And Here Comes the 6.1

And it drops on this Tuesday...

 
     Tuesday was pretty good.  We went in and tried Kargath on Heroic and got eaten.  We managed to get his life low enough to feel good but never quite took him out.  Instead we moved on after an hour or so to down a few bosses for Loot.  We only managed three, but it was better then a wasted night.

     Wednesday we went back into Blackforge and still only got down Gruul.  We had some issues fighting him that felt like things just weren't syncing up very well. We finally got him down, but not in enough time to do much else.  That means we ended the night right there.

     But enough talk about raiding.  6.1 is dropping right quick and what do you need to know about it?  Not much.  It isn't changing the landscape much other then some nice UI updates and a few tweaks here and there, and that is fine.  Not every named patch needs to be absolutly awesome.  Sometimes we just need the little quality of life tweaks that are given.  This one will include....

     Heirloom tab.  As an altoholic I fully approve of this.  This means no more trying to remember which character has was heirloom on them or where they went.  You simply click and summon the heirloom for you nooby toon, and then delete it when you done.  If you have one level 100 warlock and want an army of 49 more warlocks on your account, no problem.  You can roll them all and then summon some heirloom threads for all.  Also, if you get enough heirlooms (I believe it's 35) you get a lowbie mount called the chauffered chopper.  You get to ride in the sidecar and let someone else drive you around.

     Male blood elves.  OK, old bad joke that is still somewhat relavent.  Seriously though, your blood elves are getting a visual work up.  I don't think it's going to be an insanely big change but it will be there.  Don't worry, your laughs and voices are staying the same...

     Selfies and Tweets.  Yes, for you superficial folks that have to show off your characters and achievements to everyone you can now take a shot and tweet from in game.  I won't lie.  I am one of the folks that think the whole idea of selfies in real life is absolutly stupid, and finding them in game doesn't excite me.  I mean, aren't you excited for your non-gamer friends to lift an eyebrow at your pixalated glory?

     Legendary follower.  Yes, we can get closer to our legendary rings and we can earn a legendary follower.  Most people know who this is by now, if you don't I won't spoil it for you.  Needless to say this one I think is a nice touch and I'm excited for.

     Daily Garrison quest.  You can run a dungeon or do a quest for a chance at 640-665 gear.  This is a cool way to gear your alt slowly, or get some more chances for loot.  It might actually get folks out of their garrison a little.

     Speaking of garrisons, they are changing the UI up a little with improvements to identify what followers fit what quest better etc...  Also, your followers will now be counted when working at your buildings only if they are present during a work order.  No more assigning them for pick up, or drop off then pulling them for quests.  On the bright side they will now get experience while doing this so they can grind their way to epic while mining your ore.

    Flying.  Ok, that was mean of me.  It doesn't look like we are getting flying yet.  I don't mind not flying per se, but I do miss it.  I look forward to getting it and further exploring Draenor.  In other words,  Num Lock, fly forward while sneaking a snack, then coming back to say wow! That is a neat cliff I'm face planted in!

    And much more.  You can look up the patch notes to see what I've missed.

So what are you excited for in 6.1?

Lag/Lazyeye.

 

As the World Falls Down.... (raid update week of 09/07/2014)

Been a crazy week.

      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?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Hang at the timeless Isle.. no really!

I only say this because you can get your alts geared insanely quick.  When my DK hits 90 as a matter of fact, she will have i496 items for every slot except her weapons.  This happened in about 3 hours of gameplay at the Timeless isle.

      If you are an altoholic you are well served doing this area because it is a quick way to get your other toons geared enough to run throne of thunder LFR at the least.  Also, you can get an upgrade (A burden of eternity) add that to one of the gear token's that drop and get yourself a i535 piece of loot.  That's right, you can upgrade to i535 from a token and a burden of eternity.  Now the burdens of eternity are a very rare drop, I have gotten one so far.  You can also buy them for the timeless coins you get from killing things on the island, but at 50,000 coins, they aren't cheap and will take a bit of grinding to get one.

     Also, it's a fun area to explore.  There are enough rare mobs etc... for you to constantly run into one, earning of course loot and coins.  There are events on the island that are kind of fun to see, and treasure chests to find all over the place.  Some of them very challenging to get too.

     The Celestial's are here two.  As far as things go, they are your world bosses that drop tier gear (i553) though you can just get one drop a week from them.  Meaning, you kill Chi-ji, you won't get anything from the other Celestials because you have already downed one of them.  Bear in mind as well, you will have to kill all 4 of them to finish off you legendary cloak quest.  So make sure you take a few moments to smack them around.

      Now that i'm back from a week in Yellowstone, I'm revved up and ready to hit raiding again this week.  I will have strategies posted soon on the guild web site.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dizzty.

Dizzty in the Head

So, I am going a little crazy this week.


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

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

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

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

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

So lets get to raiding!

La... errr.... Dizzty

This week coming up, in Fear Itself

Ok, so I am being a bad person and typing this out instead of working on my back yard... Well, i'm eating lunch too.

      This next week coming up has me a little excited.  Tuesday last week for all it's faults I had 10 people ready to go at 9, logged on and excited.  This week i'm hoping for at least one day of the same.  Also, by the end of tomorrow, I will have my priest (Dizzty) to level 90 and be working on my holy heals.  (I will probably have some discipline in there too.)

      So I'm a little excited.  Of course I could have this all done in the next few hours... but here is something to remember when playing Wow.  Family comes first.

      Meaning, I could be jamming on the computer, get me priest going, running through heroics and hit up some LFRs.  However, I have to finish the back yard.  I am laying down pavers, and then I will be working with my every wonderful, beautiful wife to plant some plants she just bought to make everything look like some redneck slob doesn't live here.  This is twice as important to me right now, because we are talking about moving into a different house here in the next couple of years since we have kinda outgrown the house a little.

      This means over the next few months, the yard needs to look good.  The house may need some spit and polish, and I may have to look at some other improvements.  For me this is a big deal because i'm not a physical labor type guy.  I can pitch in when needed, but hard labor/mechanical labor is normally stuff I avoid.  My wife enjoys fixing/painting stuff on the other hand, so I normally play "Lug Lift" and let her do the delicate work when doing things.

     After the yard work is done, We promised the kid's we would sit down and watch "The Avengers" with them.  I have seen this movie a couple times in the theater, (I never see things more then once in the theater) and I am a big Joss Whedon fan to boot, so I am excited to share this with them.  "Puny God!" hee hee.

      What does this have to do with Wow?

      The fact that if you put you priorities straight, the Wow time you have will be better because you are not inconveniencing your family to play.  If you don't put your family first, you may find yourself with a lot more play time.

     Along with Child support, your own apartment etc...  Yes I know that's an extreme example, and if you end up in that situation there are probably more issues to involved.  Not putting your family first though, that never helps.

Anyway,
Zhug, Zhug, Work, Work

Lag

Last Night... Raid update Week 5/22/2013 World of Warcraft

Last Night, she said.... Oh baby I feel so down, just turn me off....

"Last Night" The Strokes. Yes, I have the Strokes in my head.

     I am thoroughly depressed after last night.  I dusted off my Resto-Shammy Shimmer, who has been my other main at different times of raiding, and found myself lacking.  Well, I might have not just been me...

    We went into Heart of Fear for our first hour last night.  This is a raid we have been 2/6 in so far, and we have consistently one shot the first boss every time we have tip toed in for the last few times.  Last night.. She said.. Oh baby we wiped so hard....

    Now, a part of this was that we were two healing this instead of three healing this.  This was a switch for us, but I finally had a good showing of DPS, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and try a healer short.  We got to the last phase on the first attempt, and didn't manage to get that far again.

    I know for me, part of the problem is that I started running against mechanics that haven't bothered me in several outings there.  Attenuation kept catching me.  Force and Verve killed people even when me and Gwyndolynn blew our cool downs at that point.  Things just weren't syncing in ways they normally do.  So after an hour of things just not lining up, we figured we would go down a couple bosses in Mogu'shan real quick to see if we couldn't get a piece of gear or two for our lesser geared folks.  We ended up 9 manning because one of the deeps had to step out.

      All I know is that first pull on Stone Guard was full of more damage then I have ever seen on that fight.

      Insanely, Me and Gwyn were once again blowing cool downs, firing away and we wiped.  We wiped on a fight that we have two healed and had little trouble with several times now.  The second attempt we pushed through but once again, my mana was bled dry before the bosses went down.

     These are the nights that frustrate me the most.  It's when I can't keep up and feel like the performance is just not there.  I know I can't point fingers because several mistakes last night was mine.  I know next time things will probably go more smoothly.  It was probably a rough night where things just didn't go as they normally would.

    Tonight we will see what happens, Our third healers should be back, even though that means benching someone who was there last night.  I want to push through HoF... as soon as we have a built up tank or healers and dps showing again,  I want to start pushing Throne of Thunder... as soon as we get some gear from there we can retro-actively finish off this older content, just so we can say we downed it, then we can hopefully be somewhat caught up before the siege of Ogrimmar.

    Tonight is a new night.... When we step in again, it won't be about last night, it will be about tonight....

     Last Night she said......

      But Tonight.... we move forward. "Tonight, Tonight," Smashing Pumpkins.

 Lag

Ok, I had to put some music links in.  hee hee
   

World of Warcraft Patch 5.3

Here it comes!

     Another patch is screaming in for World of Warcraft.  I am looking forward to more scenarios, lore, dailies and buffs.  Because yes, ret pallies are getting a buff... a small one, but I will take what I can get.

Patch notes  http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/9135374

     They have been confirmed to be going live on Tuesday, and even though I have complained, and am not excited about how fast content is coming in this expansion, I still get excited when I see information being added in the background while I play or knowing that Tuesday all my Add Ons will be broken, and even knowing that there is more push for me to get my team caught up before 5.4 comes barreling around the corner.

     My biggest concern at this point, is that Blizzcon will announce in November, the next Wow, expansion, and with the speed of content, I won't have time to plan when and how to buy it.  Because, let's be honest, most of you are like me.  I can't afford to just plop down $80 bucks without having a little advanced time to plan it, and if the content is speeding out, they could announce the next expansion in November with a December release date.  That doesn't give me much time to get the money 'specially with Christmas looming over everyone at that time and stealing the money from our pocket books.

    Ok, sue me, I like making sure my kids get toys for Christmas... sometime toys that I can "help" them play with.  I'm looking at you Wii.

     Seriously though, either they are going to have to have a period at the end of the expansion with a couple of meaningless patches that give us more stuff to do, or they need to have a raid after/before Ogrimmar that we haven't heard about, or Blizzcon is going to cut things close with the patches coming every 3 to 4 months.  I don't know how anyone else feels, but that is how I feel.

   Back to 5.3 thought.

    I am looking forward to more Legendary quest via Wrathion.  I know some people complain that it will make it too easy to grab a legendary weapon by the end of the x-pack, but I think it's smart to give us all a change at a weapon if we are willing to put in the work.

     I could care less about the battlegrounds.  (I burn when I PVP)

     Scenarios are fun, I am looking forward to playing through the new ones and seeing what lore is added there.  I love some good lore. I am not as genius at Matt Rossi or Anne Stickney over at Wowinsider.com, but I knows my stuff.  I even have a couple of Tinfoil hat ideas of my own.  Not that I will share them, yet.

     I am not going to dig through class buffs and nerfs for folks.  If you don't know what's happening with your class, there are plenty of places to look it up.  Probably a good idea for you to do so as well.

     I am looking for loot specialization in LFR.  I hate tanking for people I don't know.  That means when I LFR I sit through the dps queue's and do some damage.  The thought of being able to do so and roll on tank gear makes me happy.  The only downside to this I see, is that it could make more tanks and healers decide to dps rather then take the more stressful jobs in the raids.  We will see what happens though.  I imagine if it causes much damage to queue times, Blizzard will take a step back and remove this feature at a point where it makes sense.

     The leveling nerf of 33% in Mists content makes me giddy as well.  Time to get my alts all leveled... so they can sit there and stare at me as I ignore them afterword when I don't have time to gear and play them.

    (Announcer voice) and so much more!!!!

     What are you all looking forward to in 5.3?

Lag

My heart to Mission of Mercy on Zangarmarsh World of Warcraft

So, wanting to see the horde side of the servers, one day I rolled a BE rogue, Rhapsidy.

     Now, I know what your thinking, we must all be horde or alliance, one side or the other.  How dare I cross to the other side for something as silly as getting the other side of the game story and lore wise. Well, I love my Alliance, but I also enjoy the Horde and their side of the story.  If I had started playing as Horde, I would be equally as happy being weighted more onto that side.

    Well, while leveling on the horde side, like one does, I tried out a few guild.  I am not naming names, but it because quickly apparent to me, that when a guild spends their time sitting in Ogrimmar talking about smoking pot and doing nothing else, they weren't for me.  Other guilds would have made hard core members of the Navy blush with their language and innuendo in guild chat.  To be honest, I don't mind some swearing etc.. but I don't enjoy the feeling that one of the guilds focuses is seeing who can swear the most and be the most offensive.  Fear Itself my home guild is a very family friendly guild, we try to keep out chat G or PG rated and I normally enjoy it that way.  I like a guild that is more a family then just a group of people.  Then I ran into Mission of Mercy.

   Mission of Mercy is a wonderful guild.  A lot of the players have been playing together for years, they treat each other with respect, have a great friendly attitude and are constantly doing stuff together.  In ventrillo, when the do runs and events together the guild leader is constantly playing good 'ole classic rock for the people attending.

    So part of me is heart broken to hear that the guild leader Blessedalan is leaving the game.  I know this is very hard for on a guild, and i'm hoping that someone steps up to take the reigns and keep the guild together.  These are great people and any time a good guild ends up falling apart or disbanding its a sad thing.  I don't spend a lot of time over on the horde side, but when I do they have made me feel at home and comfortable.  I hope for the best for the people over there, and even though I am not over there much, I am not jumping ship anytime soon.  I will wait until the dust settles and see what happens before making a decision.  There is a chance, like with everyone who quits, that Blessedalan may be back someday.  Even if guild leading isn't in his cards at that time, I hope that he has a home to log into with his friends, when and if he comes back.

     So, if you find yourself treading around the horde side on Zangarmarsh, and you see Blessedalan hanging around before he's gone, give him a hug, or a salute.  Honor him for the great guild he has built up, and hope that things go well after he leaves.  I personally hope, he isn't gone for too long.

Lag

World of Warcraft Vs. Life

We have all done it.

Your running a raid, top of your game.  Your putting out numbers, and the boss is going down, everything is flowing smoothly.  Then, the doorbell rings, or a small voice next to you lets you know that someone has just woken up with a nightmare.  It's OK  you call an AFK and step away from the computer and take care of what you have to.  Most raid teams will understand.

I am the father of three wonderful children, which is part of the reason I raid at night, after they have gone to bed.  This way I can minimize the distractions that might take me away from the keyboard.  Now, normally that works out fine.  But like all kids, sometimes someone gets sick.  Or my son, (who is high functioning autistic) will have an issue and it might take me a bit before I can talk to him and convince him that things are all right, or that he can go back to sleep.  This rarely happens, but it has happened.  I have never had to take more then 10-15 minutes to handle things, and even then in 5+ years of raiding it's only been that long once or twice.  10-15 minutes doesn't seem that long, but when we raid 4 hours a week, that is an eternity of time lost.

Now everyone has their different issues.  Mine obviously are a parents, someone else may have to balance school.  There are girlfriends, jobs, power outages, parents, and many other things that can have an effect on your raid schedule.  Obviously you have to plan your raiding around such things, or burn away everyone else's time unnecessarily.

Now, i'm not going to tell you I never play when my kids are around and up.  I'm human.  My kids sit in the front room after homework, watching a show, or relaxing after dinner I will log on and get some dailies etc.. done.  I will not however, do something that I can't walk away from.  I can always drop from LFR, and wait an extra hour to get back in.  Instances, as well.  I normally run those as dps, and if I leave there is always someone waiting to fill my spot quickly.  I won't drop during a boss fight unless there is an emergency, and I give people a heads up that something happened and I have to drop.

Let us get to the unacceptable.  Telling the raid, you need to leave to eat dinner.  Telling the raid that you forgot a date, and that you have to leave halfway through.  Dropping with no explanation or reason and just logging off.  Let's be frank.  90% of us know what hours the raids run if we run then consistently with our guild.  If you know you are not available at that time let people know in advance so they can plan around it.  It is easier to plan around someone not being in the raid for a week if you know in advance, rather then at the time you are putting a raid together.  If you can't make the raid time consistently, then you either need to discuss being a stand in for the times you can be there, or find a new raid team that fits your schedule.

I know, this is all common sense, common decency.  But even smart decent people can overlook this stuff once in awhile.  That I can live with, its when people consistently fail to let me know ahead of time my patience starts to stretch.  When I have moments, like in wrath, when someone AFKS, (on a farm run for the weekly JP quest) if they are still gone in fifteen minutes after they said they were going to get pizza because the delivery person was at the door, that I kick them from the group.  Not because I need them there and needed to replace them, it was face roll at the time, but because they didn't have the respect for everyone else in the raid to get on for five seconds and say, "Hey, I have a problem, I will be back when I can."  I found out later that he was on the phone with the pizza place because something got screwed up in the transaction, and he was out a bunch of money over it.  That was fine, he had to take care of it then, that is groovy too.  But the fact he couldn't let us know? that was ridiculous.

We all have stories.  I am not here to point fingers or call anyone out.  I don't do that in raids, and I don't do that out here.  I just want to make sure, that next time you are raiding, and something makes you step away, or something comes up pre-raid, and you need to prioritize it, you keep us in mind.

You know, the Ornery Raid Leaders.

Lag

Current State of Wow

Afternoon folks!

     So lets talk about how things are running right now in the World of our Warcraft.

     The first issue to address that everyone that I read has discussed is the speed of the content that Blizzard is putting out.  Last round, at about 6 or 7 months into the expansion we were biting into patch 4.1.  We are now almost to the point of guessing when patch 5.3 is going to drop.  This means we are halfway through the second raid tier of this expansion, and in the previous expansion at this point we still hadn't gotten to the second raid tier by any means.

     The bonus to this means that by the time that the dailies you are on working on have grown stale, you have a new quest hub about to open up giving you new content.  Since account wide achievements are in place now, you don't have to get the rep for the new areas on your alts, unless they are tied to a raid or new gear.  This really helps with the boredom that can pile up doing the same dailies for 6 months on end with no change.  

     Hard core raiders also have less time between content to keep them busy as well.  By the time they have finished the current content, to and through heroic, there is a good chance that the new content will be close to opening up for them, alleviating the need to farm content they have beaten for months on end.

     If you are a pet collector/battler there is also a good chance that with each patch you have more to add to your collection.  I don't think I've seen a patch yet this expansion that hasn't introduced some new pets and achievement for you to benefit from.

    And I am sure there are a lot of other benefits I can not think of at this time.

    Now here is where I don't like this new speed of content.

     I am an altoholic at heart.  Lag is my main character for all intents and purposes, but just in case we needed to switch things up I have always had alts that were geared enough to step into the raid and help out if needed.  So far this expansion I have one other alt who is really raid ready.  There is so much time involved in getting geared and ready this time around that alts are much harder to level and keep current.  At the end of the expansion in cataclysm I had 8 character who were ready to go if needed.  Now keep in mind that was at the end of the expansion, so I had about a two year period to get them leveled and in place.  Right now I have five characters at 90, but six are sitting there for the most part because I can't spend any real time on them without neglecting my main, whom I need to keep geared and current for raiding purposes.  One of the nice things about a longer time between patches, is you get to the point where your main character can't get any more gear from anything but raiding, and the time you would use on your main would then go to getting alts ready to go.  Now about the time I'm done with LFR and dailies, the new content is dropping and I have to go focus on it rather then working on another character.

     With raiding, understanding I am a very casual raider, this means that if you are not pushing content you get left behind.  Now there is nothing wrong with not being on the current content, and with LFR it is easier to get geared to and beyond the older content from this expansion which helps work through it quicker.  That being said it means that if my team isn't downing content, we are getting further behind every patch.  I think this build frustration with guilds who are slower to progress as the gap gets wider and wider every patch if their teams aren't keeping up, of have issues where they have to reform and figure out what they are doing.  Imagine six months from now, when the next raid is out, starting fresh with a raid team where you have to get half the team geared.  Not a pretty picture.

     And that leads to the next problem, gear.  Now, LFR has created a unique issue.  We now have 3 ilevels of gear that comes out with each raid.  LFR level, normal, and heroic.  (Be glad that 25 man no longer has a gear difference, or this would be even more insane.)  That means the different between gear is very pronounced.  Mogu'shan vaults normal has an ilevel of 489.  Heart of fear, and Terrace of Endless Spring have an ilevel of 496.  This means that the newest raid, throne of thunder, to accommodate the new LFR starts at ilevel 522.  That is a large jump from 496 when you add in stats etc...  This means when the next raid is launched, (Theoretically The Siege of Ogrimmar) normal gear score will be about 548ish, that could be off though with thunderforged items in the new raid added to the mix. 

     Another side to the content coming in so fast and furious is the added chance of player burn out.  There is a good argument that players get bored and stop subscribing when they have long periods in game with no new content to tackle.  By the same token, I think people need some downtime between content to keep from feeling like they have to keep running without pause.  It is exhausting to feel obligated to keep doing dailies, dungeons, and LFRs along with raids to keep up if you don't have periods of time where you can just relax and not worry about pushing you valor cap in game.  It kills my change to just hang out and be social when I feel that every moment I am logged in I should be doing something that is productive in some way.  I bet if blizzard was to take a poll... player exhaustion would be at an all time high at this point.

     Now obviously it is easier to focus on the negative over the positive.  It does seem to get more of a response when you make that your main focus.  For now however, despite the negatives listed above I still enjoy playing Wow, and will probably continue to do so in the near future.  There is a lot to this game that is amazingly fun.  I love the lore, the players (mostly), and the feel of the world that Blizzard has created.  So while someday I will log off for the last time, today is not that day.

Lag