Raid Engagement

A raid is defined by its bosses, the complexity of encounters, the design and scale and scope of the place, how it guides us through the space and gives us a new environment to explore - but does a raid have to engage us emotionally? What part does that play in our enjoyment of a raid?

While browsing YouTube at work during lunch (as one does), I found along the list of "see also" videos on the side, a link to a Lich King kill video. It has been a long, long time since I did that fight, and much longer since I really thought about it, but I thought - what the hell, I'll watch it again. And man, it really brought everything back in spades. The feeling of hopeless despair, the anguish and anger that Arthas brought out in me, the frustration of seeing him slip away time after time, while waiting to get a chance to take our own crack at him.

And we did, eventually, and we did kill him. I remember how jubilant and exhausted and satisfied I was after the ordeal, how happy to be done with a whole story, it felt like an arc was complete, a resolution was reached. That's what made Wrath the best expansion to date - it was about the god-damned story. That's what people remember, that's what got us engaged, and that's what the game resolved - it gave us a full-stop, at the end of the book. Close it, it's done. But of course, this is a franchise, and it needs to continue, so it did.

Cataclysm's failure I think, had more to do with following up Wrath. There was no way that they could personalize the terror of Deathwing the way the Lich King was personalized for us through the RTS games. We had (most of us, anyway) walked in his shoes, as a Paladin, then as a Death Knight. We came out the other side, and committed atrocities with him, killed Uther with him, raised Sylvanas as a Banshee from her dying breath - we did all this, and now we were back for vengeance. There was no way Deathwing could live up to that.

There is no raid in all of Cataclysm that comes close to Ice Crown Citadel in terms of emotional impact. Nothing carries the weight or gravity that the Citadel had. Even now, thinking of it, I feel nothing but melancholy as if I really did go to war there, even though I was just playing a video game. I left a piece of myself there, and I wrote a story to cement my relationship with the place.

Now, we have Pandaria, and I'm trying, so hard, to engage with the raids here as emotionally as I did the raids in Wrath - and I just can't do it. Part of it is the scope of things - it's just smaller in a lot of ways. We're raiding a tomb in Mogu'shan Vaults. That's it. Nothing noble or heroic about it, there's the thin veneer of trying to save Pandaria from the Guru'bashi as they try to get a weapon to use to regain the Thunder King but face it - we're mercenaries and treasure hunters. It does not inspire the hand-shaking awe of the Citadel.

Take then, the Heart of Fear - a lovely construction and a wonderful raid to explore and fight in, grand cathedral like rooms and lovely work all-around. But the stakes aren't there - we have only the most tenuous grasp of the Empress and while the Sha is a terrifying enemy, the engagement is recent. The ending of Jade Forest was amazing, but man, that didn't inspire me to lust after killing the Sha, especially after killing another Sha over and over again in Kun'lai.

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the Hell out of these raids - some of the best fights in the game since Tier 11 and I'm super excited to kill them all. I just wish I felt for them the way I did for Arthas. Does anyone else need this kind of emotional and personal impact in the raid to really enjoy it on a visceral, sub-dermal  level? Can Blizzard put out another raid with that level of emotional impact?

I hold out hope.

Mists on the horizon

Firstly, the Legendary dudes stole part of my blog name for a show they're doing called "After Dark!" This makes me unreasonably and unbearably despondent. Sad enough to use an emoticon. :-(

Moving on.

This week was the final Dragon Soul run for me. I got to tank heroic Madness one last time, and now it's just a clear run towards Pandaria and the raids waiting for us on those distant, misty shores. The two hour clears of Heroic Dragon Soul were almost getting to be fun, but I'll be happy not to step into that place for a long, long time.

Unlike Wrath of the Lich King, my sets are all kinds of all over the place, distributed between three specs and while all of them are very well geared, none of them are complete. The side-effect of raiding with 3 specs, I suppose. And given my luck with loot, I went the entire expansion - the entire expansion (some 20+ Madness kills in normal or heroic mode) without seeing a single Souldrinker. Bravo, Dragon Soul, you have gotten one over me after all. You win this round, RNG.

Also, no heroic mounts, not from Ragnaros, not from Dragon Soul, not from Alysrazor... I've seen maybe 12 rare mounts in total drop from the bosses in all of Cataclysm and didn't win any. So it goes. I'm not too disappointed, though a Ragnaros mount would have been nice.

I don't have too many regrets about Cataclysm, but I'm just eager to put it behind me and look towards Mists, especially now that I'm trying to settle (again) into my new role, getting excited about tanking. After prepping for Retribution for a couple of months, it's a bit of a gear change, but I'm happier in this role than any other by far, and the weight of a shield on my arm is far more comfortable than the feel of a great heavy axe in my hands.

But the changes to tanking in general and the Protection Paladin toolbox in particular have been significant and I'm still getting used to them. We have a large number of keybinds and being a support class, it's well deserved. There are a tons of buttons we must necessarily have close at hand at all time. This is taking some tricky maneuvering of binds, add-ons, and re-training my hand and muscle-memory a bit, while trying to incorporate a ton of auras to track what ElvUI was doing for me, till it slowed my laptop to a crawl and had to be ejected. So now I'm stuck making my own UI, more or less, from SUF, Bartender and Weak Auras. Maybe that's worth throwing up here to help anyone making their own Tanking UI.

In a shocking bit of news for nobody, Tanking 25s is pretty different from 10s. The amount of specific information I had in 10s is missing (the smaller number of people meant that I could specifically call out to people for specific buffs or help) though that could just be me being new to the guild (not really, I've been here for over a month already.) Point being that I got myself killed a couple of times because I didn't exactly know who to call on for help - I'll need to make sure I correct that.

The other thing is that now I'm getting exposed to the new Vengeance mechanic  and its never-ending climb to the stratosphere thanks to the removal of any cap. Do you know how much AP you get after eating an Impale? A ton. Like, six-figures of a ton. Holy shit. I have a feeling if I was tighter and better with my rotation I'd be wrecking meters left and right. But not all bosses are going to hit like that - and besides, it just makes tank swaps a nightmare. Maybe some kind of macro is necessary.

/cancelaura Righteous Fury
/cast Hand of Salvation
/dance

In more sad news, the removal of Righteous Defense is such a handicap that I didn't even realize it until I saw two or three adds peeling off and, as I'm want to do, I switched targets and my ring-finger spammed my ages-old RD macro-bind and the adds just continued on their merry way. It was a sad moment, and I paused to mourn the passing of an old friend whilst the loose adds gored on the bodies of my companions.

Passion

I like to think I'm passionate about raiding.

I've pursued it twice a week, just about every week, for the last three years. It's something I enjoy very much, the puzzle-solving and teamwork style are my kind of thing and I like to think I'm good at it. Through two expansions, I've experienced the best and worst raids and continued to work through them, through roster problems, through waning and waxing interest, through a year-long drought of new content, through a glut of bosses, through simplistic encounters to encounters so complicated we never finished them. I never stopped.

And I'm still hungry for more. It's a  comfort to me, to know that I have six hours a week where I can sit down and unravel puzzles with my friends, work on executing my play and being rewarded for that time not by loot or achievements, but with the feeling of camaraderie and teamwork.

I've raiding with the same core of people for almost all of those three years - in fact, about half of my raid group is the exact same as it was at beginning of 2010 and about 80% is the same as it was in the beginning of 2011. That's a pretty good record as far as groups go - we've held together for a long time. So the raid isn't just about problem solving as I said above, but also about the companionship of these people.

But.

Raiding is also about achieving what you set out to achieve. It's about solving those problems, not giving up on them. It's about doing the content when it's still reasonably relevant. It's about taking personal responsibility and correcting our play. Owning up to mistakes and not repeating them. Taking the initiative and showing a capacity for spontaneous thinking rather than waiting to be told what to do. It's about pushing through adversity even if it means sitting on the same boss three nights in a row.

And I don't have that with my current group.

Did I ever? I don't know. I remember things being different even as late as last summer, but memory is unreliable and I might be constructing a golden age that never existed. Still, I feel there has been a shift in the guild and slowly but surely, we've moved away from the realm of personal responsibility and progression into the realm of shrugging and moving on.

It isn't any one thing holding us back either, we lost a core healer in September and never quite recovered from it. The last couple of DPS slots haven't been consistent and we've seen many people come and go over the months in an effort to try to fill them. Having me substitute as a healer lately has been a hit-and-miss thing as I try to learn an entirely new style of game-play that I never pursued before. I'm miles away from where I need to be to push new content and I feel I could contribute more as a Tank than I do as a healer. Or maybe that's just me wanting a return to my comfort zone rather than pushing myself to do something new.

"It's not that I want a Hardcore guild, necessarily," I tell myself. "I want the mindset of hardcore progression, the passion that hardcore players bring to the game, that's what I want from the game."

Because I feel that some iota of that passion is missing from my current group. Maybe we're tired, maybe we're bored, the expansion is long in the tooth and when we can see the Elysian Fields of Mists on the horizon, it becomes difficult to remain passionate about the muddy, old, familiar dungeons of Cataclysm that have been ravaged by time and their predictable ways.

I toy with the idea sometimes, of finding such a group, but this is an old song, and we know the ending to this already. After much soul-searching, I decided, way back when, that I'd rather play with my friends than find a guild dedicated to hard-core progression and that hasn't changed.

But perhaps, as with any passion, this hunger for raiding needs to evolve into something else, something more stable. Something that doesn't burn out with the heat and intensity of passion. Perhaps I need for this hunger to smolder, and become embers, something that warms and sustains instead of consuming.

Perhaps, at this point in my life, what I need is a hearth that won't give out.

In pursuit of this, I sent an e-mail to the other officers that I want to step down and become an ordinary member. Last year I stepped back to assistant raid-lead, but even there, I couldn't help but keep my hands in the pie. The temptation is too strong. It's time to let go.

I'm going to go sit by the fire and warm my hands. My responsibility will be to my play and nothing more - I'll always be ready to help if asked, but I think it's time for me to figure out how to sustain myself for the long haul. When Mists rolls around, I might not be first through the breach in the walls, but I'll be on the field.

Interpreting Cataclysm's Ending

I wasn't very happy with the ending cinematic of Cataclysm. The whole thing felt like a re-run, as if I'd seen this movie before. And Ag'ra's pregnancy was just the cheesy center of a cheesecake sandwich. But then, I stopped thinking about cheese and started to try to think of it from an old-god perspective.

What if this was what the old gods wanted?

They put their cards on the table, field their entire army, however feeble it might be, release their strongest lieutenants into the wild and say, "Go. Wreck Azeroth." All the while, they knew full well the army they unleashed, their champions, even Deathwing himself, could not possibly succeed. But success was never their intention.

When the Titans left, their caretakers were the Aspects. It was among their list of charges to keep the old gods in check. How well they did this is debatable, but consider what Deathwing does from an old-god perspective. He creates the Dragon Soul - an object so powerful that it's capable of defeating the Burning Legion - but also an object infused with the essence of every Dragonflight. This diminishes the Aspects, but not enough to matter.

For the old gods to escape, what they really need is to be left alone by the Aspects so they can pursue their agendas.

In comes the Destroyer - who must himself be destroyed if Azeroth is to continue. The Aspects can't do it alone. They need the help of the mortal races - but that's just a distraction. The old gods are still playing this game - and what they really need is for the Aspects to channel their essence into the Dragon Soul to destroy Deathwing, thus diminishing themselves permanently.

Which is exactly what they do.

At the Maelstrom, emerges in full out old-god mode and we were just the catalyst the old gods were waiting for, and at a time when they sensed everything was in place, they played their cards. Nihilistic fool that he is, Deathwing never suspects his true purpose and dies, taking with him the last of what made the Aspects great.

The old gods's hand might look like a mess, but the last couple of cards have yet to be turned and that hand might turn out to be a flush. If you were an old god, you'd be pretty damned happy right now, wouldn't you?

The keepers are gone. There are no more aspects, and the mortal races don't really know or understand the old gods enough to face them down. Without the help of the Aspects, we're on our own against all of the old gods.

We've already seen C'thun come back in the Cho'gal fight. Who knows how quickly Yogg'Saron will return. N'zoth is still out there, and we haven't seen any sign of it at all. Our best hope may lie in the fact that the old gods hate each other almost as much as they hate us, and in that conflict, we might have some hope of victory.

But man, this is a good time to be an old god.

HOW TO: Solo Tank Madness Of Deathwing 10

My Paladin brothers and sisters, let us bow our heads and pray - for this is the battle in which we prove our prowess. Indeed, here we shine, and bear the brute force of our enemies on our shoulders alone, allowing our comrades to do the best of works - the culling of these enemies of life itself. Keep your shield close, your sword in hand, look the beast in the eye and know that the Light has given you all that is necessary, all that is best, to conquer even the Aspect of Death. Cloak yourself in truth, carry the shield of the righteous, cast your final judgment on the ender of worlds and know that this crusade has come at least to its end.

Ahem.

We've used this strategy a couple of times now and it is pretty damned fool-proof. Once you get the flow of the fight down, prepare for achievement spam. I'll assume you know the basic flow of the fight as you can learn from WoWPedia, WoWHead or any millions of other sites.

Composition
1 Tank (preferably a Paladin, but most classes can handle it)
2 Healers (we used a Discipline Priest and Paladin)
7 DPS (if you can get a DK to DPS you can make phase 2 very easy)

Glyphs
Prime: Truth, WoG, Shield
Major: Focus Shield, LoH

Un-glyph'd Divine Protection is very useful on Impales but Glyph'd DP can be very useful to deal with Bolt impact, Tetanus and other raid-wide magical damage, it's a matter of what's more important to you and what's killing you.

Phase 1
Platform Order: Green (Ysera) > Red (Alextrasza) > Yellow (Nozdormu) > Blue (Kalegos)

The order of kill is as follows on each platform:

Corruption > Bolt > Limb > Hemorrhage > Limb > Blistering Tentacle > Limb >  Blistering Tentacle > Limb

The DPS benchmark is to make sure your raid can kill the Corruption before the Elementium Bolt lands. This ensures that you should only ever get 1 Impale per platform. This is crucial. As a paladin you CAN survive two per platform but you shouldn't have to as if you're consistently getting 2 Impales, the last platform will be troublesome.

So. You start on a platform, you can ignore the limb more or less, spread out a bit so people aren't standing in a line behind one another, and nuke the Corruption as soon as it comes up. Here is how you survive all the Impales:

Platform 1 (Ysera): Dream
Platform 2 (Alextrasza): Ardent Defender + Divine Protection
Platform 3 (Nozdormu): Guardian of Ancient Kings + Divine Protection
Platform 4 (Kalegos): Ardent Defender + Divine Protection

Bolt will be coming out very soon after killing the Corruption, so swap and kill the Bolt, then begin on the limb. Keep the limb below 75% - preferably right about 80% - until Hemorrhage happens. Take it slow - this is the mana-regen part for your healers, if you're standing around waiting, it's fine, let your healers get the mana back up, this is crucial with 2 healers, as the Tentacles will burn through their mana pretty fast and you really don't want Blistering Tentacles and Hemorrhage at the same time.

Once Hemorrhage goes down, swap and burn the Limb. Jump platform, repeat.

On the third and fourth platforms, you will have to deal with  Blistering Tentacles as Alextrasza won't help you on those two - leave at least your top melee DPS who loose the most by swapping on the limb while the rest of the raid swaps and kills the Tentacles. We leave our Rogue on the limb. Ranged starts with the furthest Tentacles, melee on the nearest, and you should swap and help as well. I use Hammer here to splash some damage onto the Limb.

You might need to use Divine Guardian or other raid-wide CDs here, especially on the second set of Tentacles if the DPS is slow on getting them down and your stacks get high.

On the fourth platform you will also have to deal with the Bolt impact (as you'll easily kill it without the impact on the other 3 platforms thanks to Nozdormu). What's important here is that the Corruption is killed as early as possible before the Bolt lands, preferably with 5 seconds to go so you can all get well far away from the impact point to minimize damage from the crash. If you find yourself dying to this over and over, you can even use Heroism on the Corruption to get through this part. We have our DPS save all their CDs and Trinkets on the third Platform to use on the fourth Corruption and that's usually enough.

After that it's the same as third - Limb >  Blistering Tentacles > Limb >  Blistering Tentacles. This one can cut a bit close with the  Cataclysm timer.

Notice this whole time the only thing you've had to tank is the Corruption, survive the impales, and pick up the Hemorrhage for a couple of seconds before they evaporate thanks to  Kalegos' buff. There isn't a lot to tank and using two tanks is a massive waste. As you're tanking the fourth Corruption, you're likely to be closest to the impact point when it lands if your DPS is low - remember it is safe to use Divine Protection in that case. Don't be afraid to use it to save yourself as long as you're not tanking Hemorrhages or Corruptions.

This should never happen, but, IF YOU TAKE A SECOND IMPALE FOR ANY REASON, your only recourse is an immunity. Ardent Defender is part of your first-impale rotation, but you can use DivineShield or Blessing of Protection to survive it - hit the ability, taunt, wait for the debuff to run out, and cancel. You don't need to loose a melee to pull this off but the timing can be tricky. Remember you have 3 seconds to pull this off - plenty of time and GCDs.

Phase 2
The basic progression of this is to burn Deathwing, swap and kill the Elementium Fragments, burn some more, swap and burn the Elementium Horrors, burn some more, stop at 11%, deal with the second wave of adds, the second set of Terrors, then hit hero and burn to kill while ignoring all other adds.

The only thing you're needed for is to tank the Horrors. I pick both of them up right away and drag them into Nozdormu's slow-time puddle, our Frost DK taunts one off of me. The DPS jumps on that one and burn it super fast - Anti-magic Shell is more than enough to soak the few stacks of Tetanus. You on the other hand will have a lot of stacks of Tetanus by this time and will be chaining CDs to survive. I usually use Guardian of Ancient Kings here just as the first Terror Dies and keep a twitchy hand on LoH, AD, or anything else to survive the massive spikes of damage from the DoT. If you need to, you can have someone taunt off and kite the add for 2 seconds or so to let the DoT drop off but usually it isn't necessary. Play it safe, and you'll be fine.

The Horrors are really quite survivable - on the kill last week, I died to a Tetanus tick after the first set of adds died and our feral druid and DK tanked the second set of adds just fine - though we did use Heroism to burn the adds faster. Your only purpose in Phase 2 is to survive tanking one of the adds while DPS deal with the other.

Burn Deathwing to get him as close to 11% as you can, and stop. Deal with the second set of adds the same way and you're on the home stretch.

Once the second set of Horrors die, use Heroism if you didn't use it on the Horrors and just burn to kill. If a third set of Elementium Fragments spawn, ignore them and just keep burning. You can't survive the AoE damage sub 10% for every long with 2 healers.

Save Divine Guardian for when Deathwing hits about 6% health as the AoE damage spikes quite a bit at 5%. Chain Divine Guardian with other raid-wide CDs - we go DG, Discipline Barrier, Aura Mastery, our Boomkin starts to channel Tranquility and Deathwing is usually dead right about then. I throw in a Holy Radiance too because why the hell not. Remind everyone to use Dream if it's off cool-down at this point as well.

It's actually not a difficult fight to tank at all, despite my preamble. Once you get the order of kills and rhythm down, this strategy is very repeatable. The healing on the other hand is really intense and you will want to hug your healers the first couple of times through. But it is certainly not more difficult than 2-healing, Ragnaros I don't think.

Good luck!

Hyjal is backwards

Ever since I did Hyjal back in December, I've been thinking about why I don't like that quest line. And I think with 4.2 and the invasion quests, it finally makes sense to me. Hyjal is written backwards. It starts where it should end and then tries to back out of that, and winds up feeling trivial instead of challenging and threatening.

I think one of the big problems with Blizzard is that they are writing on such an epic scale they can't see what makes stories good - they do not let us as characters experience struggle. And yet, it is exactly struggle that makes heroes what they are. It's in the wake of loss that victory has meaning. That is why Wrathgate was so widely accepted as a genius move - it was about the heroes making a massive mistake and being absolutely ruined because of it. It was about the loss of names we thought were immortal.

Cataclysm - and Warcraft in general - could use some more of that.


Think about what happened in 3.1 through 3.3 - nothing. Did we as heroes ever loose ground? Did we have even one setback? Was there ever a point where we saw Dalaran under threat even though it was a 30 second flight from the Citadel? Did the Lich-King more or less tolerate a Renaissance Faire on his doorstep for months? By the time we killed Arthas, it was a foregone conclusion. We were on a relentless march forward with barely a false step along the way.

The victory was not earned in blood and we felt cheated.

In general, Cataclysm feels half-done. We know why we're in Throne or Bastion - there are clear indications even if a few quests leading directly to raids would have helped, but what about Nefarian? There is absolutely no questline devoted to his threat in the end-game. Even something local to Orgrimmar and Stormwind where the old Lady Prestor and Lord Nefarius stories could easily have been done as they tried to re-gather their resources and suddenly we were aware of their threat and moved in before they could get too far down that line - which would explain the limited resources Nefarian seems to bring to bear.

Anyway. Back to Hyjal - I'm going to take a stab at it by looking at Hyjal and seeing how it might have been done so as to follow this back-and-forth swing of loss, regroup and victory.

So imagine, if you will, a different Hyjal storyline. One in which Hyjal is whole, or as whole as it was before the invasion - nascent forests, lush and green, blue streams of water, rich with animal life when an urgent call goes out for help to put out forest-fires. You arrive to see a small volcano and elementals - nothing too much to worry about but as you fight and quest, you find that on returning to your quest hubs, they are overrun, and you have to move back, further up the mountain to regroup - echoes of what happened when the Scourge came.

Over and over, you try to contain the fire but are pushed back, more and more powerful Fire Lords appear, and take over the lower levels of Hyjal and you continue backwards, imploring the Ancients for help but even their intervention isn't enough - only after all four are summoned are they able to put up a defense, but it's too late - by then, much of the forest is already gone, the forces of Ragnaros are on the doorstep of Teldrassil and the world-tree is truly threatened on all side, as Ragnaros' lieutenants wander openly, transforming Hyjal into a part of the Firelands itself.

We are left with dailies to combat the skirmishes against wandering fire elementals and rescuing druids from behind enemy lines and such - we are under siege. You are sent as an emissary to call for help, but the world is too fractured, too busy dealing with their own local problems to care much about a tree on some distant land.

Desperate for something to happen, we become a part of Malfurion's gambit - while the bulk of Ragnaros' forces are on the offensive, he suggests a daring attack against the enemy. He calls for resources to be gathered from the enemy, that he will collect and use to open a gateway into the Firelands itself - dangerous dailies with rich rewards, perhaps.

Imagine, further, a small instance within the barrow-dens. With all this disruption, the various prisoners held by the Wardens are breaking free as the Wardens are called out to battle. Staghelm is making a move, aided by unknown forces that have infiltrated the Dens, perhaps even druids who lead us in and then mislead us while they rescue Staghelm, we see the betrayal and corruption of Druids first hand - a sign of things to come later.

4.2 finally arrives and Malfurion, along with the Aspects and the Elders having gathered enough resources finally opens that gate - straight into the Firelands itself, bypassing all the defenses Ragnaros has put in place. The Avengers of Hyjal take a skeletal crew into the Firelands along with the adventurers and begin their own invasion - one of foliage. The quests can continue as they do now - we plant our own trees in the Firelands and solidify our foothold even as Ragnaros recalls some of his forces, aware now of his exposed flank.

The fight is two-fronted - the invasion and the repel - do dailies in Firelands to grow the trees, and do a new (shorter) questline in Hyjal to retake the land. As quests are completed in Hyjal, the Guardians move forward, take new land, open new dailies and quest hubs, regrow their lands bit by bit.

Meanwhile, the fight continues in the Firelands - adventurers raid against Ragnaros refusing him the opportunity to advance against the tree himself, and tangle up his strongest lieutenants. 4.2 ends with the fires of Hyjal finally extinguished, and Ragnaros finally defeated.

This keeps things very close to the way they are but it just changes the tone of things and adds a palpable sense of desperation to things - it brings a sense of danger. Something sorely lacking in the game right now. With phasing technology being so evocative in its ability to change the world, I think the storytellers can afford to be a little more risky and let us loose things at the end-game a little bit.

It'll make the victories all the more meaningful.

Tanking: Then And Now

I've been thinking about class balance lately as I look at my own raid team and I thought back to my raiding career over the last couple of years. This is going to be a bit long and rambling, but hopefully productive. :-)

When I started raiding, I was very good friends with a Holy Paladin who healed my bear through all the TBC heroics, Kara and Z'A. A Holy Paladin/Bear combo was pretty beastly in TBC raiding. Bears had massive armor and health (more than any other class) and Holy Paladins could keep spot healing them all day long. Back then, we were the only class that would eat Crushing Blows (unless one of the shield tanks missed keeping a buff up) and the Paladin would just land a big heal to cover it. We could keep a boss going till enrage fairly easily. During this time my tanking partners rotated a lot but I raided a lot with another paladin tank (who were strictly AoE or main tanks and made terrible off-tanks just due to the amount of agro that Holy Shield generated.)

Xariona? I hardly knew her.

Late Saturday night, I was farming on my warrior, my friend Thistle was committing mass genocide against Crocolisks to fill her Money Bin with gold, our resident Resto druid was leveling her fishing and our Shadow Priest was leveling his Death Knight in Deepholm.

It was a sleepy night, not much chatter going on, everyone was doing their own thing, as it was close to 2 AM. Suddenly the green chat lights up, "Rare in DH," says the Death Knight, "Get down here now!"

Anniversary!

Today, Raiding After Dark is a year old!

I could go back and do a sum-total of words written, but I doubt it'll be significant since I only had 57 entries which amounts to posting once a week, more or less, not a lot to brag about or anything, but consistent. Maybe I'll double my rate for the next year!

But anyway. I'm going to use this opportunity to reflect on my last year in Warcraft.

Creeping Progress: Early Blackwing Descent

Enough with the dungeons. Let's talk about raids. We've been raiding for two weeks, now, and currently sit at 4/12 and I wanted to review my thoughts about the the current style and mood of raiding, and so forth.

General Impressions
The titanic health-pool on all bosses seems excessive but I can see why it's there. With heroic and early raid gear, we're seeing bosses die in about 7 or 8 minutes depending on the figh which seems like a long time - I remember when we were doing Herioc Blood Princes a seven-minute fight seemed like an eternity. And then I remember doing Sindragosa back in February of last year and realize - hey, we used to wipe to enrage on that fight and the enrage on her was 10 minutes!

Also, tank damage is less brutal but raid damage is far more brutal. Healers are doing the majority of the heavy lifting here and I don't envy them. Effective reduction of raid-damage is a major factor in most fights if you want to keep healers from OOMing and the DPS wind up having to do a lot of dodging/juggling of mechanics (keeping out of fire on Halfus with Storm up, keeping out of all the incidental damage on Omnitron, etc.) which lowers DPS overall but increases healer efficiency.

Heroically Forward

And then there was last night, with 3 other guildies and a guild-friend, where we knocked out SFK in about 30 minutes while I pulled like a rabid monkey on crack, chaining group after group to AoE down with nary a CC save for the occasional stun or Circle of Frost, like we were doing DTK after 3.3 dropped. We even wound up getting the Bullet Time achievement off the last boss because we were too busy yakking in Vent to kill him in a timely fashion and he just kept killing more and more ghouls.

Unfair.

About half-way done with the Glory of Cataclysm Hero. I should just spend a weekend and knock it all out with a guild group since most of them are silly-easy. There are a couple of toughies in there though - Faster Than The Speed of Light and Headed South come to mind, and a couple that require perfect execution and you only get one shot at them per dungeon - like Vigorous VanCleef Vindicator and Rotten to the Core. But otherwise, they're mostly doable without too much hassle.

And you get a mount. I like mounts a lot.

Tanking PuGing

So.

I'm primarily a tank. I like to tank instances a lot. It's probably my favorite thing to do in the game. Running 5-mans is fun, the daily Heroic can be an enjoyable instance, and any time I'm with a few guildies, even 2 or 3 others, the run typically goes by in a breeze and no wipes happen.

Other time, I log in and there is no one else online, and I find myself hovering my mouse over the LFG button and I hesitate. What if my group is a bucket of fail? What if my healer is a ball of stress and can't keep up with the damage? What if I'm top DPS on boss fights again? What if no one remembers how to interrupt?

But, being a masochist, I click the button anyway, and a second or two later, the dungeon-entry screen flashes at me with a shield in the center, and I press the "Enter Dungeon" button, waiting for all the tick-marks to line up, wondering what fresh hell I'll encounter on the other side of that instance loading screen.

I usually open a greeting and throw in emoticons liberally, trying to earn some favor with these people. I'll take a glance at the healer's gear and estimate how much CC I'm going to need to use (full disclosure: when running with guild groups, I've more or less given up using CC even on 3 or 4 add pulls. It's almost back to Wrath dungeoneering - gather 'em up and nuke 'em down with a couple of stuns thrown in for good measure.)

Sometimes, things are sublime - everything goes well, and with nary a hiccup, the Valor Points are tallied to my currency total and everything is fine. Other times, things aren't so simple, and it takes a bit of effort to wrench victory from the jaws of defeat.

Take, for example, this group I had for Heroic Blackrock Caverns. I cast out my usual greeting and smilie, received dispassionate "hi"'s in return, buffed, waited for others to buff, and then, seeing the healer full of mana, everyone's health at full, and the two-add patrol walking up the ramp, I warning everyone - "pulling!" - and like Captain America facing down a bunch of Nazi's, throw my shield into their faces.

A few seconds later the adds were dead, my health had barely dipped and I felt confident. The trash went quickly, Rom'ogg Bonecrusher came thundering up, screaming and yelling, and went down just as fast. While the healer drank, I watched Raz do his thing, tearing up adds and once we were ready, we ran down, clearing trash.

So far, I was feeling pretty good - DPS was high, the healer was easily able to keep up with the damage, and I was happy to be on my way towards a quick clear. Then I realized our warrior was still standing back by the first boss.

"You coming, Steve?" I asked.

"1 sec," he said.

I shrugged - our DPS was good, there was a DK in the group, so I pulled the Zealot waiting at the bottom of the ramp. "Please interrupt Strikes" I reminded him in chat (the third DPS being a hunter), and watched the cast bar filling up slowly before using my own (1-minute CD) interrupt at the last second.

"Dave," I said, naming the DK, "Please interrupt the casts."

With only 2 DPS the Zealot wasn't dying so quickly that the Strikes were not an issue - in fact, the second and third both hit me and I started chaining CDs as my health dropped below 20% and the healer strained to keep me up.

The zealot goes down, I try to stay polite. "Please use your interrupts when you see the Zealot casting," I said. "It does a lot of damage and drains healer mana to bring me back up to full."

We cleared the next trash group before I realized the warrior was still sitting back at the beginning. "Steve," I said, "We're waiting."

"lol 1 min"

A vein began to throb in my forehead. I pulled the next Zealot. He begins to cast Shadow Strike. The cast-bar fills up. My finger inches towards the Hammer key-bind. I restrain it - maybe Dave will come through. I hit my 20% damage reduction CD instead.

I get hit, and the healer begins churning out Nourishes to get me back up.

"Dave," I type out hurried while popping wings to get this add down quickly - where the hell is Steve? - "I really need you to interrupt those, man."

Silence. Another Strike lines up. The hunter keeps on shooting blissfully, and Dave keeps on swinging happily unaware that I'm about to die. I hit Ardent Defender. Whack. A bloom of golden light envelops me saving me from death and then the add goes down.

The healer chimes in - "What the hell is going on?"

"Dave, why aren't you interrupting?" I asked.

"I don't have interrupts," he says.

The vein is red and pulsating at this point. I take a breath - maybe he's a fresh 85, maybe he's never had to interrupt in his life, I don't know what his deal is.

"You do," I say. "Look up your spell book - you should have Mind Freeze under Frost and Srangulate as well, but it's on a longer cool-down. Just put it somewhere you can hit easily and please use it every time you see the Zealot's casting. Hit 'V' so you can see their nameplates and it becomes pretty easy to see the cast-bar. Just hit that Mind Freeze button before they fill in."

"ok."

I rub my eyes while we sit in front of Corla, Herald of Twilight.

"I'll take left," says the hunter.

"I've got right," says the healer.

"Block center, would you Dave? And also interrupt her fear, please, it makes life very easy."

"Block what?"

"The beam in the.... never mind, I'll do it."

"Ok."

"You coming Steve?"

Silence. I initiate a vote-kick and it passes. Another DK takes his place.

"1st time here lol"

I shudder for a second. "Ok, just stay behind the boss and burn her down, and please interrupt the fears."

"Easy."

Yes, easy.

The fight goes just fine, except for the fact that every Fear I can't interrupt gets through and the fight just drags forever. Thankfully, no Zealots evolve. Finally she keels over and spits up her loot, and we continue down to Karsh Steelbender.

I whisper the healer, "Do you think I could just keep stacks up? I don't think these guys will be able to kite and kill adds away from me."

He whispers me back and tells me to do it however I want. I thank him, ask everyone to hold off on CDs until I say and then to burn him fast. I quickly work him up to 8 stacks and give the signal. I don't know if it works but he croaks as I reach 14 stacks and am about exhausted with all my CDs and the healer had turned into a tree spamming heals to keep everyone up.

The next set of trash dies, and I just walk by Beauty. I'm not going to pull her with this group.

"You don't want the JPs?", the new DK asks.

"We lack the CC necessary to clear this."

"Good group. We got it," he says, "Let's try."

The healer whispers me, "Please, no."

I ignore the DK and pull the trash. He doesn't ask again. We get down to Ascendant Lord Obsidius, Raz dies, and I look at the hunter and quickly setup a macro to cast Hand of Freedom on her.

"Think you can kite the adds throughout the fight? He'll occasionally swap places with one of the adds so you'll have to pick up agro on it."

"ok."

"Great, go ahead and pull, I'll taunt the boss away."

She pulls, I drag the boss to one side, and everything is dandy. Everytime a thunderclap happens, I hit a HoF on her and she seems to be doing well.

The first swap and I start running to pull the boss off of her. The add starts channeling on me.

"Add on me," I type in chat.

She's happily kiting, half a room away.

"Take this add off of me, please."

I try kiting but I've already used my HoF on her and my waddling run isn't doing much.

"Please?"

The healer is spamming me and pulls agro on the add as I've avoided touching it for fear of making it harder for the hunter. Now the healer is kiting while the hunter gets cornered and eats some damage.

I taunt the add off of the healer, giving him some time to top everyone off. Boss swaps and now I'm running to keep the new add of me, and drag him into the one add she's still kiting - a multi-shot snags the add and I go back to the boss.

That vein in my forehead has burst and is leaking blood down my face.

The DK's happily sit on the boss, swinging away. The boss doesn't hit that hard anyway, once topped off, I stop kiting and CD through the healing Debuff, just burning through the last 30% of the boss' health.

I whisper the healer and thank him for helping me get through the dungeon while the DPS are all happily cheering about a "GG."

Yeah, GG.

Excuse me while I go curl up with a glass of whiskey.

Current Progression Ladder

A lot of folks are getting really upset with the level of difficulty that Heroics represent, and casual players in particular are frustrated with their inability to get groups to successfully run heroics.

I totally understand the issue, as I find myself wondering how someone who's not used to reading will handle movement mechanics while juggling add management on fights like Heroic: Corborus, or the constant running, dodging cluster-fuck that is Heroic: General Husam. How do they manage the interrupts and burn phase of Heroic: Baron Ashbury? What do they do when they run into Heroic: Ripsnarl?

But I think another way to look at this, is that in the first tier of content, Heroics are now officially a level of gear and difficulty above normal dungeons. This is the reason, a month into the expansion, we still have world-first top-end guilds working on heroic modes in Raids after all the time they spent on them on the Beta.

For the last year, this was the lay of the land:

Top-End: Retired
Hardcore: Heroic: Lich King.
Serious: Heroic: ICC and Helion
Everyone else: Any content in the game. Even normal LK was ridiculously easy by August/September.

At the end of the expansion, that made sense. Right now, there isn't all that much end-game content in the game and I think, the lay of the land is this:

Top-End: Heroic Raids
Harcore: Raids
Serious: Heroics/early raiding
Casual: Everything else

I think if we approach the current difficulty level with this lens, it makes sense. Yes, casual players who're not raiding and are not used to the level of difficulty that raid-bosses and non tank-and-spank bosses present are going to have a hell of time in heroics. They can either train up to them or they can wait till 4.1 drops when all the Valor gear will become Justice gear.

The 3 normal dungeons at 84-85 are also great for training and you can outfit yourself in a full 333/346 set from normal dungeons, Justice Points gear (sl0wly), reputation items (some 359 items there too), and crafting. I don't think it's a slight if you have problems running Heroics right now.

Think back to December or January when you queued up and got Heroic: Halls of Reflections. You knew it was work. You knew it was effort. Now, scale that up to every heroic. That's what this is. And I for one am enjoying the ever-loving hell out of it.

As for me - so far I've killed every boss except for Heroic: Commander Springvale and Heroic: Erudax. I'm chomping at the bit to kill Erudax because it'll complete my meta but Heroic: Grim Batol has been kicking my ass for a while so I'm giong to give it a break for a bit.

I'll start writing up my impressions of the dungeons so maybe it can be helpful to folks having trouble in heroics.

Time to complete all the other dungeons with guild-groups and then prep for Throne of Four Winds. Raids start on the 11th. Eeeeek!

Dungeons

Is there anything more fun than running the new dungeons?

They're lovely, designed with a depth of detail that we saw in raids but was missing from prior 5-mans, a length that feels "just right" in theory, and with boss-fights that are rarely tank and spank.

My favorite dungeon is probably Halls of Origination but Lost City comes a very, very close second, and I love Vortex Pinnacle and Grim Batol as well.

The other two dungeons - Stonecore and Blackrock Descent - are also good, but not as amazing as the first four. I especially love the storytelling in Blackrock Descent, even if I get a bit annoyed at Raz for all the rep-stealing he does. Speaking of rep-stealing, it's a fun mini game during the bombing runs in Grim Batol, to get the mob clumbs low but not to kill them so that all that lovely, lovely rep doesn't evaporate in a puff of dragon-breath.

I'm really glad to have a couple of dungeons in Blackrock to go beat on because of the nostalgia. I didn't play in Vanilla, but as a first-time leveler during TBC, I remember standing around that summoning stone on that floating chunk of rock and watching that black drake fly around and above us, a lot. It was gratifying to finallyfly in on my own black mount and scare off that silly little whelp.

The only dungeon that feels a bit retread-dungeon-ey is, sadly, Throne of Tides - I like it a lot, but the color-scheme is so Wrath of the Lich King that I kind of blot out all the cool stuff going on in there. The Kraken cut-scene should also be trimmed with a option to re-watch, but I'm not sure how to make that happen.

Speaking of retreads, I've been enjoying the ever-loving-hell out of Heroic: Deadmines, though I haven't had the pleasure of poking through Heroic: Shadowfang Keep yet. As a life-long member of the Alliance (more or less) I never had the level of nostalgia attached to that place as, back in the day, it was pretty easy to skip that dungeon entirely, the way it was tucked all the way fuck out of in the middle of nowhere as far as lowby-alliance-leveling was concerned.

One of the things I love about all these dungeons is that they are so rarely tank-and-spank. I've been running all the dungeons as both Retribution and Protection spec, and no matter what, I find myself doing cool stuff. Using Repentance on trash pulls, running in and out of fire all the time, managing boss-mechanics, staying on top of interrupts, switch-killing or picking up adds - dungeons are exciting.

It's too early to pick favorite bosses yet. But I'm enjoying the game a lot. So much I want to talk about!

New Zones Are New And Exciting

When Wrath came out, my leveling was guided by the highest level zone that I had access to. As soon as I got to a point where I could go from, for example, Grizzly Hills to Zul'Drak, I jumped ship and started questing there, for the better quest rewards. I liked the quests fine, but didn't feel compelled to continue the storylines, or see how the zone evolved. There was something missing there that I couldn't identify.

Cataclysm is the complete opposite. I started in Vashj'ir and couldn't get enough of the zone as I said earlier, but I wound up completing every single quest I could find (~140 of them). Hyjal was the same deal, and also in Deepholm and Uldum. The storytelling is just in a whole new zone, and while there are rough patches, I think they can definitely get smoothed out over time. However much I enjoy the PvP and Raiding game now, I'm a lore-nerd at heart and Cataclysm's questing feels like a love-note from the developers to those of us who've obsessed over the game and its story for years.

I'll be writing up reviews for the individual zones and what I liked and didn't like about them over the next couple of days.

--

Now that I have hit level-cap, I'm eager to get geared up before going into Heroics and farming them over the next week. I'm hoping to get into some PuG raiding this week/weekend. I'll post a list later today or tomorrow of the super-easy-to-get pre-heroics blue gear without depending on dungeon drops or a ton of Justice Points that I think should serve well enough to get us started.

Vashj'ir is awesome

The night before launch, I sat in my chair, coffee in hand, capping professions on alts, buzzing with excitement for the chaos to come. Most of my guild-mates had reasonably gone to bed while I stayed awake with one other person, my Australian friend and as midnight approached, we nervously logged out and then logged back in.

The Stormwind flight pad was absolutley CHOKED with people, AoEing everything in sight. Good thing I had my interact with target key-bound and quickly learned flight, ran out to the city and mounted up on that bony Icecrown drake. A second later I was doing laps around my beloved Stormwind, tiles on rooftops shimmering in the Ultra-settings and I was shocked at just how huge it is. I mean, I always thought it was big, especially after the changes, but perspective was great to see it all in a new way.

I really wanted to explore, but instead, I flew down to the portals, completed my quest and then started flying to Vashj'ir before I realized I should probably take the boat as instructed, even if it was utterly overstuffed with people and mounts and pets so that I couldn't see the NPCs while they bantered on the way in.

I only did a few of the starting quests before turning in around 4:30 AM and then a day of work ensued. I got home, and couldn't log in for ages due to some computer issues that cropped up with the latest build, and when I finally made it in, I was able to quest for a bit but Vashj'ir has a lot of specific NPC and loot-item quests which are difficult to do when the entire server is trying to do them. But I powered through somehow and once I moved out of the Kelp'thar Forest, life become better almost immediately.

By the way, if you're waiting for an NPC to spawn, and there is someone in your faction also waiting, throw out an invite, everyone is always happy to accept and it makes life easier for them and you. Also, it gives you another buddy to help steal the mob from the Horde and that's always awesome. Tagging mobs as a paladin is pretty easy and fun - Holy Wrath and Consecrate make it pretty much impossible NOT to tag something. Also, leveling as Prot has been slower than Ret, but pretty fast and I never have to worry about dying. So far, the gear is okay, but I've been DE'ing for mats right now rather than upgrade. I'm sure that'll change.

Anyway - the quests in Vashj'ir are great, the storytelling is much stronger, there is a ton of new tech in place that makes the game compelling and I'm super-excited to keep leveling. I hit 81 last night and will keep on leveling in Vashj'ir until I run out of quests. Haven't decided where to go after that - maybe Hyjal, maybe Deepholm.

And there are still dungeons to do, rep to grind and a lot of work to do still.

I'm super happy with Cataclysm so far. :-)

Ashenvale

Monday night, I logged in to game and reset the hearths for all of my characters, I took a stroll around Stormwind, killing Elementals as I went, and then I paused, thinking about all the places in the game world I'd spent time in. What was the one place I wanted to ride through, one last time?

Even though my Paladin is my main and will always be my favorite character to play, he wasn't my first. I barely remember the leveling process through Vanilla and TBC. I have fond memories of the leveling process in Wrath due to my leveling partner and all of the RP that came out of it, but that wasn't at stake here.

What was at stake here was the old world.

And I remember my first two attempts at leveling, they were confused, uncertain, fitful things. First a mage, then a warrior, both of which were left in the mid forties over some unquantifiable misgiving and so I rerolled for the third time, a Night Elf druid, and I began to level, with a bit more certainty and confidence.

Now that I knew how the game worked, I was able to focus on the lore, the stories, the environment. In my head, a story began to write itself about who this guy was, the world he came from, the confusion of waking up into a world so changed from the world he went to sleep in so long ago.

Teldrassil and Darkshore were fine and entertaining, but his story really hit me when I came to Ashenvale. It is likely the most Night Elfish of all the zones in the games, purely executed, and though it comes across like a bit of a new-age crystal shop at times, I can indulge myself and enjoy the music and lighting and the purple colors. I remember leveling as Feral and prowling through the misty glens and hiding in leafy bushes, running solo as I went, and the place carved a little space for itself in my heart.

There was a quest in Ashenvale, long gone now, I'm sure, and at the culmination of the quest, you were given a vial that would grant three seconds of invulnerability so you could defeat some elite boss, but I thought the vial was so amazing that I couldn't use it for a simple quest, so I saved it and saved it and saved it.

I remember when I began raiding, tanking the Prince in Kara, when I wanted to take the potion to save a wipe but I never did. I went on to Gruul, Magtheridon, Zul'Aman, pieces of the next tier, but never used the potion. It stayed in my bags.

It was like a piece of Ashenvale that I never got rid of, that stayed with me.

So, on Monday night, I rode from one end to the other, back and forth, over and over, until finally I sighed, bid farewell to the purple glen and hearthed for the last time.

Near The End

If patch 4.0.3a (or as it likes to call itself, THE SHATTERING ) winds up hitting on Tuesday, it'll be the death-knell for Wrath Raiding, I think.

And I can't wait.

20% reduced XP in Northrend will let me get my Warlock and Warrior up to 80 before December 7th, hopefully, and that will leave me standing with a total of six level capped characters with most professions covered. The problem being that with Cata, crafts at least need to get near the level cap to learn the final professions but that's okay. My main professions of Enchanting and Jewelcrafting are on Joachim anyway, so he'll get there, but I need to level up my mage for the Alchemy and Tailoring, my druid for Leatherworking, my DK for the Blacksmithing and 2nd Alchemy, and my Warlock still needs to train Engineering and Inscription from scratch.

Looks like I'll be leveling a lot of alts when I'm not grinding out Heroics for points and gear. But I'm excited for the new zones and the new quests and new dungeons and hopefully I don't need to do every fucking quest in every zone to get to 85 so I can get up there while questing without doing a lot of repeated stuff.

I've also started working out a raid plan for Cataclysm. With the two medium-length raids to tackle and the one short raid, I think we'll focus on Blackwing Descent first and then Bastion of Twilight. I'm happy to leave Throne of the Four Winds to the side for a bit until we gear up a bit in raids as that raid seems to have some steep DPS requirements and gear can only help.

In terms of end-bosses, I think we'll be doing Nefarian, then Cho'gal, then Al'Akir, with Lady Sineastra coming late in the gearing process, I think.

For a while, I was thinking about swapping over to DPS as my main spec in Cata but honestly, I'm absolutely loving the Protection Paladin tree and playstyle right now, and after an hour and a half of working on and downing Heroic Sindragosa last night, I have absolutely new-found respect for the Paladin tool-kit.

Between Word of Glory, Hand of Freedom, Hand of Salvation to make taunts trivial, macroed Divine Shield to drop debuffs, glyphed Divine Protection to provide 40% damage reduction from magic, Ardent Defender anytime I dip below 50%, Avenger's Shield with a Focus glyph, a 2 minute Avenging Wrath, and the massive crit-scale of both Shield of Righteousness (I was getting 50k crits on H:Sindi, I've hit 90k crits on H:Festergut) Hammer of Wrath (crits in the 30k+ range) I was keeping myself alive through some crunch moments, able to work through movement impairments so easily that I didn't even miss a closer, while pushing nearly 7k Damage while downing a single-target boss with messy movement heavy mechanics and a fair amount of downtime.

I'm a little worried that we might even be a bit over powered right now, even with the Ardent Defender nerf (I actually like being able to chain DP and AD to give healers a breathing room stretch when they're really busy healing up a raid).

Do I sound a bit giddy? I'm getting pretty excited for Cataclysm. I think it'll be a good time and I'm excited for my guild to come roaring back from the year-long malaise that ICC has plunged us into.

Lessons Learned

I really hope Cataclysm changes things for me and I fall back in love with the game because I really enjoy playing Warcraft quite a bit, but things are just not a lot of fun right now.

A lot of it has to do with the boredom of a lack of content, and even the new elemental invasion feels anemic with the quick little questline which was fun the first time, and then the wide-spread elementals which is more of a chore, trying to find a node when it happens to be open.

Some of it has to do with the lack of guild activities (or guild interest in activities) so that when I log in game, there is little of the socializing and commaradarie I crave desperately which I think also ties into the big "people are bored and they aren't playing" thing.

I've just about given up trying to push any progression or agenda at this late point and we're trying to use raid-nights as a chance to keep interest up and just do achievement runs in old raids or whatever people want to knock out. Someone mentioned that one of our problems is that we only Raid and maybe if we expand out to do a BG night or something, we can open up things a bit more and I'm certainly open to such activities.

--

I'm trying to think ahead and see what lessons can be learned from the last six - seven months of raiding and I think the biggest - the biggest - factor in success and failure is a consistent team.

We made amazing progress when the same core people showed up again and again and we really floundered and struggled when we didn't. That's number one. As a small, friendly, casual guild, I can't really use loot or member standing as a motivation to help attendance and so I'm just hopeful that a year of old content is what is causing this hot-and-cold attitude towards raiding and that this is not an endemic issue.

Another was loot. I don't know what to do about loot (see above re: small guild) as we've always been very casual about handing it out and loot is easy to get these days so it's not really a motivator but I have seen people with BiS trinkets or weapons decide to GQuit or stop raiding and that's always a bit of a pinch. I'm willing to chalk this one up to a shrug and move on, as we've been relatively okay regarding walk-outs and our inner core is very strong.

Lastly - progression. I think I need to set higher standards for progression and be more ruthless towards loot farming and extending lockouts to force progression. The last time I really pushed for progression, we got LK down on our second extension. I think there's a lesson to be learned there.

--

But all of this won't be a factor for another long, hard month. Thankfully a holiday takes up part of it, at least. I really, really hope Blizzard doesn't make a mistake like this again - a year between expansions is ridiculous and I for one am just about burned out on the game entirely because of it and I can't afford to quit and come back because I have a guild to sustain.

/waits_for_December

No Time

Just when I'm so close to wrapping up a bunch of stuff in game, is when work and personal life are piling up to make it impossible for me to even log into game.

Aargh.

But even now that the official date for Cata has been pushed to Dec. 7, I don't know that all this content will sit around and wait for me to finish it. So... before Deathwing devours us all, I need to finish up at least the following on my Paladin:

• Get at least 35 Exalted reps (and finish up the Z'G grind - only need 2 more solo clears!)
  
• Start working towards 3,000 quests done so I can pick up that title
• Start collecting more Heroic Kills for that title
  
• Finish up Glory of the Raider (10)
• Finish up Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10)
• Finish up Glory of the Icecrown Raider (10)

That list could be achieved in one week if I did nothing but just sit down and play for a week!

But lately, I'm lucky to be able to get on twice a week to raid... I was hoping to hit Cata with more than 100k gold, but I'm sitting on just 54k and I doubt I'll be able to double that in a couple of months. Bah. My virtual life is slowing down!