Feel the Rhythm! Feel the Rhyme! Get On Up, It's Raiding Time! Cool Runners!

Hello and welcome to the very first post of Cool Runners, the blog owned and operated by members of the Horde guild Shadows of Torment on Altar of Storms (US)! My name is Joe Alden, and I will be one of several contributers to this guild blog. I'm a college student at Keene State College as well as a blogger for my own site on the side, but most of you reading this know and love me as officer, raid leader, and main (squishy) tank Zephyrbreeze and that other crazy shaman guy Ragepyre as well as any number of other alts. I've been a console gamer practically my whole life, and still enjoy doing so. I only relatively recently started playing on PCs, with the discovery of the Warcraft franchise, back in Warcraft II. I followed it unto Warcraft III and the expansion that followed that, and naturally it was only a matter of time until I started up WoW. I've been playing WoW since about the middle of "Vanilla" and have loved (almost) every minute of it.

So what is Cool Runners exactly?

Cool Runners is the brainchild of a conversation between one esteemed Spencer Long and myself. The idea behind it is to put forth interesting and sometimes useful stories and information, primarily to other members of Shadows of Torment, but indirectly to any of the rest of the denizens of the internet who happen to find their way to this blog. We're hoping to have several other contributers in order to have at least a once daily post. It'll be informative and yet casual; though I or others may understand all that theorycrafting nonsense, none of it will be reposted here. Instead, any time we talk strats and stats it will be a lot more down to earth and easy to understand.

The main focus won't even be on hard numbers at Cool Runners anyways. Being a casual (raiding) guild, the focus will be just that: casual. Note the parentheses around raiding; though as a guild we definitely raid and raid frequently, we are foremost (at least in my mind) a casual guild.

Though Spence has already posted a general list of topics we'd like to discuss here on the Facebook group, I'll provide a small breakdown of the various ideas he's come up with, as well as a couple of my own. I know I would like to talk about various raid and boss strategies, as well as provide lore information or info on classes I know well enough to explain to others. As I mentioned earlier, I do play games that aren't WoW, despite my /played time, and I might take this opportunity to talk about some other games as well. Beyond this, we're hoping to have information on dungeons, DPS, healing, and tanking strategies, maybe game mechanics coverage, and any number of other topics. I think it will be a good time, and it will only get better if people read and contribute, so I encourage you to do so and spread the word to other guildies!

Happy hunting, and here's to the future!

(PS I'm really really really sorry about the title, I just took it and ran with it I swear most of my article titles aren't always that cheesy)