No, not that one thank the light! I have a few more months until that one…the big 10! No the one I’m talking about is Wrath.

Wrath released November 13th, 2009. It’s been a year!

Actually, you ever have that feeling where you can’t believe it’s been that long and at the same time you can’t believe IT’S ONLY BEEN THAT LONG?! Yes, Wrath has been wonderful and with some respects it feels like it’s gone really fast. In other respects it feels like I’ve died and gone to hell only to suffer for all eternity!

OK, it’s not quite that bad, but it has been an eventful year. So I’m thinking a recap is in order.

November 2008

Started leveling Kyrilean through Northrend. Within two weeks I was 80. Sure wasn’t the fastest in the guild or on my server, but then again I had real life duties to attend to like work and family. Damn real life!

The two things I remember the most vividly about those intial experiences were questing and the new dungeons. The quests were varied and amazing! Drops were more prevalent than they had been in BC and definitely better when compared to Vanilla. No more grind fests!!! And the dungeons were…easy. I remember running Azjol-Nerub the first time. It was the first dungeon I’d run and my friends were bugging me to come heal it. I really wanted to keep questing and wasn’t looking forward to a 2 hour grindfest at the moment, but I went anyway…and we were done in less than 30 minutes!!!

All I can remember is thinking, “That’s it?!” To this day I’m disappointed in the 5-man dungeons. Sure they were at least a little challenging at first, but we didn’t have to utilize any strategy like CC!!! It was run in, faceroll your keys, and unless you were really bad the bosses died. They were definitely an improvement on the 3-hour slugfests that were a lot of BC runs (man I hate Shadow Labs*), but less than 30 minutes?! Hell, even Ramparts took the better part of an hour until you geared well beyond it.

December 2008 to March 2009

Naxxramas and the gear grind. Gear plans. Class study. I even posted my series of Holy Paladin guides, which are way outdated btw. This was also unfortunately the start of the end for me.

With a few exceptions, leveling guilds level at different levels. It’s inevitable. Everyone spends a different amount of time on questing, instancing, and afking. I for one spent every second reading every letter of quest text. I’d just spent a nice chunk of change on this expansion and was going to get my entertainment’s worth. Others I knew flew so fast past the quest text that when others asked questions about quests, they had no idea what you were talking about.

Because everyone hit 80 at a different time, that’s when the drama started. Although my memory is probably somewhat fuzzy and more than likely jaded to an extent, I put all the drama squarely on the shoulders of three groups of people.

Group 1 – An officer tank and a pvp’ing, flirtatious mage that had said officer tank wrapped around her little finger.

The mage had joined our guild due to her friendship with the tank. Due to some luck she geared up quickly in Zul’Aman and mysteriously was unavailable for raids after that, although she spent 5-6 hours each evening in battlegrounds. She and the tank were also the first to hit 80 and grinded out heroics while everyone was still finishing leveling. They then became unavailable to assist others in the heroic grind, going so far as to play alts on another server or at least the other faction in an effort to avoid us according to rumor, but crawled out of the woodwork as soon as we were ready for Naxx.

The tank thought he was Blizzard’s gift to Arathor-US. He thought he was the best tank out there and ten times better than our current main tank Zeza, who I’d venture to say is probably still the best tank I’ve ever met. I’d even heard him say he was better than Zeza and was upset about the whole thing. Ask the healers and we all said he was a good tank, but he was not as good at grabbing loose mobs, nor was he as good at avoidance. The guy took spiky damage at the weirdest times and would get two shotted more times than I care to remember.

After a huge blow up with a drunk GM, things were said and they quit the guild to start their own raiding guild telling us off and that they would do much better. I don’t think they ever recruited ten members.

Group 2 - Wife/husband combo.

I recruited this group. They’re good people. Even today I think they’re probably good people. But drama followed those two like flies after a manure spreader!!! I remember the wife bitching and moaning about loot given to lesser geared people when rolls were won by her or her husband. We had a loot council system back then. You rolled if you were interested. Loot council made the decisions at that point.

They were good players. It only made it more frustrating that we needed and wanted their heals; one was a druid, the other a shaman. So enter pressure. We needed them. We wanted them. It’s my own damn fault for letting them get to a point where they could dictate to an extent how things were run because I was so afraid that we’d lose them.

Group 3 - All the little whiny ass, snot-nosed kids that felt entitled.

I hit 80 first, I deserve to go to Naxx. I shouldn’t have to run with the “B-group”. I needed that item more than the guy that won it. I shouldn’t need to gem and enchant my gear until I have all purples. I don’t need to bring food buffs, someone’s got fish feasts. I don’t have time for dailies and can’t afford flasks.

But you sure as hell feel entitled to anything and everything the guild officers are working so hard to give everyone, don’tcha?!

March 2009

I wanted to raid, but didn’t feel like raiding with any other guild on that server. I wanted to raid with my friends, but the drama and self-imposed responsibility of trying to keep everyone happy finally broke me. I didn’t want to raid with any other guild on that server. I still wanted to raid, but knew I’d run a /who search every night to see what they were doing and that wasn’t something I could live with. I knew I’d go running back to them eventually and I couldn’t do that. Why?

I never admitted this to my friends, but a year has passed and perhaps it’s time to admit it. I couldn’t raid with them because of Group 2. I was so sick and tired of the drama those two caused that I was done. They had gotten so bad that I almost canceled my account. I was quitting a game over two people I had never even met! How fucked up is that?! But on the other hand, I couldn’t give my guild an ultimatum. It wasn’t right for me to say “Me or them.” So I left the server to prevent myself from going back to the guild and living in misery. I was too addicted to quit.

So it was with a lot of thought and heavy heart, I made the decision to switch servers.

March 2009 to present

Naxx25 runs with my new guild were a lot of fun. They were almost always full guild runs and we flew through them relatively easily, but not easy enough to make it boring. When Ulduar finally hit, raiding went to hell. Granted we lost people to summer, but even still it was worse than expected. Ulduar was tough the first few weeks and people disappeared when the content got too hard, but they came back with a vengeance for ToC…

In the offtime, I had spent a lot of time gearing up other toons, going after achievements, and just learning to play the game around things other than raiding. I also learned how to play the AH and brought in over 200,000 gold in less than four months. Granted I spent 150,000 of it on mats and other items. My guess is that 110,000 of it was mats and the other 40,000 was for “loans” and craftable gear for me and friends.

But that got boring too and after having leveled all four healing classes and a DK, I continued on with the other five classes leveling 5 levels at a time before switching. What this means is that I can play all classes, but know nothing and suck at all of them too!

What’s Next?

Well, as much as I’d like to get into heroic ToC (and damn it I really do) I’m concerned with the next step. If it’s too easy, I may just quit raiding altogether. If it’s too hard, I’m afraid others might. On top of this you have the holidays and all the joys it brings!

Real life events will interfere to a certain extent making raiding a little harder. In some cases, it might get easier. Add to that the holiday releases of new games and who knows what will happen? I know I for one will be on less when I finally buy CoD: MW2 tomorrow. And the wife is getting me Assassin’s Creed 2 for Christmas so…yeah. But it’s kind of scary when I log on and I’m the only officer around. It’s not that the others have disappeared from the game permanently, but when the officers** don’t make regular appearances I begin to wonder what members think. I know I’d be concerned.

So I think 3.3 can’t come soon enough. My guild needs it.

*LOL, I only have to run it about 5 more times to hit Exalted with Lower City! Soloing it is kind of fun!
**Actually one of them just RPs a lot on another server and needs to come back and entertain me on Vent if nothing else!!! Hell, Amber’s GM now and should be on Vent to entertain me too! And I’m too poor to transfer 10 toons to another server!!!

After reading Arthas, I found myself wanting to read more. I haven’t read fantasy novels in a long time, but that one really got me wanting to again.

I wanted to start with something near the beginning, meaning early in the history. But I didn’t want to start so far back as to be way before the events of what’s going on now like in the War of the Ancients trilogy. So Rise of the Horde seemed like a good place to start…

Rise of the Horde details the events prior to and leading up to the Horde invading Azeroth. The book is chronicled by Thrall as a history for all races, not just Orcs, in hopes that the horrible events that occurred may not be forgotten and avoided in the future.

Each chapter, except the Prologue, begins with Thrall’s writing. He sets the tone of the chapter by commenting vaguely on what’s to follow based on his knowledge of the stories told him by Drek’Thar. The chapters themselves are told from the perspective of Durotan, father of Thrall, and leader of the Frostwolf Clan; well, leader after he grows up and his father passes. At the beginning of the book Durotan hasn’t even gone through his rite of passage yet.

The story tells of a simpler time when the orcs were much more like the Tauren are viewed. Simple beings living in harmony with nature. They were a scattered collection of clans living off the land, hunting and gathering. The orcs revered their ancestors and the shaman are able to communicate with them. All of this would have remained for generations to come if the Draenei had not entered their world.

The Draenei*, the “exiled ones”, led by Velen the Prophet, had come to the Orcs’ world a couple of hundred years ago after having fled their own planet millennia ago. Having encountered the being Sargeras, the Eredar leaders Velen, Kil’jaeden, and Archimonde are offered great power and knowledge in exchange for their loyalty and that of their peoples. Velen sees what loyalty to Sargeras really means and encounters another being K’ure, a Naaru, who offers to help Velen and those loyal to him a chance to escape Sargeras. Their escape leads to countless worlds and eventually to the orcs.

A chance encounter between ogres and a young Durotan and Orgrim Doomhammer of the Blackrock Clan, lead to rescue by the Draenei and a meeting with Velen. Unbeknownst to any of them, that meeting leads to the destruction and ultimate salvation of the Draenei on the Orcs’ world the Draenei have named Draenor.

As the two young Orcs grow older, their friendship remains providing support to each other during the tumultuous times ahead. Ner’zhul, the Orc shaman of the Blackrock Clan, encounters Kil’jaeden, who in his fury has pursued Velen with a vengeance. Seeing an opportunity to utilize the Orcs in his mad quest to destroy Velen and the remaining Draenei, Kil’jaeden entices Ner’zhul with power.

Ner’zhul, blinded by Kil’jaeden’s offer, falls victim to Kil’jaeden’s lies about the Draenei. Ner’zhul brings the various Orc clans together and creates The Horde! By the time he realizes he’s been duped, it is too late and he is betrayed by his apprentice Gul’dan. Gul’dan’s treachery further leads the Orcs down the path to enslavement.

The book ends with the completion of The Dark Portal and the entrance of the Orcs into Azeroth.

So what’s great about this book?

What’s really starting to get to me is how these books and the lore behind it all really ties World of Warcraft together. I for one never really understood where the Orcs came from. I knew the names like Ner’zhul, Gul’dan, and Orgrim, but knew little more than Ner’zhul eventually becomes the Lich King.

I was also surprised to discover that Archimonde and Kil’jaeden were Eredar. I knew those names from Burning Crusade, but didn’t realize that the same thing that had happened to the Orcs had happened to them as well. This gives the Draenei a little more of a solid place in the game for me than previously. They always seemed to me to be too much of a sci-fi space thing going on rather than what I felt was appropriate for a fantasy genre.

After reading this book and seeing how Outland really used to be, as opposed to how we see it in the game, gives me a new appreciation for that old setting. I also now know what the hell Oshu’gun is. Seriously? A giant shiny crystal mountain in the middle of Nagrand? WTH is that all about?! Well, now I know.

And having encountered Sargeras in the briefest of ways has led me to find out a little bit about him. Like he’s one of the titans, but due to some issues he couldn’t quite grasp, he became disillusioned and rather than defend creation as he was supposed to do he changed and decided to destroy it all. Although I haven’t researched it much, just knowing that Sargeras was a Titan and responsible for the Burning Legion, which in turn is responsible for the Horde, helps in tying the Titans, Ulduar, and most of Storm Peaks making the game a little more fun.

So now I’m just trying to decide, which book next?

*The Draenei are actually of the race Eredar as was Kil’jaeden and Archimonde before allowing themselves to be enslaved by Sargeras.

Google Reader is a godsend at times. I get to read all the posts out there without having to actually click to every site, which with the 100+ blogs out there that I’m currently following can get rather cumbersome. The disadvantage is that I do most of my reading during my breaks at work. I think a lot of us do. When we’re at home, we play!

The problem with reading a lot of blogs at work is a lot of the sites are blocked and I can’t comment. For example, even though I’m not really much of a mage, I love reading Gnomer’s blog, but it’s always blocked. So let me just say his post today had me laughing quite a bit!

Anyway, back to the real meat of this post. Spinks has an excellent post. And it instantly made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of that?

Here’s what grabbed me:

…WoW at the moment is only as good as its last patch.

We as a society are pretty in the moment as it is. WoW’s no different. Remember how Obama was going to change the world? Seems to me like he’s hiding in the background now and all I hear is how disappointing he is as a President as he hasn’t lived up to his promises. How fickle we can be.

But how true is this? We were all excited when Wrath hit! The quests are awesome! Everything was so new! Now everything seems dull and boring.

This current patch is simply not compelling and I’ve run out of goals.

Huh. Not compelling. An even better way to put it. I’ve rather had the impression that it was a good patch, with a generally good instance, but I focused on the gear progression issue and that’s what broke it for me. But thinking about it, Spinks is right. It’s simply not compelling.

Which leads to…

…many people who played since the beginning of Wrath are now out of in-game goals and bored of the year old gameplay…Any subscription game needs to keep offering players a mixture of short, medium, and longterm goals to keep their interest in maintaining a relationship with that game.

I was once an achievement whore. Oh yeah! I loved playing to get those achievements. Granted I wasn’t focused on each and every one, but I selected several I wanted and got them. I stopped pursuing them months ago, but I passed the 6000 point a few weeks back.

The point is I had goals. I got my Salty title. I worked hard on getting the rat and turtle, and yet they still elude me. Shazbot!

On the plus side, I was on my paladin last night making enchants for my shaman when my addon went off that Putridus was around. So I hightailed it out of Dalaran with at least one Horde obviously doing the same. When he saw I was looking too he took off in the other direction, but fortunately I got to him first and was able to kill him by myself. So 8 down and idk how many more to go!

And finally…

The reason this has become more of an issue now in Warcraft is that Wrath heralded a new era of accessibility for the game. And that meant fewer long term goals, and a shift in perspective for raid goals. For example, if your goal is to kill the last boss of a raid instance, you can now decide whether killing it on normal mode (possibly in a PUG) will satisfy the sightseeing instinct. Is it worth the extra hassle of finding a raid group just to get the boss on hard mode? A lot of people don’t find that as compelling a prospect as when it was the only way to see that boss die at all.

I think that’s my problem. I love how raiding is more accessible. But the way it’s being done has disrupted my long term goals; the primary goal being to experience all the raids and down all the bosses. Hard modes are extras. If I can do them I would like to experience them, but I definitely won’t kill myself over them.

Finding Goals Again

Monday night we had to deal with the download boss. I logged in to WoW a couple of hours before the hotfix was available so didn’t have to deal with it, but while we were waiting for others to do so in the middle of our raid, I was curious how many JC tokens I had. So I went searching and lo and behold! Wouldn’t you know?! I had 106 Triumph emblems*…

Yeah, I got a little shit from the others as you can imagine.

I’ve been hoarding a few** items in my bags that I’ve gotten from Ulduar and ToC10. But I really didn’t want to break my T7 4-piece bonus so I’ve waited and waited. Well I had one trophy as well so I finally sat down and tried to figure out what I should buy. After nearly two hours I figured it out and got it done. Sorta.

I have 60+ Conquest emblems as well and I was too tired at that point to do anything about it.

The point is I had a lot of fun doing that. I miss that. I got talking with Mach last night and I think I realized I stopped doing gear paths when Ulduar hit. The upgrades felt too much like sidegrades to me so I didn’t worry about it. I was only worried about finishing Ulduar.

But I find that I miss having those gear goals. I’ve let the whole issue ruin the game for me. It was my long term goal which I lost. And I think it’s also why I have been leveling 5 toons the past few weeks. It’s a goal that’s filling my need for long term goals which is why I think it’s the only thing I’ve been enjoying in the game lately.

My Goals

So in order to help me rejuvenate myself here are my new goals:

Short Term – by the end of the month

Farm Lower City rep. 5 more Shadow Lab runs and I’m done! FYI, prot soloing that takes a looooong time. But then again I think it was still faster than when I ran it at 80!

Medium Term – by the end of the year

Long Term – before Cataclysm

I may not hit all these goals. Some may shift from Short Term to Long Term and back again, but at least I’ll have something to move towards. Regardless of what your goals are, isn’t that the point of playing the game? Lose sight of that and the game is meaningless.

*I had 109 after Faction Champions when I got hit by the download boss and that was the end of the night for me.
**Try seven. I had two helms…

Please note that Oswalt is a paladin. I was in a VoA several weeks back and ran into this. For all you non-paladins, Pally Power is a definite must have addon that assists paladins in giving out buffs.

Be careful how you abbreviate “things”.

Well by now you all know that Amber’s our new GM. Mach did a wonderful job in my opinion, but I for one can more than sympathize with stepping down. Hell it had gotten so bad for me that I not only stepped down, but made the tough decision to leave friends behind and go to another server. But damn it! She’s already got me helping her clean out the bank…Mach never made me do crap!

So what did I do this weekend? Well, I leveled alts mostly. I was supposed to raid on Saturday, but personal things got in the way. My wife and I made the conscious decision to get rid of one of our cars a few months back. I only live 3 miles from work so it works out pretty well and saves some money. But at times it gets a little annoying.

On Saturday I had to take my oldest son to get his H1N1 vaccination. We waited outside in the cold for 1.5 hours. It wasn’t exactly fun, but I have to thank my kids for being so good about it.  To do that, I had to drop my wife off at work and pick her back up which conflicted with raid start. I thought I’d just be a little late, but it turned into more than that. We started Christmas shopping a little early this year.

My wife works at a department store, if they even use that term anymore. And we decided this year to buy a Wii. The store was having a buy 2 get 1 free on Wii games. So she got the Wii, games, and a couple of accessories for the family with her 10% discount. My son has been begging for a DS, but he’s 6 and still hasn’t done a great job of taking care of his toys and mine for that matter. At the end of the week there’s always a stack of games and DVDs in the living room and it often takes 30 minutes to find the cases and put them all away. Yeah, I’m not buying a $200 handheld toy for him to destroy…

Anyway that made for a late evening and we picked up G.I. Joe to boot and watched that when we got home. So Saturday became family night and I have to admit it was a lot of fun.

So mostly that left time for leveling alts which was a lot of fun. I know I’ve been rather negative about the end-game lately. We had an Ulduar10 hardmode run this week which was the most fun I’ve had in raiding for a long time. We didn’t complete any hardmodes, but we sure had a hell of a time trying! I think we would have had XT with a slightly different makeup and a couple of slightly more geared dps alts.

But in the meantime, leveling has been a huge blessing! I’m having a ton of fun with the rogue, hunter, and warrior. The warlock is a little boring still, but I seriously dislike dotting and wanding. If I do much more, I aggro and in the few cases where I don’t I end up running seriously low on mana and have to sit and eat/drink afterwards. Trying to keep the downtime to a minimum, so wanding it is. There has definitely got to be a better way, but I’m a noob and haven’t found it or found the motivation to really go and find it.

I will admit that the mage has gotten a little better since I’ve learned pyroblast! I can almost kill mobs my level before they reach me and anything 2 levels below is dead. I need to figure out a better cast sequence though. I’m basing it solely on cast times which has got to be the dumbest way of doing it.

Unfortunately I was ganked several times yesterday and I finally raged enough to park my DK in the zone. In fact, I ran around the zone for 15 minutes trying to find the four or five guys that had ganked me. I had even attempted to move into Stranglethorn Vale, but there were a couple of guys literally parked at Nesingwary’s camp waiting for Alliance lowbies. They stared at me for two minutes across the river before I finally gave up on them leaving.

Is it wrong that I want to level my rogue to 80 just so I can camp lowbies like Scrappie does in Redridge Mountains? You got a kid that apparently has been doing this since BC every weekend and most weekdays according to several people in the zone and through my own personal experiences. It’s a nice dream I suppose, but one I’m likely to never do. Man sometimes I wish I was more of an ass*!

*In all honesty, it’s probably less of being an actual ass than just a different method of playing. But it’s less fun to bitch about!

I wasn’t going to comment on this because everybody and their dead ancestors already have (Merlot has a great one btw), but unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days you are well aware that Blizzard now has two new pets for offer for the small sum of $10 each.

As we’ve seen it’s caused quite a stir as predictions of doom and gloom abound. Blizzard has gone the way of the microtransaction. Soon we’ll all be able to buy gear with real money instead of having to farm away in-game. No more grinding Naxx, Ulduar, and ToC for those shiny purples! No more farming heroics to buy emblem gear! Just whip out your credit card and deck out your new level 80 for raiding Icecrown in 5 minutes!

Bullshit.

The game, like any other, revolves around progression. You create a character, you log in, and you begin progressing.

Oooh! I’m level 2! I got a new ability! What’s it do?

Awesome! I’m level 40, I can start wearing plate!

Only 5 more pets and I get my achievement!

I know that spirit beast is here somewhere. If he’d just spawn…

<pant, pant>…Only 5 more laps around Dalaran…<pant>…I will fit into those jeans again, I swear it!!!

Whatever you’re after, whatever you’re doing, you are attempting to progress in something. Otherwise what’s the point of playing?

So my prediction is that yes, we will see Blizzard introduce more microtransaction items into the game; pets, mounts, and other vanity items will be all up for grabs. Just like race changes, faction changes, and server transfers these little transactions will have absolutely no effect on gameplay. We will NOT see items for sale that have an impact on PvE or PvP gameplay.

Have you ever played a game and used an invincibility cheat or an unlimited ammo cheat with an extremely powerful weapon? What happens? Oh sure, it’s a ton of fun initially being able to beat all those hard areas that you couldn’t before, but do that for a few minutes, a few hours, or possibly even a few days and the game becomes boring. There’s no challenge. So what’s the point?

If I’m wrong, then this game will become so pointless that this paladin will sadly hang up his mace.

Just ran across this post over at MMO Champion. For those of you that can’t access it at work, etc. Here’s the part that’s interesting.

Icecrown Raid Difficulty Functionality
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)

In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance’s difficulty setting on a boss per boss basis. The way the raid leader chooses to switch is the same as now, by right-clicking on the character portrait. The difficulty settings can be changed from inside Icecrown Citadel, with some restrictions. For example, you cannot change the difficulty in combat or during certain events specified by our design team. To enable the ability to change the raid difficulty to heroic, you must first defeat the Lich King on normal mode, as doing so unlocks the heroic version of this raid instance. There is no heroic version of trash; meaning changing the difficulty will only affect boss difficulty.

We chose this particular functionality because we didn’t want to use the Trial of the Crusader method, and have four versions on a raid of this size. We felt the Ulduar method of having to know a certain trick to do on the boss was difficult to communicate and tied too heavily to achievements. We might eventually convert Trial of the Crusader over to this new system but Ulduar and Naxxramas will likely never change.

Not that it’s really all that important, but I think I’m confusing myself a little. With the release of Arenafest, we saw the introduction of heroic raids. If you recall, before 3.2 we had always assumed that the 25-man versions of raids were the heroic raids. Trashlessfest changed all that for us. We were given 10- and 25- man regular raids and heroic versions to boot. It appeared that this was going to be the new system going forward. Some believed it was Blizzard’s way of copping out on new content. Instead of giving actual new content, just release something and give it three other versions to tide us over.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Snoozefest, but that’s because it doesn’t feel like an instance to me and in general it’s easier than Ulduar which is more of a personal dislike of the progression rather than anything really important. My brain tells me that content should get harder as you move on. It didn’t, at least not in the way I thought it would. Remember, I still haven’t experienced heroic ToC, or ToGC, or whatever the hell you kids are calling it these days. I bet I’d have a shitload of fun in there!

But I still have fun in regular 10- and 25-man ToCs because it’s still challenging. Well, maybe not 10s so much, but we still haven’t cleared 25s and still wipe on every boss at times. I like that. Some don’t. They feel we should already have it down pat and get pissed off when we wipe. Me? I’m playing a game I really enjoy with people I really enjoy. I don’t need anything more.

Anyway let’s abandon Mr. Sidetracked here and get back to the topic at hand. Bear with me as I try to piece this together while clearing cobwebs out of my brain.

“In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance’s difficulty setting on a boss per boss basis.”

• So we will still have 10- and 25-man heroic versions of each of the bosses.
• Since they can be changed on the fly, we will not have a regular and heroic version of each instance. This means there’s only 2 versions of the instance instead of 4 like Lootfest.
• Ultimately this appears to be similar to the hard-mode mechanics of Ulduar except it’s automatically selected instead of sometimes having to do something special.

So how do I feel about this? Actually it’s kind of neat. How many bosses does Icecrown have? Wasn’t there 31 announced? But I think some of those included the 5-man instances as well, but still it’s gotta be a lot. Can you imagine trying to run both versions in the same week? LOL!

I also find it interesting that Bornakk states “we didn’t want to use the Trial of the Crusader method, and have four versions on a raid of this size” and further that they “might eventually convert Trial of the Crusader over to this new system”.

I’m not a big fan of the multiple versions, but I don’t know that I can say it was broken. But does this mean that Blizzard is saying that their switch to the 4 raid versions didn’t work or was just impractical? And what does this mean for future small raids like ToC and Ony?

I’ve really got altitis right now. If you’ll notice on my sidebar, all of my alts at this time are currently at least level 30, except the mage.

Try as I might to love the Mage, I just can’t. I was leveling frost spec until last night. It’s boring!!! So when I hit 24, I switched to fire to change things up. Problem is it’s still the same at level 24. Boring! There is a good chance that I’m dysfunctional and don’t know what the hell I’m doing… Frostbolt, Arcane Missiles, Fire Blast, Ice Whatchamafreezethemob*, run away or Blink, and continue blasting until dead. At least fire spec changed it up a bit so instead of Arcane Missiles I was using a lot more fire spells for the hell of it. Saw a little faster damage, but overall still boring.

The Warlock finally got a little play time and to be honest, it isn’t as much fun as it once was. My little tank fiend is getting better at holding aggro, but I still often have to just dot the mob and wand away. Pretty boring. I was finally able to practice aoe’ing a little bit though since I’ve noticed his threat has jumped significantly in the last few levels. But it’s somewhat difficult to do still since I end up aggro’ing extra mobs and even when I do survive the downtime of getting mana back sucks. Then again, I could totally be doing it wrong and I’m just one of those noobs.

The Hunter is fun. I tamed a raptor in Wetlands the other day to see what that was like compared to the bear. Works pretty well! Mana is an issue though. Seems like I always run out way too fast so I usually end up hitting a mob with poison and then auto-shooting. Not sure why that’s more fun than wanding with a warlock, but it is. Maybe it’s the sound of the gunshot?

The Warrior is surprisingly fun! More so than I thought it would be. It used to actually be the one class I disliked above all others, but it’s definitely picked up some. Especially now with dual-wield I can generate enough rage to keep going. And I can even hit multiple mobs with little downtime.

The Rogue is fun. I never thought it would be. I’ve tried leveling them in the past, but I never could get past about level 15. The combo point mechanic was just too weird for me, but after having leveled a druid it definitely is a lot easier to understand and stealthing is always fun. I’m also motivated by the potential of pvp’ing with the rogue. There’s some definite sense of satisfaction about sneaking up on an enemy and hitting him while he’s trying to cap something.

I am ashamed to admit that I did gank someone last week. I was level 28 and snuck up behind a level 29 Horde paladin near Southshore. She was leveling near Southshore and I stealthed with the intent to move to another area when the bright idea hit me to see what all the fuss was about:

You know. That paladin probably wouldn’t hesitate to gank you. You haven’t yet run across a single Hordie on this server that hasn’t at least tried to kill you if they were anywhere close to your level or much higher.

Yeah, but I don’t play that way. I have nothing to prove by being able to kill someone. At least not outside arenas and battlegrounds. It’s why I never accept duel requests.

You don’t accept duel requests because you suck at PvP!!! Besides she’s one level higher than you! It’s basically equal footing. It’s not like you’re 10 levels higher which would prove nothing more than you’re an ass!

I got better things to do, like questing.

Come on! Just try it! First, you’re dying to see it from a rogue’s point of view and second, you’re curious as to why people do this. Try it! You may find out why the average rogue is such an ass!

Fine. Let’s see what happens.

Anyway, all I proved is that when you engage someone while they’re already in combat with mobs, you generally have the upper hand. I did feel somewhat guilty after the fact because this isn’t how I play. I did however try to console my guilt by saying that this person probably ganked me on her main at some point.

But why the sudden altitis this past month?

I’ve been debating for about a week whether to bring this topic to light. In fact, I hinted at it recently. Then Amber, Rivs, and Cel all hinted at it too so what the hell.

Bottom line, I’m tired of raiding because of attitude. It’s negative. We all know I don’t care about loot. I have sufficient for the content we’re doing. I’ll get sufficient for the content we’ll end up doing. I’m not worried. It’s the fact that raids are no longer fun.

To be fair to all, I must point out that I have little to no detail in some areas and am guessing at others. Bottom line it appears that illness and real life issues have cropped up in the background. The added stress has not helped the raid leaders and complaints in guild, raid, healer, and officer channels have brought a couple of people to the breaking point where tempers flare.

Whatever the causes it has finally been acknowledge by our officers. We had a brief meeting after our so-called “fail raid”.  We will be working on it further so that even if our raids are still “fail” in the sense of difficulty on bosses, they will not be “fail” in the sense of fun.

P.S. Mach, I really miss this…

P.S.S. To the rest of you, we were having a little trouble with this fight way back when. Amber abused Raid Warning while Mach calmly explained the fight in Vent. Now one might find that distracting and annoying while an explanation is going on and perhaps it is, especially by someone not as entertaining as Amber, but I think the added effect was it made the raid a little more fun.

Now I don’t have a recording of her in Vent, although I should probably start doing that, but Amber is also very good at voicing things in a certain way. Her tone doesn’t carry the harsh accusatory tone you often hear in pugs. I’ve heard her get that motherly tone in her voice where she starts to speak softly when she says something like “Ky, dear. You have to stay out of the fire. Standing in fire is bad, mkay?” If most of us tried to say something like that, it would come off as condescending. Perhaps some people think she is, but I for one find she’s not and it’s a lot easier to accept her comments as constructive criticism than accepting someone yelling ”Ky! Stay out of the fucking fire!”

As an officer, and more importantly as a raider, it’s my responsibility to help out the raid leaders in whatever capacity I can. They aren’t getting paid to provide me entertainment. What they do can be very difficult and like I said I’m no good at it and don’t want to be. I’d rather someone else lead the way and I’ll enjoy the ride.

So basically I just need to help out by being a little more positive. Maybe that attitude can be contagious.

So in the interest of being positive about negative things, have fun with this.

Man I miss his show!

*You have to give me credit for even remembering the names of the first three spells. I can’t ever remember the names of my healing spells!

FYI, my traffic has increased quite a bit over the year and comments have increased by quite a bit as well. Unfortunately, this means that spammers are also getting smarter at getting around the built-in Akismet spam filter.

For those of you with blogs, you’re probably seeing smarter comments being left with the actual links in their names instead of in the comments. Although I still laugh at all the ones that say “this is a great forum. hope to really contribute and get to know you all.”

I’m not one for deleting comments. If you troll me, disagree with me, etc. I will not delete your comment given that it pertains to whatever the post is about. I do reserve the right to delete or edit comments that attack other commentors. Blast me all you want, all I ask is you treat others in a respectful manner.

Now with all that said let me point out this hasn’t been an issue on this blog thankfully. However, because the spammers are getting better and starting to sound more like legitimate commentors, I apologize to you in advance if I accidentally delete a legitimate comment.

I just deleted one that looked legit, but the name was linked to something I wasn’t sure was. So I Google’d it and the short description was definitely odd. Not scary odd, but odd enough that I deleted it.

Mortigan started this and he’s wrong. No, not just that he’s Undead, which is wrong on a whole other level, but that he’s just wrong.

Amber picked up on it and bless her heart, try as she might, she’s wrong too!

Wipe #1
Cause of Wipe: The Tank just sucks.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Heirloom gear has spoiled the leveling game where people are supposed to learn their classes, but everyone avoids the instances now. The debacle that passes for gear progression in end-game is such a mess that again everyone avoids the earlier raids and is ill-prepared to tank current content.
Possible Solutions: Remove heirloom gear. Bring back gear progression.

Wipe #2
Cause of Wipe: The Tank dies.
Person to Blame: Blizzard. They nerfed our poor tanks. Probably due to some PvP imbalance which royally screwed tanks over.
Possible Solutions: QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #3
Cause of Wipe: Boss immediately ignores Tank and 1-shots the DPSers.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Again the tank nerf screwed them over and they can’t build/maintain threat. Also it’s probably patch/maintenance day and the encounter is bugged.
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #4
Cause of Wipe: The Healer dies.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. If a healer aggro’d, the encounter is glitched. Or possibly another version of Wipe #3
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #5
Cause of Wipe: The adds are killing everyone.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Again encounter is bugged and/or tanks can’t maintain aggro because of their nerfs.
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #6
Cause of Wipe: The DPS is too low, and the boss Enrages.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. They didn’t make the encounter easy enough to cater to the casuals.
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #7
Cause of Wipe: The Healer dies, even though you have a rocking Tank.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Again similar to Wipe #3 and #4.
Possible Solutions:  QQ on the public forums.

Wipe #8
Cause of Wipe:  People don’t know the fights.
Person to Blame:  Blizzard. Encounters are too easy so everyone feels they don’t have to research up on it OR encounters are so complicated that no one understands it anyway.
Possible Solutions: QQ on the public forums.

So who’s really to blame for all our problems?