Guild Mergers?

I had a funny message last night from Manda.

A guy named Bluestealth had whispered him to ask about a guild merger. Manda passed on my details, and later that day I got a whisper from Bluestealth himself.

He is a RaidLeader in the ENIGMA guild. I'd done a bit of research beforehand, so I already knew who ENIGMA were. They're more raiderish than the Munquis, but not particularly big (which isn't that unusual). The Munquis have been around for god-knows how many years and have had alot of time to grow.

He was suggesting that we merge guilds. And that the Munquis should disband to join them. And that way they would be able to do lots of heroics, and would always be able to find a raid team.

Now, I've no idea why he chose to ask the Munquis to do this, but maybe we weren't the only ones, maybe he's just randomly spamming people to ask.

A couple of facts to explain my stance on this:

1) The Munquis are a 'Social' guild.. not a raiding one. We raid, but only for the fun.
2) The Munquis have been around for several years, across 2 servers
3) We have over 400 Active characters (at least that have logged on within the last 5 months). Obviously alot of those will be alts, but even so, it still leaves a pretty decent number.
4) I am not a raid leader, nor do I want to be an 'officer' in any other guild. The next time I'm an officer again, it'll be because I've stepped down in the Tribe, or because we've all moved to a new game.
5) The skills of a GM and a RaidLeader are completely different. One needs to control around 25 players for a few hours at a time, know raid tactics inside out and enjoy the sound of his / her own voice. The other needs to manage the needs and running of a guild, but over a much longer timescale, and never has to say a word if he / she doesn't want to (or happens to have a difficult to understand northern accent).
6) If the Munquis are ever sturggling for raid members, we have people we can call on to help out. Freinds, Guildies who have alts in raid guilds, and other guilds (like BAD APPLES) that we have a raiding stsaus with.

Offering me an Officership, and a position as a Raid Leader, in return for merging our guilds was just pointless.

ENIGMA had 8 players online at the time (3 lvl 80's). The Munquis had 15 online (8 lvl 80's).

Bluestealth suggested that if we merged "We could do more heroics". I don't believe we have struggled to find enough players for a heroic in a very long time.

The Munquis have around 400 toons, including Alts. I believe has around 80, including Alts.

Given all of the above, why the hell would anyone even ask??

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think I know anyone from ENIGMA and they may be a great bunch of people, but c'mon... seriously?

I did suggest that they diband and come over to us. The answer was "Hang on, I'll ask" and when I didn't get an answer 60 seconds later I whispered him again and got an 'No player name Bluestealths is currently playing'.... figures.

So if any other guilds are considering asking us to merge. Do your homework first.

Another Day Another Ding

My new Pally has been getting most of my love and attention recently. And it seems to be paying off nicely.

He went from 47 -50 yesterday, and by the time I logged off he was 80% of the way to 51.

And he's finally reached the Plaguelands which, as everyone knows, is Pally heaven.

I can easily run into a group of melee mobs around my level, aggro 10-12 of them at a time, and come out laughing with full mana by the end of it.
Should any crits land on me, a 2.5 second heal puts me back at almost full health.

My XP bar was filling up so fast it was almost scary.

I havent really played a Pally in a while, but I like what they've done with the Holy Wrath and Exorcism spells. They're now much more useful, and with added crunchiness on the undead / demon mobs.

Agrro 10 zombies / skeletons, holy shield, consecration, holy shield, Holy Wrath, pop a heal if needed (while they are all stunned), lather, rinse, repeat. (Although by the lather they're usually all dead).

Another night or two like this and he'll ding into the high 50's and then it's a quick whizz around Outland before jumping headfirst into Northrend.

Just to prove that Blizz really have nerfed the levelling game... you all remember the gold spam adverts claiming to get you from 1-60 in 10 days?
Well Smythadin is almost 51 and he currently has 2 Days 17 Hours '/Played'. I thought Blizz had only nerfed the levelling time by 20%, but apparently not.

UB40, IB40, EveryBodyB40

A distinct lack of blogs from me recently, but with good reason or two.

My office firewall has decided that blogs are corrupting all the government workers.
I didn't realise the UK just became part of China, but apparently we are, so my blogs will be more limited for now, until I find a good way around it.

I can already blog by email, but the formatting is a mess when I do, so I'd rather not go down that route.

The other reason is that I've been too busy. I'm levelling up a new Paladin, as some of you may have noticed.
I'm not trying to power-grind him or anything, it's just working out nicely.

And with 1 Day 20 Hours currently '/Played' he is now level 40. 15 more levels and he'll be grinding Hell-Boars in Outland.

I started him as Ret, then switched to prot as soon as it was convenient. Ret was great, solo mobs stood no chance but it wasn't the fastest way to play, and I always missed tankign on my previous Pally.

The fire festival buffs of +10% xp, plus my heirloom shoulders have obviously helped. But these days I can pretty much send Smythadin into a group of 6-8 mobs a few levels above him and, as long as there's no casters, there'll be a pile of bodies a few seconds later. No wonder its going so fast.

The odd boost or designer gear run from freinds has helped too. Boosted through DM, Boosted through Stockades, and a half run of SM to pick up a shield that will last me for several levels to come. Uldaman, Gnomeregan etc... are way too much hassle to be honest. They're far too long to ask someone wasting the time to boost me, and the number of quests there are fairly minimal.

If I had a nice big lump of quests all at once, like you can pick up for DM and Stocks, it would be more worthwhile... Something for blizz to think about maybe.

The next instance I do will probably be Zul'Farak. But maybe not even then.
None of the outland instances are really essential to levelling either. So it's likely that I'll bypass them altogether. I'll stomp through Outland, or maybe fly through it if the patch comes out in time. And then onto Northrend where I'll start in the Borean Tundra for a change. I haven't done a single quest there yet, on any toon.