More to follow.... very soon :)

Ah, tumult!
Thou art my friend!

I've been busy both in RL and in game, so I've been working on a few posts but haven't published them. Hopefully today and tomorrow I'll get a few out.

My second raid was also interesting and a very short 'second impression' is worth posting seperately here, although I've been writing a much larger post that will follow shortly.

We gathered in the box that is TOC, and Lord Jaraxxus quickly bowed to our gathered might. One-shot it was, and it felt good.

However, as we gathered ourselves for the assault on the Faction Champs, it was quickly becoming clear that all was not well in Fallout-land.
We wiped a couple of times - certainly par for the course as this was the point of progression for the guild. Then, the one and only priest in the raid said he had a RL emergency and left. This meant no mass dispel, and on that fight, it most likely spells disaster. We spent an evening wiping. This would have been fine by me, as progression means learning a fight and what works for your particular guild, but it did seem to me the group grew less focused as the evening faded into late night.

And while the raid was going on, a few things happened.

Several guildies had been posting typical comments seen ubiquitously in online gaming, typical sexual comments like "that's what she said," or, "I want to get some corner love" (between two males), followed by declamations of "homo!" While many find even these offensive, I've personally decided that I'm willing to tolerate a certain amount of the locker room humor endemic to raiding guilds these days. There certainly is a wide range of maliciousness vs simple camraderie that some of these comments can imply. But then the comments (and some I saw in /trade and /general too) became more pointed - several comments about 'Jews' were made, and a guild member posted an ASCII swastika in guild chat. This certainly troubled me and I was planning on talking with the GM after raid, but as the raid was finishing, the GM and one of the officers asked everyone to stay in vent. They commented on the lack of focus of the raiders for a bit, then mentioned that some of the rascist/sexist/religion comments were excessive and needed to stop. Several guildies laughed and said people should "just chill."

I appreciated the efforts of the GM and officer, and, being new to the guild, decided to see how things worked out.

So, for night two, some more progress from the raiding perspective, but some concerns regarding maturity and guild culture. More to follow.