It’s Been A While..

Welcome back to Bigticket’s Blog.

There’s been some pretty major changes since my last blog before Christmas and I do have to apologise for not blogging in a full month but it’s been a hectic month and I haven’t set myself time aside to sit and type up a blog but I’m back and it’s gonna be back to normal for me here. Thanks for your patience and I hope you will enjoy reading upcoming posts.

The Dambusters have moved again, to Grim Batol this time and I have to admit that I’m really impressed so far. It’s probably not far off the population of Ragnaros was when we first moved there but slightly favours the Alliance regarding faction balance. Being on the side with the higher ratio is new to me and although there’s still plenty of hordes around, it’s not an utter sea of red wherever you go in the current zone Timeless Isle.

Ragnaros had tipped to an incredible amount of horde v alliance since patch 5.4 hit and became largely unplayable for some in our guild. Complaints ringing in my ears made me feel regretful that we moved there in the first place even tho originally we felt the guild had made an excellent realm choice then. People had to wait up to 2 hours in login queues just to play the game and that is totally shameful and required careful consideration from myself.

On the other side, people had paid not insignificant sums of irl gold to transfer with us from Xavius just 10 months ago and plenty were adamant they were staying on Ragnaros regardless of how crazy it now is. I understood both sides of the debate and decided to wait it out and hope things improved with horde side having Free Character Migration (FCM) to other servers from Ragnaros. We waited and it just got worse. I mentioned during a guild meeting on January 4th that the guild would have a decision to make ONLY if Blizzard opened up FCM to alliance but at that time I thought that notion was never going to happen because surely the mega faction imbalance is something Blizzard would ensure was addressed. Man, I was wrong! Blizzard even opened FCM up TO Ragnaros for horde on certain other servers! I mean wtf was the logic behind that? Filling up horde while trying to drop server numbers? Seemed to me and the other officers that Blizzard actually just wanted to make another massively horde friendly server by giving Alliance the FCM and that ‘last chance’ to get out while you still can or become utterly overwhelmed. Think of the poor horde over on Ravencrest which is over 90% alliance. You would only be on that kind of deficit if you had a small guild of brutally dedicated Arena or RBG masters who always run together in a big pack, now that actually sounds like fun but it’s not a playstyle most average players pursue.

As soon as we found out about the Alliance FCM last Thursday morning, I arranged an emergency Mumble meeting for the guild to attend at 8pm server time to which we had well over 30 attendes and I was forced to upgrade the Mumble server from 25 to 50 man which was just as well since we now regularly fill up our Mumble server allowance.

At our meeting we discussed at great length with all the officers who were there having their opinions heard while others had plenty to add also. We decided to have a vote and one of the guys set up an online strawpoll where the guild overwhelmingly chose to take the free move. I gave around one full day and decided to take that vote and redouble our scouting to either The Maelstrom or Grim Batol. Ravencrest was off limits because of its long history of being a full server with queues as bad as Ragnaros and also the fact that it’s over 90% Alliance which I personally could never understand the appeal of. I don’t know about all you guys but I want to at least feel that slight hint of tension that keeps me on my toes and ready for ad hoc conflict at any given time. I like killing horde and I don’t like having to compete with a sea of Alliance for that 1 v 1 out in the world so for me, Ravencrest is a no-go.

Tarren Mill was the other option but that’s just a horde version of Ravencrest and the decisive factor in our eventual decision to select Grim Batol was (including a number of good reports from our scouts) taken simply because The Maelstrom has the mega-famous ScrubBusters who I even heard mentioned in last week’s Convert To Raid podcast. The Dambusters, although we are an excellent community and very proud of it, would appear to people on The Maelstrom like a ‘rip-off’ to ScrubBusters and we deserve better than that potential judgement so we opted from Grim Batol and here we are.

Thus far, I am really happy with the server and the fantastic support we have received from our members who almost entirely followed the guild with our transfer. Only a tiny few failed to follow us and in addition to the good roster numbers, we have also managed to make a good impression on the server and recruited some nice new Dambusters into the guild. That first night was hilarious as Jibbas arranged a guild parade outside Shrine of the Seven Stars where many non-guildies also joined us on a legion of their finest Travellers Tundra Mammoth mounts and one lucky random collected a cool 1000g prize for being the biggest mount on display haha.

After our fine parade we all headed over to the Shrine if the Two Moons and proceeded to blitz in the front door and commence total annihilation of every horde in sight including their ludicrously weak ‘keeper of the peace’ respawns. Dambusters flags were planted, screenshots posed for and the website gallery earned five new entries (go look) so in all it was a fantastic introduction to Grim Batol and we were very warmly welcomed by the people around the server.

So far, until Blizzard manage to destroy Grim Batol, The Dambusters are happy and at home here. Hope you all enjoy not having to queue to log in!

/Salute