Ooh, I hate these. :) Please forgive me for not doing the standard app - I think I'll cover most of your questions in a more conversational tone, but since I'm not applying for a raider spot or anything I'm not sure that sticking to the format would help.
Hiya!
I'm Illuminiere, level 70 paladin. Born and raised on Trollbane, a boring PVE realm also in Ruin. I've been holy since level 10, except Trollbane usually has a surplus of healers and I respecced prot the other day just for giggles.
I have 5 characters at 70 or higher - a 70 druid (31 balance / 30 resto) on Shattered Hand, a 70 prot warrior on Trollbane, a 72 disc/holy priest on Trollbane, this 70 paladin I just transferred today to Zul'jin (man, that'll take some getting-used-to to type properly), and a 70 frost mage on Trollbane. I also am currently working on a 39 holy paladin and a 41 hunter on Shattered Hand. I did a tiny bit of raiding in classic WoW on my warrior, before realizing I didn't really like being a warrior and wasn't very good at it. (Ever been in a group with a lowbie tank who says "But if I taunt, the mobs will attack me!" Yep, that was totally me once upon a time.)
I suppose this is where the ADD kicks in and I apologize for extensive use of parentheses.
I raided on the priest in MC / BWL / AQ / ZQ / 40-Naxx. Then BC came out, I got both characters to 70, raided Kara / SSC on my priest (either TK hadn't come out yet, or we were focusing on SSC). Then the ex and I broke up, and I retreated to a PVE server, where proper carebears belong. Have you ever tried leveling a holy priest on a PVP server? It's not pretty. Anyway. Rolled a paladin on Trollbane, despite my fervent proclamations prior that I would never roll a paladin, and enjoyed it very much. Got her to 70 as holy with a feral druid friend tanking, did Kara / SSC / TK / Hyjal / BT. Got really tired of my guild - have you ever been in a guild where one day you just looked around and said to yourself "holy crap, these guys are assholes!"? - and just sort of... stopped logging in. I went back to Shattered Hand, got my druid to 70 after WotLK came out, got my priest to 72 on Trollbane, and have been working on the lowbie paladin and hunter since. Which server I play on depends on where I'm first able to find a group, and there were rarely enough people looking for groups on Trollbane.
Aaanyway. I'm essentially looking for a server where I can actually find groups, preferably as a healer, where there's a good economy, and find a group of nice adults. I've almost always been in adult guilds, but the definition of "adult" seems to vary. In my last guild, it apparently meant "be over the age of 18, and speak to others rudely". There's a time and a place and all, but if you can't have a serious conversation without one or more people feeling personally attacked and resorting to lots of profanity and rage-gquits, it's not really a great place for me.
I am clearly slacking on my leveling, and I don't expect that to change. I have a full-time job, full-time fiance, I'm in the process of buying one house and selling another, and trying to plan a wedding. My fiance doesn't play WoW, so my playtime is somewhat intermittent. Again, just for emphasis, I'm not looking for a raiding spot - I'm looking for nice people to talk to, as I'm brand new on the server. I saw you guys on GuildWatch on Wowinsider (grats!) and your description sounded good.
Oh, actually, now that I read over the application... The flagged gnome lives, regardless of where I'm going or what I'm doing. I'm a hardcore carebear, to the point of MCing Alliance on my priest and Forting them, then /crying when they killed me. A tea bag is a small porous bag containing tea. Would you like ceylon, chai, red zinger, or rooibos? Yes, .Net sucks. The proper spelling is "whiskey", but I'll have a glass of red wine instead. In order of importance, it's naked fiance, clothed fiance, fire, work, alts, auction-housing, and then leveling. I can do quite a bit with Perl (mostly having to do with parsing output from routers), but sorting is not my forte. I do have an archived sort script somewhere that was written by a colleague, but I'm just not that dedicated at the moment. If you give mark a skull, I'll heal the person hitting it. I don't actually have Omen or DBM installed right now (gasp!) but I had used them for years before. And I don't care if you're assholes (everyone is) as long as you don't pull off a pout worthy of a twelve-year-old girl.
Let's see, anything else? Hm. Oh, I'm old. I'm like 27. I live in NC, and manage routers at a university. One pain-in-the-butt fiance, one pain-in-the-butt dog. I'm always right. I drink way too much Dr. Pepper and coffee. I am not a neat freak. My favourite colour is purple, then Carolina blue (suck it, Dook), and then silver. I'm on the cusp between Scorpio and Sagittarius. I am obsessive-compulsive about many things, especially spelling. I prefer Maxim to Cosmo - Maxim at least has nifty facts, whereas Cosmo is just like "Hey, here are the same sex / hair / clothes tips we've given you ten times already, but with different colours!" I got to work at 6:15 this morning and by this point I'm just rambling...
Illuminiere:
I'll let you know right off the bat that we're all a bunch of assholes. We also enjoy tormenting Alliance players - we have chased players from Gadgetzan to Darnassus. The three officers are all older than you. We're not as old as Ribeye, though.
What is your end goal? Just to have fun, raid when you have time? Is it to level your paladin to 80, then work on your next toon? Get to 80 and tell your future bride that you've got raiding to do?
Well, having "grown up" on a PVP server, I'm not entirely alien to the idea of PVP - my warrior is a Scout and my priest is a Senior Sergeant. There is a reason I've moved most of my 70s to PVE servers, though. :)
I don't really know what my end goal is. I wouldn't object to raiding if you guys need a healer. I've put in my time doing scheduled raids, and while the routine is familiar, it's not my ultimate goal. I'm a bit ADD, so I don't like to log on a toon and sit there waiting for a group that may or may not materialize. I don't really have a "main", per se, more like seven alts. I log on a character, check for something to do, and if I don't find it I do the same thing on a different character.
The fiance gets priority. Right now we're in separate houses, but (assuming closing and subsequent upgrades go well) we should be living together within a month. It's sort of hard to predict how things will change then, y'know? I'm sure there will be alone time, I just don't know how much.
Sorry, I know those aren't fantastically specific answers. Best I got, though. :)
Do you think you could provide a specific link to that article about us? I'm curious to read it.
-Mark
Sure thing. http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/03/11/guildwatch-ninja-ing-mount-sry/
QuoteHorde Defense League on Zul'jin took down Malygos this week, completing all 10-man content. They're 9/15 in 25-man Naxxramas, but need more players! If you're interested in a casual, older raiding group, with no mandatory attendance, and a focus on camaraderie first, then give them a look.