Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Aggramar Refugee Exodus


So - the other day I got an email from one of our best friends & guildie; I'll call her M. As many of us have been ever since the Wrath release, she was venting some minor frustration over the length of the queue at 8pm her time (PST). D & I jumped into full-on emergency mode. I ran to kitchen for a pancake turner and started gently scraping M off of the ceiling... he called in the Church and set about the lengthy paperwork process required for an exorcism.

Once that was all done, we began seriously entertaining Blizzard's offer of free character transfers. We've looked into this before, and on more than one occasion. D's long been annoyed by our "target-rich" environment - we went through 95% of BC with Halaa in the Alliance's hands. Now that we suddenly care about Wintergrasp, our being so horribly outnumbered is an even bigger consideration. We had queues just after BC for a bit, but apparently enough of our realm-mates took the bait with the last free transfer offer and they subsided. Now, here we were again.

"I'll go if everyone else goes," was the predominant opinion throughout the guild. Which brings me to obstacle #1 - Cat Herding. Obstacle #2 - not everyone we play / hang out with is a member of BG&E. I have a 'daughter's bf,' G has a cousin, D's brother has a PvP-pal. For one reason or another, all of these individuals were other-guilded. Obstacle #3 - the guild bank. With the money invested in 3 tabs, I had a very hard time just walking away from that. Plus, there are literally POUNDS of highly valuable and oft-required grays and vendor items in there. What if I needed to level someone's cooking? What if I suddenly had a burning need for [Solid Stone]?

Nay, the risk was too great.


My resolve lasted about 12 seconds.

"Screw it, I'm going." And apparently, our inaction was purely the result of no one wanting to go first! M immediately hammered out her GEMA plan, "No Blacksmith Hammer Left Behind," and D and I set ourselves to the task of cleaning out mailboxes. Ten minutes and ten toons later, I'm done. I look over and D is still tranced in front of his monitor doing his very best "deer-in-headlights" impersonation. "OMG, I don't even know where to start," he cried.
I said, "start with that stack of Deviate Fish - vend it." Then I jumped in a raid group and ported to Wintergrasp.

"You know," D commented, breaking my concentration, "while I appreciate the sentiment, this might not have been the best time to have every one of my toons' mailboxes full of Heart Candy."

Eeeek. I did do that, didn't I? /sorry!

Anyway, a flurry of phone calls and emails later, and every one of our core members was alerted to the change and we were on our way to our new home: Nesingwary. We've re-guilded under the name "Occams Razor" (D's idea - love it!) and the bank is pretty much back to normal. We're at about 60% transfers completed, with several toons still en route, but it doesn't look like we've had any real problems.

So - if you're For The Horde and tired of /Trade and sad 'ur mom' jokes, come look us up. Maybe we'll drop by AQ20. Maybe we'll actually hit a Northrend dungeon. Maybe we'll just all hang out in chat and level our fishing. I'll pay 50g for the first Enormous Barbed Gill Trout brought to me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Grats on the move and TBH i dont know how you could have put up with it for so long.

our server is 2:1 Hoarde ratio so oposite way round.

I had a tauren warrior on twilights hammer and logged him one night ot be 256 in the queue hahaha.

No more of that i rerolled my hoard alt to a orc rogue on a low populated server.

Im bladefirst which is medium so its good like that enough people to get to know and do things with but not too much where there are queues everytwhere