Butchered in Highmaul (Raid update week of 12/14/2014)

We have officially started raiding in Warlords.

     Tuesday we went in and tried Kargoth Bladefist.  Strangely, despite his name he seems to be a very violent fella.  It took us two or three tries, but he went down.  Honestly, I wasn't prepared for this, so we went forward into fights I had not looked up yet.  Next on our list we decided to try the Twin Ogron.  We got mushed, and then there was a DC from a healer.  Our night ended there.

      Wednesday we went in and started on the Twin Ogrons again.  This time after a couple of attempts they went down and we were able to chalk off two of the bosses on our first night of raiding.  We decided to try Brackenspore next, which we were making progress until we had another issue with DCing.  Deciding that we couldn't do this boss with two healers, we moved over to the Butcher.  We only managed a couple of attempts, but we got him down to 15%.  Very happy with our first week.  I'm also Dissapointed that the butcher wasn't a big pig demon.  (Diablo I-III have ruined me for villains named "The Butcher.")

      Still having issues with 2 things in raids.  One is DCing/ending early.  I know when I raid I plan on staying until the end of the 2 hours.  When someone has to leave it's not as big a deal with the flex system, but it can impact the raid if you are a tank or healer a lot more then if your are a DPS.  I know people have busy lives and it's a busy time a year, but I'm going to be a lot less happy come January if we have to swap out a major roll early.

      Second is timelyness.  Both nights we have started a half hour later or better.  That means there is a whole hour we have wasted, and I'm pretty sure, had we used that time, we could have killed the Butcher this week.  If not something else. I normally try to get invites and that rolling at 10 server, and when I have to hunt people down, or wait on people it bogs everything down.  Once again real life happens and I'm O.K. with that.  However, I want to make sure this is a week 1 trend and doesn't continue on.

       So far Highmaul seems good to me.  I ponder that if we have downed two out of seven bosses already, that it might be tuned a little easy, but at the same time I am hopeful we might down them all before Blackrock Foundry opens sometime in February.  (Blizzard hasn't said when yet)  It would be nice to be even with the raid content this time around and as more people get geared and hop in, I look forward to some pretty good progress.

      Warlords still seems to be fine.  Now that people have gotten gear Heroics seem alright to run, and I'm enjoying a few of them.  Hijacking a train in Grimrail Depot is just fun.  I have my Legendary ring to 680, and I'm working on the next part of the quest.  I am also determined to find all the treasures in Warlords now that I have bought the maps from the archaeology vendor in Ashran.

     I have also dipped into LFR.  It's not a bad pre-emptive gearing spot, as everything in it is insanely easy.  It does get kind of boring but as far as what it is intended for I'm with the group that thinks it's perfect.  If you are just in it to see the content and story and your not worried about raiding it's perfect.  I don't see myself running it once all my gear has hit that 640 spot, but until then it's a way to get some OK gear before I start getting raid drops.  I am happy that most of what I'm seeing in there is already lower geared then what I need.  Of course the legendary quest might have me running through there a bit for now.

     Next couple of weeks are holiday driven.  I only plan on raiding on Tuesdays for both weeks so it's important people are on time and ready to rock.  I would love to get a new boss down each night.

Lag/Lazyeye.

Invasive Gearing.

I think this is the easiest time I've had getting geared for raid.

         Seriously.  Between garrison raids, Apex crystals, heroics, and having a blacksmith on my garrison it hasn't been that hard to get to ilevel 632 where I'm sitting right now.  My Pally seems to be doing good dps and I'm feeling happy with him.  I have only finished two or three heroics and I'm doing fine and happy.

        Legendary ring is going to be my focus this week.  I still need to get a couple of bands to pop it up to the 680 ilevel.  This will also be my last week off as I'm going to throw us into the frying pan next week and start raiding.  Mwha ha ha.

      At this point only my hands and one trinket are not ilevel 630 or higher.  I still need a couple of enchants, but those are coming along and I will buy the ones my mage can't make by next week.  As much as I don't like the profession system this time round, I do have to mention that you can just pull your alts up and through to about halfway through Shadowmoon valley, and then have a decent profession base to work with.  My shaman has made the 640 neckpiece I'm wearing, and she is only level 91 as of yet.  I've had to mail her some ore, but I get so freaking much from my level 3 mine I normally have a ton to spare.

      Other then that, I can't say enough about doing the daily Apex crystal grind.  It normally takes an hour or so, even quicker if you get in a group. (Group finder list is great for this.)  But there are a ton of 630 pieces you can get in Ashran by trading in 4000, or 3000 of those crystals.  After you buy the piece you can even get the upgrade for even more Apex crystals... then there is yet another upgrade you can get for the piece for, you got it, even more Apex crystals.  You can through the apex grind get a bunch of gear up to the 665 (I may be off a little on that) ilevel pieces.  Basically, 3rd tier level purples for a little work.

     I can't say how much I love garrison invasions.  So far I've earned about one a week by doing my crystal dailies.  These are awesome because you can invite a couple of guildies in, go crazy blowing baddies up, and if you can get gold rating (which I have 2 out of 3 times) you get a bag with a chance at a purple in it.  I'm sporting a ilevel 645 helm from one of these.  Gold doesn't seem to hard to get either, as long as the people you invite in are consistent on blowing crap up, it's attainable.  Honestly the only time I didn't get it, I dc'd a couple times at the beginning of the fight and wasn't able to be there for a bit of it.  I am not sure if these adjust difficulty to the amount of people you have present or not, but there is no reason not to give a couple of guildies or friends a chance to get some gear.

     Level up your followers too, I haven't gotten any pieces worth replacing what I'm wearing yet, but the heroic mission you put them on can score you some ilevel 630 gear as well.  Don't just get one follower, but get a few up past ilevel 615, and then you can start getting stuffs there.

     Really, there is not much reason to not get your gear up past 630 to start raiding.  There are so many paths they have given us, including heroics, to get the stuff you need.  Heroics themselves seem a little tougher this time round.  As long as you pay attention though, it doesn't seem so bad.  I won't lie, I think Blizzard will give the heroics a nerf eventually, just ever so slightly.  I have a lot of groups just falling apart and not making the end.  Not because it can't be done, but because people are impatient and tend to jump ship after one wipe.  You get people constantly jumping in and out, and it makes life a bit harder.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on this week.

Lag/Lazyeye

Take a breath, It's not that bad.

Seriously, the freak outs are getting to me.

      So we are by my count about 3 weeks into this new expansion.  In that time we have had a rough launch, (Due to large amounts of people coming back and DDoS attacks) and several time when service had been disrupted as well.  Today, I imagine we will find out there was a whole new round of DDoS attacks because it was the opening day of the Highmaul raid.  Hackers aren't stupid, they target the times they know that the populations of different games are going to be on in force and excitement.  They get their kicks ruining the fun for other people.  Same reason Mac's don't tend to get viruses.  It's not that they aren't susceptible, it's the fact that hackers are going to focus a large group, and Mac users tend to be a minority.

       I will admit.  I am as frustrated as the next guy when I can't get on and play.  Sometimes, after a long day at work, I feed the kids and then look forward to that little bit of me time.  When I can't do that because authentication servers are having issues, well it can make me kinda grumpy.

     Or like tonight, I shrug and finish that book I've been meaning to finish while trying to log in.  Why? Because there are other things then World of Warcraft.

      Other then nights like this I am enjoying the new expansion still.  I am having connection issues when doing dungeons and group events that may make me swap ISP providers here soon.  But even there I am doing OK when I run, and I'm enjoying the new content.  Lazyeye, and Shimmer have both started their quests in Draenor, along with Leesill over on the horde side of Hellscream.  I'm not in a hurry to have a second level 100 toon, but I won't complain when it happens.

      My plan here is still to hold off raiding for another week or two.  I am about ready, and I know several people are, but I don't want to rush back into things quite yet.  I am enjoying my little break from such things and know it will be over soon enough.  When it's time to lock and load and blow stuff up I'll be happy to do so.  Until then, I enjoy the peace and quiet of just running around and exploring the new lands.

See you all in game soon.

Lag/Lazyeye

Questing for hats....

Yes, I won't be raiding for a month or two.  Yes my goal is still to keep posting.

      I have hit 100 in Draenor and I am loving the content.  So far I have loved the leveling content, the story lines, and the zones.  The aesthetics to the areas are wonderful and feel like they pull you into the world.  I can't say enough about how much I am loving this new expansion.

      Garrison's are fantastic.  I have a love hate relationship with my desire to go back and re-set up quests etc.. for my followers every time the button on my mini map dings and tells me that someone has finished their job.  My only problem is getting extra mats for professions does seem more like a requirement then a bonus at this point, and I will say more on that in a moment.  Most of it feels like you can set things and come back any time later, and your garrison will keep pumping out the love until it's time for you to come back.

     The stat squish, (as I said after fiddling around in the beta) doesn't feel limiting or like it has broken damage or anything else.  Mobs still die, dungeons feel accessible, and for the most part PVE feels pretty balanced to me.  (I am not a PVP fan, so you will have to get your opinion on that elsewhere)

     I do have a couple issues however.

     Professions feel limited to me so far.  With the mine, mining feels unnecessary, while Engineering feels like I can get recipes for stuff I just won't be able to make in any type of quick time frame.  In past expansions if I worked hard I could farm, earn and buy mats to get some nice toys within a week or so of hitting level cap.  This time around it took me a week to get my engineering goggles, and then after doing an evasion event via Easybake (Saberlynn) they were replaced by a superior headpiece.  I could grind up another week and a half and upgrade them, but it is annoying to have saved for them just to replace them so quickly.  You know, like with in a couple of hours....

     End game feels a little light, and that might just be after getting done with Pandaria, but there are only a couple of quests and dungeons it feels like at this point.  Yes, you can farm rep, and hunt rares as well.  I just think that while I don't want to see last expansions daily overload, a bit more might be nice to have to keep people with a focus in mind.

     Oh, and if you haven't watched the above video yet, you should.

     That is my quick snapshot of how things are feeling right now for me in the new expansion.  Next week, will have more I hope.

Lag/Lazyeye


   

Haven't seen this in forever.... (Raid update week of 11/09/2014)

    Yes, there we are... after years I now have a queue time to log in.  Kinda hurts a little.

     This week was rough.  Tuesday I spent 2 and 1/2 hours pugging trying to work up a save close to Garrosh so we could try and get some folks another shot at a leveling boa for their alts etc...  I managed to get to Nazgrim (Lame) Pug groups tend to stop for 10 minutes between bosses on average I'm learning and part of me died inside.  However, we picked up another save from someone in our raid and started a bit further at Spoils.  We had a rough night of it however, wiping on Thok a few times etc.. and just barely managed to get to Hellscream's door.  We decided to hit him Wednesday but the raid leader (me) had a judgement in error.

     I let the person who had the save swap toons after the first boss went down.  This meant if We had used my save we would have started on Immersius, and would have to fight all the way through Malkorak to get a shot at Garrosh.  On the other side the raider who swapped had swapped after spoils so we would have started on Thok, and had to fight through that again.  We opted to do Heroic ToES instead.  Sadly as we could only take ten at a time we decided to go in two groups.  Second group didn't make it far in before we ran out of time, and I'm hoping in a week or two to give them a shot at their "The Fearless" title.  Why? Because the guild is Fear Itself so it fits greatly.

     Now I would love to tell you the expansion launched yesterday, life was beautiful and everyone was happy.  I can't.  The launch was horrible, filled with latency issues, inability to log in, and wait times.  It made me want to punch something, to swear at Blizzard, to gnash my teeth in frustration, but really, Blizzard wasn't to blame.

     They were attacked by DDoS attacks on a major scale.  Everything we experienced was because a bunch of A-hole hackers decided to have some fun and ruin other peoples experience.  You can argue that some of the blame lies at Blizzards door for not anticipating something like this happening with enough preparations, but at the end of the day, it's the fault of those who illegally decided to flood the servers with false attempts to log in and ruin your day.

      If you want to real a little more (http://wow.joystiq.com/2014/11/14/warlords-of-draenors-launch-failure-and-where-responsibility-li/#continued) Adam Holisky at Wow Insider had this article on it.  But in short, we were on the receiving end of a bunch of douches who wanted to have some fun at others expenses.

     Now as I write this I'm hoping the servers come up soon enough for me to get a couple of quests in before work.  Probably won't, but I can hope.  If not I will have this evening to play.  I am sincerely hoping this unscheduled maintenance this morning weeds out most of the issues we are having.

     Then we can all have fun exploring a beautiful new Draenor.
Lag/Lazyeye

Blizzcon 2014. It's on.

Really not much Wow to talk about.

      Are you surprised? Well you shouldn't be.  With a week left before the next Xpack launches I doubt that blizzard had much to say.  I mean there were a couple of live blogs, I read through them.  Not much revealed there we haven't seen before.  As far as Blizzcon's go this one was kind of Wow light and for once I am glad I am not in a position to go.  As much as I love Blizzard, I would want to go to a Blizzcon where my favorite game was the focus.

      Not that there wasn't some focus.  There was a Warcraft movie panel with some cool art.  Depending on what you want to do, you can got to fightforthehorde.com or fightforthealliance.com and get signed up for news on the upcoming movie.  So far they sent some artwork for tablets, facebook, and/or computers.  I imagine as things move on they will have more stuff to promote what they are doing.

     The question then comes, what does this mean for the announcement of the next Wow expansion.  Traditionally this happens during Blizzcon, and Blizzcon, if it happens wont' be until another year from now.  Traditionally.  Does this mean we will be looking at two years of Warlords of Draenor?
Or the expansion being dropped within a couple months of being announced?

     The second is a thought I don't like.  Since I normally have to budget in two expansions, one for me and one for my wife, I like having some time to figure when to buy in.   I would rather have two years of Draenor, and have them spread the content out a little more efficiently.  If they had waited an extra month, month and a half for each major patch of Mists we wouldn't feel like we were in the middle of a downtime at this point.  (Not that I can say much since we only killed Garrosh a couple weeks ago.)  Dragon Soul was nicer to us as we had Deathwing on Farm for a couple months before Mists dropped.

      In my opinion if we are going to see the next expansion in a year Blizzard will have to make the announcement in July or August. at the latest.  The timing on this would have to be critical since if they make it too early, we are pushing through this expansion looking at what comes next and that doesn't feel good.  Too late and people are scrambling to get the resources to buy the new expansion if you have to budget like most of us.

     The other danger, and I can't remember where I read it, is the thought that if Blizzard cuts down the expansions to two raid tiers instead of the traditional three, topped with the price increase, people will start to complain they are getting less for paying more money.  I think after ten years of no price increase on the monthly subscription for us Americans, that ten dollars is not much to complain about.  I do think, looking at the fact that the price has increased elsewhere that eventually we will see our monthly subscriptions go up.  Not by much, but enough to drive some people off of the game.  Let's be honest.  If they raised the monthly subscription by one cent, people would yell foul and jump ship.
   
     There were some awesome things though, Overwatch looks cool.  I think this won't be the last IP we see Blizzard introduce in the next couple of years.  The best way for them to grow their business at this point I think is sideways into other area's they normally haven't touched.  And they are doing it.  Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone was only the beginning.  Overwatch won't be the last.  I expect to see a lot of cool new things coming from Blizzard.

That's it for now, see you in game.
Lag/Lazyeye

Heroic and Blizzcon.

Alright, here we go...

     It's been a busy couple of weeks....  And I admit to not having written this last week, partially in frustraition.

     Last week between Tuesday and Wednesday we managed to get to both Thok on regular and Heroic on Thok.  Sunday we snuck back in only to find that our Heroic save had been corrupted so that we had to start at the beginning, so we worked Garry on Regular.  And we died.  Sadly.

    Tuesday this week we went in knowing we would be working on regular as the same issue was still presenting with heroic.  We downed Garrosh for the second time on regular and then thanks to a guildy who had a heroic save on an alt we were able to fight Garry on Heroic.  We got him close but didn't quite kill him off.

    Wednesday we went in to try him again.  This time (after a rant from yours truly) we managed to down him in about an hour and called raid early.  Gratzy to all who were there.  We can say we downed Heroic Garrosh and now have shiny titles and better BOA's to level with.

   Of course the other big news is Blizzcon launching tomorrow.  I think the next expansion to Starcraft, and Hearthstone will be shown.  I would also not be surprised to see them show off something up and coming for Diablo III.  I am guessing we may get introduced to a new Blizzard project or two, and maybe Beta release plans for Heroes of the Storm.  What of World of Warcraft you ask?

     I have heard people wonder if they are going to announce the next expansion.  This would fit into their goal to release more content faster and keep pushing us along.  I honestly feel the opposite.  I hope they don't tell us the next expansion because it would feel strange to walk into Warlords knowing what was going to happen after from the get go.  I believe that would be a mistake that might make Warlords feel like something in between and not it's own expansion.  I am one of the few though that thinks that having an expansion about every other year is better then every year.  Truly part of it is budgeting with me.

     So, next week the question is what next? Do I just push an alt run through regular Siege to get more toons some heirlooms? Or do we try and work Heroic again?  Maybe we should go back and try to finish Throne of Thunder?  I haven't fully decided.  Honestly, part of me wants to start my short break from raiding early so I'm fresh and ready to start leveling on the 13th.

     Still not sure if I'm leveling Lag or Lazyeye though.... I'm not convinced we have a steady 2nd tank at this point.  We have had people step in, but no one who has been consistant on being there every time yet.  I don't want to level my hunter just to find that I have to power level Lag to raid....

That's it for this week.  See you on the 13th.

Lag/Lazyeye.