Now That’s Dedication!

Raiding 2 comments.

Can you guess where I was this morning?  If you’re thinking that I was happily curled up in bed sleeping, you’d be oh so wrong.

And as the only person of that raid that was on the West Coast¹, I was feeling that early start time this morning! Even worse, I had problems trying to sleep last night, so I ended up getting only an hour or so. Thankfully I have the rest of the day to make that up if I so wish!

Unfortunately, Jezrael² didn’t get her mount this morning.  This was a double blow, as her significant other managed to get the Amani War Bear this past Saturday amidst a lot of teasing and guesses that he’d be sleeping on the couch that night!  However, we do have our Saturday raid left; the successful completion would mean that all of our core raiders would have managed to snag one of them before the patch is released — which many people are assuming is this upcoming Tuesday when the current Arena season will end.  So if you have the opportunity before Saturday, stop by DPS: We Deliver to wish miss Jez all of the luck in our raid.

Because if she doesn’t get it, we’re all in for a world of pain!

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Yes, I am Well Mounted!

Csilla, Raiding 8 comments.

I have brazingly stolen today’s witty title from a guildie who commented in “Guess It’s a Lucky Week for Mounts,” but I don’t care.  Want to know why?  I bet you do.  Who wouldn’t want to know why Cynra is so gleefully happy at this very moment?

Amani War Bear.  I have it.

This would have been a post written with Cynra dancing in her chair at the sight of such an amazing thing, but it’s late, I’m tired, and repeated wipes on Azgalor in Mount Hyjal this evening following a raid last month that managed to one-shot Archimonde and complete a full run in an hour and half leave me feeling a little bit cantankerous.  However, know that this item was won during what seemed like an impossible endeavor after two wipes and numerous numerous deaths littered through all of Zul’Aman.  I have no idea how we managed to successfully complete this run¹, but, man, am I ever glad that I decided to put off sleep for a little bit longer!

Now we just need to acquire three more mounts for our remaining three members.  And, sadly, they’re all Aussies!  Someone in the raid blamed it on the time differences between the server located within the United States and Australia.  Either way, here’s hoping that they get their bear mounts in our remaining three attempts!

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It’s Okay — They Still Have to Get Out of the Fire!

General, Raiding 4 comments.

I haven’t seen too much of this on the blogosphere this afternoon, which surprises me; usually information like this spreads through all of the sites like wildfire!  That said, this afternoon US forums community manager Bornakk dropped a bombshell on the World of Warcraft community regarding the status of existing Outland raid content.  In a thread title “Existing Raid Content Changes,” he states:

To coincide with the upcoming new talents and mechanic changes for classes in the next patch, we are making some adjustments in existing raid content to provide a smooth transition when the upcoming patch is released. The creatures and bosses in raid dungeons that were introduced in The Burning Crusade will have their health reduced, and most will have their standard melee damage output reduced as well, but their spell and ability damage are not being changed. These changes are being made in all raid dungeons from Karazhan to Sunwell Plateau as well as the outdoor encounters of Doom Lord Kazzak and Doomwalker. On top of this Illidan is also doing his part and will stop casting Shear on players.

I’ve heard supposition that this is Blizzard learning from their pre-The Burning Crusade mistakes.  As many of us may recall, Naxxramas was released shortly prior to the expansion, though only a very small percentage of the community was able to explore the content — much less defeat it.  By nerfing all of the bosses in Outland content, Blizzard is supposedly allowing more people to explore said content.

I have another theory.  The upcoming patch will be introducing the new stat Spellpower, which combines the currently-existing Spell Damage and Bonus Healing into a single number.  Through talents, this stat will then be coverted into the damage and healing with which we are currently familiar.  This is a huge overhaul of game mechanics, the like of which has not been seen since the introduction of Spell Hit into the combat rating system in Patch 2.0 and Expertise replace Weapon Skill in Patch 2.3.

Furthermore, there are other changes to note.  Specific buffs will no longer exist within the game or will not stack as they originally did.  The existence of the debuff Potion Sickness which will prevent players from consuming another potion after using one in combat will change how many encounters are approached.  There is an equivalent debuff for the use of drums called Tinnitus that allows only a single drum to be used during combat.  Sated and Exhausted¹ will prevent chain casting of Bloodlust for the Horde and Heroism for the Alliance respectively.  And, finally, the effective removal of the downranking of spells by making each rank of spell worth the same percentage of base mana will be extremely difficult on those classes that rely heavily on downranking to remain mana efficient — in particular, many classes of healers.

This is going to influence players’ ability to complete content, some of which may already be considered farmed content by these same players.  Rather than go back and individually retool each individual boss encounter in each instance, a change of this magnitude not only reduces the likelihood of this occuring, but may even aid people in seeing content that was originally unreachable.

While striking a balance that neither makes the encounters more difficult or too easy in light of these changes will be very difficult for Blizzard, I believe that this is an appropriate first step.  Of course, with the so-called hardcore raiding community² decrying how Blizzard has trivialized their achievements once again, it’s a little difficult to think coherently.

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You Want Me to do What?

General, Raiding 4 comments.

Here’s a word of advice from mama Cynra: while WebMD may be an invaluable resource for many people, using the Sympton Checker is an exercise in futility and paranoia.  You see, I recently injured my back doing who-knows-what¹ and have been dealing with intense lower back pain, an inability to stand straight without extreme effort, some stiffness and decreased mobility, and a slightly elevated temperature on that spot.  While I eventually came to the conclusion that I was suffering from lumbar strain, seeing the other twenty possible combinations and their symptoms left me with more than just a little bit of paranoia that I could be suffering from something a bit more severe.

Hey, back problems do run in the family on my father’s side!  It was a natural progression to wonder that it was something else!

That said, once I came to my senses and decided on the most logical choice², the recommended treatment has been on the money.  Already this morning I’m feeling a hell of a lot better than I have within the last week.  As it is, I can stand up straight and sitting at a desk for more than twenty minutes doesn’t give me that extreme sense of discomfort that I was feeling earlier in the week.  It also helps that everyone has been yelling at me to take it easy and has been catering to my every whim.

That said, let’s move on to other more important, World of Warcraft-related matters.

The guild has been up in arms for some time now regarding our Zul’Aman bear mounts runs.  While the acquisition of Amani War Bears has been rather consistent for the past couple of months³, many members are starting to feel the strain of the patch bearing⁴ down upon us.  It appears likely that the patch will be released 14 October 2008, around the estimated time that Season 4 will end.  This leaves us with under two weeks to somehow obtain mounts for those dedicated members who have yet to acquire one.  At the moment, it appears that there are four of us, myself included.

One of our more dedicated members sat down with a calendar, looked at the reset dates and came up with the following times that we may be able to do a run:

• Friday night following our five-hour journey into Hyjal Summit,
• Saturday during our regularly scheduled raid time,
• either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday next week, and
• the following Saturday when we would normally make our attempt.

This leaves us with four possible time periods during which we could acquire four mounts for the people who have been joining us on our bear mount attempts for quite some time now.  Of course, there is a further rule that would be applied in order to ensure that these people would get a mount if we managed to get the timers: only these four — no pickup, no alts, no one else — would be allowed to roll.

This is a decision that is contrary to a long-held philosophy of the Drunken Badgers.  It’s always been that we allow people who joined us in any of our endeavors the equal opportunity to roll on loot, particularly in ten-man raids.  This has been a core belief of the guild: if an individual puts in the effort to help us conquer content, he should be able to reap the benefits of his efforts.  However, over the past couple of months this has resulted in seeing many of the bears being handed to people who showed up to fill a slot one week and never returned again.  The number is almost staggering when I consider it, especially since I can think of perhaps six regulars that have the mounts and we’ve been running this consistently since early June.

The attitude of guild-first has been something that has been cropping up a lot in guild discussions, especially at a time where we’re considering loot policies for when we venture into raiding in Wrath of the Lich King.  Even though we do maintain a loot list for our twenty-five man raids in the form of Suicide Kings, there have been an uncomfortable number of times when someone who was not a regular or even a regular sub has acquired loot well before many of our stable members.  This has left a bad taste in the mouth of many raiders and has invariably resulted in the policy of hording one’s position on the list in order to ensure that when a desired piece of equipment⁵ one will be able to acquire it; as a result, valuable pieces of loot that would otherwise be considered upgrades have been offered to the raid on an open-roll status, meaning that offspecs and even pickups have gotten the gear before the people who would have really benefited from them.

And while I would like to futher discuss how the guild is trying to solve all loot problems⁶, there is really only one thought going through my mind right now: do I want a bear mount enough to get up and be ready for a raid at 5:30 in the morning?  This looks like the only time acceptable to the raid during the week due to the fact that many of our regulars live in the Land of Down Under⁷ and the time discrepency either puts normal raiding times in the middle of their work days or during their sleep cycle.

Ouch!

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The Epic Conclusion to a Story of Heroic Proportions

Csilla, Raiding 2 comments.

As I have mentioned before in the past, as a roleplayer I tend to maintain myself in character for the vast majority of my time within World of Warcraft.  My only clear cut exceptions are in raids, where the littlest bit of miscommunication can sometimes end with painful results — and neither of my raiding characters are suited to giving information during raids whether due to the manner of their speech or their lack of understanding.  As a result, the remainder of my characters’ actions could and should be considered their own.

That said, I have made a conscious effort not to adapt any of the major plots or storylines into my characters’ histories.  While suspension of belief can take a roleplayer very far¹, it can be difficult when that same roleplayer is defeating Defias Kingpin Edwin VanCleef on her tenth character.  As a result, while the efforts were performed in character and may be referenced by that same character in the future, they generally are not considered to be a significant portion of that character’s history.

I have, however, made one exception to this policy.

Nearly two years ago during the latter-fall, early-winter months in 2006, I had successfully managed to level my newly minted perky priestess Csilla Kovács to the then-level cap.  While I’d had fun playing the character and assisting my friends in the Shield of Dawn with completing their pre-The Burning Crusade objectives, I was definitely looking forward to raiding again after a yearlong absence.  My efforts in trying to obtain a raid for my Beast Mastery huntress — Eszti “Iron Legs” Nightwing, of course — had fallen through, mostly due to the fact that it appeared that every raid was chockfull of hunters and even if I were the epitome of huntery goodness it would be unlikely that any raid would have an opening for me.  On the other hand, raids left and right were clamoring for competent healers, specifically of the priestly variety.

In this vein, I managed to garner every piece of the Vestments of the Devout set² and had even managed to get into a Molten Core raid with The Exiled, led at the time by my friend Malichi.  While we made exhaustive effort to clear all of Molten Core prior to the expansion, a variety of factors prevented us from doing so.  Irregardless, the raid leadership planned forays into other dungeons, including the Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj and Onyxia’s Lair.

At the time that this announcement was made, Csilla was unfortunately not attuned for Onyxia’s Lair, sadly having never completed the chain.  While I had made more-than-frequent efforts to complete it, I always seemed to run into problems with Jail Break!, the leg of the quest that required players to rescue Marshal Reginald Windsor from his imprisonment in Blackrock Depths and then escort him to the exit.  One of two things would invariably happen: the group with which I had joined would rescind on their promise to do the escort quest or somehow I would encounter some sort of bug that would prevent me from completing the quest.  My penultimate heroic effort met with failure when Windsor somehow strayed too far from me less than perhaps ten yards from the exit, leaving me frothing at the mouth in disgust.

My pleas to my guild for assistance in completing the chain were mostly met with hostility or total disregard.  I was hesitant to bother my fellow raiders because I didn’t want to take from their time spent in the game, especially when many of them had familial obligations outside of World of Warcraft and their time in game served as an escape for their otherwise hectic lives.

Perhaps maddened by my inability to complete this quest — which I had tried perhaps four dozen times in the past to no avail — I came to a decision and stomped³ my way to the entrance of Blackrock Depths: I was going to go with my raid to Onyxia’s Lair even if I had to do the damned instance all by myself!  And, despite the fact that I was a lowly Holy priestess in only a handful of Tier 1 mixed with some pieces of the Vestments of the Virtuous, I somehow managed to complete the quest on my own.

To this date, I’m not quite sure how I managed to finish Jail Break!  I know that it took many, many hours and more than just a few repairs.  I relied heavily on Mind Control to take down an enemy or two, only to cowardly run out of the door as soon as things started to look far more painful than my perky priestess could handle.  Select a mob, watch it die, run out, repeat.  Over, and over, and over again.  The packs with dogs were particularly difficult due to the fact that they often had only a single humanoid in them; I would have to take a Dark Iron dwarf remaining from one group and use him to defeat the dogs.

Once I had cleared both the way to Windsor and the path to the exit, I then heroically strode forward with him and healed as he tanked the enemies that would appear along the path.  Since I had  more or less cleared the entire area, I was able to Psychic Scream with impunity and watch our enemies flee in terror.  And when the damned quest was done and I could finally, finally meet up with Marshal Reginald Windsor in Stormwind City, I leaned back in my seat, a foolish grin on my face, and thought, Wow, I wonder if that’s how Csilla would feel right about now!

And it clicked.  This momentous event — no matter how foolhardy or asinine — was something of which I was proud.  Furthermore, it was exactly something that Csilla would do; I could easily see my plucky, perky diminutive priestess getting it into her head to do something like this on her own and somehow being successful.  Not to mention the interesting dynamic that would occur when a teenage priestess of Light met up with a crotchety veteran of war who had spent quite a bit of time locked away in a dungeon. Marshal Reginald Windsor⁴ would be a wonderful foil to Csilla Kovács.

Unfortunately, that made the events that followed in Stormwind that much more traumatic to the poor girl, but that’s an aside.

I was reflecting on these past events when I found myself in Onyxia’s Lair last night after a series of fights with Coren Direbrew.  Friend Draccos got into a raid to down the dragon herself and I gleefully jumped at the chance to join him.  You see, despite the fact that Csilla bonded with Reginald Windsor and that I finally managed to get the character attuned, I never really had the opportunity to defeat Onyxia on this particular incarnation of my healing priestess.  Two years after that fateful evening, this was still something that lingered heavily on her mind.  Until last night, when Csilla Kovács — daughter of György Kovács, a plain man from Elwynn Forest who owned his own vineyard — assisted nine others in slaying the beast.

Then, and only then, did the young woman finally got her revenge by giving the fallen dragon a swift kick to the head with one dainty foot!

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