This weekend was just overall a bad time in Azeroth. Bad enough my usual play time was limited by the holiday–seeing your family, who wants to do that?–but also most of what gaming time I got in was marred by various annoyances or disasters.

It started Friday night where a bunch of us were logged in but with not much to do. A Naxx10 was scheduled for the following day, so I couldn’t get saved, not enough people for a 25man raid, and not much interest in anything else. Eventually the guild leader saw a Black Temple pug forming and asked some of us if we wanted to go. I agreed, because I needed the achievement, have yet to see an Illidan kill, and have dark, dirty desires for the Bulwark of Azzinoth (coolest looking shield in all of WoW, by far). I was totally game.

The GL got a few of us into this raid, but had to split soon afterwards. In the end the raid composition was about 12 people from ES and the rest scattered from various other guilds. Just about everyone was lvl 80, except for the raid leader, who was a lvl 72 warrior. The RL had one Warglaive and was aiming for the offhand. Same deal with one of my guildees who needed the same glaive.

Anyways, raid starts and we’re basically steam rolling the whole place.

Slight aside: the most absurd Death Knight ever is main tanking for us, who apparently only knows how to communicate in all caps. Perhaps my favorite line of his was when he was explaining some boss and warned us all that if we wiped he would “STAB [us] IN THE NECK WITH A STRAW FROM MCDONALDS.” As you can imagine, he provided much entertainment for those of us in ES. We spent most of the time in vent making fun of this weirdo.

Now in about an hour’s time we reach Illidan, and the first attempt we wipe, mostly due to me. Like I said, I’ve never done Illidan, and I was told to kite the flames during phase 2. So I do, and drag them away from the glaives which I guess enraged them? I got one shot and the raid wiped. Anyways, once Capt Capslock actually used his big boy words and told me to kite the flames around the circle, I was good to go. We downed Illidan in short order and dontcha know on his corpus is the Bulwark itself. Glory be.

A mainhand Warglaive dropped as well, and that went to a rogue from ES, which was pretty cool, but I didn’t really care about that. I wanted the shield.

The Bulwark of Azzinoth is the absolute dead-sexiest shield in all of WoW. If you’ve never seen it before it is this massive slab of spiked metal that rests horizontally across your back. Just absolute sex, it is.

The RL calls out for rolls, and people start furiously typing their /rolls. RL gets a 10, a couple of warriors get between 15 and 35. Some guy rolls a 40. Then I roll, and get a 60. Oh man, the high roll, it was going to be mine! Ages pass as I wait for further rolls, and none more are produced. The RL then says in raid, “LOL well I’m taking it anyways.”

Feck.

The guy then ninjas the Bulwark of Azzinoth, stating that as a lvl 72 he has better claim to it. Absolute bullshit. Somewhere nearby a flock of birds flees their perch as I loose a torrent of obscenities against the heavens. And of course, completely enraged, I had to call it a night.

So then Saturday morning I wake up and log in for what little WoWing I could do that day, and find out that two of our guildees were hacked in the dead of night, officers both. As you can imagine, the Gbank was cleaned out of anything of worth. One guy’s toon was server transferred (probably to facilitate a gold shuffle), and is still trapped in limbo elsewhere (but at least has control of his account). The other guy is waiting to get his account back.

Well, great.

And then last night when I got home from Easter dinner with the fam, I logged on to do some relaxed Disgusting Oozeling farming (I mean that ironically), anticipating that the scheduled raid probably would not happen. The rank and file had other ideas, and after about opening about 40 Ooze Bags with no pet to be seen, I found myself in Naxx.

We were finishing up a raid that was started Saturday, and right from the beginning I could tell we were cursed. One of the tanks last night was Taunty the Impatient DK, and he was in rare form. Running ahead of the pack and pulling without a healer in sight, pulling more mobs while healers were attempting rezzes, complaining why he wasn’t getting heals, etc. I saw him during Kel’Thuzad just sitting in the middle of the circle during Phase 1, not even moving. Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered to dps the Aboms or whatever. He’d only move when I picked up KT and dragged him into the middle of the circle. Ugh, I hate that guy, he’s a blight.

Long story short, we got to KT, but we couldn’t down him. Too many stupid mistakes on the part of melee, rogues weren’t coordinating kicks, people were dying to voids, unlucky mind controls. It was just chaos. After a few wipes it was pretty late, so we called it.

Hopefully this week turns out better.