The Next Expansion.

     We are now waiting on 5.4 to drop.  This means that the last major patch (to our knowledge) of the expansion will be out possibly as early as September, and probably by October or November at the latest with the speed the patches have been coming from Blizzard.

     Of course, this expansion has been, and will continue to be fun for a good while yet, I'm not calling in the doom bells on this.  From watching the trouble with Mission of Mercy, to the epic return of my friends in Bridgeburners, to all my long winded speeches about raiding in Fear Itself, you know, my guild, Mists has some great moments and memories for me.  However, we must start looking toward the next expansion, because we know that Blizzard is.

      Chances are that Blizzard will be announcing the next expansion at Blizzcon in November.  From there, if things are going the speed they are we can expect the next expansion to drop sometime in early 2014.  I would guess that if Blizzard keeps at the pace they are going that the aim would be before summer hits.   Heck, I will even make a guess, the next expansion will drop on May 13th.  Now it's in writing and we can all see how close I am.

    Of course traditionally it's been a nine months to a year after the last big patch before the next expansion has dropped.  I don't think Blizzard will stick to that this time.  I think they are too dependent on dropping another expansion quickly, and making it hit all the right notes to bring some of the players they have lost back.  They have maintained a breakneck pace of releasing content for Mists, so I am assuming they plan on keeping that momentum going.

     There are things I hope to see in the next expansion....

      New Class.  My hope for this would be the Demon Hunter.  It has long been in Wow's lore and would be awesome if implemented correctly.   They could even go pure dps on this one, with a melee spec, a ranged spec, and maybe some sort of caster spec.  I wouldn't mind them stealing a couple of things from Diablo's Demon hunter for this as well.  Plus, they could introduce one handed guns/crossbows and warglaves into the game with this...  Whatever they choose the next class will probably be a Mail armor wearer.  Other armor types have three classes.  Plate (Warrior, Pally, DK.)  Cloth (Priest, Mage, Warlock.) Leather (Monk, Rogue, Druid.) Mail (Hunter and Shaman.)

      New Character slot? This one I don't think will happen.  (I won't say it will never happen) With Virtual Realms opening up if you want more then 11 characters on your realm, you can just choose of the the realms connected to yours and have the same access you would if your rolled on your home realm.  The caveat to this being, that if you are on a high population realm, or one that isn't pulled into virtual realms as firmly it might limit your options a bit.

      New Race.  I am not sure we need a new race, but I am not sure they can pass on putting some more coolness into the game.  My guess on this varies, but if we go on another space adventure, like in Outlands, plan on the new race being demon/alien like.  If we go to the Emerald Dream or somewhere closer to home then it will be a local thing we have never seen, or they may roll something we have fought for years rolling into our ranks.  I.E.  If it's an underwater expansion (shudder, I love Vash'jir, but didn't make a point of going back after I left it) there might be a rogue group of Naga that join our factions. As it is, the races I'd like to see (but most probably won't) turn playable would be, Etherial, Naga, High Elf (for the alliance),, and Saurock/Jinyu.  NO MURLOCS!!!!  I am guessing if they do another race they will do them like the Panderan and they will be multi-factional.  Not only was that done well, but it cuts down on development time to only have to throw in one race.

      New Places.  This expansion we got Panderia.  Next expansion who knows?  There has been plenty of signs that we may be facing the burning legion again.  My guess is that we will avoid that direction though until Wow has about pushed it's life cycle to the end.  Eventually we will go after Sargeras, but I feel that is the big bad Blizzard will save until the end.  We may also end up facing off again Queen Azshara which would mean some under water work.  Of course with us still discovering things from the Cataclysm, we could go to Kul Tiras, see Jaina's family and find several new islands/areas that have popped up in the sea.  Tie in Zandalar, and maybe we can have a tropical expansion where we hop island to island.  I am just throwing this in, because everyone else says Space Adventure/Emerald dream.

      Level Cap.  Blizzard will add more levels.  Whether it's 5 or 10 remains to be seen, but I would put my money on 5.  I think there will be an item squish this time around and we will see all stats/ilevels bosses, npc's etc.. in the game get squished with us so we aren't tracking 1.5 mil dps by the end of next expansion.  With a squish they may go for 10 levels, but I wouldn't bet on it.

     Dance Studio.  MWha ha ha, lol, hee hee hee, ho, ho, ho, Mwha ha ha ha ha.  Needless to say at this point even if put in and done well, they would get nothing but mockery for it.

     New Talents system.  I hope not.

     Swimming mounts.  If we get our undersea expansion, I imagine we will have an array of Undersea mounts to collect.  Then again, Blizzard has said that if they could, they would go back and avoid putting flying mounts into the game.

Always nice to remember where we come from.

    And more....  What do you think the new expansion will have/be about.  What have I missed?  As a matter of fact comment on anything you think you can add to this and make it a discussion.  What do you think?

Dizzty

   

   

     

Heart of Fear update for 06/26/2013

    Yes, i'm busted, I created a youtube channel to put stuff on.  The good thing about this, is it gives me a media form on which people can mock my healing abilities, my voice etc..... bad side of things is right now I'm limited to 15 minutes of video per video.  So I will probably edit stuff down for time.  However as I have a system that I can now put videos up for you to watch, I am a little excited.  I may even start studying classes and doing simple guides for people in the guild to watch.  I am not expecting anything fantastic, but I will see what I can do.

(bit of the first half of our raid)

     Now, I haven't figured out how to get the other half of the vent conversations working yet, when I do it won't feel all one sided.  I may have to bring up my headset for recordings so you don't get as much background when I talk.  But enough about new features/toys.  Let's discuss last nights raid.

(and some of the second half)

    O.k.  So last night wasn't the amazing stomp fest that I was hoping, (as you can tell from the videos)  We managed to kill trash.. but the Emperess Shak'zeer stomped our faces.  To be fair, we did make some progress through out the night, but it's going to take some more work to get her down.  If we can manage a Jin'rokh kill and get our LFR's done weekly we will even out gear this fight quicker and just take her down much quicker.

     So, I ask everyone to study the fight, it is up on our guild website.  If we can just tighten up the amber traps on the add phase, we should be able to get this down quickly once we get that figured out.  The difference between having an add up after the boss re-emerges and having one dead is what will be the difference between a dead boss and a live one.

      We will get this, and we will get this soon.  We are still playing a little catch up from having attendance issues, but those will pass quickly enough.  Most of the people playing now have been playing with us on and off, and we should start gelling soon.  Couple of people (like me) have just class switched and are still figuring out the nuances of what we are playing.  As soon as we get more comfortably into a groove things will go faster.

I will hopefully have a new report, or something similar this weekend.  Remember, next weekend I won't be around as I will be chilling at Nerdtacular.com 

Dizzty

Jin'rokh is dead... poor Jin'rokh is dead.

     I have a happy announcement for everyone.

     Woot, da Woo!, Yes folks, after months of fighting attendance, and having some headache pains we have finally started into Throne of Thunder.  First boss is down, and we had some great progression during the night.  We went from wiping in the first few moments of the fight, to consistently progressing, to downing the boss with half an hour to spare.  The trash defeated us after that, and I called the raid about 10 minutes early when I realized that we wouldn't have a chance to get to Horridon.  I am in high spirits though, because we have started some current progression.

   Credit should go to those on the team last night.  Shaqia, Gwyndolynn, Laroth, Magilla, Scorpiack, Badwulf, Easybake (and her insane deeps, she gets an extra call out), Amelmi, Khallon, and Dizzty (me).  It was great work tonight, and I will soon have all the boss fights up on our website (fearitselfofzangarmarsh.enjin.com) and I look forward to pushing through the rest of the fights in Throne of Thunder.

    So I am sticking to the plan now, we are going to continue on Throne of Thunder on Tuesday nights, and Wednesday nights will be progression through the rest of HoF and ToES.  As soon as all those bosses have been downed, we will be ToT every night, all the time.  Well, at least two nights a week.  I may look at opening up and starting raids a tich bit earlier, or finding a way to get more time into ToT because the raid is big, and I want to make sure we have the time to progress.  It will also help because from what they have released on the Siege of Ogrimmar, it looks like there are going to be 14 bosses in there as well.

     But, big ups to the raid team, and I look forward to downing the empress tonight and moving on through ToES.  If we keep our momentum, I think we will be done with that tier completely in the next couple of weeks. I also am going to look for a recording program I like so I can start posting recordings of our raids where out members can watch them, and review.  I plan on having this up by next week, so if anyone has any they like to use, please leave what it is in the comment section.

(This song dedicated to Jin'rokh, and hey, Wolverine can sing!)

      And hey, if you find them wandering around Zangarmarsh, give the members of our raid team Big Ups for their hard work.

Dizzty.

State of your Class

   Believe it or not, there are people out there who have never rolled an alt.  Weird huh?

    Then you have people like me who have about 500 more alts then I have time to play, and occasionally you go hop on one to hide from the world, or have a little me time where you won't be bothered by people.  (Have I mentioned I can't wait until the appear offline option goes in someday for real ID)  It's not that I don't love people, and my friends it's just there are times when I don't want to have to say, "Umm.. no, I don't feel like it right now," because I feel I am letting others down when I say that.

      For those who play one class, and one class only? I am wondering why?  Why do you limit yourself to that one character?  I understand some people don't like change, and desire to perfect themselves in what they play... but I know I need to swap up speeds here and there.  I can't be a one toon player.

      I always have my main, don't get me wrong (whom recently changed, and will someday likely change again.) But I always have an alt i'm working on.  My priest has all his LFRs done for the week? Well then maybe I dust off my hunter and run a couple things, or try to get that gun from Kara for my transmog, once again.  I will continue to work on that hunter in my spare time for a week or three, and then suddenly my warlock will whisper to me, and I will switch up which alt gets my extra time again.

     I feel my Disc priest is strong on heals atm.  As he is my main, this makes me happy.  My Pally is solid on tanking, but Ret just seems middle of the road on dps.  None of my other characters are developed enough for me to give an opinion on how they feel.  However, I do want to get a ranged dps leveled and somewhat geared to step in if needed, as my shadow dps leaves something to be desired right now.  I still haven't a lot of practice at it, and as much as I should work on that half of my priest... I like the alt time.

     So, comment on how you are feeling about your class right now.  Is it the bees knees, or has blizzard left you in a mode of boredom/devastation?

Dizzty

   

   

This Week in Raiding 06/20/2013 Un'Sok Goes down.

We kicked some trash! Also, a couple of Bosses.

      I am very happy with this weeks progress, insanely happy.  My priest Dizzty did a decent job healing, which is still a point of worry for me, but Disc seems to be in my wheelhouse of things I can pull off, and I plan on sticking to it for a while.

     First of all, Tuesday was not a great raid day.  We made progression, and moved against the boss, but the same little thing kept killing us as the end of the fight.  We hit a wall about half way through the night and couldn't get the boss down below 20% or so without blowing ourselves up with the wind bombs.  I left Tuesday night feeling frustrated and ornery... which due to running around earlier in the day I was already ornery and hiding it through the raid.

      Last night my goal was just to take down Wind Lord Mel'jarak, my brother Matt (Shaqia) gets a big shout out from me for talking to one of the raiders who was having a lot of issues with the wind bombs and helping her out.  Gwyndolynn helped her out as well, and between their help and everything else we managed to one shot Wind Lord Mel'jarak last night.

     I was excited, and ready to push against Amber Shaper Un'Sok for the rest of the night.  However, my raid team completely smashed my expectations and we downed Un'Sok in a few tries.  That's right, two bosses down with time to spare!!!  We even smacked the Empress across the face a couple times and I anticipate her going down next week as soon as we get her add phase figured out.

     The Whole raid team deserves a shout out for a Job well done.  The raid was Dizzty (me), Gwyndolynn, Shaqia, Magilla, Laroth, Cuin, Amelmi, Easybake, Fantaa, and Scorpiak.  Everyone worked hard and we managed to push through.  This means a couple things.

    Next week, raiding will be different.  We are going to spend one night on Throne of Thunder and one on Heart of Fear.  We are going to start working through the old stuff one night a week until we finish up the Terrace of Eternal Spring, and the other night, we are into Throne of Thunder territory.  Once we have downed all the old bosses, we are going to be doing Throne full time.  This is the plan, and I'm excited to see it move forward.

     I think with some hard pushing and some luck, we maybe close to caught up when the Siege of Ogrimmar comes out in a few months, and hit that one hard.  We had a good run with Cataclysm where we caught up right before Dragon soul came out, and we managed to down Deathwing before the expansion ended.  Hopefully we will have similar luck.

     Here are two things I attribute to the success last night.  One the fact everyone worked hard and pushed to get things down, and two.  Everyone was on time and ready to go so we were able to maximize out time in raid.  We had a short break midway through, but most the two hours was time well spent.

(This video has nothing to do with this post or raid, I just have Imagine Dragons in my head.)

     On to next week now, we will see what it brings us!

Dizzty.

Dizzty in the Head

So, I am going a little crazy this week.


     For the near future, I may be declaring my new main as my priest Dizzty, So after almost 4 I won't be referring to myself in game as Lag.  As in all games, things happen.  Names change, and sometimes we adjust either due to circumstance or desire for something different, but I have a confession to make.

This image looks nothing like my priest, I just liked it

     I tried disc this weekend and I love it!!!!  Atonement healing FTW!!!!  Reward burning the enemy with holy power by healing your friends? Absolutely!!!!

     I am going to step into raid tonight as a Disc in our ten man for the first time, and I'm excited to see what happens.  Right now I am working on a crit build, and man, I am loving it so far.  The feeling of being able to heal and shield your party just by dpsing is awesome.  Having to guess and work around when you think damage is coming in, is cool in itself as well.  So we will see how raid goes tonight.  I hope well, because i've sunk a lot of gold into respeccing and regemming.

     Here is to hoping raid goes tonight as well.  We have 7 peeps signed up, and at least one other whom I can talk into coming.  Anything over that, we will see.

So lets get to raiding!

La... errr.... Dizzty

Virtually in a Realm

      So, looking at this virtual realm thing, now that I've read up on it, I feel I need to opine, much as I did when they announced Flex-raids coming up.

       Yeah, that is kinda how I felt when it was first announced.  Only, less chickness, more short fat dudish screaming... well you get it.

        Anyway, now that I've read a little more, I can tell you from the get go who is going to hate this idea with a passion.  Who is going to rail and scream and call Blizzard names.  Who is going to take up arms, troll forums, and make Blizzard's forum moderator's jobs hell for the next while.

       Everyone who hates cross zone realms (CRZs)

        Because really, this is the next step after CRZs.  This is them taking all the realms and combining them in a way where we get more population, more competition for mining nodes, more fighting people for quest objectives, and frankly all the downsides you get with CRZs.  Knowing I will have to listen to these people, is why I feel like screaming.

        Now to be fair, I have never personally had a problem with CRZs.  I have gone back leveled a couple characters since they were implemented and haven't had a ton of challenge with leveling professions as I go and keeping up.  As a matter of fact the biggest problems I had was that I stayed in zones long after quests had got green and gray because I leveled to quickly to not have to stop and grind for my professions.  That's ok, because that means I also hung in leveling areas long enough to get the whole story.  Even flying around Wrath areas like Sholazar Basin, I still had no more trouble farming ore then when I was a level 80 getting ready to fight the Lich King.  This doesn't mean I didn't have competition, I just don't think it was so bad that I felt like it took away from my gaming experience.  As a matter of fact, I enjoyed seeing other people playing in the areas I was in, and have enjoyed CRZs for the most part.

       Virtual Realms will take it a step further.  That means, my home realm Zangarmarsh will be combined with other realms.  I will still be Lag of Zangarmarsh, but if there is a Lag of (Insert realm name), we might end up playing together and our realms, or a number, will be listed like a surname for identification.  Not that it might not get confusing even with the surname type identifier.

      If you are on a virtual realm, that means you can join guilds, with any guild on your virtual realm.  You can mail between characters, you can do current raid content.  Essentially, it will behave like one giant realm where we share Auction Houses, Raids, etc...  And while this is good for low pop realms and will give people options there that don't involve paying to transfer to a more populated realm, I wonder how it will effect high population realms, or mid population realms like mine.   I think it's fair to question whether or not this is good for everybody, or if this is a band-aid fix for the low population realms, that is going to involve everyone who logs in.

     Now, I like the idea, that I may finally be able to level several horde characters that will benefit from my BOA items that are gathering dust in my bank.  As someone who has 8 out of 11 characters on my home realm at 85 or higher, most of these are going to waste, and I like leveling characters.  (Yes, I know I'm sick)
This means I might be able to build a support system horde side, like I have on my alliance side.  (The only professions I don't have leveled are leather working and skinning, and that will be fixed when/if I level my monk.)

     I also like the idea of having more accountability in the community.  One of the problems with LFR and random dungeons is that you can be a jerk and unless there is someone else in your realm thrown in with you there is no penalty for it.  However, if you end up with people in your community a lot more often then your reputation is more at stake.  There is more chance of someone you run with being able to call you out in a meaningful way.  They will be able to contact your guild officers or guild leader, possibly causing you to get kicked out of your guild.  If you keep up that behavior and get pushed out of enough guilds you will eventually lose your credibility and may even get yourself blacklisted on your realm.  Most guilds don't want people in them that get them constant mail and complaints.

     There is a lot still not set in stone on this, so if they make any more big announcements I will give my opinion.  Over all, I think this feature will be a good thing, but I think there is going to be a lot of heart ache over it.  What do you think?

Lag

This weeks non-existent raids! 06/13/2013

   So, I would love to tell you, that we all got together, marched in and cleared the rest of HoF this week.  That we left crushed Klaxxi twitching as far as the eye can see, and spent hours later cleaning their blood and body parts from our armor and weapons.

    Instead I have to tell the sad tale of two nights, where we didn't have enough people to raid.  4 people showed up to the first night, and then 6 to the next night.  Now, we had one member who left to take care of her family, and she will be gone for a few weeks, and our prayers go with her because it's going to be a hard time for her.  One other had a concert Tuesday night, and you can't plan on when who you want to see is coming in concert.  That is stuff I accept and even am happy to see the people on the team aren't putting Wow ahead of their life.

     Other people /shrug, we will see

      I did check my friends list, and I did see if anyone was on in Bridgeburners... in both cases I had no luck.  Bridgeburners were all in ToT Tuesday, and friends were otherwise occupied.

      Fortunately we have one member who logged in later last night, who is making a great return to the game. We also have had a small influx of people joining the guild recently.  Hopefully with that happening we will pick up, and even train and gear a couple more raiders.

     Here is the thing, I plan on being eternally optimistic.

      I am facing the reality my wife is gone from the game for a while.  (Her computer is dead for the moment, even if she had the play time.) My raid team is still having attendance issues, and the nerd I am I don't like hopping in and raiding with new people a good part of the time.

     Time wasn't wasted, we got a LFR in last night, and help a guildie with a quest, and also got a Nalak kill in.  So, last night was fine.  Tuesday night I just worked on an alt, so, I could argue that time was kinda wasted.. but you can never have too many alts.

     Back to the optimistic part... I plan on still building the raid team.  I plan on still scheduling raids and I plan on making this work.  Eventually we will be a full raid team again, and even if it takes until the next Xpack, we will get there.  By the way, any bets on what we are doing for the next Xpack?

     Anyway, I will blog later about other things I want to discuss.  Like virtual realms etc.. There has been a bunch this week, and I have not had the time to properly read up on it, so I won't opine.  Yet.

Sally forth, and next week, we shall squash some bugs

Lag

Blizzard announces Flexible raids.

     So, Wow Insider just ran and article where Blizzard announces flexible raids.  While it is too soon to know exactly what this will do to the game, one can guess.

     First of all my warrior Trisham from Aerie Peak says hi, why? Because she can.

     Now, on the face of things, Flexible raids seems like a good idea.  The difficulty is supposed to be in between LFR and 10 man normal.  Awesome features include the fact the raids can accommodate 10-15 people and will adjust the difficulty level appropriately.  This means, if you have two extra raiders one night, no problem, they don't have to sit out.  Having trouble getting through 10 man normal? Do flex-raid and get some gear.  If you don't want to have to roll against that other clothie on your raid team, no problem, the Flexible raid system uses the LFR loot system.  Are you afraid of getting locked out of a raid for the week, No problem, just life LFR, Flexible raid system has it's own cool down.

       See, on the surface I think it's a great idea, it's a way to work through fights as a guild, on an easier setting so you can see whats going on with the different fight.  It is another way to get geared up and ready to rock in the 10 man normal.  It may also be a chance to hop in with friends from another guild and have a night here and there where you play with friends you don't normally raid with, without loosing you save and chance to work with your guild on current content.

       There are a couple things that worry me about this though, 

       First of all, ilevel.  This is supposed to have a gear ilevel in between LFR and normal.  This means we may have a bigger spread in ilevels between raiding tiers.  That also means our ability to advance to the next raid tier will need bigger numbers.  Not only does this mean faster gear inflation, it means it will be harder to gear those alts up after they hit max level once you get to the second and third raid tiers of an expansion.  Blizzard has talked about a gear/numbers squish before, and heaven knows we are ever getting to the point where we will need one, and this may bring the need quicker.

       This may also feed player burn out.  There are those of you, who feel you need to do every daily, and every raid you can weekly to get geared and maximize your character.  That is all fine and good, but right now, if you do all the LFR's on a dps character you are looking at about 2 hours per LFR X 8 possible LFRs. (You can skip lower ones though, unless you like them for valor)  plus your normal raid times, which for the sake of argument we can say is 6 hours a week.  That means you may already be doing 22 hours a week give or take between queue times and getting through the stuff your doing now.  Adding another 4-6 hours of raiding on that is just going to push raider burn out into a higher degree.

      Alright, that is my take on it for now, let us see what happens when it's implemented.  Hopefully my fears are unfounded, and this adds more appeal to the game for everyone.

Lag.

Garalon got killed to death!

      O.k, I am excited.  And reasonably so.  For the first time in a couple months Fear Itself downed a new boss.   I know, some of you out there are like, "Garalon? We killed that MoFo months ago," and you may have, however, I think this is the start of the upswing that will take us away from the issues that have plagued our raid team the last few months.

     Garalon is down, and i'm keeping the save.  Hopefully we will get through HoF in the next week or two and get to work on Terrace of Endless Spring again.  At that point, I may do one time ToES, and one night Throne of Thunder.  I want to start hitting the Throne.

      Of course we aren't the only ones who have had a hard time this expansion. WotLK to MoP: A Trend Analysis of Raiding Difficulty.  This article on MMO Champion details the amount of Boss kills per raid tier, or more accurately, how many guild have beaten each boss per raid tier.  It is enlightening, and well worth reading.

      I am looking forward to getting caught up on content.  Last night showed me one thing, we went from pulling Garalon and dying horribly within moment, to downing the boss withing a couple of hours.  We even got to smack the next boss in the face once.  It was a good feeling though, seeing the group progress every pull, do a little better each time, and then finally kill the ugly A bug.

      I am still liking my heals at the moment.  I may swap to Disc eventually, but as my priest is going to have to get caught up on the legendary quest line, I am also going to have to dig into dailies etc.. because in order to have every advantage at the end of the day, I have to hit that, and hit it hard.  There is too much benefit to ignore the change to get an extra gem slot on your weapon etc... even after you have moved past the sha touched items.

     But the biggest Kudos goes to the people in that raid last night.  Magilla, Laroth, Gwyndolynn, Shaqia, Lotauna, Easybake, Cuin, Badwulf, and Scorpiak.  You all rocked it and make me proud to smash things with you.  Well, smash when i'm not healing anyway.

Lag

Wiping is O.k.... so grab some T.P...

      And a shout out to people in Russia!  Why, because apparently you guys have the second most views on this Blog.  Seriously, you beat Canada and Alaska! (O.k., I admit Alaska is part of the U.S.)

       Last night was good but rough.  We got off to a late start, between a couple peeps getting smacked with real life and other events we didn't get running until about half an hour after the raid was scheduled.  When we got running though, we one shot the first boss Imperial Vizier Zor'lock! (It sounds more impressive when you give his name and title)  The pull was good and smooth, everybody did their job, and we cheered his demise.

       I was happy in particular, because while my heals on my priest weren't spectacular... they were decent and I kept up for the most part.

        Little did I know Zor'lock was giggling as he died, for he knew what was going to happen next.

        We got beat down like hookers at a pimp convention.  O.k., it wasn't really that bad.

        The first pull actually went great, Blade Lord Ta'yak didn't seem any more difficult then normal, heals and dps were in place nicely, we got to the wind tunnel phase, most of us made it to the end, but when the winds shifted, we didn't swap quickly enough and he had about 3% life left when he enraged and destroyed the two tanks who were left standing.

       Not feeling too discouraged I complimented peeps on the feel of the pull and called for us to get back into the fray.

       Now, we have a running joke that Ghostcrawler Greg Street has bugged our vent.  When things start to go strange and wonky, we normally make comments about, "Man, Ghostcrawler must be listening in and playing with us tonight."  "Or crap, shut it, Ghostcrawler can here you!  Do you want him to screw with the boss?"  Yes folks, Ghostcrawler is our raids Boogey man.

       And if this was the case, man someone pissed in his cheerio's yesterday, because after that first pull, we had healers getting one shot even when everyone was stacked on the arrow.  You would throw a heal on a tank, see he was topped off, throw a heal on a dps, and realized in that split second the tank had been destroyed.  We had people get trapped behind balconies and tornadoes so they couldn't get to us when marked with an arrow.  In short, Murphy showed up and gave us a first hand demonstration on how his law works.

      To be honest, this was not how I wanted the night to go.  We had someone who has raided with us off and on for years, who may be quitting Wow for good when his time is up.  With that in mind, I wanted to march through a dungeon on squashed bugs, and give him a great high to end on, if this is the last time he ever raids with us.

     Instead we got the 3 stooges meet Abbot and Castello celebrity death match style.

     Here is the thing to remember though... wiping is not a bad thing.  It can be at times, but if every boss in this game went down quickly with little or no work, there would be no reason to raid.  If we didn't have nights where things went wrong, we wouldn't enjoy those nights when things click right into place and we rock through some encounters we have formally had a hard time with.

     The one thing I didn't hear last night, swearing, raider's giving up, and malcontent.

      I did get something shiny and new that I loved.... Squeeky toy aggro! It was amazingly funny because  raider A.  had a dog who was fighting with a squeeky toy.   When the sound went through vent,  raider B. was getting attacked by a dog who got excited when it heard the squeeking.  I now want to whisper raider A. on occasion, and say... "Alright, quickly, I think raider B is falling asleep, squeek that toy and squeek it now! Mwha ha ha ha ha"  I digress though....

      We were a team, and we were a team working on a fight that was beating us.  Now, part of that might be because we are rebuilding things, getting the feel for newer members of the team, along with people who have returned after a while out of game.  This may be the way of it.

     So we wipe, we wipe so we can appreciate the kill later.

Lag.

To all the Gnomes I've punted before....

Yup, I used and old, bad, horrible joke.

      I promise that I won't rant angrily like the post before.  I am pretty calm and relaxed, and fully caffeinated, as it should be.

      My priest has finally felt the victory of having the gear to break into Throne of Thunder LFRs.  However, being valor capped for the week already, I almost feel punished sneaking into those for gear.  Go figure.  Of course, since my brain can't sit still, my Death Knight Illyrea has been telling me she needs to be leveled too... jobs are never done.

      Today, as I put up the raids for the week, I think about whether or not people are going to show up.  Not only that, I think about people who have played this game with me, who aren't here anymore.  People who have not only raided with me in the past, but have disappeared off the face of Azeroth altogether.

      Now, everyone who has played this game for any length of time has had this happen.  I know there are people I should think about here, but I don't remember for whatever reason.  This game at it's height during Wrath had about 12 million subscribers, and it is now down to 8 million.  That is roughly 1/3 the population of this game that isn't playing now.

      And for those who say that means the game is dying... well we still have several times more players then any other MMO out there.  I believe the next runner up was SWOTOR, and they peeked below 2 million, and now have less then 1 million.  That is not the discussion I am giving here though.

     Sometimes when I do that first pull, I think of tanks who had stood in my place, dpsers who have had my back, etc...  I have been members of other guilds a long time ago.  I was in Midnight (Now gone), Guardians of Light (Not 100% on the name on that one) and a couple others I don't remember.  However, I know some of my real ID friends are from those guilds back in the day.  I now pretty much stick to my home guild Fear Itself, or on horde side, Mission of Mercy.

     Oh, and for the sake of it, I have and Illyrea in AIE on Earthen Ring, and Trisham in the Convert to raid guild on Aerie Peak.  These characters exist so I can step into chat etc... with these communities that have been built around podcasts I enjoy.  I don't know if I will ever max level them.  But every now and then I like  to hear the chatter from there two groups, which are massive guilds that only exists through add ons like Greenwall etc...

     So, simply put... before that next pull.  Before you run that next LFR, life you glass of Mt. Dew, (or the beverage of your choice, I also recommend Apple Beer)  and think about those whom you have played with that are no longer in game.

     And give a wicked grin for those who come back....