January 2009 Archives

So, last night we at the Ravens had a retro gaming night. Having never really got our act together enough to conquer Zul'Aman prior to the expansion we decided to go back there and give it a thorough shoeing.

 

Success took us just over two hours with three bosses on the timer. Leafy has some nice pics and a more detailed story here

 

At that point we were at a loose end and decided that as most of us had never seen molten core, we would take a little jaunt there just for the scenery.

 

And what a let down it was. Obviously I am a bit spoiled now with how pretty WotLK looks, but please, it looks no different from several of the other old instances. Was this really the pinnacle of achievement back in the good old days?

 

I am hugely grateful that I never got into the forty man raiding scene. Not only does it look ugly and all too familiar, but the mobs seem to be just plonked down randomly. I think I would have stabbed my eyes out in frustration many times over if I had had to put up with this for as long as people say it took, let alone having to repeat it over and over. Why would anyone put themselves through that?

So, it's been a very long time since I've written anything here. I've been much more involved in playing than writing and a lot has happened in the intervening months.

We had a bit of guild drama that ended up with several members leaving to become more raid oriented.

 

3.01 arrived and things got a bit silly as our Karazhan runs switched from taking two nights to something like two hours.

I experienced a bit of burnout, mitigated somewhat by the new games that came out later in the year. War hammer was especially helpful as a kind of MMO lemon sorbet to clean the palate for Wrath.

Right now my tank, Gradjo, is a hairs breadth from 80 with many others in the guild being there way before me. He's taken over as my main as previously he was always the character that I got to play most. I've managed to get 440 blacksmithing as well and so access to the epic patterns. *yum*.

I'm not sure which direction I'm going to take with this, I certainly toyed with the idea of having one of each of the tanks and seeing the differences involved in each one. That's certainly a more viable option with the new expansion as there is so much kit generalisation to play with and having one set does not preclude the other.

 

Tanking also became quite a bit more fun in 3.01, especially as a warrior, as they ditched a lot of the base threat in their moves and increased the damage instead. Finally you can get a handle on how the tank is doing beyond, 'have I pulled aggro?'.

 

It's certainly not unknown for me to feature heavily in any damage meters when I'm tanking now. This also makes the switch from OT to DPS and visa versa much more of an option these days.

 

I'm going to endeavour to make at least one post a week from now on as I do enjoy the scribbling when I finally manage to sit down and do it.

 

A few more pictures in here to spice things up a bit certainly wouldn't hurt as this has been a rather academic affair so far.