Living in New York City can be pretty challenging.  For 250-300K you can probably get a very nice house in Inactive-chan's hometown, but here you can barely get a one-bedroom apartment in a decent area and no you won't be living in Manhattan.  I got my place for four years now and this past week I was actually looking to see if I can make an upgrade before the big event later this year.  My apartment is walking distance to all the basics (subway, highway, nice park, supermarket, drug store, basic restaurants) but I was trying to find a whiter oops I meant more upscale area.  You know the kind where you can walk to a Starbucks or get a Fresh Direct delivery.

Kind of like my situation with Blackdragon Flight.  For a while I was hit pretty hard by Bynis's retirement.  Our RMP went from top 10 on the ladder to a 2000 scrub team.  I didn't really have time to commit to any raid guilds and sat in the "Rogue Trainer" guild Ultimus created.  Other than the small batch of arena games a week to keep points flowing, and some random BGs here and there, I thought I was playing a single player game.  At that point I actually did talk to a few BG9 players with solid ratings and transferring to a larger server looked pretty appealing.   I couldn't even get epic red gems on my server and things felt pretty dead.

That is when merciless gladiator Wojo and his warrior friend landed on the server like the rich white couple who just bought the house down the street to start a family.  With the economy (arena) slowdowns everywhere, people are moving out of Manhattan (BG9) and going back to their hometowns.   A few more weeks without a top team, I would have almost certainly moved to BG9 to find a consistent supply of quality teammates!  But now with the TTR/tournament server allowing everyone to play together, I suddenly find myself playing RLD with American online 2v2 champion Dhaoss, WRD with merciless gladiator Wojo, RRD with Serennia (although I still see him ultimately going to his warrior roots for the tournament, since that is his flagship character and druid took some huge nerfs in 2.4), and an invitation from Realz/Ronmexico to play rogue/shadow priest/resto shaman!  In my own BG, I suddenly find myself top 5 in 5v5 and top 10 in 3v3.   Things definitely changed for the better.

I know with one month server transfers, it is easier than ever for people to leave their neighborhood and move to the big cities.  But I have heard of way too many stories where someone left their friends to join another team/guild only to have it fall apart, and the player quits the game shortly after.  Blizzard is making it easier than ever to raid and PVP.  Relationship is what keeps people playing during the slow nights. 

PVP vs PVE:

On the night when TBC launched, I promised the rogue community that I will prove rogue is the number one 1v1 class in the game.  Ever since that day, I have been searching for a suitable container with one or more warglaives and full PVE gear to overcome the healing classes.  I asked Stryfe-kun to donate his body to the cause of the rogue community.  He has the mouthwatering 4S3 + 4T6 set-up and I could have very easily made a WCM platinum dueling video but sadly, he declined.  My best shot is probably the other warglaive rogue on my server who is still using S2 sword for offhand.

I know people will say the fact that a warglaive rogue can't crack 1850 is the living proof that PVP takes way more skills!  But for every PVE Is Hard, there are countless PVE guilds made of PVPers that fell apart (and yes, I was in one that couldn't clear ZA, every player on the roster over 2100 in at least one bracket), and even more gladiator teams from top PVE guilds.  While being the 2000th US guild to kill Illidan with members with both raid experience and PVE gear is . . . not exactly an amazing feat.

Arena for the most part is turning into its own scripted encounters.  Our warrior/rogue/hunter/priest/druid played a lot of games against Nick's warrior/mage/hunter/priest/paladin this past weekend.  The first three games were very intense, by the seventh game it started to turn dry, and by the 15th game . . . let's just say I was looking for excuses to "dodge queue".  Every fight I went on the exact same target (their mage) and had to pop defensive cooldowns against the exact same "boss attacks".  I was trying to keep expose armor and slice and dice up as much as I could, while my warrior was sundering their priest . . . Sure there were a few random target switches here and there, but in the end it was just like a 5 men instance.

If arena is really complicated, I shouldn't be able to beat all these big name BG9 teams, first night playing a comp that I never played before.  With the exceptions of playing against teams that play a very different comp/style (just like learning new encounters?), as soon as the gate opens I can already calculate our chance of winning, and everyone knew exactly what they were supposed to do on both sides. 

Last but not least, being the guild master of a large raiding guild is probably the most valuable learning experience you can get out of WOW, and requires most skills.  Just like real life, people skill is far more important than individual strength.  The successful GMs will develop very strong leadership skills that will benefit them immensely when they move on from WOW.  Believe it!