There was an ICC10 raid Wednesday night, and the best way to describe it was to use the old adage: "We came. We saw. We conquered!"
Icecrown Citadel's Lower Spire can no longer contain us. Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, the Gunship, and Deathbringer Saurfang all fell on our first assault.
We then moved on to the second wing, The Plagueworks. The two mini-bosses, Stinky and Precious, went down quickly and we reached Festergut. We had a little blip in our march on our first attempt, when a couple of raiders got confused about how the spores worked. Do that wrong and a lot of raiders die - which they did, very early in the fight. Instead of trying to salvage it, we did an intentional wipe so that we could start over more quickly. Festergut went down on our second try. There was a funny moment on the second attack, though, again involving the spores. In ICC10 Festergut periodically puts a spore on two raiders. Every raider needs to get close to one of those spores in the seconds after they spawn. The spores then explode, doing modest damage to the raid, but also leaving a debuff on all those close to the spores that greatly reduces shadow damage. This is critical, for without that shadow debuff Festergut's Pungent Blight attack will one shot kill an unprotected raider. Most of the time we are positioned so that little movement is required to get to a "spored" raider. On some occasions, though, the random nature of who gets them forces a raider to have to run to the center or run out to the edge. One raider who had to do that got so excited she ran out to the edge like she was supposed to - and then kept running, with three of us, including Wild, running after her to get close enough to get the spore debuff! We all got the giggles, and luckily we also got her to stop running in time to get our debuff.
Normally we would have had time to take on the next boss, Rotface, but we ended things early so that MM guild officers could have a meeting.
Wild and Philly learned the results of that meeting early Thursday morning. Philly was in game to get her daily Jewelcrafting quest done. She'd been neglecting that task lately, and that's bad because it takes four days of quests to be able to buy one new JC recipe, and Philly still has many recipes she needs to buy. These dailies are pretty easy to do, but this particular one got her into trouble. The quest was to kill Vyrkuls for a necklace (vyrkuls are like vikings). Philly usually flies to the far corner of Northrend to kill the mid-level 70s vyrkuls, but she knew there were some level 80 ones much closer to Dalaran in Icecrown. Philly went there, instead, found the town of Yrm-something or other and started killing. On her third target the single vyrkul she attacked drew five more. Even now I don't know where they came from. Philly was alone on a winding mountainous trail with that one vyrkul. My guess is that those incoming vyrkuls were on the paths below and above Philly, but it was still surprising that they would all aggro at once. Philly kept her cool, DoTing up the angry mobs and taking them down, healing a time or two when her health started to drain. She killed all six, and started looting bodies to get her necklace. Crazily, the looting caused another group of five vyrkuls to come running again. I don't know if that is some mechanic of this particular area, which Philly had never been to before, or if it was a bug. Fearing she would be fighting those five mobs over and over, Philly decided to mountain goat her way down the mountain. She managed not to jump to her death, and finally got out of range and clear enough to call her flying mount and get out of there. Philly got her quest done, but that was quite a bit more excitement than she was expecting on an early Thursday morning.
But back to the plans of the MM guild. There are many guilds out there, and I have to include FS in that group, where they are pretty much just marking time until the Cataclysm expansion comes out. Wild posted on the FS website last week asking if there was interest in a Ruby Sanctum 25 man run. There was not a single reply, not from other guildies, not from guild officers, not from the guild leader. Not even a no. Utter silence.
Not so with MM. The MM guild leadership is very active in trying to keep guildies engaged and find fun things to do. The schedule for the weekend was announced:
Friday - a Trial of the Crusader (ToC) raid, 10/25 man, depending on how many can make it. Philly is excited about the possibility of getting into that raid.
Saturday - the guild is planning an ICC25 raid, which Wild will try to make.
Sunday - a mystery "spankathon" raid; if it's something Philly is geared for she'll probably try to get to that as well.
I really like that the MM guild is still so active and their guildies are still engaged in activities.
There has been another guild related event that happened a couple of days ago. Wild's long time friend and former guild leader for FS, Lady Jo, posted on the guild website that after five years she is hanging up her gear for good. Players come and go, but Lady Jo is one of those special folks and will be greatly missed.
Wild will soon be making his own post on the FS website:
"Wildshard is moving on -
It's been a wonderful run with FS. Wild joined FS in his level 40s way back in the vanilla days of wow, and not many weeks after the guild originally formed. FS has been Wild's home all this time.
But it's time to move on. Wild will be joining MM, where I've been raiding for the past several weeks.
I wish FS all the best."
Yes, Wild finally made the decision to change guilds. The decision has been building for some time. In one sense nothing much will change, since Wild has had virtually no interaction with FS for quite some time. My friends in FS will still be my friends, even though Wild is no longer in the guild. And it'll make communicating with MM friends and learning about MM guild events much easier.
It still makes Wild pretty sad, though.
Wild's last picture as an FS Guildie
Wild's first picture without wearing a guild tabbard in over five years
Wow, congrats on the change. I think it was a long time coming and MM sounds like it is a lot more fun to run with then FS. Wild will be happier in the long run.
ReplyDeleteYep, now that it's done I wonder why I waited so long. It seems like a cloud has lifted that I didn't even know existed. Wildshard was welcomed into MM with a lot of congrats and teasing. It was the right choice.
ReplyDeleteAnd PS - For Almond, from Naithipe - Thanks, Hun. [Don't tell Naithipe I said this, but I think Naithipe even smiled - a little]