I left LO for good in the... I think it was 2012? Late Cata. I stuck around to help with an organizational transition (it had, by that point, gotten too big to comfortably operate under the old paradigm - Overall Leads in the original sense only really worked when everyone - or at least, all the charter leads - knew at least one or two of us directly. When the OL team was roughly a dozen active members but the raiders numbered 1k+, that was not really possible) and checked back on the website a couple of times - it's down now, but it was up as late as 2-3 years ago, I think.
I definitely didn't raid with anyone else after LO, but I did raid some before then. In vanilla I had only a rogue at 60 and was a member of a small guild (whose name I can't remember and that fact is driving me BONKERS) that was allied with a larger, well-known raiding guild, and they had some regulars from our little guild on their raids, as well as pulling fill-ins from our group when needed. (I was a fill-in, having come late to the party and being competent but nothing special on my rogue.) I mostly got pulled in for ZG and MC, both of which were on farm for them at the time. In TBC my (and my roommates') little guild started doing its own thing, since there were no new 40-player raids and we had the numbers for 10s and 25s. We actually chose to split off and switch servers when Gruul/Mags were cutting-edge because of drama regarding one of my roommates and tanking; basically, he'd been playing a paladin for forever but had been tanking in TBC but always got short shrift compared to the old-school warrior main tank who wasn't as good. It got REALLY dramatic and explosive, more than was at all warranted, but the net result was that our apartment fucked off to Silver Hand to start over, because my other roommate knew people who were around for the founding of LO and we really liked the concept.
Coming out of that experience of transitioning I was pretty ardently attached to the LO model of "throw things at a wall and see what sticks." Like, there was *never* in any group I ever ran with, a reiteration of the pigeonholing of old-school vanilla raiding. It was always just, are you adequately contributing? In what ways are you contributing and can this be used even if it's unconventional? The flexibility of mindset in the LO community as a whole was very precious to me.
The very back end of my raiding experience, when I came back in Cata and was no longer leading a group, was running with the charter that was led by one of my friends in the Overall Leads + her wife. So I was still in the organization proper but associated with a different charter group. (And I joined their guild at some point because ours was a ghost town. It's... funny, I know one of my alts on that account is still the GM of Cry Havoc, but I don't even remember which.)
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Oh my god, I remember when there was stuff about Blizzard being like "don't advertise being LGBT in chat." >.< I was too far into the closet then to make noise about it but that sure was a thing and fuck that.
And honestly, getting 40 people to coordinate enough to get anywhere in vanilla raid content is... a feat unto itself. I'm glad you got to experience that kind of mass YEAH!!!! when downing a new boss then because... given how much it meant to me in TBC 25s I wish I'd been there for new boss kills in vanilla. (While I did get invited to some AQ raids in vanilla, I was never present for a new boss kill.)
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I'm... kinda saddened by the loss of server communities as a thing. I get why they did it, but that's another aspect of the game that feels unfamiliar. I'm faffin' around on the new character and trade chat is all people from Scarlet Crusade (my original server, where I did the vanilla and early TBC stuff first) and I'm just like O.o.
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Yes! Hannelore and I have interacted briefly and I am super pleased to meet both of you! (What context of HP fandom, if I may ask? I... have read a positively obscene number of words of HP fanfic for someone who has rarely considered themselves in the HP fandom proper.)
no subject
I definitely didn't raid with anyone else after LO, but I did raid some before then. In vanilla I had only a rogue at 60 and was a member of a small guild (whose name I can't remember and that fact is driving me BONKERS) that was allied with a larger, well-known raiding guild, and they had some regulars from our little guild on their raids, as well as pulling fill-ins from our group when needed. (I was a fill-in, having come late to the party and being competent but nothing special on my rogue.) I mostly got pulled in for ZG and MC, both of which were on farm for them at the time. In TBC my (and my roommates') little guild started doing its own thing, since there were no new 40-player raids and we had the numbers for 10s and 25s. We actually chose to split off and switch servers when Gruul/Mags were cutting-edge because of drama regarding one of my roommates and tanking; basically, he'd been playing a paladin for forever but had been tanking in TBC but always got short shrift compared to the old-school warrior main tank who wasn't as good. It got REALLY dramatic and explosive, more than was at all warranted, but the net result was that our apartment fucked off to Silver Hand to start over, because my other roommate knew people who were around for the founding of LO and we really liked the concept.
Coming out of that experience of transitioning I was pretty ardently attached to the LO model of "throw things at a wall and see what sticks." Like, there was *never* in any group I ever ran with, a reiteration of the pigeonholing of old-school vanilla raiding. It was always just, are you adequately contributing? In what ways are you contributing and can this be used even if it's unconventional? The flexibility of mindset in the LO community as a whole was very precious to me.
The very back end of my raiding experience, when I came back in Cata and was no longer leading a group, was running with the charter that was led by one of my friends in the Overall Leads + her wife. So I was still in the organization proper but associated with a different charter group. (And I joined their guild at some point because ours was a ghost town. It's... funny, I know one of my alts on that account is still the GM of Cry Havoc, but I don't even remember which.)
---
Oh my god, I remember when there was stuff about Blizzard being like "don't advertise being LGBT in chat." >.< I was too far into the closet then to make noise about it but that sure was a thing and fuck that.
And honestly, getting 40 people to coordinate enough to get anywhere in vanilla raid content is... a feat unto itself. I'm glad you got to experience that kind of mass YEAH!!!! when downing a new boss then because... given how much it meant to me in TBC 25s I wish I'd been there for new boss kills in vanilla. (While I did get invited to some AQ raids in vanilla, I was never present for a new boss kill.)
--
I'm... kinda saddened by the loss of server communities as a thing. I get why they did it, but that's another aspect of the game that feels unfamiliar. I'm faffin' around on the new character and trade chat is all people from Scarlet Crusade (my original server, where I did the vanilla and early TBC stuff first) and I'm just like O.o.
--
Yes! Hannelore and I have interacted briefly and I am super pleased to meet both of you! (What context of HP fandom, if I may ask? I... have read a positively obscene number of words of HP fanfic for someone who has rarely considered themselves in the HP fandom proper.)