What it's like joining Paragon?

Background:

Before Paragon I had spent my whole WoW career on Twisting Nether. I started raiding mid-Burning Crusade and by the time WotLK was released I was running my own guild with 20some finns in it. International guild of course, but with heavily finnish core.

After recruiting Jobim The Guild Destroyer I merged with the same core to another guild on my server and we managed to reach the wowprogress top20 page shortly after ( coincidentally thanks to Paragon and especially Anaram sharing the secrets about Anub with us at a party ). Meanwhile Jobim was busy destroying Jhazrun's guild. For Cataclysm we remained in the same guild, but we split it into Finnish 10man raiders and international 25man guys. Sadly my finnish roster was starting to run low after couple months of Cataclysm and we stopped raiding - again Jobim. Most of us quit the game, myself included. Some decided to move on to more hardcore enviroment, like Fragi that joined Paragon. It's not that we had been too casual either. We were pulling 12h raid days if whenever possible, but not everyone was that dedicated.

I started playing WoW again during summer - simply out of boredom. I just casually leveled some new chars to Twisting Nether as I didn't have a guild and during that half a year period that I had been gone the server had died, so that no interesting guilds remained. Those few from my raid group that still played had gone to the server's top 25man guild, but as someone who had followed their discussions about what was happening in their guild, I couldn't have been less interested.

 

Applying:

Short time after starting to level up again I happened to talk with Arx - who's my old friend from Warcraft 3 days and we've been irregularly in contact ever since - and he asked: "would you be interested in some WoW... wouldn't mind members that don't stand in fire". A topic we had discussed in the past too.

I was. No obligations holding me back to TN anymore so it was an easy call. 3 weeks later Paragon killed hc ragnaros and a few days later I PM'd Seita to apply. Arx and especially Fragi had vouched for me.
Unlike you might think the applying process of Paragon is not the orthodox one. There is no application form to fill and the discussion is very informal. Im sure it won't HURT if you do one of those traditional CVs where you list your keybinds, computer specs, swear that zomg i never dc my connection awesum, boss kills by date and exact guild histories - but atleast for me that wasn't required.

Basicly there were only 2 parts:

1. Impress us with what you have done in WoW or some other competitive game.
 2. What things in life go ahead of raid progression for you?

And then for the next 4 hours I waited for officers to reach a decision of which class would they require. Less surprisingly, they seemed to be quite well covered, and Fragi was already getting nervous. He kept telling me it didn't look good, as they couldn't figure out if they actually needed anything. Well in the end I got to choose between a hunter and a warlock. I chose hunter, as just earlier that day I had dinged my hunter level 85. As my alt I was later on told to do moonkin. And to be on server by next resets tuesday for alt/gearing run.

 

The first week or two:

I migrated to Lightning's Blade the next reset. First advice I got was to "join the vent and get social". They had just cleared content for the week with mains so as the raids aftermath there were plenty of people around chatting. As a warning for future trials theres this nasty EVIL test involved when you are spotted on vent as the new guy the first time - I failed it, but I do blame Arx for not warning me. Tuesday it was time for the first raid with Paragon, the first raid as hunter and pretty much the first proper peek at Firelands. We cleared Firelands(normal 25), Tot4W and BoT so I think I was running with 4pt11hc after the very first raid.

I got to enjoy the perks of being part of sponsored guild very early. Already the very next weekend after my first raid, Assembly Summer (finlands biggest LAN event) was coming up and ASUS was sponsoring our guild there as Paragon would have a live raid in the event - commentated by Verdisha and TotalBiscuit. As my impression about the guild so far was that the atmosphere was really healthy and relaxed I thought what the hell, I would go check out what my new guildies are like IRL - besides you never know when the next chance for a guild meet comes. Worst case scenario I would atleast get to meet some friends that have come to the event or just happen to live in Helsinki. The first evening I mainly spent with old friends, but for next day I came to watch Paragons live raid and actually got to see FL hard modes for the very first time, eventhough it was behind a shoulder. After the raid the aim for most of the guild was to head out to spend the evening somewhere, somewhere turned out to be Wakoz's cabin, about 8 km away from Hartwall Arena where the LAN was held, and in the end of a road not even the cab drivers could find.  I didn't head out immedialitely with the others as I promised to wait till Fragi and Trixi(HoN, MSI) got their HoN finals over. The schedule was intented to be so that we would be done by 11pm. Well, dream on, finals hadn't even started by that time. As a bonus they lost the first game, and the were no benches for the audience so we went to the players area with Diivil and Lazei. When Admin came to ask I was the serviceman, Lazei the Team Leader and Diivil the Tech Support. We even got medals after Fragi's and Trixi's team - finaly - won the tournament.

              

 Trixi and Fragi - Da Champs.

 

Around 1:30 AM we were done with the HoN crap and Fragi, Trixi and myself were ready to head out. As we were several hours behind others, I called Arx to make certain that we wouldn't be paying for taxi just to notice everyones leaving already. Arx was a bit doubtful whether there would be any point in coming that late "well maybe if you come here right now". Yeah, right. When we arrived it was obvious the beverages had been put to good use and the athmosphere was on cloud nine and we weren't one bit too late. It turned out to be a great evening, got to meet a lot of people, got some advice from a veteran hunter - Kruf, whom "Seita" had told to take more shots a bit earlier, after which he was sharing his wisdom to us new hunters with the words "DPS DOESNT MATTER, JUST STAY ALIVE, ITS ALL THAT MATTERS". Eventually when we were heading back to Assembly or in my case the Train home with Trixi at 6 AM Fragi was so busy with his yoga poses that he decided to stay behind at the cabin. Paragon can party no doubt about that.

                  

Yoga Fraggo or Sohvajoona

 

Raiding:

Fairly quickly I got to move one from alt raids to main raids(minus Ragna) and then eventually to even kill The Boss. Hunter is a fast class to gear up as Protector tiers and Mail loots are the least wanted items. Didn't take long till I had 380 iLVL.

But in the beginning, god damn I felt rusty when I was playing. 6 months of no raiding, zero experience from Firelands progression, whole new class and role, 25-man enviroment ( read: absolutely terrible FPS ). And how to obtain that experience? Well no way. It's pretty much one pull a week / boss. Then 7+ days of waiting for the next raid. You kinda learn to appreciate the chance to fail and see others fail during progress as it is a very effective way to learn the encounters. Luckily I got to try few nights of wiping on Ragna HC on other char and server and it was a really really helpful way at getting back into the game.

By now its been couple of months since I joined Paragon and apparently I've got a member status. I have yet to see a progression period and how people act there, but based on this time my thoughts about how Paragon varies from any other guild I've been  in are:
- Ofcourse the players are all great, its Paragon afterall.

- The goals are the same. People raid for progress, people bother with the farm just so that you would be more prepared for next progress. Everyone has the dedication to show up and do their job and to make time for the next progress. You might be familiar with the term "Wednesday raiders" - you know, the people that only show up for farm raids to get easy epics. Well in Paragon it's slightly different. Sure nearly everyone shows up every Wednesday, but there is not a single person that wouldn't mind skipping the raid simply because it is just a farm raid.

- Raid athmosphere is whole different, theres always smalltalk going on - obviously one of the benefits of everyone being fluent in the same language. I know most people can speak great - even fluent - English, but its just not the same joking on English as it is on your own language - the vital step to speak up is just so much smaller.

- You might also know how the traditional raidchat model is, that raidleaders speak and everyone else STFU unless its important, and sometimes even then. Paragon's voice chat during encounters is more of a jungle survival. The one that yells hardest gets heard. Too bad for the rest. And if it happens that people are silent, there is always someone saying something about "srz bzns" to normalize things.

- Pull Timer. A little thing I know, I should have used it in my previous guilds, but for some reason I never bothered - maybe because I mainly tanked or healed and never had to bother with the dps. It just makes pulling bosses so much more effective and less dramatic when people see the lovely pizzatimer and can have those aimed shots and wraths properly precast so that they hit the boss when timer strikes 0.0. Try it out, trust me the "vent countdowns" or "5 4 3 2 1 raid warnings" are not the same at all.

- Excluding Wednesdays it's rare to see like 5+ people at the same time online.Sadly we are so not going to be a level 25 guild when 4.3 comes out. We only hit the daily guild xp cap like one day a week - two if some play arenas some other day. So much about "top guilds playing a lot". Well they do for the short progress period, but for the majority of each content patch people only log on like once a week.

 

Last words:

It's funny how the tag attracts attention, good or bad. Especially when running random troll heroics you rarely get to just focus on the run, no matter which character. It is either "zomg DREAM Paragon, whos ur main" or sometimes, from people that just don't remember the server correctly, a friendly "fake paragon noob". There is also quite a bunch of whispers included. Personaly I decided to get SpamMeNot and block those low level whispers just for some peace while playing. It doesn't mean we wouldn't be available, but ingame is not the best place for that. If you actually wanna contact Paragon member for whatever reason, our website and IRC channel are way better options than ingame. If you have the patience to wait for an answer. Please do search the forums whether your question has already been answered. Especially concerning UI questions.

And sorry to let you down, but despite all the credible sources at mmo-champion forums it turns out that being in one of worlds top guilds doesn't mean getting paid to play. Sure sponsors offer some perks, but actually getting paid to play? Wrong Game.