He goes by “X”…and all your noobs are belong to him.  He is the guild master of Un Guilded, number one ranked guild on Silver Hand (www.guildox.com ), and raid leader for the Raiding Charter (raiding alliance) Blameroll .  WoWGiggity was able to chat with X and pick his brain about his experience with WOW, with Un Guilded, and of course higher orders of computational reasoning.  Catch the interview after the page break.

Cal: How long have you been playing WOW?
X: Since 7/9/2006 when I tried a 10 day guest pass and got hooked.
Cal: What was your first character?
X: Human Warlock on the Aeris Peak server. It only made it to level 10 before I made my next one.
Cal: How many characters do you now have?
X: Depending on who you ask way too many lol. I have six level 80’s that are all on Silver Hand. I have one of each class on Silver Hand as alliance. I’m sure there’s a few low level ones elsewhere from days where our server was down or I was really bored.
Cal: What is your Main?
X: My raiders are probably laughing right now if they’re reading this. My current main is Alazab. He is a Blood DK Tank. My raiders would laugh because I’ve changed mains a lot historically due to raiding needs =P

Cal: What is your favorite thing about WOW?
X: That’s a tough question because I can’t pick just one thing. If I had to I would say the people that I’ve met and the friendships that I’ve made. I’ve known some players for a number of years at this point. I really couldn’t see raiding being remotely close to as fun as it is if it were not for the friendships that I’ve made and the people there laughing with me. A lot of our friendships started on Thrall-US where we were guild mates together.
Cal: What is your least favorite thing about WOW?
X: Trade Chat. =)
Cal: Aside from leading Un guilded to glory, what do you spend your time doing in The World of Warcraft?
X: Well, I’d like to point out that I didn’t do it alone and we’re not done yet. There are so many people that have contributed to our successes thus far. I won’t do the Grammy Award thing and start naming people off =P but they know who they are. Back to the question… I like trying to work on achievements on my Death Knight when I’m in the mood. With changing mains to my DK in the middle of Tier 8 content I missed out on a lot of achievements so I go back and work on those. If I don’t feel like doing that I like to play my alts. I really enjoy understanding the mechanics on different classes.
Cal: Any other hobbies outside of WOW?
X: Wait… there’s life outside of WoW?
Cal: What’s the story behind “X” ?
X: The first guild that I was ever in back on Thrall-US is where “X” started. My first character on Thrall that I made was a Rogue named Xdeathdealer. Someone had the name Deathdealer so I put an X in front of it. One of the officers started calling me X for short and it stuck from there. I always kind of liked it =P
Cal: What is the back-story behind Un guilded?
X: Well that’s kind of a long story lol The shorter version is that some of us were in a raiding guild on Silver Hand at the time called “Just Wipe It.” The guild was having some issues and the charter “Blame Roll” was created to help provide some more raiding and maybe bring in some new blood for progression. When “Just Wipe It” disbanded I thought it would be funny to make a guild called “Un guilded” because I thought there was a little bit of irony there. With the help of some of those raiders from “Just Wipe It” that were homeless and a few friends the guild was born. Sadly I can’t remember the names of all the original signatures but the ones I can remember are Kabira, Perma, Brylee, Tinkerbee, myself, and I’m sure a few others that I should remember >.> Sorry guys!
Cal: Why Silver Hand?
X: While in a struggling raid environment on Thrall a guild mate of mine, Brylee, told me about “Leftovers Raiding” and thought that I should think about it as an option. I had mentioned server transferring. After a week or two of thinking about it I made the plunge. Though I did go to my first Silver Hand raids through Leftovers I was taken in by a raiding guild on my Holy Priest at the time and did that for a while. I’m glad I did because I met some awesome people there. Now I raid exclusively with Leftovers under the Blame Roll Charter which is where “Un guilded” does it’s raiding. Truly the reason why it’s Silver Hand for me though is Leftovers. It’s the best raiding environment I’ve ever been a part of and the community as a whole awesome. I’m very happy here! For more information on Leftovers check out their website http://leftoversraiding.org You can find us on there as “Blame Roll.”
Cal: Why Alliance?
X: I honestly don’t even know lol When I got the free trial I didn’t really know how it all worked as this was my first MMO. I just picked something and tried to find my friend. I had no clue that a different server meant something or even about the factions. I later found out after I got my account going that my friend was Horde side on a different server. At that point I was so into leveling my Rogue at the time that I didn’t want to make the switch to Horde. He ended up quitting the game anyway so I guess it worked out =P I’ve always wanted a Tauren Warrior though in full Tier 6. Think that’s my favorite tier model.
Cal: Did you start as the guild master?
X: For “Un guilded” yes. It wasn’t always “Alazab” but it’s always been one of my characters.
Cal: Did you lead a guild before Un guilded?
X: I’ve been every rank possible in other guilds that I’ve been a part of in the past. This will be the third Guild that I’ve been Guild Master for. The other two times were back on Thrall. The first one was more of a have fun type of guild that was super casual. The second one was right before I transferred to Silver Hand. It was more of an attempt at some progression raiding but the raider pool was pretty tough pickings at the time there. I decided to transfer off to Silver Hand for leftovers where I wanted to eventually start my own Charter and a few people made the switch right before me, with me, or after me.
Cal: How many officers does Un guilded have?
X: Right now there are seven Officers counting me. They are Alazab, Brylee, Lucyan, Ivysnow, Feurdrauka, Ulmia, and Marlinda as their respective mains.
Cal: At a high level, what is discussed at Un guilded officer meetings?
X: Listening to me complain about something or trying to make a “That’s what she said” joke. Trust me no matter what people tell you nobody is THAT serious in officer chat… definitely not in ours at least =P
Cal: How many members does Un guilded have?
X: We usually have just around 200 or so. Those are of course including all of our members alts, friends, and even some family members. I think we have Kabira’s entire family in our guild that plays WoW lol
Cal: How many of Un guilded are core raiders?
X: I’d say we have about 25 core raiders that are in Un guilded. We’ve probably got another 5-7 that are not actually in the guild. We have several people that raid with us regularly that aren’t actually in the guild. Since we raid with Leftovers it’s never been a requirement for them to join. Typically we have 21 or 22 people in the raid that are from Un guilded though.
Cal: What does it take to join Un guilded?
X: For raiding purposes you can find out our current needs on http://blameroll.guildlaunch.com/ . We’re interested in pushing hard modes and progressing through content while it’s relevant. So we’re always looking for like-minded individuals. We also let family and friends in as long as someone in the guild can assure us they won’t be a problem =P All invites are officer approved though.
Cal: Do you require certain specs and raid compositions?
X: I like to really make sure that we have every buff/debuff available to us so depending on what we might be missing I recruit accordingly. I generally expect people to stay the same spec and I have been known to ask people to respec for something =P I wouldn’t say it’s a requirement as much as an expectation that you do what’s best for the raid.
Cal: At what point did Un guilded decide to focus on elite progression?
X: I don’t know if it was ever a decision that was made but more of a process of wanting to see what we could do. We just started out raiding together under the Charter and kept looking for ways to improve. As our raiders grew and we started getting some bosses killed it became easier to find new talent. It’s funny how that works =P I’m a pretty competitive person so I’ve always aspired to try and be the best that we can be. Since the Charter started in late BC we didn’t really have a lot of time together but from starting fresh and raiding together we did fairly well. At the end of BC I wanted to try and push hard in Lich King to see how we would compare with other groups that would be starting new content at the same time. I really thought we could do well together as long as some things fell into place. Thankfully they did. I don’t think we’ve ever considered ourselves to be elite. I think it’s more accurate to say we’re a bunch of really sarcastic friendly people that love to have fun while killing stuff. At least that’s how I look at it. I never want to be known as an elitist, ever. =P
Cal: How many hours per week are spent on 25-man progression?
X: Our raid schedule right now is Tues/Wed/Thurs 3 hours each. That 9 hours is all of our farm content and progression time. Usually we have a target in mind for that week and we spend a good amount of Wednesday night on it usually.
Cal: How many hours per week are spent on 10-man progression?
X: Right now we have two 10 man groups that run the current content. One group is scheduled for four hours and the other is three on a different night.
Cal: What kind of prep goes into your raid leading?
X: I’m usually reading up on boss fight abilities and if there’s a video of an encounter available from the PTR or live server I’ll generally watch it to see what it’ll all look like. I don’t always care for the instructional videos since I kind of like coming up with my own strat but when I’m unsure of something I usually hit up http://www.tankspot.com/ before anything else.
Cal: Do you experiment on the PTRs?
X: Generally no. I always read what the changes are but have never found much time or need to go play on the PTR. Some of my raiders might but I haven’t. I think the last time I played on the PTR was when they FINALLY buffed Arms Warriors after the Lich King expansion came out.
Cal: How did you get hooked up with LeftOvers?
X: Brylee was the first person to mention it to me and thanks to her I made the switch.
Cal: What is your best Un guilded memory?
X: The last time I kicked Bigfatness, or is it Bigfatnes (with one ’s’), or is it Rasvoja? Seriously, I don’t really have a best memory. I really enjoy the banter in guild chat and some of the funniest things I’ve ever heard have been on vent with these folks or in guild chat/raid chat.
Cal: What do you think about how the raiding game has changed to be more inclusive of the less-hardcore?
X: I think I share the view that Brylee has on it in my Leftovers forum signature lol  I do think though that there are challenges out there for the hardcore people out there.
Cal: What do you think about the 3 leading Guild ranking websites (guildox.com, wowprogress.com, and wowjutsu.com)? Please talk to which ranking system you feel is most accurate, if you have an opinion at all (they rank Un guilded very differently).
X: Obviously I’m going to say that I like Guildox.com the most since it ranks us the highest =P I do want to say first that to my knowledge wowjutsu.com hasn’t been updated since Tier 7 content so you could use that as a historical point of reference to see where people were at that time =P The issue with wowprogress.com and guildox.com are that they don’t take into account raiding alliances. That may not be an issue on other servers but on Silver Hand we have a lot of groups that run raiding Alliances. Leftovers alone has a lot of groups that raid together that aren’t exactly a guild. Outside of Leftovers “Harum Scarum” is a really amazing group of people that are not all necessarily in the same guild. Horde on Silver Hand also have “Handle It” which is a raiding alliance. I think rankings and websites that track them have to be taken with a grain of salt. The value of the information is only as good as the knowledge the person has who’s reading it. We’ve done very well for ourselves but I want to give credit where credit is due. Harum Scarum and Handle It along with several Leftovers organizations don’t show up on those sites as high as they should. We’re just fortunate in that our runs have a TON of our own members so we trigger the achievement tracking features of the sites sooner.
Cal: Where is Un guilded in the current progression?
X: We’ve cleared the Plagueworks and killed the Blood Princes in the Crimson Halls as of the date of this interview. We ran out of time last week so we didn’t actually use up all of our attempts on Blood Queen. Looking forward to the new wing tonight and finishing off the Crimson Halls.
Cal: Do you find raid leading stressful?
X: It can be stressful sometimes but I figure someone has to do it and at the end of the day the reward of accomplishment usually outweighs the stress =P I’ve also got some really amazing leads that help ease the stress a lot.
Cal: What are you most appreciative of from your raiders?
X: I’m most appreciative that my raiders have put their trust in me and my decisions. Sometimes the decision may not always be the popular one but hey! =P Also, my leads for keeping me as close to sane as possible.
Cal: What is your biggest “pet peeve” from your raiders?
X: When I have to repeat something over and over
Cal: What are Un guilded’s future plans?
X: Finishing up some unfinished business in Heroic Trial 25, Algalon 25, getting our Hard Mode drakes for Icecrown, and keeping it all going through Cataclysm.
Cal: If a Train leaves Chicago at 6:00 pm traveling 62 mph, and a train leaves Los Angeles at 7:45 pm traveling 84 mph, when do you use Heroism?
X: We wouldn’t be able to because someone probably accidentally hit heroism in the train station before it left and everyone’s got exhaustion.

Thanks to X for this great insight into the mind of a successful guild/raid leader. Best of luck to Un guilded and Blameroll!