WoW in My Hour - Miss Medicina

WoW in My Hour is on to its fourth instalment where I interview other bloggers and WoW players to explore the different ways people spend their time in game and speculate (or relate) what/how they might prioritise the smaller time periods - particularly if that is all they are left with. We move back to the healing side of the fence this week!

1. Can you please introduce yourself. Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do (blog about) - in terms of WoW?
   
   My name is Jessica, and I write Miss Medicina (missmedicina.blogspot.com). My main focus is on healers in general, with a particular leaning towards healing priests. I like to talk a lot about healing philosophy, "logiccrafting" (it's like theorycrafting, with less numbers!), and all sorts of semi-useful information that is often derived from my experience organizing healing teams and raids outside of a raiding guild. [Ed: She also dabbles in some awesome MS Paint skills - see her post on Mitigation vs. Colander Heals]
   
   
2. How would you describe yourself as a WoW player? Hardcore, casual (and what you mean by those if you choose to use them), raider, PvPer etc.
   
   I never really know how to define "hardcore" and "casual". Some people refer to it as a usage of time, others as your attitude towards the game. I'm probably somewhere in-between. I do spend a lot of time on WoW related stuff, but to be quite honest, most of it is time spent outside of the game itself. I do a lot of research into the theorycrafting and mechanics of my class for my blog, and I spend a lot more time writing and reading about the game than I probably do playing it! But when I am playing, I enjoy raiding and running dailies. Most of the raids in which I participate are actually PuGs, but I organize the weekly raid quest and a weekly ICC10 progression run for my guildmates et al.
   
   
3. What does a typical week of WoW playing look like?
   
   On Sunday and Monday evenings I raid with my guildmates plus a few good friends from another guild (occasionally Thursday instead of Sunday). I usually run my daily heroic and a handful of other dailies each day, while keeping an eye open for PuGs that need another healer. I like to multi-task my time, and I'm almost always in queue for something while doing dailies or chatting with friends. Some weeks I'm just not feeling it, and I will only log on for raids, or into the bloggie guild, .
   
   
4. You formed your own raid group - can you explain the reasoning and focus behind doing this?
   
   Our guild is actually very small - only 7 raid-ready players, and we are all close friends "IRL". Some of us work together, some of us went to high school together, some of us are living together - we like having a small private guild, and we have no plans to grow. For a year or two we were part of a 25 man raiding alliance with a handful of other guilds, but recently became disenchanted with 25 man casual raiding, and chose to drop out of the alliance. For several months after stepping down from our raiding alliance we had no regular way to do any raiding at all, since most of my guildies choose not to pug raids.
   
   I missed out on a lot of the later Ulduar content, and was late to the party for ToC as well. I wanted to be sure that I would get to see ICC, and I've always felt that if you want something done right, do it yourself. If I wanted to be part of a raid group that would raid according to my schedule and my priorities, then my only reasonable option was to do the leg work and put together my own. I figured I had enough contacts between pugging, my former 25 man raiding alliance, my guild and other various friends, that I could reasonably put together a good ICC10 group. I wanted to raid, and I knew how I wanted to approach it. I wanted to do short nights (no more than 3 hours) because I personally have a tendency to get frustrated and lose interest after a few hours.
   
   
5. What was the process of forming the group like? Any tips you can recommend to others if you they were going to do this?
   
   It was somewhat stressful. I wanted to make sure I had a solid group makeup, along with picking people I would enjoy running with, and who would be willing to deal with me as a raid leader (which can definitely be frustrating in and of itself, heh). I also wanted to give my own guild members priority.
   
   I had a certain list of buffs I knew I wanted us to have in order to optimize our abilities. I had a list of people who were interested in joining the team. I then had to try and make those two lists combine and hope we could all get our schedules to work together! I had to read about all of the fights that had been on the PTR (I started assembling the group a few weeks before ICC was released) to get an idea for the kind of raid makeup we would need.
   
   In terms of building your own raid group, the first thing you will have to do is look around and see who is interested in joining you. You need to have a lot of available people, as well as potential backups. I have backup players who can fill in for any members of the regular team if they can't make it. You also need to be sure to be respectful of the players. We had a couple of guildies who were interested in joining in on the team who were not there when I first organized it. It would not have been fair (in my opinion) to just kick other people who weren't in my guild out of the team, even for my own guildies, because if I had done that, how could they ever trust me in the future? In the end, we had to change the raid night, and some people had to drop out, allowing my guildies to come in, but it was stressful.
   
   In addition to the actual players, you need to have a well balanced raid group, in terms of buffs, roles, specific boss fight makeups (for instance, you need a balanced group for Deathwhisper), and abilities. It's always good to have a couple of dual specced players who can "swing" if needed as well (such as a dps/healer or dps/tank). The website http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/ can help with figuring out buffs. You need to let everyone in the team know up front what your expectations are, especially if you are on a tight schedule (vent, ID resets, how you will handle things like the ICC buff, loot, biobreaks, etc). I have everyone's email addresses so that I can contact them throughout the week and let them know what our plans are, as well as send boss strats.
   
   
6. How has the raid group turned out?
   
   The group is great, and I'm grateful for how much patience they have with me. It is really stressful trying to raid lead, and I don't think I would be able to do it if I didn't have a couple of people who help me every time. My fiance co-leads with me, and does a lot of the talking, while I do most of the organizing, scheduling, etc. Fulguralis (from killingemslowly.blogspot.com) helps me a LOT with the boss strats. It's particularly stressful trying to fight out what strat we are going to use. But mostly, we have a really goofy bunch of people who cracks jokes all night long. We don't take ourselves too seriously, and laugh a lot at our own failures. The best thing about my group is that everyone will fess up when they do something wrong. This saves a lot of time in trying to figure out what is and is not working. All in all, I would call it a resounding success.
   
   
7. Is there anything (in WoW) that you wished you could get into but just don't have the time (or for some other reason)? 
   I actually have a lot of time available for playing WoW, but the people I enjoy playing with most do not. I wish we could add an extra night to our ICC progress, instead of just one night, because I feel that with the escalating ICC buff (which we do not use) we are running out of time!
   
   
8. If you had only an hour to play WoW in any given session how would you fill your time?
   
   If I only have an hour, I usually run some dailies. When I'm running solo content (like dailies) I get to play around with all of my different abilities and don't have to try and organize other people to try and make something work.
   
   
9. If you could only ever play for an hour at a time - would you? If yes, then how would you see your in game activities change? If no - why not?
   I wouldn't mind playing one hour at a time. I enjoy doing a lot of solo activities, and just chatting with my friends while online. I like working on my professions. It's not easy to raid in only hour spurts, but it is completely possible with so many short raids these days. I would check to see when my faction has Wintergrasp, and I would catch a VoA pug during my hour. Or I would organize friends via email to get together for other short raids throughout the week, like ToC, EoE, or Sartharion. We make a lot of use of the iPhone armory app and the in-game calendar for putting together raids. I can put an invite on the calendar for a quick hour of raiding something, and my friends can accept the invite while at work on their iPhones - it's great. With the advent of extendable Raid IDs, we could even take on longer raids, and just extend the ID week after week, or get back to it each night. The best thing to do is to get a group of people to raid with you who understand time limitations, and try to sync your schedules.
   
   
10. Would you be willing to be part of a raiding crew/guild that only raided for an hour at a time? Do you think it's feasible?
    
    Absolutely - one hour a week isn't that much less than 2 hours a week, and we do that now! The trick is to maximize your time in-game by preparing as much as you can outside of the game. Communicate with the other raiders via email. Figure out your strats before you log on. Be sure that everyone is on time and you really focus during that one hour that you have, and you can still see all the game content.
    
    
11. Do you have any tips/advice for making the most of your WoW play time?
    
    Plan out what you want to do before you get in-game. When you log out after one session, do it in a place where you can easily jump back into the game. For instance, I always log out in Dalaran, despite the lag - but I log out in the sewers, where there is an Inn, a guild bank, a vendor, a personal bank, and a mailbox all easily accessible, and there's not nearly as much lag. Ever since I set my hearthstone down in the sewers, I spend a lot less time waiting for everything to load.
    
    
12. Why is map making so cool?
    
    You know how you can read a boss strategy, but it doesn't really make sense sometimes until you see a diagram? Until you can see a map of where you should be standing, and where you should move? Maps are crucial for showing spatial relationships. You can think you know all the facts about a place or an area, but when you see it on a map, all the relationships between all these different places suddenly click and make a lot more sense. Plus, there's a lot of creativity and art in map-making.

A big big big thanks to Miss Medicina for taking the time out to answer my questions. I've enjoyed interacting with her on Twitter and look forward to the time we meet on Single Abstract Noun in the future! Ever since I first heard about her raid and what they do and how they deal with their time limitations I've been wanting to quiz her more about it (and I still continue to)! So thanks again.

If you have any questions for Miss Medicina then please ask away in the comment and I'm sure she'll be more than willing to answer them.