Hail Ashbringer.

So... I did the retribution paladin's artifact quest.

     The artifact quests themselves seem fairly short and to the point.  I think I could have done both the Demon Hunters, and the Paladin's in about 15 to 20 minutes with little trouble.  My guess is the rest of the quests are going to be similar, but I look forward to doing a few more to see if I'm correct.

     It's kind of cool to be wielding Ashbringer.  This is a sword that has been in Wow since vanilla. (Might have been in the RTS games, but I only played Warcraft 3 and I don't remember it in there.)  I know there was a corrupted Ashbringer in the original Naxxaramas.  I never played, but I have heard the stories.  I believe there was a quest in the Eastern Plaguelands which was created around the idea of reclaiming and purifying the Ashbringer, but I have never had the pleasure to do it.

     Here comes my qualms.  There is an obvious price for the right to wield the Ashbringer.  I had heard the price hinted at, but seeing is believing and I am not happy with the circumstances.  It has also been said that some of the other weapons will be obtained in a similar manner.  With some of the weapons that will be wielded the overall price in potential stories down the line baffles me.

     Yes, I'm trying to be a little vague here.  While the price is easily guessed I want to avoid all out spoilers for any who want to find out for themselves when they play this content.  If you want to know what happens look it up.  Plenty of other folks have spoiled it.  It's a quick google search away.

     Needless to say, that the Azeroth we are fighting for might be a very different place if even a third of the Artifact weapons we are gaining comes with such a price.  While change brings potential, too much change at once makes me worry.  If you shake up your player base too much you risk losing a few folks.   This might shake up the face of the Horde and Alliance as much as Catalysm and Siege of Ogrimmar did.  If not more.

      My other worry, is that if these quests have as much bearing on the future of Azeroth as this one did, than I think they should be longer.  More epic in scope.  15-20 minutes is fine.  But I could see a bit longer since this is a quest you only do once for each weapon.  With the possible future repercussions I think that more time might be worth spending on each of these.  Of course, if we have to get three weapons each if we use all our specs, (four for druids) 15-20 minutes might be just right.

     So, I am looking forward to doing a few more artifact weapon quests.  But I am hesitant about where they will lead in terms of story.  I keep mentioning price.

     What will be the price of this expansion.

Will Garrisons be in the next Expansion?

I'm not that sure.

      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?

Lag/Lazyeye

     

       

   

We are closer then we were before..... (raid update for the week of 9/18/2014)

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?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

The Servers Killed Our Raid! (Raid update week of 1/16/2014)

Last night was a big bottle of suck!  I am of course not talking about the raid team.

     But lets rewind to Tuesday.  It was an exercise in frustration as well.  We did better then last week and got three bosses down in the first wing of Flex SoO down.  This may seem like a little accomplishment at this point, but on the first two bosses the synergy was working well.  I dpsed on my Pally Lag as we had a new tank in the raid and I wanted to be able to step in if needed.  I was pleasantly surprised that my pally pulled decent dps in ret, even though his gear was alright, but not fantastic.  My hunter still puts away better numbers, but Lag is a solid choice if I need him as well.

    The problem was the third boss.  Things didn't sync up well on the third fight, and the tension in the raid was insane by the end of the fight.  The other tank swapped to dps, as he was getting tired and I threw on my tank set.  Boss went down.  I don't believe any of the issues we had previously to that pull was one person's fault.  Rather there was a slew of factors that added up.  It's possible I didn't explain the fight well to a couple of people.  Several folks made fatal mistakes at times when maybe they normally wouldn't have.  I think it undermines everything for folks to say... "This one person made X fail".  There were 11 people in the raid.  No single person could have made everyone else die to RNG.

     Wednesday night was... horrible.  Zangarmarsh was down! Server outages across the board pretty much killed our chanced of going in and killing more bosses.  (And Lag really wanted that two hander off of pride.)  We will get our chance next week, but it's kind of irritating when you can't run your raid because of bad luck with Blizzard.  (I'm not saying Blizzard purposely did anything.  Then again... they may hate me at this point.)

      At this point in the expansion I've given up my hopes and doing and crushing 10 man.  Right now, I want to get a team stable enough that when Warlords of Draenor launches we can hit raiding in a timely manner, knowing who is doing what.  We have several people working their way in and more then one plays a couple of different roles.  This is good.  I want to see people swap between healing/dps/ and tanking occasionally.  It helps keep the game from getting too boring, or you class from becoming a mind numbing blankness when you run it.

Fight some Foo

     Next week it will be better.  We will be better.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

     

The Weekend before 5.4....

     So here is some bad mocked up poetry to suffer through as you get ready for patch 5.4....

The Night Before Patch Day
-Horribly done by Ben Marble

It's the night before patch day
And all through the land
The player's are raiding
With sword's firm in hand

Their mods have been loaded and updated with care
In hopes the 5.4 quite soon would be there
And me with my Pally, Aeryn with her priest
Had just settled down, for 5.4 release

When out in Stormwind arose a clatter
I quickly hearthed to find out the matter
To the AH I flew on my mount in a huff
To find out what was the cause of this stuff

The noobs where all crying in fear and in fright
For in trade district there was such a sight.
For in all his glory so grim and so drear
It seemed that Ghostcrawler had suddenly appeared

With his nerfbat so hard and mighty and thick
Everyone trembled at that evil big stick
Then I heard him call in a big booming voice
The people that had helped him by choice

Come Zarhym, come Lore, come Crithto, come Bashiok,
Come Brower, come Hazzikostas, come Nethaera, come Bornakk,
To the Eastern plague lands, to Northrend's great wall!
Now nerf away, nerf away, nerf away all!

And just like the winds in the Maelstrom do fly
They all mounted up and took to the sky
Through the land of Azeroth they flew
Out for the Alliance, and the horde side too!

And then with a shudder I turned to see
Ghostcrawler drooling with maniacal glee
I stepped back and was turning around
When through Stormwind Greg Street did bound

He was translucently cover in a crab shell
His claws where sharpened to give out all hell
His nerfbat he held firm to attack
When all the player's he started to smack

His eye stalks they glistened
His shells dimples how frightening
His nerfbat made noises like
Big strikes of lightening!
His crab mouth was firmly shut with a snap
As dpsers Greg Street started to cap

The Nerfbat swung and gave no relief
As players corpses lay about like a wreath,
His crab legs went clickety clack
That skittered madly as toons he did  wack

He was giant and cruel, a mighty old crab
And I shuddered to see him, and hid in my bag
Then he lifted his nerfbat made up of lead
And gave me a whack on top of my head

He left me they lying all dazed
As he nerfed all players wildly crazed
Sudden as he appeared, he suddenly stopped
And yelled, patch 5.4 can now be dropped!

He flew up into the air his crab legs all twitchin'
Because he had finally finished his mission
But we heard him scream as he vanished out of sight
"Good luck with cross realms! Good bye and good night!"

-Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

Your allowed to Rant. Yes you are. (Raid Update 08/22/2013)

      I was debating sugar coating this post, going through, talking about how everything is all right and being the calm in the midst of the storm.  F*** that.

      We went from a point where we one shot every boss up to Tortos last week, to this week where events made it so we didn't even get past Horridon.  If you are on the raid team you are allowed to be rant, be frustrated and be grumpy as I am this morning.  What happened you may ask?

      We had too much damn change in the last week.

      First of all, we lost Ithuriol to Bridgeburners.  We wish him well over there and hope he enjoys his time.  We may see him in guest starring roles occasionally as he has some characters still in the guild, but that leaves a hole in our raiding roster that needs to be filled.  Preferably by a healer as I don't want to swap who I am gearing again, but I probably will. /sigh.

       Secondly one of our tanks had real life commitments this week, and those always trump Wow.  So the first night I was tanking on Lag again, in a raid I had previously not really tanked in.  The second night I was on my hunter, then my priest when we tried to swap things up a little.

       We also had to pull in a couple people to fill holes, (1 the first night (I still count moldie as a standby for the raid team)) and 3 the next night.  (Two being Ithuriol and Khallon's alts respectively, and we thank them for helping.)  

      I want to point out that the issues we are having are nobodies fault.  There should be no pointing finger's or irritation.  Sometimes you lose people from a raid team, that happens.  Sometimes you have a few extra spots for a night or two, that happens as well.  This week they all just happened to hit us at once, and hopefully next week will be better.  Or I will have a stroke.  I am voting for better.

      I do appreciate everyone working hard in a bad situation, but the situation as it stands may kill any chance of great progress in Throne of Thunder at this point.  Patch 5.4 drops in a few weeks on Sept. 10th, and I am not sure we can get our crap together before then.  Of course I could also be over blowing the situation and I may swap back to Dizzty and find out the raid is fine.  Right now though, I am just so frustrated, and not just for myself, for everyone else on this damn raid team that have worked so hard to get to the point of progressing again.  I owe you guys a better experience then this.

     So, this weekend, I will find a fill in.  I will look mainly at Pally or Priest heals, but will also look at DPSers.  Agility leather, Agility Mail, Strength Plate are all areas that don't have a lot of MAIN spec distribution right now, depending on how things shake up.  At this point, I will push whatever toon I am working on through the legendary quest to get them caught up, and once they are legendary, I plan on getting my other two pushed to that point.

    That's right, I plan on doing the damn legendary quest three times.  Though to be fair both Lazyeye, and Lag are well along it.

     As far as inspirational happy thoughts go, on Sept 10, we get siege of Ogrimmar.  That is a new raid.  New content, and a fresh start for us to start progressing again.  At that point, we will go one night ToT, one night Ogrimmar until ToT is done, and I plan on saving the progression since the new raid finder gear will have a higher gear score then the content we are working on.  We will push forth, and prevail.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

For all the Bugs I've Squished Before

This was what one would call a very good week.

       With an overwhelming return of people I actually had to see if someone wanted to sit out of raid Tuesday, (thank you Lotauna for volunteering) and Wednesday we were full quickly as well.  Sadly, had to leave a person or two out of that one as well.  But we shook hands with our good friend progression.

My hunter Lazyeye who is getting geared now.  Mwha ha ha.

       Night one Jin'Rokh went down again, then we burned some time on trash (sadly) and got a few good hits off on Horridon.  It felt like a good start.

       Then Wednesday we stepped in to do Grand Empress Shek'zeer.  We had an issue with a DC on the first attempt that killed us.  Lag, had to strap his shield back on and hop in to tank, And we took that giant bug down!!! This means, we don't have to do Heart of Fear again peeps! No more HoF

       It was then a trip to Terrace of Endless Spring.  Now we had killed the Council before, but it had been a few months and I wasn't sure how this was going to go.   It did take a few tries... but we got our bearings and those Jin'yu breathed their last.

First two bosses we killed

     The next part is the part that makes me most happy.  We stepped up to the Giant Tsulong!  We had experienced tons of trouble trying to take down this dragon previously.  We hadn't attempted him for a few months either So with about 15 minutes of raid left, I wasn't expecting to take him down.  However we walked in and gave him a great smacking on our first attempt.  I said holy crap we decided to do another attempt with 5 minutes of raid left we stepped in, and went a little late while getting our first kill of Tsulong.

 It was a good night.

First Downing of Tsulong!!!!

      So that means, if we can down the last two bosses in Terrace next week, we can focus solely on Throne of Thunder!  I don't think that is an unrealistic goal after last night to think that is possible.  So off to a happy weekend and We shall beat things down next week!

       As a note, I probably won't have an opinion post this weekend like I try to do, since I will be at Nerdtacular on the 5th and the 6th at Snowbird, Ut.  If anyone else is there that reads this, I hope to see you.

Dizzty, Lag, Lazyeye.  Yes I am having an identity crisis.

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

   

   

     

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

A New Priest... Err, something like that.

Let's get it out there, we all sacrifice for our raid teams.

     It means at times we play a spec we don't like.  We might raid on a night when we would rather go to bed all wrapped up in our blankets.  Or sometimes we might even play with people we don't like, or spend time studying fights and other classes.  I can think of one time back in Wrath when I was tanking ICC with a fever and was fighting just to focus on the screen.  I was tanking, so it was pretty much stand there and listen for a taunt, but as soon as the raid was over I laid down and collapsed.  I'm still surprised that I made it through that night.  I remember another time that a healer whom I love like a sister hadn't got much sleep, and fell asleep at the keyboard during a 5 minute afk.  (This prompted me to almost drive over to her house to see if she was o.k., as she wouldn't answer the phone etc...)  I may pay later for sharing that one.

     If you are a raid leader, or even a committed raider, this means you look forward with your raid team.  You have some focus on the now.  (Which is where mine is mostly at the moment) but you look at how things are going to shape up in a month, or longer as the team is going.

     Enter my priest Dizzty.  The Worgen ball of fluff who is slinging around holy spells and hoping to keep people alive.  As it seems we may have a tank, who is being built who can take my spot there, I am getting my heals in place on my priest, so i'm not rolling against the shaman heals for gear.  Of course this means that we will have two warrior tanks, meaning that our main tank will still be rolling against another tank for gear.  But it would be the same if I had stuck with my pally, so while I wish I could mix up the tanks a little more, right now I will take what I have.  Besides, I would wouldn't trade Magilla (Our main tank) for any other tank in wow.  And Laroth (Whom is back to the game after a hiatus) is a bad A tank in his own right and as soon as he catches up completely, I will have one of the strongest tanking teams I've run with.  (I'm a good tank, I will never claim to be a great tank)

      So, I have sacrificed time to get my priest to LFR level, and he has run the first two successfully.  I am going to be neglecting my main (Lag) for a bit while I build him up.  I only feel a little guilty in this as Lag is geared higher then the content we are hitting, so if anything happens at this point, he and step back in.  I also am going to put in the work as soon as Dizzty is up to snuff, on keeping his Prot and Ret sets caught up as possible.  This means hours may be burnt on building up two toons.  As I want to do both Holy and Disc on my priest, that means i'm going to be studying a bit too.  Lag will continue to be my achievement hound, and be the one who pushes the new dailies/content unless there is gear in it for Dizzty.. which there may be.

     This Tuesday will be another Heart of Fear run.  I know Dizzty will not be ready by then, so Shimmer will be bench hitting.  I am hoping with people starting to show up again that we will be able to push to Throne of Thunder here in a couple of weeks.  This means I may discuss another raid night, or save progression.  If people are doing LFR's the gear in there should help push through HoF as much as anything.

    When the siege of Ogrimmar happens in a few months, I want to be fighting my way through, so I can punch Garrosh in the face.  I am fascinated by the fact Blizzard is doing a raid to unseat a major faction leader.  I also believe that if we do kill Garrosh, and not just unseat him, that one of the major alliance characters will die as well.  Blizzard loves to appease the Horde characters.....

     Most importantly, I want my team to be there with me when we pony up and attack that raid.  And I want us to be ready.

Lag.