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.

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

Update 5/28/2013 Are you a Solo player?

Here is the deal,

     Only had 5 people show up on time for raid.  This was after being informed 2 wouldn't make it because they had Tornado warnings going off.  (I hope they are fine, they never logged back on last night) and another person tell me they were sick.  So, rather then fight, I just called raid for the night.

     I told people to go ahead, hit raid finder, work on their toons etc...  So it was a night for a little more work on my priest.

     Now, I did have other options.  I know Bridgeburners, (one of the best guilds on Zangarmarsh, you know, other then Fear Itself) Had been looking for DPS earlier, and I probably could have squeezed enough dps out of my Ret set on Lag to at least make an OK showing.  I get in this mode though, when I call a raid etc.. I don't want to go off and raid elsewhere.  I want to sit back, be in my funk, and work solo on a character.

    This comes from the part of me that is a solo player.  I have issues at time being social because I prefer to play a large part of the game by myself.  Strangely this includes LFR's and Randoms.  I just like to group up with strangers I don't have to talk to, burn through some content, pick up some valor and be done.  I don't know if this makes me a bad person, or just strange.  Keep in mind, when it's time to raid I am all about being social, and having fun with the raid team.  I just switch from one mode to the other.

     I wonder how many other players are like me.  Honestly before I started raiding I never grouped with people except on rare occasion.  When my wife and I leveled I didn't even play/level with her.  It's just my play style.  Honestly if you play like I do, let me know, give me some vindication.

     But Soloing old content, leveling a lowbie who will never survive past level 30, that is my normal game.

     Anyway, tomorrow will be a better day.  I look forward to doing some raiding, potentially on my priest if I get real lucky, and pushing the team through some content.

Until then,
Lag