanted to get my epic mount quest done. And Teddy could help, since he had the mats and knowledge for it. Then when TBC came out, we quested together. The summer came, and he was whining about not having anythin to do, so I invited him to come see Barcelona. I must warn people though, if you’re going to meet Teddy. He isn’t a gnome in real life. He is huge, haha!”. She stops speaking and I look at her asking if there was anyone else she had met up with. She winks at me and smiles. I’m not sure what this is all about, so I ask her again. “Well, I did meet up with Unamithil when he was in Barcelona, but we’d rather not speak about it, since he is a noob at playing warlocks anyway”. Auch, I quickly look at my paper to find the next question, but she cuts me off. “Well, let’s ask HIM what he thought about it, shall we?!”. She takes my notes out of my hands and starts on a new section of notes: “So Una, how was it to meet Nolwenn?”. I look at her in disbelief, but it seems like she is going through with it. So I told her that I had a great time in Barcelona. Thanked her for showing me all the sights I never would have found myself. Especially the Elekk was great fun to see, since I didn’t knew they existed in the real world. So a short week with much of fun. But now I have to insist that this is my interview, so I take my notes back.

Where were I? Oh yes, is there anyone from the guild that she wants to meet. “Fydria! I’ve talked a lot with him, and he is funny! He always made fun of the pictures from Barcelona with Una hugging the mount. He even asked me: “If I come to Barcelona, do I get to take a picture with me and the mount?”. Apparently it’s now some kind of achievement for Ariseners, haha”.

Anyway, our time is nearly up and I finish off with five randoms:
Dungeons or questing: Questing
Cooking or fishing: Fishing
Gnome or Draenei? Draenei!
Guildies or pugs: Guildies
Tanaris or Nagrand: Nagrand

This concludes the first guildie of the month. I don’t know if we know the person Nolwenn any better now, but at least we had fun doing the interview.

See you all in game!

We started out with the professor in his laboratory of fun and horrors. And fun and horrors it was indeed.

We had some good attempts on him earlier, but a server crash was in the way of taking him down. So after some hamster reputation turn ins at the Blizzard Offices, we hoped we could avoid further crashes. And we were right – the only thing that crashed was Professor Putricide.

After the professor we went to the Blood-Queen. Originally we aimed for Sindragosa, but we had been advised to take her on first, since she should be way easier than the dragon. And it was a good choice if you asked me.

After two attempts we had the feel for the fight, people were bitten, and Lana’thel was vanished from the night (sorry, I’m never going to be a great poet).

She went down on third try, and this means the only obstacle before Mr. Menethil is his pet dragon Sindragosa.

Really good job everyone!

We decided to try out the Blood Council, so Darkbeaver finally could tank (not that he’s not doing a good job doing that already :P).

After the first few tries we quickly realized this was very doable, so a little tweaking later, the council had to go down.

So we continued to Professor Putricide, and when we finally started to get the tactics right, the server decided to crash. So sadly we didn’t get him down.

But very good job on the Blood Council! We’ll be back, and soon we’ll take a peek at Arthas :p

After a few tries of tweaking, we actually managed to get her up in about 3 tries. I admit, it was a little bit messy in the end, but hey, a kill is a kill.

Congrats to everyone who was there, and good job! Was a fun night (I loved how Beaver died!) :)

The setup wasn’t perfect, but we never the less got some pretty good attempts on the Northrend Beasts.

After some tries we finally manage to get the luck on our side, and got through it, without anyone being rammed.

So Arisens first HC kill is here by documented!

We had some decent tries on the demon, but unfortunately people had to leave. But we are definitely ready for some more heroic action!

Festergut got one shotted, so we quickly continued to Rotface, our second nemesis.

We started off with running in just to die, but quickly got our tactics tweaked, so we had some decent tried. But some unfortunate disconnects made it even harder to get him down.

But we kept continuing, and in the end we got respawns right behind us, so we had to realized we had one last try left. So when three people were down at 20 % the tension was big, but everyone kept their heads cool, so even though it was a bit messy in the end, we managed to get the bugger down.

Good job everyone, we’re 50 % through now! :)

Loot Inc tried out with 25 mans themselves, but as Arisen, couldn’t keep the steam up, and that sadly made them quit the 25 man adventures. It ended with people going on breaks, quitting, etc.

A story that seems very familiar to how things have gone in our guild.

But now the core have returned (as it is with Arisen), and they decided to just go casual/social/friends raiding together (as in Arisen).

We started talking with them (in a random VoA raid where I won my tier 10 gloves, yay), and talked about the possibility to do something together.

So the last few weeks we’ve used to prepare, and talk to them, getting to know them, and last night the final test finally arrived.

The first 25 man, together. We ventured to ICC25 (together with three randoms), and the first wing was more or less one shotted. There was a few, probably too big pulls, but nothing we couldn’t overcome.

We met our challenge at Festergut, but it’s only a matter of time before he will go down too.

We’re all pretty happy about how things went last night.

So a big thank you to everyone who showed up!

We managed to nail the tactics (and dps) on Festergut after a good amount of tries.

We tried Rotface afterwards, but we didn’t manage to get the tactics straight, before people had to leave – but we’ll be back!