CHANGE

I haven't posted much lately, and there's a very good reason for it, I won't bury the lead here... I've hit the wall. I haven't quit the game, but it has become imminently apparent that a change is absolutely necessary if I'm going to keep playing. So, let's talk...

FIRST WORLD (OF WARCRAFT) PROBLEMS
So, what happened exactly? The TLDR is that Blizzard made a damned good expansion and I want to get more involved with the game. Initially I had hoped that running five mans with the new Mythic+ system would work out for my own personal progression five-boxing. In that however, I was wrong.

Mythics are challenging, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there's entirely too much shit on the floor...

Take off your pants and your panties...

But I'm not going to get into that mess, I've spent enough time hashing it out on a previous post so read that if you're not sure what I'm talking about. The conclusion I reached was that boxing just isn't for me right now, which if I'm honest really sucks. Likewise, just running World Quests and schwiftposting tradechat isn't for me either, especially after the election. So, I needed to find a guild if I wanted to get anything done, and I did find one that was a pretty good fit on Staghelm, but there was a problem... timing.

My situation is fairly unique, the only time I have available to play is during the day. Evenings are family time, and that is not going to be changing in the foreseeable future. So normal raid times aren't going to jibe with me and mine, that limitation means I needed to look carefully for a new home in wow. I ended up deciding on Arthas, a PVP server with a relatively high population. That also means I switched back to the Horde, I rerolled Khaas as a Blood Elf.

WAIT WHAT?
Yeah, Horde is not my preference. It feels really weird playing there right now, but it's a compromise I'm willing to make. I went Blood Elf specifically because though I like Orcs, they looks absolutely ridiculous riding horses. Seriously, have you ever seen an Orc on a Deathcharger or Dreadsteed? HILARIOUS. I mainly went Alliance before for a chance of pace and scenery, Blood Elf is a good compromise. I never seriously played them before, and they look good. Bonus points for having an interrupt as a racial. Okay, but why Arthas? Why Horde?

SERVER SELECTION
I'm not one to quote Pirates of the Carribean, but if you'll allow me a moment I'd like to quote Pirates of the Carribean, so indulge me a line from Captain Jack himself, "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can't. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you'll have to square with that some day." it's actually a pretty important lesson that every adult's got to learn sooner or later. And with things the way they are, I had to figure out where compromises could be made, where they couldn't and navigate accordingly. For the longer version, it went like this.

I started with questions. First, what do I want to do, and what do I want out of the game? I decided that I wanted a more social experience (for several reasons). One where running Mythics and Raiding was actually possible. All right, so what level of raiding do I want to do? Well, I'm not looking for top 100 raiding. I'm perfectly happy with a casual raiding guild where I can challenge my skill, see some content, and have fun. What else do I want? Well, I'd decided I wanted a server with a larger population/community, this generally means a healthier economy for me to flex my muscles in the Auction House.

Additionally, I really wanted to find a server where the name Khaas was available. Other names would be a bonus, but not essential. If push comes to shove though, I might have to find a new name for my main, ultimately that was unnecessary. With a rough idea of what I was looking for in mind I fired up wowprogress...

http://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/us

And sorted servers by population, I then logged on to each in turn and attempted to create Khaas and/or other characters I had names for. I compiled a list in Excel to keep track of my findings, the most populous server was a real tempting option. But the highest population servers all have the same problem, scarcity of available names. Basically, if you can think of a name. It's probably already taken. And then there's the login ques, which are something I haven't had to contend with since my days on Blackrock back in Vanilla, so...

I decided to narrow my search a bit. I was looking for something in the 8-10k population area as what I see as ideal. High enough pop for a robust economy, but low enough that I might actually be able to use a name I want. That gave me a list of servers ranging from Hyjal at 10414 to Stormreaver at 8387, I could have dipped a little lower but the next lowest population was Moonguard, the infamous RP server. So, I'd narrowed it down to seven realms (nine including the two connected realms).

Another very real concern/consideration was latency, depending on the physical location of the realm's datacenter/server I could be in for a bad time. So, I consulted the US Realm List by Datacenter page.

Hyjal [ PST , Phoenix ]
Lightbringer [ PST, Phoenix ]
Darkspear [ MST, Los Angeles ]
Arthas [ EST, Chicago ]
Nagrand (connected to Caelestrasz) [ Aust. EST, Los Angeles ]
Khaz'goroth (connected to Dath'Remar) [ PST, Phoenix | Aust. EST, Los Angeles]
Stormreaver [ CST, Chicago ]

This left me with two main contenders, Arthas and Stormreaver. I checked out their server forums and Arthas immediately jumped to the top of the list when I saw a recruitment thread for a morning/day raiding guild, Oblivious. They raid twice per week Mon and Weds from 11 AM to 2 PM. It being an EST server, that means 10 am to 1 pm for me. Which is actually perfection as far as I'm concerned. And with a population of just under nine thousand, it fit neatly into my target area. Bonus the name Khaas was available, though I had to compromise on the faction and go Horde.

Additionally, this is a server with a lot of highly progressed guilds. With the top being 59th worldwide, the top 11 guilds in fact are in the top 2000 world wide and all Horde. So, it's a server with a lot of lateral mobility. I made a few characters and started playing around, and so far so good. I'm still looking at other possible options, but this one looks like the best case scenario so far. So, until further notice consider this my new spot.

You can add me on battle.net as Heathen#12399 and follow along as I rebuild my empire...

K