World of Warcraft Raid Leader of a very casual raid team talks and vents about life in World of Warcraft, and maybe a little bit of life outside of WoW.
I'm not sure this one was completely thought out. The sword and shield look awesome for Alliance, the staff and axe are nice for horde. I think all the items given look unique and are great tie ins for the movie. I'm not complaining about what is there in game.
I'm thinking about the things that aren't.
I feel that these were kind of limited. They are battle.net bound so you can mail them around. When the new transmog system goes live they will be accessible to all your characters at once who can equip them, and that to me is kind of the rub.
If you play a class on alliance that doesn't do one handed swords or shields, these are essentially useless to you. They look cool, but all they do is take up bank space. Rogues, Druids, Ret pallys, etc... have no use for these. If you play one character and don't like alts, this is pretty much a worthless promotion for you. Horde has similar issues as well. Very limited use with a one handed axe and a caster staff.
Now, let's be fair here. While I feel this promotion is limited in use, it is free. Simply log in during the promotion time and get the transmog items. So you aren't technically losing out on anything if you don't like the look of these, or you can't use them. I'm sure Blizzard could have done more, but that would take away from their time on designing items and features for the new expansion. So I'm split when it comes to the idea where they could have had more items to be more inclusive, but I'm not sure it would have been the best use of Blizzard's resources.
So I open the question, how do you all feel? Is this promotion too limited? Was it a waste of time in the first place? How could it be better implemented, or done differently? Is it even worth worrying about? I think the items look cool but are they worth the trouble? Am I just pointlessly rambling over something most don't care about?
So far, I've been enjoying it. Of course the first thing I did was roll a Demon Hunter to take a spin at how the class feels. I love this class.
The double jump is fantastic. Pair that with the ability to sprout wings and glide it's fun just to hop around as needed. I'm going to call it now. Blizzard is going to get hit with a top of people complaining about the Demon Hunter's double jump being an unfair advantage yada, yada. Of course, this will make Blizzard go one of two directions. They will either get rid of the double jump, or give everyone a double jump. I just hope the glide part stays unique. Anyone who wants to be able to glide can use toys or become an engineer.
Battle wise they feel O.k. The mechanics feel fun, but I don't feel it's completely unique. The building and release of a resource isn't something new, but the animations look cool. The double glaves as a weapon feel nice and manages not to look clunky, even though that was a distinct possibility.
The Demon hunter starting zone was fun as well. It was lovely with demons and a unique mount. I'm not going to spoil much in the way of story, but it was nice to see that not all elements of demon hunters where Illidan yes men and women. There are several names of the demon hunters that you will recognize, and you will continue to see those names through the entire beginning area and on until you get your class hall. I hope Blizzard does something so that moving beyond this expansion the familiar names are not lost. If the class hall moves on to the next expansion, or is revitalized it would be nice to continue to fight with the same army of people.
I don't know if I'm going to play much further, but I am planning on fiddling with some of the other starting experiences. I really don't like spoiling an expansion for myself, or doing so much that the expansion doesn't feel new and shiny when I play it. However, I do like to do a little spelunking and poking about. What I do play with, I will report on and let people know, without spoiling anything as much as possible.
That is my week. I'm going to try and log on a little more, give my friend Aaron a little more support if I have time for it. He needs some training so he's not a noob by Legion dang it. School does eat up a lot of my time, along with work with has had me working a little later than normal lately. Starting to feel the burn there, but there isn't much I can do about it. Between school and work i'm not home about 4 nights a week now, that is a lot more than I was missing at home a couple months ago. I'm alright with this for now, but if it doesn't change when I get back to my IT classes I may have to shift something.
Blizzard and Activision starting their own film and Television company. They are starting with a Skylanders T.V. show, and mention was made of a Call of Duty treatment. This is perfect as anyone who has seen Blizzard's cinematics has seen the awesome talent that Blizzard has hired on. I'm excited to see where they take this.
The Warcraft movie cinematic was released as well. I enjoyed it and I look forward to that movie more than I do Star Wars. I don't feel the trailer gave a ton away other than the idea of the main conflict. The few shots of Garona made me wish she looked a little more orc like, but really I had no complaints.
The opening Cinematic for Legion was released as well. I felt it was VERY Alliance heavy, and that is coming from someone who mainly plays Alliance. I thought the tone was interesting and I am wondering if they are foreshadowing Varian's doom, or if they are trying to fool us on the direction the expansion will go. The moment between Sylvanas and Varian before the fight breaks out was something I never thought I would see in a Warcraft game... and anything else I say will be way too spoiler filled for those who haven't watched it.
And here is where I get a little negative. They announced, last night actually, that Legion will be released on or before September 21, 2016.
Really Blizzard? You are focusing on getting content out quicker and it's likely to be well over a year of Hellfire Citadel? This is going to be a mistake on their part, and I would be surprised if there aren't folks at Blizzard working to make sure they beat that September deadline by a bit. If they wait that long, I am betting the subscribers who plan on returning will be less than if they dropped it in June, or so.
The honest part is that the date says BY. That means there is a chance that the expansion could drop well before September if things work out right. But with Blizzards standards of perfection and track record, if they do get the game out before September, I wouldn't bet on it being a lot sooner. They could prove me wrong here however.
Once again however, this wait could have been alleviated by one or two things.
Blizzard could have slowed down how quickly they released content by a little. I'm not saying a lot, but if each of the major patches had been delayed by an extra month or month and a half that could have bought Blizzard 3-5 less months of waiting for the next expansion. Yes, in reality we would have been waiting just as long, but it would feel as long since the last bit of content was much closer.
A third raid tier. I won't lie that I felt it was a mistake for Blizzard to up the price on expansions at the same time they released a two tier expansion. We had taken it for granted that the previous expansions from Wrath to Pandaria all had three raid tiers. Yes I know they were saying that the third raid tier was sacrificed for Garrisons, but had they done something, anything, to at least give us a midway raid that would have bought them more time as well. Instead if feels like we paid more for less content. That feeling is never good for a player. It probably won't cost Blizzard my subscription, but I'll be severely dissapointed if Legion only had two raid tiers. It's just not a direction I think Blizzard should go.
I'm sure there are other things I could think of. They could release a patch of just extended quests, make some timewalking raids available, etc... There are things they can, and may do to alleviate this time. However, remember. Anything Blizzard does at this time is essentially development time they are taking away from Legion, so it becomes a double edged sword if they throw a lot of resources our way to help get past this down time.
I'm honestly surprised they didn't offer another annual pass deal, because while I don't think this is by any means the death of wow, I thinks it's a major loss of revenue they could have had if things had been planned better. I honestly hope next time around they do figure this out. The less people playing World of Warcraft does effect the gaming experience, and I have a right to worry about the future of the game I love. But enough about that.
What has been your favorite bit of information dropped from Blizzcon so far?
Attendance one again down, through Saturday, and a little into Sunday we just went through and nuked Siege of Ogrimmar. I think at this point when we don't have the attendance we will start working old raids for mount achievements etc.... At this point there is no reason not to.
Then the next week, (yes I missed a week here) I forgot to post the raids, and attendance was low, probably because of that. We worked on ICC 25 (I got my achievement mount) and the next day we did heroic BOT and BRD. Some achievements where had, a couple missed. Next time will be better.
Now is the hard time. People are playing less and less, some because of real life obligations, others because it's hard to get the will to work on things in an expansion that is for all intents and purposes coming to a close. Attendance is going to be harder to gain, and so on.
So now is the time to level the alts if you have something different in mind for next expansion. It's time to play other games, be they Wildstar now that it's Free to Play, heroes of the Storm or whatnot. Now is the time to take a breath and not live in Azeroth full time.
But I would love you all to still show up for raid... hee hee.
To be honest, I will keep posting raid times whether or not people show. We can go work on old content mounts like I mentioned in the moments when not enough folks show. I do still want to work through Hellfire Citadel, and I think we can if we can get the attendance, but If people don't want to show I'll make other plans.
Let's be honest, we still probably have at least four to six months before the next expansion, we have time. But that only works if we use that time.
As for me, I plan on keeping my account active and dropping in when I have time. School has had a major effect on my play time and that's a good thing. I am doing well in school and I can't complain about the experience. I think it had been good for me, and in the long run it will provide some good opportunities. Not just for me, but for my family.
So, let's try to get this raid done. The little nerfs are coming through which will make things even easier. And if folks decide to keep not showing up, there is always next expansion.
Saturday was
interesting. We were short a couple
people so we went and stomped down Heroic Mogu’shan Vaults and Heart of Fear to
get our guild achievement for the mount.
It was nice laid back fun and if we are short again I am hoping to stomp
throne of Thunder in the same way next.
But hopefully next week we won’t be going to back to do old content.
Sunday was awesome. Pure, 100% awesome. Lag put his tank pants back on due to the sudden
departure of our off tank. Despite
having to kick the rust off my tank skills we ran pretty smooth. Once we were up and running we downed Gruul,
Hanz and Franz, and Beastlord with only one wipe between the fights. I found the groove I needed and we moved
through well.
Now, while I
would love to rant on having folks leave during a transition time. For example, like when we are swapping to
weekends and things might be rough getting schedules in place. I really want to
discuss garrisons and how I think this system will work in the next
expansion. (See, I’m being good and
moving on.)
Garrisons have
been the big feature of this expansion.
There is no way advancing in Draenor without building/maintaining one
and without getting to level 3 you won’t be able to experience then next big
bout of content. They have allowed us to
make stuff from any profession that we might need. They have made it so gathering (other than
leatherworking) can largely be done without going anywhere. The garrison had felt like your specific
place on Draenor, and it has pretty much destroyed the desire for most folks to
go out into the world.
I don’t believe
we will see garrisons like this again. I
think the ideas taken to the next expansion might include building your own
little quest hub, but won’t be as comprehensive. Allowing folks to make stuff from any
profession, gather, play the Auction House, and do pretty much everything in
one space has been detrimental. There is
a reason a lot of people are referring to this game as “World of Garrisons”
now.
There is no need
to go to a main city unless you are actually PVPing in Ashran. Other then maybe a weekly visit to get your
tokens for raiding. Every time I go I’m
lucky to see more than a handful of other players who are trying to get in and
out as quickly as possible. Gone are the
days of players hanging around showing off mounts, or just staying together in
a central location. For all the rage
that happened when Blizzard announced it would be moving the Capital Cities for
the factions before expansion launch it seems it didn’t matter what they did. We have abandoned the idea of a faction hub
where everyone hangs out.
I normally have
an alt with every profession leveled.
Garrisons have destroyed my need for that. Not only am I not leveling several alts like
I have in previous expansions, I haven’t felt the need too. I have no use for professions I can access if
I can just make items in garrison. On
top of that, I just don’t have it in me to level a bunch of alts if that means
I have to keep up with garrisons on them as well. With three level 100 characters it feels like
a big time sink right now. There is no
way I could keep up on garrisons on ten or twelve characters. It just feels impossible to do more with a
limited amount of time.
So, my guess is
that for the next expansion we will see things pulled back to somewhere between
the garrisons we have now, and the farm we had in Mists of Pandaria. I think we will still have something that we
can work with and build up, without it taking all desire to do other things in
the game away. The other thing I could
see happening is they could just do away with garrison/player housing
completely as Blizzard does have a tendency to overcorrect when something
doesn’t work. This would be a shame as I
do like the feeling my character has a little bit of something invested in the
current world.
So what we need
is an area where we can enhance our professions, without replacing them. Supplement our resources without replacing
the need to grind. Build and have
something that feels permanent without being tied down to the point where you
feel like not visiting several times a day puts you behind. I am not sure how they can pull this off, but
I like the idea of them doing some sort of guild housing, or maybe a keep that
is phased in a way that you see other players, but certain buildings look
different or change when you enter them.
How do you think
they can change garrisons for the next expansion, if they include them at all?
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.
Sunday, yes this one starts with Sunday raid night. Sunday can't say much really. A few of the main raid team couldn't make it because it wasn't a normal raid night, but we did manage to work on Garrosh for a couple of hours. We got to phase 2 a couple of times, but didn't really push him as far as we had previously. We will have to keep working....
Tuesday was patch 6.0 day. Everything changed. We still went in and raided even with a lot of mods not working and everyone in the midst of relearning their classes. I will say right now I didn't really feel the item squish. that much. Then numbers popping up of course were lower, but the bosses didn't seem to be going down any slower then normal and we managed to work our way past Galakras for the night. We only really wiped once, and that was on Galakras because the smash animation at the top of the tower had been updated and was harder to see. Then some tank ran up the other tower without his healer. How embarrassing. For myself.
Wednesday we picked up where we had finished. We managed to work our way through a bit more and found our way all the way through Spoils of Pandaria. Once again everything was pretty much a one shot (Save Malkorak who took us two shots) and we kept moving forward pretty well. I am of course saving our progress so we are now going to start on Thok next week. There is no reason we shouldn't get to Garrosh again and have the raid saved to him by the end of next Tuesday at this point.
So far nothing in 6.0 has surprised me. I am missing a few buttons, but I can live with that. I played through the pre-expansion quests, which were better then the Theromore scenario, but still pretty disappointing when you match them up against the pre-expansion events for Wrath and Cataclysm. I know the bigger the pre-patch stuff the less work is going into the actual expansion, but I still like a nice big meaty lead in. This just felt like, "Hey, do a handful of quests and smack some orcs. O.k, good, done, have a pet." I would have loved to have had to fly across Azeroth hunting down Iron Horde scouts or have to fight against the Blackrock to keep them from making a treaty with this "Iron Horde." It all feels very small and contained to me, and that is a little sad.
The one thing that has been wonderful has been all the people I have seen coming back with the new content. We have seen Khallon, Orheim, Kedec, Sylvanara, and several others who have re-appeared in time for the patch. I have heard of a few more who are thinking about coming back as well. Other players have re-appeared in guild but haven't blown stuff up with us again like Deathsprite and Easybake. I'm very happy to see the returning faces.
Well, that is this week and my quick impression of the patch. What has your experiences been? Are you enjoying the changes? How do you like the new character models? (I love them btw)
Tuesday we had some issues to start with. I was tanking, and while I do OK I haven't tanked enough consistently to be amazing at this point. Scorpy was on his tank as well since both folks who had been tanking weren't able to make raid. Once again, we found ourselves getting stomped out by Blackfuse. It wasn't any one thing either. Scorpy was learning the fight from the tanking side, we had a new belt person because he wasn't there to do belts, and a couple of folks we hadn't played with for a bit. The new dichotomy of the make up was what did us in as well as the learning points. We finally called the raid about twenty minutes early and gave up for the evening.
Wednesday was a little better. While it took us a few minutes to get the raid off the ground, we managed to kill Blackfuse in a handful of pulls and one shot Paragons. We managed a couple of attempts to punch Garrosh in the face, but at the end of the day ended with him still standing. Hope is not lost however.
Sunday night we have an extra raid posted this week. Now, I'm not sure this raid will even happen since a lot of folks have a hard time coming when the raids aren't scheduled, but we are going to try to get one last shot in before 6.0 drops and changes everything.
Speaking of change, there is one more change we have thrown into the works.
There is a new guild kicking around the Hellscream server! "Fear Itself!" That's right. Since Hellscream is connected to Zangarmarsh I decided to start a new chapter over there for folks who want to play around on Horde. Fear Itself was not taken as a guild name, so essentially we have an Alliance Fear Itself, and a Horde Fear Itself all on the same server. (leading to my ability to take such screen shots as the one above)
Now, for the record right now this new guild is just for hanging out, maybe leveling with some friends you already know, and experience the other half of content. I am not at this point planning on leading any raids over there as I just simply don't have the time. If someone when the guild is more established wants to do so I will give them my blessing and support, but I don't push for a second raid team anymore. It has never worked in the past and it's not worth the effort on my part at this time.
Also, as far as raiding In WoD, I plan on starting about a month after the expansion drops give or take a little. This will put us right in the middle of December, so it might not happen until Januaryish depending on schedules. That being said, I want to hop in the saddle and be moving before patch 6.1 comes out and brings us more big raidy stuff. With the way Blizzard released content in Mists, I'm afraid if we wait too long we will be way behind the curve.
We are hitting up against the dead line, but we are so bloody close!
Tuesday was another smooth start. We didn't one shot Blackfuse, but we downed him on the second go around. Paragons went down very quickly and we managed to get some time on Garrosh. It was only a couple of pulls and he ate our tanks (one of which was me) alive but we managed to punch him a couple of times.
Wednesday we had our dedicated Garrosh day. It took us a few minutes to get started but once we were rolling we made consistent progress. We managed to get to the point where we were burning through phase one quickly and were pushing through phase two. We still have a little work to go but I don't think we are far from getting to phase three a few times. Next week... well we will see.
With next week we are going to be short a couple of people. I still want to push and see if we can get the group to work on these fights but depending on who shows it might be rough. With Blizzard announcing that the PVP season is ending in a couple weeks (most likely on the 14th of October) that is likely patch day for 6.0. That means, yes I was wrong about when it was going to drop. I can own that. But it also means that next week will be our last chance to work on Garrosh pre-patch.
When the patch drops we aren't sure what will happen. Honestly every time a patch before an expansion has dropped before we have had a small boost to the power of our characters etc... so I'm not too worried. There is the chance however that we may go into Siege and find out that between the item squish and ability pruning we just aren't performing as well. Not because the stat squish is a nerf, but because we are not used to our rotations, or translating the damage we are putting out into levels we understand. Meaning, if I was pulling about 250k dps and now I'm pulling 2k. How does that translate? Am I doing better or worse? Honestly until I have seen how others are performing I won't be able to tell. Neither will anyone else.
I am also debating other things. One of the guilds I run with on the side has changed. When I joined it, it was family friendly clean chat etc... It still claims to be those things in the guild tab but running with them eventually (I am only occasionally over there) I was shocked to find the environment is now more adult suited from language to subject matter. This wouldn't bother me as much if I was expecting it, but as I wasn't it was more then a little disconcerting. I am probably going to sit on the decision for now, but next expansion I may be looking for a new home for a couple of Hordies. Heck, I may even just start a "Fear Itself" Guild on the Horde side of Zangarmarsh/Hellscream for folks to play in when they are feeling a little Hordie.
If someone from that guild reads this, understand. I am not calling you guys out, or being disparaging in anyway. Guilds and groups over time change. It is inevitable. The guild is just not feeling like a fit for me anymore, and that means it might be time to move on. If I do so I wish you all the best luck in the world, and hope everything continues to work out well for you.
Well, time to gird up and get ready for work. See ya'll on next week.
Lag/Lazyeye. (dropping my priest form the signature since he's just collecting dust now)
I know I haven't hidden it well, but I've been kind of ornery lately when I've written this. (Hey, it's almost like this blog is named well)
This week was pretty good. Tuesday we got in and after a bit of struggle we achieved our third Blackfuse kill in three weeks. It's still a little rough, but it's safe to say we have him on farm.. kinda. It was a different week for me as I ended up tanking instead of dpsing for the first time in a bit. Apparently I did OK since we downed the boss. We did have some low DPS but as we managed a kill I'm not complaining too loud.
Wednesday, I finally plunked down the gold to re-gem and reforge Lag over to a haste build for tanking, as I have been running mastery all expansion. I am not a fan of the thought process behind the haste build, but it seems to work well enough that I won't complain and I will even admit to being a little pig headed on this. We did start late, but managed to get Paragons down. That's right. We are down to just Garrosh and then we have finished Siege of Ogrimmar as a raid team. We even did a couple of quick attempts on old Gary Hellscream and it looks to be an interesting fight. I do have to give props to Moldivenom who has come back to us and who allowed us to finally run again on a Tuesday night.
This also means there is a chance again to get Garrosh down before 6.0 drops. That is assuming it doesn't drop this Tuesday. (I really debated putting up and extra raid night Sunday, but realized I would be out of town.) Next week the big goal in my head is to get Blackfuse and Paragons down on the first night and have all Wednesday to work on Garrosh. If we can do this, I think we may even have him down next week. At that point we will have to decide if we want to keep farming the last wing of SoO or take a trip back to Throne of Thunder to finish up that raid. I would love it if we have finished all the content before WoD drops.
There are other things that people need to scramble and do as well. The legendary cloak quest is going bye bye once WoD drops, if you haven't completed it. My understanding is once 6.0 is here no one will be able to pick up the quest if they aren't already on it. Once the next expansion hits us on Nov. 13th the cloak quest will be gone for good. I don't understand why they are removing the quest completely, but they are. I can tell you right now that there are still legendary items in the game that aren't hard to get if your very persistent. (Say, Sulfuros, or Thunderfury.) I managed to farm both of those in a manner of months with the right amount of luck.
Challenge mode dungeons, Brawler's guild, and the ahead of the curve achievement for Siege of Ogrimmar are all among the things that are disappearing once 6.0 walks out and slaps us in the face. Several other things are disappearing as well. Pretty much as a rule of thumb, if it felt temporary it's gone.
Soon we will have to re-learn our classes, get used to our new Character models, and start clearing out bags and finishing quests before we head into a completely new... umm... relatively... land. (Seriously, there are still a bunch of Orcs hanging around that probably remember out Outland 35 years ago....)
So, I know what i'm doing... (More time on alts) what are you trying to get done before 6.0 and WoD launches?
Tuesday was filled with a little disappointment and irritation on my part. We marched into Flex hoping to start on Paragons to find out that Flex runs can not be saved at this point. (Why Blizzard, why?) So it was back to our old nemesis Blackfuse. We did manage to kill the little green B........ again so not all was lost. By the time we downed him though it was too late to go on to Paragons. The best part? We will have to down him next week too. I am so not happy with this Blizzard....
Wednesday we didn't raid. Once again not enough folks showed up so we ended up running retro stuffs. Alas, no Ashes of Alar, or Onyxia's mount decided to drop but it was fun anyway. Once again if we don't have things drop I want to do something as a group, and retro raids seem where it's at right now.
At this point I am resigned to two things watching the trends. One, we will not be doing any real raiding on Thursday until Warlords drops. This is the third or fourth week in a row and the Masses have spoken. People don't care to show up on the second raid day at this point, so we have one night to push things. Two, because of point one, we will not be likely to get Garrosh down before 6.0 drops. After that point when the raid system is updated I imagine that we will be able to save our progress etc... but with only one night a week and the fact 6.0 has hit test realms, I don't think that the patch is more then two weeks out. Most of the abilities and changes in the patch were tested out on Beta, so I can't imagine it will need much time on the PTR.
I won't lie, I'm a little disappointed. I felt after last week and this week, (Two Blackfuse kills back to back make me very happy don't get me wrong) we might suddenly have a chance to get Gary Hellscream down before 6.0 dropped. Now, unless we get Blackfuse and Paragons down the first night next week, (which is possible) and then have people show up on Thursday to kill Garrosh I think there isn't much chance. Not that I don't have some faith in our raiders. But my DBM was counting about 68+ wipes on Blackfuse. Paragons I don't think will be as hard for us, but Garrosh. I don't think he's going down easy and I don't think from what I've seen historically much of the raid team will pre-watch study the fight. Sucks but there it is. I would love to be pleasantly surprised otherwise.
This brings us up to WoD. We are a month and a half away from the next expansion essentially. (OK, two months, so sue me) and I am not sure how things are going to look when we start raiding again. I want to start leveling my hunter first, as I am still enjoying using him as my main, but I have a feeling I will need to level a tank right off the bat. So Lag it will probably be. Hopefully I can get both characters leveled and ready to raid in a time frame that gives me the option for either with in the first little bit of raiding. We will see what happens though.
So, that is our week in a nutshell, what is your week looking like?
Tuesday, we marched in and took down Blackfuse in a little over an hour. I am very happy because while this isn't the first time we have beat him, it's the first time we have done so without a couple of extra heavy hitters. Now I know Flex compensates for extra players, but there is a difference between bringing in someone who does about 150k dps and a lock (al la Amelmi) who has topped the chart at 350k plus. The fact is everyone there where members that have normally been raiding with us. So when we downed Blackfuse we can say we did it under our own steam. That is a great feeling.
Wednesday once again was defeated by the attendance boss. We ended up destroying Tempest keep and Black Temple for fun instead. I'm not going to go over attendance, my feelings on this etc.. again. I have beat that particular horse into the group and I'm tired of rehashing it. I'm sure I'll discuss it again, but for now I'm resting that demon.
I am holding this save for now. We have another month, month and a half before 6.0 drops if Blizzard holds to it's normal schedule. I honestly think we will see it the last week of September, while Magilla was betting on the first week of October. I think if they are doing an in game event that any later then mid-October is going to be to late to give us any real time with the introduction to the new content. I am hoping for another pre-Wrath or pre-Cata type event. I still maintain it was a mistake to not do any more then a scenerio to open up Pandaria with. I think that the opening events to different expansions actually gives the players an attachment to the new happenings. How cool was the Zombie invasion before Wrath? Love or hate it people still remember that event for the city invasions, and the ability to jump around and defend different areas from the scourge invasion.
The lead into Cataclysm was good as well. While it didn't have the resonance of the zombie invasion, it was cool to go infiltrate the cult of the damned and work your way into the story before the world got shattered and Deathwing rose. While that expansion had it's issues, the story at least made you feel involved with everything that was happening.
If we keep playing we have several more expansions ahead of us. Blizzard had already stated they are working on the expansion that comes after Warlords of Draenor, and have up to five more after that in the works. So, for all those who think Wow is dying, be assured, there is a plan. Do I know if I'll be playing several expansions from now? No, I don't. In another ten years my youngest will be nineteen. I am fairly certain my life will be looking very different at that point in many wonderful ways. I won't be sad if I'm still a resident of Azeroth in my spare time, but if I'm not longer there that is just the way time works.
Wow, I walked off into a tangent.
Anyway, next week we will start on Paragons. I feel we have a good chance of downing them before the night is through. Then onto Garrosh. We will try and plant an axe into the face of good old Gary Hellscream. (Well, an arrow in my place) If things work out correctly we may have a chance of beating him before 6.0 drops. At this point I wasn't expecting to get him down this expansion. I am happy to have some of that hope back.
NSFW on this video.
So folks, sharpen your swords, shine your armor. Make sure your mana is full and your arrows fly true. For next week we move on, and our foe to go down, is Paragon.
Tuesday was good. We went into Flex wing 3 and managed to work our way through the whole place. We wiped once on Spoils of Pandaria and two or three times on Thok, but managed to get them both down. It felt good to get through all of wing 3 without having to cry a little because we seemed to be backtracking. Not that I cry. Ever. O.k., there may be some manly tears from time to time.
Wednesday we went in and tried one or two swings at Blackfuse. When things didn't seem to be melding well we realized we had 10 unsaved players and decided to try regular 10 man SoO. I am glad we did. Immersius wasn't too hard to handle, but we had to fight kicking and screaming to get the protecters down. At the end of the night that was where we stopped when we realized we wouldn't get any real tries at Nurushan with the time we had left.
Now when I say I am glad we struggled on protectors, it was because I wanted to see how the team did against the regular content. It was nice to know that if we were to go to a ten man it wouldn't be a face roll up to where we have already been. I have done the first two wings, (up to Malkorak) on my hunter, but I was in a group that had been tacking regular difficulty, and it was a 25 man to boot. I knew the content was a little harder, but didn't realize how much.
I am hoping it was kind of a wake up call to realize that the stuff you can ignore in flex, can just destroy you in normal. That was what was killing us, there were mechanics that some of our players just absorbed, or didn't try to get out of quickly on flex, that they were prepared for in normal. It's not a good sign when your healers are out of mana before the first round of abilities are done.
Then we have the week of 8/25/2014.
I will put it simply, we didn't raid. Tuesday we didn't have the folks, and ran LFR. Then Wednesday we went and cleared H. ICC and Some other Wrath content. 'Lil bit of fun, but not what I had planned on. On the bright side we still went out and did stuff together. I believe this is important.
More then ever the end of expansion doldrums are hitting us. I am seeing a lot of people not logging on, or playing. I myself have slowed down a bit and find myself meandering on alts, or only playing in bits and pieces. I think I am done with this expansion for the moment, and hopefully will be re-energized for the WOD. Then we come to the elephant in the room.
Without people we can't raid. Even with flex we need at least ten folks.
I am going to continue to schedule raids for us to run. But if we keep not having folks I may call a break until into WOD. I don't want to. As much as I'm feeling expansion fatigue I still think it's best to keep the group together and doing things so we maintain the habit of running things on the same nights. However, if we can't field a team at all at this point, I would just as soon wait until the next expansion to rebuild things. The core of the team will still be here and those who have stopped showing up really have no stake left in the team at this point. Now, this isn't a strike against those who have real life going on. We have folks who due to work etc.. are now missing a raid night a week or so. They talk to me and I understand this.
This is meant for the folks that have just disappeared without a word. Sorry, if you come back I'll welcome you, but I can get along without you. Feel free to stay disappeared.
Yes, I am feeling a bit bitter right now. This expansion above all the others had really had a plethora of folks who built themselves up raiding with us, then moved on to raid elsewhere. I am tired of this. I know it's a fact of life that it happens, but what out team would have been now if they had invested in where they started rather then finding the greener grass on the other side.
There are days where I debate banning people from coming back if stuff falls apart. But that is not the attitude I need, and it's not the attitude my team needs. I will welcome people back every time. Sometimes even when I would rather shake my head and say no.
We aren't going to discuss raiding this week. I took Tuesday off to spend time with my wife and saw "Guardians of the Galaxy" (Awesome, go see it) and Wednesday we didn't have enough folks to field a foray into enemy territory.
The big news, the announcement of the release date for Warlords. Yes, I guessed wrong, partially because I wanted the darn thing sooner. I am convinced though that everyone wanted it sooner, including Blizzard. However great things came from today's unnecessary announcement. (Yes I still think they should have just released the info instead of spending extra time on and effort on this. Not because I believe it has any bearing on when the game comes out etc.. but because it's a pointless dog and pony show.)
The almost as big news as the release date is that this is blog #100 from me on this site. I sit here amazed and surprised that I have managed to keep blogging on a weekly basis. (I have only missed one) Some weeks I have even blogged twice which is why I am here less then two years after starting this.
I want to actually take the time to thank some people, though I am sure I will miss some as we have an ever growing and changing team, that have worked and influenced my time through Wow as a Raider.
Aeryn-My wife and partner in crime. Honestly, I fiddled here and there but never would have started raiding if I hadn't sojourned with her into Midnight. She is the extrovert to my introvert that has helped build my relationships in WoW. She is the best priest heals machine I could have sitting next to me and making sure I am seeing everything going on in raid.
Gwyndolynn- Our guild leader and druid heals machine. I can't remember what she thought back in Wrath when me and Aeryn stated that the guild should start it's own raid team. I do know she has been supportive since day one and we have rarely butted heads over things. She has very rarely missed a raid and has been a solid fixture since we started.
Magilla- Warrior tank master. Mag has been tanking and running with us since ICC. You couldn't ask for a more solid co-tank and raider. He is always on, ready to rock and lead us into danger. I think he didn't know what he was getting into when he joined us, but I'm glad he did.
Shaqia- Shaman heals/enchancement. He is there making sure no one gets too serious. Amazing with heals, and getting crazy on dps lately rarely does he miss a raid. He started raiding with us at teh beginning and has taken a couple of Wow breaks, but I always look forward to him coming back and smashing things. Then we go raid....
Scorpiack- Shaman/Warlock. Scorpy has been mainly a shaman but has recently put away his lightning for demons and fire. He has always ruled the dps charts in our guild and is happy to destroy anything that gets in our way. I'm a little more fuzzy but I believe we picked up Scorpy at the end of Wrath, beginning of Cataclysm.
These five I would consider the core of our team. They have been running with us solidly for multiple expansions and make even the worst wipe fests of a raid a good time. I imagine without them I'd have a hard time stepping up and leading the guild to our doom.
There are more to be mentioned though, we have
Shojji- Hunter and brudder. He's been playing Wow a good while but he just really started raiding with us this Xpack. As a deeps he has grown and is constantly working hard to be better. I think in time I will be fighting him to stay near the top of the deeps chart.
Belevina- Bel gets a mention here as he has been in and out of our raids for the last couple of expansions. His priest deals pain instead of heals and when he's in raid stuff dies a lot more easily. And he's entertainment! His sarcastic comments can challenge my own!
Mynk (Hellscream)- Monk tank from Midnight rising-One of the newer members of our team, she is light, bubbly and brings some good positive happiness to the raid. She has been a great addition and I am hoping we can keep her into WoD.
Orheim- His Disc priest makes sure we know what is going on in raid. He is a good solid healer and when he is in raid everyone knows it. He is invaluable at times when trying to figure out a wipe, and while I don't always agree with his observations, I love the fact I can always get feedback from him.
Reighven-He is still playing in the guild but the school monster took him from us. (Priorities, sheesh, hee hee) Hopefully sometime we will get him back but the man is one of the best fathers and people I have known and I'm honored to have gotten to meet and spend time with him.
Amelmi-Another person who has been in and out of our raid team for a couple of expansions. When he is there the numbers his lock rocks is almost insane. I'm excited any day he runs with us.
Cricky- She will always have a special place in my heart. Cricky hasn't raided with us for a while but she was one of the first people I invited to our guild when I opened it up to more then family, and I feel I have virtually gotten to see her grow up a bit. She will always be our guild mascot.... because you know young girls don't play Wow so she was a FBI agent the whole time.
Fantaa-The mother of the guild, literally for some of us. She doesn't run with us often but she is sure to keep us on the straight and narrow in and out of vent. She always brings fun with her.
There are a few more who have been hopping in that I don't know as well yet, Ainnvar, Aluara, Frosttide, etc...
And there are so many more I could mention who are gone.
Bromli, Deadlysinner, Wickedsavior, Lotauna, Khallon, and Ithuriol, and so many more that I know I'm forgetting.
Thank you all for making Wow a good part of my life.
This week we started wing one again. (I am having a love hate relationship with this wing. I want to be done with it, at the same time some of our most fun raids as a group have happened here recently.)
We had a few new players to gear, so I stayed on Lazyeye and we blew the place up. Well, until Sha and then we couldn't get a couple of bugs worked out and he blew us up. But that was ok.
Wednesday night we one shot Sha in the face and moved all the way through wing 2. We have a very smooth run, even one shotting Shamans again. (Me and Magilla I think have worked out a great system up top for the second boss as we use the three tank method) Nazgrim took a couple of tries, but it was a good night for all.
I am still stuck in the conundrum of whether or not we should just stick to the first couple of wings and get some newbies more geared, or keep pushing the last two wings every other week. I know how it feels to run with a group that is not as organized or doing as well as your normal group is. It can be frustrating and I know we have lost a couple of raiders over this. I do think back to the fact that the original thought to our raiding was, that we were going to have fun. We are accomplishing this a lot of the time when we are running the beginning content.
This week though we have received the amazing announcement of and announcement. That is right. On August 14th, 9:30 am pst we get an announcement of the street date for Warlords of Draenor. The almighty announcement of the announcement has spoken. They could have just done an announcement of the date and released the cinematic for the new expansion, but it is so much more powerful when you announce your announcement before hand so people can gather and be announced too from your announcement.
If you can't tell, I am rolling my eyes at this announcement of an announcement which is pretty much whipped up to give us some news. Not just any news, but news that we are getting news in the form of and announcement of an announcement. /eye roll.
I love Blizzard. They make great games and I like if not love most of them. When I see something like this that is just an excuse to garnish some publicity it kinda rubs me the wrong way. I think they would have gotten just as much response doing a normal release of the trailer and the date on the same day and flooding media sites with it.
On the bright side this re-enforces my belief that the expansion is coming out in September or October. Normally they have announced the new expansion's release date with in a couple months of the drop date. I predict we are getting 6.0 at the end of August, and that the game itself will launch the last week of September. Let's see how close I come.
I feel this topic has been beat to death. however, I want to weigh in my two cents. First, raid update.
Tuesday we tried starting wing 3. After some complications etc.. I hopped on my Pally Tank Lag and we managed to down Malkorak. We managed a couple shots at Treasures but ended up falling short for the night.
Wednesday we opted to start from where we finished. Not going to lie, things just wouldn't balance out and we couldn't manage to get the boss down. It didn't help raid stopped a bit early as the raid leader was sick. When his sickness finally defeated him, we went home without any new bosses.
Not going to lie, it was a sadly regressive week, but next week will be better.
Now on to my topic, and it's considered hot button but here we go. I am going to try and write this from a somewhat neutral position politically because if I wanted to talk politics, I would make a political blog.
As a prospective writer I am faced with a choice every time I start a new project. Who are going to be my characters? What are they going to be like? How do they talk? How do they act? How do they look? Who do they love?
This part of character creation is important because it flavors what you write, what decisions (Good and bad) your characters make. If you put in something that doesn't belong there with the character it feels forced, and out of place. This leads to stereotyping and poor characters. You want to make racist decisions for a black character into your story, work to make him black. Same goes for LBGT characters, if you want a bad stereotyped character force one in to echo an agenda and most people will end up with a horrible character that is out of place and offensive.
The truth is inclusiveness is very important. But not at the price of story or character. If it makes sense to make a character any race or lifestyle by all means do it. If you want to add that flavor in anyway, I say write your piece then add the race/lifestyle after you have finished your work if it isn't important to the story. If the focus of your story obviously is going to be around race/lifestyle don't write your characters to fit the "normal modes."
This goes for video games as well. I want good strong characters of different races, sexes, and lifestyles. I don't want stereotypical lazy writing or characters that seem out of place because they don't fit. So when it works, do it.
My worry is that the pressure for games, books, and shows to be inclusive is going to do some damage in the short term as more and more demand for inclusiveness is pushed. If you are crusading for this, please be careful what you wish for because bad stereotypes can push unrealistic expectations in the real world. (Because some people do believe all they read and see is real) I would rather there was a steady and slow approach to this than we were introduced to a bunch of bad characters that damages society's notions of any group.
I am also going to get myself in trouble by asking this next question. When will there be enough inclusiveness?
Looking at the census about 14.1% of the United States is black. Does that mean that when 14.1 percent of actors in movies and T.V. shows are black we are being representative? Or do we push the bar beyond that? Same with other races and lifestyles, do we go for a realistic number? Or in order to support minorities do we push further until we get an unrealistic mix of characters in our media all in the name of inclusiveness?
Most of all, what do you think? I would love to hear feedback on this topic. If you have a well thought out answer I will listen. If you leave an answer full of hate and vitriol towards any group, I will delete your comment.
Tuesday we did wing one again. Yes, again. I hopped on my mage this time so I could try something a little different and we of course got through the whole experience roughly intact. We only did the one wing as it was a late start to say the least. It was a pleasant experience though, the mood was high and we still are pushing to get some gear for some lower geared folks.
Wednesday we went straight to wing 2, and cleared the wing by the end of the night. This time I took my hunter to help push through the higher life pulls and the raid went rough at first, then got moving well. I was very frustrated when Galakras took us 3 or 4 pulls to down as we died to simple mistakes more then once. We then one shot Iron Juggs, had our best pull and one shot ever on Dark Shaman, and got Nazgrim down at the end of the night on our second pull.
Next week we are starting on wing 3 again. If we down it in one night we will smack Blackfuse around again.
I am really fighting the feeling of being stagnant right now. I feel we have been stuck in the same place for months now, and looking back at posts, I'm not wrong. There is that saying that something has got to give, well for me I am feeling it more and more. I try to be positive but this is one of those moments where I debate if I'm holding the raid team together for Warlords, or if I actually think we are going to progress further.
The people we are gearing are giving me some hope, but I can only hope we can push further soon. We are running out of time before WOD launches, and soon it will be upon us. At that point we will take a break from raiding while we all level to 100, then will start all over again. I won't lie, I look forward to this small break as the beginning of the expansions is normally the only break I take from raiding. We could continue to push stuff at that time, but it seems silly to work on raid content when we could be leveling and gearing at a relevant level.
I am excited more and more about the upcoming expansion. From what I've played of the starting zones it's not Orc heavy. It's Orc and Draenei heavy. The alliance starting zone is fantastic and shiny new. Garrison's feel good. They are interactive, but so far don't seem to be a bogged down quest hub like it was feared they might be. (Golden Lotus 2.0, no thank you)
The NPCs are good so far. Lots of familiar faces, and a lot of new ones are everywhere. I wanted to write a blog about the inclusiveness of the game, but I feel this is getting over hashed right now and I don't have a lot to add to that argument other then to stir up some dirt pointlessly. (I have opinions on this, but I would need a lot of space from a long rant. I have that here, but I'm not ready to let it out.)
Next week will be a new week. I'm hoping to see some progress that lightens my heart. Either way, I will be diving headfirst into the fray.
Tuesday we didn't raid because I was celebrating 14 wonderful years with my wife.
Wednesday was pretty good. We had some new blood so we went back and just nuked stuff from wing 1 to half way through wing 2. We downed Iron Juggs and called it a night. While we didn't really push any boundaries or progression, we did have fun and it was a good feeling raid. We also pulled in two new toons to start gearing and working towards crazy DPS status.
I really think we are getting closer to the point where WoD drops. If it is a September/October drop like I have predicted, that means 6.0 will be in all likelyhood dropping in August/September. That means, we could be a little over a month away from having the first major patch walking into the expansion.
The beta itself feels pretty good. Yes, there are still plenty of bugs and glitches that are happening, but for the most part it has looked good. There are things they have added that I enjoy, like the outline of whatever you are targeted on glowing to all the cameos from people we knew in BC. (Seeing Akama as a proper Draenei is weird)
The class changes are taking some getting used to as well. Playing a hunter without leading with serpent sting, or having to keep Slice and Dice up on a rogue is strange. I understand why they took these buttons out, but it feels like something is missing in my rotations. We will have to see how it all turns out.
It's been a long week with work etc.. this week. So I am keeping it short. Oh, one of my favorite things about the Beta thought, is captions like, Amazing in game event here....
Tuesday night this week we started on Wing 3. Though we wiped on Spoils once, and Thok a couple of times we got all the way through and to finish the wing. What this doesn't say in that sentence is we felt like a cohesive group and things felt smooth as we worked through the wing. Spirits were good and Everyone seemed to be doing their job just fine. (My favorite part was the second pull on Spoils where Shaqia and Scorpiack both accidentally dropped on the wrong sides and it balanced things perfectly to get the boss down.)
Wednesday was not a great night. Blackfuse is still killing us and it's still from stupid little mistakes. I had the opportunity to tank this fight for the first time on Lag and it was interesting to me to see how it worked from that perspective. Believe it or not, this is the first time I've actually wanted Blizzard to leave fire on the floor. I had a couple of moments where I was tanking the add in fire, then the fire would fade, then the next line of fire would fade as I pulled the add over as well. We didn't get the boss down. But I feel once again we are closer. Shojji now had the conveyor belts down, and when Scorpy got there the belts went smooth. We just need to work on staying alive down below long enough to punch through.
Despite this, I feel the group is smoothing out again. We are getting to another point where we are going to start making progression soon as things are smoothing out. My worry is that this means we are going to lose a person or two soon as this seems to be the pattern we have been fighting. Group gets going smooth and starts moving forward, someone leaves to go to another team or leave wow until the next expansion. My pure hope is that next Xpack we manage to get a team of 15 people or so and maintain it so if someone leaves we don't have to worry about it when a person or two leaves.
I am looking forward to previewing the raids a little in the beta as well if I get to that point. As I play mainly alliance, I am mainly working horde on the Beta so as not to ruin my experience on leveling later. I have not had a lot of time to work there this week, but am hoping to get back in this next week. I know beta is a lot different from what gets dropped later, but this may help I hope.
There are things I want to discuss about the Beta at length, but right now seems a bit premature. It's strange playing a Rogue who doesn't have to keep up slice and dice. Hunters feel weird not opening with serpent sting. There are other things like that that seem just different. The content itself so far is pretty good. The best part, wait for it,
We are actually getting some Draenei lore. Yes, it's coming.. holy crap we are getting some.
Lets review the raiding for the week first shall we? On Tuesday we started Flex wing 1 and managed the first three bosses. I hadn't tanked this content for a good while and it showed. When we fought Sha of Pride I know I made several mistakes, and between that and some other unlucky issues like people DCing etc... we didn't get the last boss of the wing down.
Wednesday I went ahead and lead us into wing 4 again. We did better then last week but still there are too many issues there. I think this next week I may start wing 1 the first night and move to wing 3 the second as I know we can down malkorak and treasures of Pandaria continues to elude us.
I think we have had more content resets with the raid team this expansion then we ever have. I hope leading out of this one we will get time to down Garrosh before 6.0. I know people are still predicting the next expansion to be out November/December. I am more optimistic then that. I am sticking to my guess of the expansion in September. I think we can bet on 6.0 in mid to late August and to have the game out before Blizzcon.
I know this isn't the popular guess. I am still thinking that the Beta is going to be surprisingly short this time around. We don't have to have access for over a million free passers this time, and if Pandaria has had one major success it is to show that Blizzard can put out content quickly, I even have said and still think too quickly at points. As they continue to refine the process I think we may be pleasantly surprised this time around. If I am wrong, I will accept it but I have high hopes that Blizzard will surprise us all.
I went into the Mysts Beta a couple times when I had it. This time I plan on delving a little deeper. I am hoping to get my live stream going so I can comment and give my opinion on the things I am seeing. As soon as everything is live I plan on going through the Alliance side on Lazyeye my hunter, and Rhapsidy my Rogue will sneak around some of the Horde content. I am not sure how deeply I want to delve as I've always hated having to redo content or spoil myself too badly. At the same time I want to embrace this Beta as a new opportunity to play with some other stuff I've wanted to do.
If I can I will even let people know when I'm streaming beta so they can hop in and watch if they like.
We are one step closer, and before you know it, Warlords will be upon us.
