About a week ago Mr. Chick looked at me and said “Hey Auz, you’re doing a lot better. Haven’t been in the hospital in a while, you’ve got the house set up nicely. All in all you seem to have a handle on things, and I have this level 70 DK who could use a priesty to help them get to level 80, what do ya say?” Well I have trouble saying no to Mr. Chick, so I pulled out the debit card and got myself a copy of Wrath.

It’s been a year since I last played and in gamer time, that’s a lifetime. I logged in expecting to find the guild much changed, and people to wonder who exactly I was. I was pleasantly surprised to find neither to be true.

A week later I’m level 73 and can log in to find myself deep in conversation with only 5 or 6 old friends at a time. I found myself amazed at the connections that still existed and how much I missed the people with whom I’d spent so much time battling pixelated monsters. Some of the guild members who’ve been recruited since I left messaged to say hi, and it turns out they’ve heard so many good things about me I’m afraid to talk to them for fear of disillusioning them.

The guild is absolutely thriving, currently the furthest progressed raiding guild on our server (though, I’m taking their word on that, as I don’t even know what instances people raid these days.) I should have known the guild would be doing so well as I always had the support of a wonderful co-gm and incredible officers who run things beautifully. I was sad to find that many of the guilds I knew and loved cannot say the same thing. Though I am happy to find that one of the GMs I used to share late night conversations and ideas with, has merged his guild with ours and is now a content raider, happy to sit back and let other run things for a while.

I too am settling into life as a casual player, and enjoying the view from the member side of the guild relationship. I’ve learned that the disappointment I felt in myself for letting down my guildmates isn’t something they share and thus been able to let go of the guilt I felt. It’s nice to share in the welcoming atmosphere that is so familiar, revel in rekindling old friendships, and just enjoy watching people I trust and respect steer the ship.

Returning to the game, got me thinking about this site. I left the blogging community fairly abruptly and the fact is I probably owe readers still visiting the site an update. So this is my update. It’s about me. I know those are the most boring updates, but as I’m not GMing, I can’t write about leadership in WoW. Which leads me to my final paragraph.

I can’t say for sure what will happen with the blog. I still have years of online leadership experience and topics fleshed out in notes that I have yet to post, but without the weight of a successful guild behind me, I find that I’m lacking in “street cred.” Also, as a more relaxed player and currently less structured person, I’m not sure how much time I’ll really have to put into the blog. So dear reader, if any of you still exist; I’m back (sort of) and I’m still alive (definitely).

Hey Look Matt, a picture

I have 3 posts outlined (Wrath Tradeskills, Wrath Resources and “Everything I need to know about GMing I learned from Captain Kirk”- Which is really way too much fun and has me speaking in broken monologues), a Tales from the Tabletop info page, a Tales journal entry halfway translated from “drunken game handwriting I can hardly read” to my approximation of English all of which is coming soon to a blog near you, but before I can do that, I have to solve a forum problem for the new guild website.(See Below)

• Guild Website Project: Someone tell me, how can the guys at Drupal be SO SMART and yet not realize that I might want levels of security on our forums. Unless I’m stupid (which is a distinct possibility) the forum settings for default Drupal seem to be, You can see forums or you can’t see forums, I see nothing for you can see these 3 forums and not these 2. So I’m off to make phpbb and Drupal talk nicely to each other, right now they are saying…
  • “Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘forum/includes/utf/utf_normalizer.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /SecretDevelopmentURL/drupal-5.10/modules/phpbb/phpbb.module on line 401″
• …to each other, which I suppose is better than nothing. If you know that I’m an idiot and this permissions problem can be fixed in drupal, or know how to make phpbb and drupal speak English to each other and not error messages, and want to offer your assistance I’m definitely interested in talking to you

• I now have beta access and I’m in love with a reader who isn’t going to be named in case Blizzard hates that kind of thing. But you should know I love you in that completely platonic Mr. Auzara is not going to show up on your doorstep way. This means I’m putting beta play into the ChickSchedule but it also means I’ll have beta information to provide. No I’m not going to talk to you about specs, classes, leveling etc there are lots of smart bloggers who’ve covered that for you (see - Blogroll) but I will have better information about what we’ll need to do as leaders for Wrath that’s more specific than in past expansions I’ve seen these changes.

• I spoke to our first “I read your site and tracked you down can I join you for Wrath” reader. It was pretty cool I didn’t talk to him long because I had this pesky raid thing to handle, but when I told him I was going to put him in touch with RecruitmentDude he knew who that was and he didn’t seem to know my home address or real name, so kudos for doing your homework and not being creepy! I hope you impressed RecruitmentDude just as much.

• In that spirit we are recruiting for Wrath, so if you’ve ever read my entries and said, gee that sounds like where I want to be, now is your chance. I do feel the need to say that any guild looks good through the eyes of it’s GM, and all the lessons about GMing I’ve learned, I learned the hard way (by screwing up). If you’re a regular reader, you’ve certainly got an image of what we strive for but like any guild we aren’t perfect and don’t always hit our goals. We raid Sun-Thursday 7 to 11 pm EST and expect 75% or higher attendance (that’s 15 hours of raiding a week minimum). We expect you to be able to farm and maintain your own consumables for raiding and to respect each other’s time during raids. I know we can be found but if you’re interested and you can’t find us use the “Ask Auz” contact form and I’ll email you back our website. You won’t be interviewing with me but I promise RecruitmentDude is a nice guy and won’t bite. If you do get in, make sure you aren’t that guy.

• In personal news the health problems that have been plaguing me have finally been diagnosed. This isn’t a personal journal and normally I wouldn’t mention it, but I have a joke about it. The diagnosis means I have to keep a record of all the food that comes into my body and all the food that goes out for purposes of treatment. So my joke is, I’m should make it into a Blog, “Auz’s Poo - A shitty story” and I want to know, Matt, does this blog need pictures too?

Anyway, I’ll figure out the forums and then you guys will learn why “Ducky!” is a valiant battle cry in D&D and how to get your tradeskill ducks in a row for Wrath. Either way there will be a lot of ducks.

I know, personal updates aren’t the content you guys come here for, but until I fix the forum thing and set up EP/GP tracking on the guild website, it’s all I had time for. I’m setting up for Wrath too ya know!

No, the picture of the chick isn’t me, unlike a canadian I know, I’m not a Mac user.

As I was slipping back into real life I found myself sitting down to write on my book. It’s been a while so I chose to re-read a few sections to get my mind back in the game. I’m out of practice so my mind was wandering rather staying on the topic at hand. I thought I’d share the results of that wandering with you.

• I wonder how many officers a typical guild/clan has? Do you think it scales with number of members.
• A lot of these sections remind me of the functions of a Human Resources department, is there room for a post drawing comparisons between the two? Is there a benefit to this comparison?
• That guy that said I write about guild leading like it’s a small nation, should I lighten up in my presentation here? I find most of my writing takes an air of professionalism for the topic. Why would someone bother to read something that it didn’t seem like I’d addressed the matter as something of import?
• I wonder what the comparative age of guild masters to the average age of their guild is?
• Why can’t I see the google notebook Matt sent? I wonder if it’s just me or everyone he sent it to.
• You think anyone is really going to buy a book about guild leading? Maybe no one has written one before because no one wants one.
• Tonight’s the last raid before the weekend for the guild… I wonder how it’ll go tonight. I need to go over our twins strat this weekend….
• I should use the polls on the blog to get some informal statistics about the things I wonder about general guild leadership…
• hmmm this will be another post without pictures, I’m pretty sure that means Matt’s going to hyjack my blog and get Wyn to retroactively add pictures to these posts.
• My pug has put my legs to sleep, how can something weighing 25 pounds keep me weighing at least 10 pounds more than that (=P) in place?
• I should move the dog, and go to the kitchen for lunch…. what should I have for lunch, I think there’s a leftover wrap in the fridge, mmmmm wrap…..
• I still have over a thousand entries on my blog reader, maybe I shouldn’t try to go back to working today maybe I should take a day to catch up on that and rest before putting myself back to work, clearly my mind is not on topic and you have to be a good reader to be a good writer….
• Oooo I still have to work on the new guild website… I was going to use that to write my chapter on guild websites and the series I wanted to write for the blog about websites… I think that technically makes it count as work on all three things…..didn’t I have a guild that said I could use their website too for that blog series… have to check my blog idea notebook… you know I haven’t checked that thing since before I stepped away, it doesn’t do me any good if I don’t use it..

And with that, I beg your leave to go work on the new guild website. Let me know if you guys liked this  format or hated it. It’s atypical of my writing style, but like the chicklette said maybe I need to lighten up some and try new things.

Welcome Carlie to the Chick family. Today Carlie was born after a difficult pregnancy. She’s healthy, beautiful and well worth the wait. Her mother, my cousin, is one of the most patient, gentle and loving women I’ve ever known. Little Carlie, if you grow up to be half the woman your mother is, the world will be a much brighter and wonderful place for having you in it. Happy Birthday!

In less personal news, my D&D crew is amused by the journal my character keeps and has suggested that I publish it. I think it’s a marvelous idea, though I know we will always be more amused by our D&D sessions than others will. Now I just have to decide where to publish it. So would you guys be interested in that or would you rather I make it it’s own blog. Use the poll on the right to let me know.