Yesterday was the last day of the old Azeroth, and being the nostalgia monster I am, I had to explore the old girl one last time.

First things first, I was covertly offered by a guildmate to be taken to a “secret place” that was going away in the Shattering. He wanted to share it with someone one last time. He also wanted to know if a rag smelled like chloroform.

We met in Tanaris and and I hopped on his bike as he rode south and then west, along the coast, towards Silithus. Around the point where Tanaris “ended” he rode up some steep hills and crossed into a sparsely textured expanse. We kept riding west and we reached a chasm and had to parachute/bike jump across. Another journey ensued and another chasm we rocket boots&chute jumped across. There he then MC’d me and used me to somehow get us both up a hill along with Intervene.

A few more minutes later, and one more crazy jump into a severely graphically bugged “Silithus” and we arrived at our destination: some crazy sand waterfalls.

I was supposed to be starting an Undying run, so we couldn’t keep going to what was apparently an uninstanced C’thun room, but just reaching this spot was reward enough for the trek we just took. It kind of encapsulated one of the things I love most about WoW, how it’s this gigantic world with so many nooks and crannies (the dancing troll village, the Ironforge airport, that lone house down the shore in EK, etc.) and so many things off the beaten track.

I can’t wait to explore the world in a whole new way in the saddle of my Argent Hippogryph.

As for the Undying run, only took a little more than an hour, and aside from a scary moment on Kel’Thuzad, it went off without a hitch. I already had the achievement, but I was happy I was able to shepherd 9 more folks to wrapping up the last shot they had at it.

Once that was done, I embarked on my nostalgia tour.

Feralas

I logged onto my hunter, my very first character, and took him and his pet wolf over to Feralas where I first tamed it. The pet he has used ever since (although, granted, I barely ever play him… he hasn’t reached the level cap since originally at 60) is Snarler, the rare black wolf near Camp Mojache.

(This is a dopey story, and I apologize for the sentimentality, but I wanted to share this tale of what this spot in Old Azeroth meant to me.)

In November of 2005, my real-life dog (a black lab/german shepherd mix named Casey) was dying. As a way to immortalize her for me, I wanted to find a comparable wolf for my only character at the time–that hunter–that would always be with him in one form or another. After searching a few sites I found an appropriate wolf, Snarler, who patrolled the woods near the Horde town in Feralas.

I spent the next week intermittently hunting Snarler, hoping to tame it, before it was too late. Finally, at the end of the week, when my patience was about to break, I spotted Snarler trotting around the ruins there. I sprung into actions and quickly began the taming spell. It was nearly complete when suddenly Snarler zipped away. Completely disappeared.

I didn’t do my research, but the mob has a spell called Fade Out which will render it invisible for a few seconds.

Not knowing that, I thought I missed my chance. Suddenly the emotion of everything, how I was about to lose my best friend, came crashing down upon me. Completely lost in the despair, I almost didn’t noticed Snarler running back to me. It had just run off briefly and aggro was bidding it return.

Composing myself, I quickly restarted the tame and soon locked it up. Snarler was mine. I named her Casey, and haven’t swapped her out for another pet since.

The real Casey passed away a week later.

Even though I don’t ever play my hunter, it’s comforting knowing that my now-long-gone best friend is still around, in one form or another. Even if Snarler (at least according to wowhead) doesn’t exist anymore thanks to the Shattering.

Orgrimmar

Back on Rhidach, I continued my tour, eventually ending in Orgrimmar. I was going to say goodbye to Warchief Thrall one last time when, once in Grommash Hold, I remembered that he had already left and Garrosh had formally taken his place. I owe no allegiance to that ill-mannered runt, so forget that act of fealty.

Thunderbluff

The last thing I needed to do before logging off for the last time was say goodbye to Cairne. I’m sure most of you didn’t read The Shattering (none of my guildmates did!) but it details his betrayal and downfall. Sorry if that’s a spoilers, but you’re not going to find out in game because Blizzard likes to hide lore detailed elsewhere, so you’ll have to hear it from me.

Cairne was betrayed and murdered and come when the servers return tonight, he’ll be dead and Baine will be the leader of the Tauren. Being the honorable old bull he is, he deserved some parting respect. The Horde will need good people like him in the dark days to come.

With that last item ticked off my list, I logged off content I had properly said my goodbyes. It’ll be weird–very weird–logging into a brave new world, so completely different from what has been a home away from home for 6 years now. I’m not sure I’m completely ready for it. But we shall see.

Note: This actually happened last weekend, I just let this sit in drafts for a while.

The very first time we tried Undying it was on a whim, a drunk Naxx run that we suddenly realized was going perfectly. We kept going through each wing until we reached Kel’Thuzad. Seconds from victory, one of our raidmembers (while very inebriated) died in a voidzone.

The second time we tried, months later, we got up to Sapphiron before one of the healers forgot you need to hide behind the iceblocks and was killed by a frost bomb.

The third time, a few weeks ago, I didn’t have my pet frame enabled, couldn’t quickly dismiss my mind controlled Student on Razuvious, and a warlock got killed. Raz died from dots before we could make a break for it.

Fourth time, we did it on a whim after a drunk Ulduar run and managed to fail on the second attempted boss (Sapphiron) because someone was too far to the left of an iceblock and couldn’t LoS the frost bomb.

Saturday night we went to Naxxramas for the fifth time to attempt an Undying run. With seven people: myself, two healers, and four dps (with one dps a possible OT).

We started on Razuvious, with me double checking my pet frame was active, and dropped him with no trouble. Considering each dps in the raid was doing 2-3 times the dps that someone was doing when Naxx10 was progression, that wasn’t much of a worry. Our main concern was making sure no one died to environmental hazards during boss fights.

After Raz we ported up to Saph to drop the two “hardest” bosses in the raid. When Saph died I’m sure you can imagine my relief, considering so many of our attempts have ended with her. After the dragon we took out KT, though that was a bit more stressful than I thought it would be. I knew we generally would have no issues, but I was still getting constant flashbacks every time a purple ring formed on the floor or someone got trapped in an ice tomb.

It didn’t help that DBM added this awful noise whenever someone got ice tombed–like a “woooo-ong… woooo-ong”. Very unnerving to say the least!

So KT was dead and we were raid for some less stressful fights. Or, at least, less stressful to me. Everyone seemed to be having a great time while I was seeing spots and grinding my teeth down into nubs.

The rest of the run went generally smoothly with only a few bumpy spots. Our biggest hurdles (or so we imagined) were going to be Heigan and Thaddius. For the former, it wasn’t bad at all, despite the fact that all the damn casters made me and the two melee do the dance rather than just camping on the platform for most of the encounter. Somehow I managed to not screw up all the dancing and we got through all right.

Once Plague was cleared it was on to Construct for what we assumed would be a straight run to Thaddius. And then we remembered. Gluth.

We had one tank and one dps switching to tank here and there. Moreover, there were only seven of us total. How the hell were we going to kite adds and pull off a tank switch.

As we stood on the pipe, eating the slow ticks of damage from the slime, the answer came to me. The offtank, Morvain, would kill zombies and I would solo tank Gluth myself. Once the stack hit 10, it should fall off rather than renewing, and I was pretty sure I could hold out that long.

How wrong I was.

We started the fight and I’m watching my stacks steadily climb, hitting about 80% healing reduction by the time the first Decimate was approaching. My first instinct was to bubble off the stacks, and I suppose I got lucky because I bubbled right as Decimate hit, didn’t take any damage, and yet my stacks continued to climb. In short order they were at a full 10 (and, eek, not falling off) and I was at 84% health. For the rest of the fight I basically dodged/block/parried/and absorbed (thanks to disc shields) every incoming hit. I never dropped below 80%.

So despite the odds we managed to pull that one out pretty smoothly. Likewise, Thaddius went according to plan with some minor dps pacing issues on Fuegen/Stalag and then I guess at some point during the fight someone got zapped denying us the achievement for that. Ah well. Nonetheless, no deaths and we marched onward.

At this point we started to debate our next step. It was obvious the biggest hurdle now was going to be doing Four Horsemen with seven people. Finally, we decided to bite the bullet and head right for 4HM, doing spider wing last. One way or another Undying would end on that fight.

We ended up bringing in the pally healer’s fiance, a warlock, for some extra dps since we were stretching ourselves out so badly. Two priests went in the back, as heals, and healed themselves. In the front Morvain tanked Baron and I tanked Thane with the rest of the dps plus the pally healer. As soon as the fight started we burnt down Thane very quickly, so I yanked Baron off Morvain so he could go to the back and relieve them. We burnt the Baron down, then fled to the back to kill the remaining two Horsemen.

Once Zeliek dropped we got an interesting surprise.

Considering we hadn’t cleared Spider wing yet, looks like the achievement is bugged a tad. I wonder what the requirements are? KT and 4HM? Sapph, KT, and 4HM? Everything but Spider wing? Who knows!

At this point I was feeling a little hollow about the achievement. It wasn’t bad enough we severely outgeared the place, but it was just adding insult to injury that the damn achievement was bugged. Nonetheless, we went and cleared Spider with no deaths, scoring our Dedicated Few achievements in the process.

Perhaps not as epic as it would have been pre-3.1, but it was pretty fun overall. And it’s nice we finally put that nagging desire to nab Undying to rest, finally.

Thanks to the new random dungeon system, some bored guildees, and the free-flowing emblems of triumph, I managed to run about 25 heroics this weekend and pick up a little more than a hundred badges, which I think parlayed into t9 shoulders and gloves and the godly dps sigil for my DK. Finally he is free from the BoA shoulders! I have a few 232/245 pieces on him now, but the majority of his gear is sitting in the 200-219 range. Something must be done… ah yes, need moar badges.

On my main I’m currently sitting at 39 emblems of frost, which is awesome. I should be able to score my t10 shoulders (I always go for shoulders first) after the two raids this week and the raid weekly quest. As for the DK’s emblem generation, I think I’m going to use him to buy Primordial Saronite for Rhidach’s crafted tanking gear. My alt will always be a workhorse for my main, be it working the mines for Rhidach’s JCing, or forgoing tier 10. Sacrifices must be made.

And speaking of frost, last night we went in to do ICC-10, but first a few of us ran over to Naxx to bang out the raid weekly quest before raid. Unfortunately, just about every character in the guild was saved except for a smattering of alts (including Demo’s resto shammy). We had myself solo tanking, one healer, and four dps. And we wiped on Anub’Rekhan… four times. Each at 2% when Locust Swarm would hit and Demo refused to let the dps die so I eventually bought it, or the second crypt fiend would spawn after swarm so I couldn’t pick it up. It sucked.

The last guildee we were waiting on for ICC finally woke up and logged on (damn you Gandy) and with his non-alt dps we were able to push it over the finish line. Still, the shame endures.

Once we finally got into the Citadel I had a preconceived notion (based on the accounts of other bloggers) that the 10man was going to be pretty easy. And indeed, I was not wrong. The whole place is one massive faceroll. Aside from some initial trash wipes, we one shot every boss. Wasn’t even a contest.

Deathwhisper especially, which was nightmare-inducing for us in 25man was a total cake walk. And Saurfang I was too busy admiring the kiting being done on the Beasts to really pay attention to the fight. Hell, we only had one Mark that fight, and it went on a healer who died and we still one shot the fight.

We steamrolled the whole place in the duration of one flask.

I can’t wait for tomorrow when we have a wealth of experience on all the bosses and should be able to seriously speed up our progress in there. Tuesday night can’t come soon enough!

Considering my recent bitching about the one day–horror of horrors–I had to run a raid, I somewhat enjoyed the position I found myself in this weekend is a particularly gruesome Naxx25 run. It was late and I was pretty sloshed, and in hindsight the whole episode was an interesting case study on the following obvious point: a leader makes or breaks a raid.

Not to disparage the person leading the motley crew that assembled to run this outdated raid tier (so outdated that the healers were three Ulduar25-geared people with a fourth occasionally subbing in when the group had to split up), but he was in over his head.

A little less than half of the raiders were pugged, the rest being myself, the aforementioned three super healers, and then a bunch of undergeared folks. For reasons I’m not entirely sure we started with Military and then when that was cleared (three hours later!) we went to Construct.

Actually, I think Construct was my fault. It’s hazy, but I’m pretty sure I was asked which wing to do next and I just repeated whichever wing I was standing in front of.

An amusing moment: during 4HM I was tanking Thane who we burned down (dps was surprisingly good) and everyone ran over to Baron to kill that too. The Baron tank typed in /raid for me to taunt it off him and I kind of spaced out/just stood there (see earlier, re: my being sloshed) and didn’t notice until the Baron tank died. Eek. Got a nice “Rhidach wtf” for that one, too.

To bring it back to my original point: the raid leader wasn’t keeping a tight enough leash on the 24 of us. It took us (I repeat) 3 hours to clear Military, mostly due to time being spent waiting for someone to go afk, or for loot to be passed out, or stupid wipes because someone ran ahead and pulled when no one was ready. These were all issues that could have been ameliorated with some heel-clicking discipline.

I wish more of the normal 25man Ulduar crew could have been stuck in that slow motion hell. Might make them appreciate the relative efficiency of our raids a little more.

(Oh, obvious post script: no, we never finished. 6 hours later and we stalled on–of course–Thaddius. Never did Spider or Plague wings.)

21% on Kel’Thuzad and someone dies to a void zone, costing us Undying.

/wrists

So I basically stole the idea and most of the rules from the original created by Vaer of Shadowsong (though with a few dopey rules removed and one or two added), and set up a raid tonight for Naxx10 with the following drinking game guidelines:

1) Killing a boss is a social, the entire raid drinks.

2) If you pick up a gray quality item (armor or weapon), you take a drink.

3) If you die, you take a drink.

4) If it is obvious you wiped the raid (Grobbulus clouds, etc.) you finish your drink.

5) Before you can accept a battle rez you must finish your drink.

6) If you die doing the Heigan dance you must drink continuously during each dance phase you are dead for.

7) If you miss the Thaddius ledge jump you finish your drink. Take a drink if you zap everyone.

8) If you fall off the pre-Gluth pipe finish your drink.

9) If you die on Frogger you must drink once for each person who made it through without dying. Immunity effects are a foul under penalty of chugging a fresh drink.

10) If you loot a green you direct someone else to take a drink (we’ll set the threshold up so everyone can loot greens, but then just pass them to a designated DE’r afterwards).

11) If Embrace of the Spider drops, we all toast Gulliveig and his shitty luck.

I’m interested to see how far we get… and if I’m coherent enough to remember to take screenshots.

So it’s official, my guild runs DKP. Were this a few months ago, I might be disappointed to report such a development, but today I’m actually quite happy. As you could tell from my raid recaps lately we’ve had major attendance issues, and after the last few nights I am feeling positive about DKP’s ability to fix these issues.

Sure, we’ve hit the same hiccups you’d expect from a guild adopting DKP for the first time. We had the dissenting quarters, populated mostly by those that raided very seldom and liked the thought that they could hop in once a week and maybe snag a purple. Which is all well and good, but ultimately this laissez faire attitude was hurting the guild and progression.

I look at DKP from the perspective of a hardened pragmatist. Human beings are rational creatures, and invariably will act in their perceived self-interest. Likewise, WoW players will act in a way that will maximize their loot intake. If a player knows that they’ll get the same amount of loot raiding one night a week then they will do that. However, shake up the system like we did and make it so raiding one night a week supresses how much loot you get on that one day (rather than having an even shot with everyone else in the raid) and they will be compelled to raid more often.

It’s simple economics.

There have already been several comments by guildmembers saying something along the line of “when’s the next raid?”, “does x raid I never attend give DKP?”, and so on. They feel compelled to accumulate the green points, to maximize their shot at loot, and will act accordingly.

We did Naxx25 as the inaugural raid for the new system and it went very, very well. Looting was smooth and very, very fast. No multiple rounds of calling for rolls, just one box pops up. Everyone puts in their maximum bid and the system resolves winners eBay-style. Whatever doesn’t get bid on comes up for a second round of offspec bidding. I’d go so far as to say it’s flawless thus far.

Only worry I can perceive of is (1) dealing with recruitment when people will come in and find themselves at the bottom of a DKP pile, and (2) dealing with raiders ceasing to attend raids once they are sitting on a fat pile of points. We’ll have to see how those two situations operate when and if they appear.

Now for a funny ironic story:

We have this one raiding healer who I’ve mentioned in the past. She was first mentioned on these pages for disappearing once she snagged most of the loot she wanted from Naxx25, and only recently reappeared in the week or two before Ulduar came out. I don’t think it’s unfair to characterize her attitude as selfish. We’ve had issues finishing Naxx25 in one night this last month, and when told we probably wouldn’t devote a second night to old content, she informed the guild she only runs Naxx for the chance to get a ring from Kel’Thuzad.

Gee, thanks. Screw gearing up folks to help the guild, right?

So on Wednesday we scheduled a Naxx25 so we could fine tune the DKP system and not let it hamper an Ulduar run. Seems reasonable, I thought. Well, like I said, despite it being an exceptionally smooth Naxx run, she bailed out after Maexxna (our first wing), probably assuming we’d stall after two wings like the last few weeks. And a boss later we noticed she was in Obsidian Sanctum.

Okay…

We continued through Naxx, steamrolling everything in our path, and once at the last wing I noticed she was still in OS. They must be working on 3D, I suspected. I /who’d her fiance who is not in our guild, and he was in Naxx as well. She dropped a guild raid to do a PuG achievement run in OS.

And not long after the achievement for 2D popped up in guild chat. No one grats her as far as I can recall.

So the point where irony kicks in is, and I’m sure you’ve seen this coming (and you especially see it coming now that I’ve foreshadowed the shocking twist), we downed KT and the Signet of Manifested Pain dropped.

Sweet revenge! Four different people linked it in guild chat to flaunt it.

More so, we did Ulduar last night and Ignis dropped the Pyrelight Circle (and the Heart of Iron, woooo). Because she skipped out on Naxx, she didn’t have near enough DKP to compete with the other people that rolled on it, and lost that ring as well.

The lesson here, kids? Be loyal to your guild, or irony’s gonna git you.

(Lastly, before I get ambushed by an English major, I know that story wasn’t technically irony… but I’m lazy and it’s so much easier to type that than “unfortunate coincidence” so many times.)

Ah vacation, how I love you. I loathe when you end, but we have fun times while we can.

Speaking of fun times, yesterday myself and Gulliveig (my IRL buddy and guildie who I do not talk about enough on this blog) hosted two guildies from out of state, Ildara and Cendra, who came over to Boston to see us. It was great times, but I think the whole day is a remarkable testament to WoW as a social tool.

I met Ildara and Cendra randomly while listed in the LFG tool for Heroic Steam Vaults way back during TBC. I’ve “known” them for two good years now, and I say known in quote marks because there was the awkward moment yesterday when hands were shaken, hugs exchanged, and “good to meet you”s dispensed.

And yet, it was all sorts of surreal considering aside from never standing within 600 miles of each other, we basically knew each other as well as we could of had they been my next door neighbors and playing WoW.

I think in the end that will be WoW’s legacy for me–not the phat purps I accumulated, or the raid bosses felled, but the friendships I made in the game.

But I digress.

As you may have noticed around Thursday last week I finally caught up to the rest of the WoW-playing public and achieved Champion status with my last faction, which gave me my much-desired Crusader title.

So heroic.

Of course, now I’m out more than 50g a day in dailies, but them’s the breaks.

In a Naxx25 gear run on Thursday night (as I mentioned in my last post) for the lulz I decided to go afk halfway during the Loatheb fight. Mechanics of the fight being what they are, not to mention how insane my threat is, it was pretty easy to just walk away at 50% and go grab a drink or something.

I warned everyone in advance too, and I don’t think anyone believed me. But then at 50% I said in vent “afk guys, I’ll be back in a few” and got a few “wait, WHAT?!”s in reply. Of course, at such a threat lead, it wasn’t hard holding aggro with auto-attacks and Blood Corruption, haha.

Oh, and I saw a fun glitch: a dragon riding a horse. Didn’t know they could do that.

A scene from the most boring Naxx25 ever last night.

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.