Wednesday (8 Sep) - Pre-Launch Fever

Wednesday (8 Sep) - Pre-Launch Fever

Wild did not join the G2 ICC10 raid Wednesday night. We have a real life commitment on Thursday that will keep Wild out of the game on that night, so Wild offered up his Wednesday night spot as well so that the raid group would have the same ten folks on both nights. It was unfortunate, too, because Bd is now back from a couple of weeks away and was able to raid last night. Wild would have loved to raid with Bd again. Not sure how they did, but it was a good group and they should have done well.

The horde Cata pre-launch event, "Zalazane's Fall" has been a great opening salvo in building further excitement for the expansion. I learned that you have to be at least level 75 to complete all of the quests. However, you only have to be level 10 or higher to be able to do all the quests excluding the battle with Zalazane. So, those under level 75 can't get the "Feat of Strength" achievement for completing the quest chain, but they CAN get the Darkspear Warrior disguise.

So, Wild turned his entire family loose on Wednesday so they could all get the quests done. In addition to JB, who was the first to complete the event, Naithipe, Mery, EZ, Jocelyne, Dethsdoor, and Happy have all now completed the quest chain.

On Thursday it was time for the Alliance cousins to take a turn at doing the alliance version of the quest chain, called "Operation Gnomeregan." As the senior member, Java got the honor of being the first. I must point out a couple of things, though. Even though Java is the highest level alliance toon in the Wild family, he is still only level 20 and has not seen much of the world of the Alliance. Java lives at the Exodar, a city close to where he was born. The pre-launch event for the alliance starts in the city of Ironforge. Java had no idea where Ironforge is or how to get there. Frankly, the only family members that had ever been close to Ironforge were horde - JB and Wild (or was it Philly and Wild? I forget). And they weren't exactly in the Alliance city to sightsee. They were there to kill and sack the city for the "For The Horde!" achievement.

Java was pretty much on his own. He tried the Exodar flight path first. Unfortunately, the only place linked to the flight path didn't help. Ok, Java knew there was a boat. Java took the boat to Auberdine. He picked up the flight path there, but there were still too many undiscovered links and the flight path went nowhere. At Auberdine there are boat docks for both Tedrassil and Stormwind City. Java tried Stormwind City.

Java had to ask a Stormwind guard where the flight master for the city was. Stormwind City is a huge place, with canals and bridges and buildings stacked upon buildings. No horde metropolis can match it. Java found the flight master, but was again stymied with no connecting flights. What else was there? Java returned to Auberdine and eventually wound up in Darnassus and another dead end. Java was running out of cities, but Ironforge remained out of reach. Java was ready to consider taking the long road from the Wetlands to Ironforge on a ground mount. That was fraught with danger for a level 20, and it would be even worse if Java's lower level alliance pals had to go that route as well. There would definitely be some dying on the way.

Java returned to Stormwind City and sought out the city guards once more. Is there another pier where a boat might get Java closer to his goal? Nope, he was told, the only other boat coming to the city was from Northrend. Of course, there is always the tram, the guard suggested. The tram? The Deeprun Tram!!! Of course! I'd heard of the Deeprun Tram. However, no one in the Wild family, neither horde or alliance, had ever seen it. Where do I find it? Java asked the guard, who gave Java directions to the Dwarf Quarter of the city.

Java wound his way through the city until he finally located the tram entrance. He had to admit that it was pretty impressive.



Java stepped through a portal and found a completely deserted tram station. Small cars attached to a track came and went. What looked like a long passageway was actually the tunnel carved out to allow passage of the cars. Java walked along the tunnel for a bit, watching cars go by overhead. How long was this tunnel? Java didn't know. He returned to the tram station. There didn't seem to be any other choice. Java nervously got into one of the cars. After all, this thing was made by gnomes - and gnomish stuff has a way of, well, exploding, falling apart, killing it's user, that sort of thing. After a short wait the car rolled into motion. The voyage was a lot longer than java expected. The car eventually stopped at another station that looked exactly like the one he'd just left. There were no signs that he could see. Supposedly the tram did stop at Ironforge. Is this it? Java had never seen Ironforge so he didn't know. Java left the car, wandered around, and finally stumbled over another tram portal. Stepping through the portal, Java was welcomed to Ironforge.

Is This Thing Safe? - Tram car

Entry to Ironforge

If just finding Ironforge was this hard, how hard would it to find the quest giver for "Operation Gnomeregan?" The point of contact was High Tinker Mekkatorque, but where was he? Java did some research and came up with some contradicting information. Java should have just looked around the area he was standing at. When he finally did look around, Mekkatorque was standing just a few feet away.

Greatly relieved, Java picked up the first quest, "A Few Good Gnomes." Like the horde version Volunteers quest, this first quest required finding five volunteers. Java managed that quickly enough, but then ran into trouble. Java needed to deliver those volunteers to Captain Tread Sparknozzle at Steelgrill's Depot, said to be "just south of Ironforge." Oh, great, thought Java. Java had no idea even how to get out of the tram station, much less find his way out of the city and then to some place he'd never heard of. This was going to be a lot tougher than Java thought, mostly because this was all foreign ground for him.

Unfortunately, things got a lot busy on the real life side of things and Java had to wait, cooling his heels until more time could be found.

Tuesday (7 Sep) - Cataclysm is Here!

Tuesday (7 Sep) - Cataclysm is Here!

Now, hold on! The expansion is not here yet. But the events leading up to Cata's arrival have begun, brought via the completion of Tuesday's "maintenance." Every player received an in game email. For the Horde the letter came from Vanira, a servant of the leader of the Darkspear tribe, Vol'jin. It was a call to war.

On the southern tip of Kalimdor is a small troll enclave called Sen'jin Village. This is where young trolls grow to manhood (uh, trollhood) and where all good trolls get their first ground mount (a raptor). Across a narrow strip of sea from Sen'jin Village is the Echo Isles. Among the many quests on those islands is a quest to kill Zalazane and return with his head. Zalazane is a powerful troll witch doctor who has violated troll ways and desecrated the Echo Isles.

We thought we'd killed him, but like so many beings in the world of Azeroth, "Death was only a setback." It seems that Zalazane used his witchcraft to make it only appear as if we'd taken his head.

So, on Tuesday, in the first Cata pre-launch event, the horde is called upon to defeat Zalazane once and for all. The letter directs all to travel to Sen'jin Village and seek out Vol'jin. That begins a quest chain. So it begins.

What is the significance of Sen'jin Village and the Echo Isles? In Cata the horde must retake the Echo Isles so they will become the starting zone for level 1-5 trolls. Currently, trolls and orcs use the same starting zone area and then the trolls travel to Sen'jin Village for continued leveling. Many players had hoped that a troll home city would arise on the Echo Isles, but that was not in the cards. So they had to satisfied with taking control of Echo Isles.

Wild family thought it only fitting that our top troll, JB, be the first to complete the quest chain.

JB already happened to be in Orgrimmar, so she hopped on her ground mount and rode south. She soon reached Sen'jin Village, discovering that the preparations for war with Zalazane were already underway.


JB found Vanira and accepted the first task, "Da Perfect Spies." We needed some spies to scout out Zalazane's forces on the Echo Isles, and according to Vanira the perfect spies were - frogs! JB bagged five frogs and returned to Vanira, who "prepared" them for the next step in the plan.

In the quest "Frogs Away!" JB was sent to a nearby flight master (in place only for the event, I believe, since that area normally has no flight master) and was given a bat flyer. Using the sack of frogs Vanira gave JB, she tossed frogs at Zalazane campsites all over Echo Isles. Ok, it sounds pretty silly, but it was fun.

With our "spies" in place, Vanira sent JB to Vol'jin himself, who was raising an army. In "Trollin' For Volunteers" Vol'jin sent JB to the small town of Razor Hill to the north to pound the drums of war. JB found the five volunteers she needed, hopped on her mount and headed with them back to Sen'jin Village.

[Just as an aside, it is interesting how Blizzard improves it's content in small ways to fix incongruities. For example, quests which require traveling with one of more npcs originally required the player to walk with that npc - on foot. Try to mount and ride and you'd leave the npc behind and fail the quest. So Blizz got smarter and allowed players to mount up and the npc would run fast enough to keep up. But the npc was still on foot! Players could even use flying mounts, and the npc would still keep up, running four times normal speed on the ground. It made the quest go faster, but it was, well, stupid and unrealistic. When JB mounted up to return with her volunteers, guess what happened? The five volunteers also mounted up on their own ground mounts. Nice. ]


Ok, back to the retaking of Echo Isles. "Lady of Da Tigers" is a cool challenge quest. Vanira cast the "spirit of the tiger" on JB and sends her to one of the Isles to challenge a powerful tiger and attempt to win the tiger's support in the battle. Troll gods all have animal forms, including their Tiger god. With the spirit of the tiger on her, JB had access to three melee attacks there were actually feral druid cat abilities. How cool that JB could feel what is was like to fight like a druid cat! JB won the challenge and the tiger agreed to help. In Cata trolls will be allowed to select the druid class for the first time. This quest provides the rationale for that - we got the help and blessings of the great tiger and the tiger god.

"Dance of the Spirits" is exactly that. JB joined a group of npcs and other players and waited for a repeating scenario to start. JB didn't have to do anything but be close by while Witch Doctor Hez'tok banged his drums and led us all in a cool dance. While we didn't "have" to do anything, every player standing around when it started did a /dance and joined in. The purpose of the dance was to determine when to start the attack.


Completing the Dance rewarded JB with [Darkspear Pride]. This is about the coolest looking disguise Blizz has come up with since the Murloc costume. I highly recommend that every player and every alt do at least up to this part in the chain to get this. It has a very long cooldown (4 hours) and only lasts 30 minutes - but if you want a costume to turns you into a Darkspear Warrior, don't miss out on this! Once the event closes the costume may never again be available. JB will show off her disguise at the end of the post.

"Preparin' For Battle" sends JB back to the flight master and a short bat flight to eastern Isle. There, a small army of players were already milling about. This is the launching point for the attack. Most of us had no idea what to do at this point. We all wanted to "do something!" but there were no clues what that was. In a way it raised the excitement level, wondering what would happen next. But as more and more players showed up and not much happened, we started getting impatient. What was happening, though, is that the group before us was still on the next leg of the chain and we had to wait until that played out to completion.


We waited probably 15 minutes, and then we got the nod that the attack was about to start. JB was ready and carrying the battle flag!


"Zalazane's fall" is the final quest in the chain, and it's an exciting, running battle against Zalazane. The pics below don't do the battle justice - you should experience it yourself. I believe this part is for level 80s only, but I'm not sure.




When the battle was over and we had defeated Zalazane, JB was rewarded with [Darkspear Shroud]. Not to take anything away from the Event, but the shroud is just a cloak with no stats on it. It's just a plain 'ole cloak. There are rumors that Cata will introduce an "overcloak" which would be a new gear slot. However, there is no such thing in the beta so far, and no hints from the developers. Some are already calling the cloak vendor trash (ie, throw it away). JB is holding on to hers. Who knows what it might be worth? And she loved doing the quest chain!

Now, how long will it take for the entire Wild family to get this done?

As promised, here are some pics of JB in her Darkspear Warrior diguise:




PS - By the way, there is also an Alliance pre-launch event. One of Wild's alliance cousins had better get moving and tell us about that!

Monday (6 Sep) - More Market Meanderings

Monday (6 Sep) - More Market Meanderings

For the first time in four weeks, I believe, Blizzard is running maintenance on a Tuesday morning in the usual 5am to 11am window.

For the first time in almost as many weeks, the team of Lao, Ando, and EZ got together on a Monday night. Rather than hit the pvp battlegrounds, we opted for some dungeon fun. EZ had the most to gain from that, as she is at level 41 whereas Lao and Ando are both level 48. Random dungeons that fit both level 41 and 48 players are few, and so we were not surprised that the random choice was Maraudon, a five man dungeon in Desolace rated for level 45-48s. Maraudon is a massive place that is divided into three areas identified by a set of crystals - purple, orange, and pristine. Two of those areas are rated for as low as level 39 players, which is how EZ was able to get into the dungeon with Ando and Lao.

Normally we could wait upwards of 20 minutes for a random dungeon, but in our case we had two aces up our sleeve. Ando signed up as a bear tank and Lao signed up as the healer. With both a tank and a healer, getting two DPS in addition to EZ was fast, and we instantly got a queue.

We roared through Maraudon with no troubles. EZ discovered, though, that she was constantly running out of mana for the spell casting that added extra "oomph!" to her dual wielding weapon attacks, as well as her mana based totems that added buffs to the whole group. As an enhancement (ie, melee) shaman, EZ has a lot of agility based gear to improve weapon attacks, but also needs considerable mana to deal the most damage possible. EZ also got to practice melee positioning, as I wanted to get used to moving behind mobs the tank has targeted. Doing that, though, was one of the main reasons EZ was running out of mana. EZ's primary means of regenerating mana is from her mana shield. Every time a mob hit that shield, EZ gained mana back. But Ando was a good tank, and he didn't give the mobs any chance to hit EZ. EZ loved the protection, but she couldn't regen her mana. There was only one boss in this section of Maraudon, but that boss did drop a very nice mail armor piece. Unfortunately, EZ lost the roll to the hunter in the group.

Lao had to leave after the first run, but Ando and EZ did one more. Ando switched to healing, but we would need a tank and more DPS. We got lucky, and the wait was a short one. We got the same section of Maraudon again (luck of the dice) and pounded through it a second time. Ando then had to leave, and we called it an evening.

EZ started at level 41, 0% of the way to level 42. When she finished, EZ was 66% of the way to level 42. EZ had several completed quests from earlier questing, wanting to save them for when she had some rested xp. Now was the time to turn them in, and with those quest completions EZ reached level 42.

A nice evening for EZ and the team.

A week ago Happy was seething because another one of his big sellers went into the tank. This time is was flasks of frost wyrm, which Happy sells for around 19g each on average. They cost roughly 16g to make (less when Happy can get a bargain on the materials). The flasks are in high demand on weekends because they are used by virtually every raiding toon that uses mana. On a single night a raider will use several of these flasks. Prices go up and down constantly, with Happy sometimes getting as much as 23g per flask when quantities get tight. When prices drop to 16g or less, Happy stops selling and waits for the price to go back up. It always does. Except that this time the prices kept dropping, down as far as 13g, and then refused to budge upward for days. The cost of the mats didn't get cheaper, so many players were selling their flasks at a loss.

This past weekend things were even more strange, but in a (hopefully) positive way. In part due to the low prices the prior week, I believe that flask sellers ran low on stock, and so this weekend there were fewer flasks for sale. Happy still had his stock because he'd refused to sell at those low prices. Happy made a killing selling those flasks at much higher prices - a LOT of flasks. On the alliance side the price dumping didn't happen last week - it happened this weekend. The low pricing was so juicy Lost could not resist risking some serious gold to buy up many of the bargains. Lost bought a number of flasks for 11g each, and bought frost lotus (an herb used in making the flasks) at 11g each as well (frost lotus usually sells for 20g each). Lost had been selling whatever frost lotus she picked up to Happy, but the 15% trading fee charged by the neutral auction house is a pain, and Lost decided that this time Happy was on his own. Lost intended to repost the frost lotus on the alliance side AH and keep the profits. Lost had already made a risky purchase on three full stacks of large brilliant shards, her biggest purchase to date at the time. After a worrisomely slow start, the shards are selling briskly at a very nice profit. So Lost risked another large purchase, this time on dream shards. Dream shards are a riskier bet as their price can fluctuate quite a bit and it can be hard to make a profit on them.

Her current cash cow, small radiant shards, now has more competition. Happy has been selling Lost the small radiants for 2g each, which was still a profit for him, and Lost was selling them on the alliance AH for 7g each. Quite a deal! There weren't many sellers of the small radiants, so Lost had the market mostly to herself. Others have noticed, though, and Lost has had to lower her prices several times. She's still getting close to 6g each for them, and since she only paid 2g each, she's well positioned to chase away her competitors. Update - Happy has been buying up the low priced small radiants to sell to Lost, and as could be expected, all that buying has been noticed and the price of small radiants on the horde AH has jumped to over 3g each. Happy is trying to back off the buying a bit to let the prices fall again.

It'll be a few days before Lost will know whether she made the right choices. Two things that Lost is learning from Happy and from her own experiences with the AH: (1) When you see a great bargain - buy it! Don't dither, don't worry it won't sell. Grab it before someone else does. (2) When selling stock be patient! Yes, selling those 11g flasks for 14g (the going price at the moment) is a nice profit. But those flasks have an average price closer to 18g each. Wait for the prices to go back up and rake in even more profit! (3) Ok, so there's three things, but this is a corollary to (2). When there is a lot of competing sellers for an item, and you get a good bargain, repost quickly for a decent profit but low enough for it to sell right away. When there are many sellers underbidding is a constant issue, so in that case selling fast and taking a little less profit is the best approach.

Sunday (5 Sep) - So You Want to be in a PUG

Sunday (5 Sep) - So You Want to be in a PUG

Wild had some time on his hands Saturday and wanted to get in some raiding. The MM guild has a standing 3pm ICC25 raid scheduled for saturdays, although attendance is iffy and getting a full 25 raiders together involves both bringing in PUGs and waiting around as much as two hours to get started. Wild has only two items that he really needs from ICC25 - a BOE (bind on equip) ring called [Marrowgar's Frigid Ring] and a bis (best in slot) trinket called [Althor's Abacus]. The ring is a random drop and the trinket is a drop from the Gunship battle. The MM raid leader spent 45 minutes trying get a raid together. We had at most 10-12 guildies available, and the raid leader did not feel like trying to PUG it with so few guildies, so he called off the raid.

While Wild was waiting to see if the guild would get an ICC25 going, I told the raid leader I would be trying to get into a VoA25 raid. VoA is a short, usually two boss raid that can be done in 15-20 minutes once the raid gets started. VoA drops a token for the Tier 10 gloves. The Tier 10 set is supposed to be the top of the line gear for raiders, but for druid healers the set stats are so poor that druids with the 4-piece T9 set would rather keep that than get the T10. Wild doesn't have the T9, but does have the 2-piece T10. The 2-piece set bonus is nice enough to keep, but it wasn't worth the effort to try to get any more since Wild could get (and has) better gear.

Wild still has a problem, though. Wild wants more +haste to speed up his spell casting. Wild is already at what is called the "soft cap." This is the point where Wild's instant spells have the shortest possible cooldown. The "hard cap" is when Wild's non-instant spells will have the fastest cast time. Wild only needs 50-60 more haste to get to the hard cap. So, one of Wild's T10 pieces, the shoulders, doesn't have any haste stats. However, the T10 gloves do have haste. If Wild could get the T10 gloves, he could then replace the T10 shoulders with gear that has haste and wa-la! Wild could reach the hard cap and still have the 2-piece T10 set bonus.

Wild found himself a VoA25 raid and got an invite. The trash mobs in VoA are trivial and we plowed through them to get to the main boss we were after, Toravon. We only had four healers, but that was more than enough for this fight. We engaged, and while it took a bit longer than it should have, we brought Toravon down. The T10 druid gloves token did not drop, unfortunately. Wild didn't need anything from the second boss, but was prepared to stay and help out and pick up an extra badge. We cleared trash to the next boss while loot was being distributed. Then, with the whole raid standing in front of the next boss, ready to go - the raid leader left the raid. He was also the master looter, so we wouldn't be able to loot the next boss, and that effectively ended the raid. That made it two short circuits to Wild's raiding.

Not long after that, Wild asked to join a PUG ICC25 raid that was forming up. Might as well, Wild thought, there won't be a guild ICC25 run this week apparently. The raid was nearly full when Wild joined. The group of raiders were dominated by two guilds, plus a number of other raiders like Wild. The main tank looked pretty good and we had five healers, so I was pretty comfortable with the makeup of the raid. If the raid leader was using vent he didn't offer it to the raid, so there was an expectation that everyone knew the fights.

Wild was further encouraged when we started on the trash mobs. They went down fast and everyone seemed to know what they were doing. Matter of fact, mobs died faster than Wild usually sees in his own guild. We had some high powered DPS here. While clearing, one of the raiders named Van stated in vent that he was "reserving the bloods, just so everyone knows that." The "bloods" are a drop off of two bosses used as part of a powerful quest chain. Loot rules hadn't been discussed yet so there was immediate grumbling from other raiders who hoped to win bloods. The raid leader stepped in and said, "No, the bloods are not being reserved." Good for him.

We cleared two packs of mobs and a boe bow dropped. This bow is a really, really nice entry level i264 bow and coveted by hunters and other classes that use bows. As a boe, it means that even someone who doesn't use a bow could take it and give it to someone else or sell it. The general rule for boe's is that to roll on it you had to be able to use it, and if you won it you had to equip it on the spot to prove that you needed it and weren't going to just sell it. Several raiders immediately rolled on it. The raid leader then announced: "This is a guild run and all boe's are reserved for the guild." That started a small storm of protests. Wild was now concerned as well. After all, one of the two things Wild was after was a boe ring that Wild was now excluded from rolling on if it dropped.

The raid leader, trying to weather the storm, called for the tank to pull the next set of mobs. We fought the trash mobs while the complaints continued. The loot rules should have been stated up front, particularly since they were different from the commonly accepted loot rules for a PUG group. Nobody had said before we started that this was a guild run or that boe's would be reserved. The right thing for the raid leader to have done was to allow the bow to be rolled on, and then if he still intended to reserve later boe's then at least everyone would know that. Instead, he ordered another pull, stubbornly restating that it was guild run. Two players left the raid. The tank made a bad pull, and the fight became a crazy mess. Raiders started dying, and some of those raiders started leaving, too. It became a rout - both from the perspective of players leaving and that the mobs soon overwhelmed those of us that remained and we wiped.

Wild, as he was returning to collect his corpse, told the raid leader in raid chat: "Loot rules that are different than the commonly accepted rules should be stated before the raid starts. Had I known that boe's would be reserved I would not have joined the raid. Stating new rules after the fact also makes raiders suspicious about what other rules will suddenly be used to deny us loot. Good luck." Wild then left the raid.

Even after all that the raid leader began calling for more invites to fill in the many, many vacancies in his raid. Upset raiders called him a "ninja" (someone who steals loot) and blasted him in the trade channel. I don't know whether he got his raid going again or not, or if he learned a lesson, but Wild will not raid with him or his guild again.

Sunday - Well, here I go again, trying to get Wild into a functional ICC25 raid. It was about 8:30am and a player had just announced in trade chat that he would be starting an ICC25 raid at 9am. At 8:58am a player I'll call Rav put out a call for invites to a fresh, newly forming ICC25. It wasn't the same player that had put out the earlier call, but raiders already invited to a raid sometimes help out by announcing the raid as well. Wild waited a few minutes to see if the original player would show up, but he didn't show, so Wild went ahead and asked Rav for an invite.

There were only five others in the raid when Wild joined, and getting more took a little time. We got to 15 raiders, with one tank and three healers. In raid chat, the tank posted an ominous concern, "Hey guys, looks like no one is checking gear. There are some really low level geared players in here." After a moment Rav, the raid leader and the one doing the inviting, announced, "hey, doesn't look like any more are signing up, who wants to do ICC10 instead?" What? Then, from the tank again, "I'm outa here, going to start another ICC25, those who want in give me a whisper." The tank left the raid. Wild, who was locked to ICC10 and wasn't interested in ICC10 at any event, also left the raid.

Someone looked up that raid leader's gear after we broke up and discovered that he was wearing mostly i200 gear and should not even have been in ICC, much less leading a raid. Perhaps it was Rav that the tank had been complaining about. Rav argued in trade chat, tried to start an ICC10, and when his gear level came out he tried to form a Naxx10. After getting yelled at for five minutes he logged out. I felt a little sorry for him. I pictured a ten year old wanting to start his own raid, and just trying to do what he'd seen other raid leaders do. But that was yet another failed attempt to raid, Wild's third. Wild was not having much luck.

The tank that left announced that he was forming an ICC25 raid, requiring invitees to have at least a 5k gear score. Wild asked for an invite (Wild's gear score is 6k) and got one immediately. All three of the healers from the broken up raid, including Wild, got invites. The death knight, Van, that tried to reserve bloods also got in the raid. Van was obsessed with getting those blood drops and talked constantly about them in raid chat, asking who else was on the quest chain multiple times and asking a million other questions. We got a full raid together with two tanks and five healers. There was a holy priest, two shaman and two druid healers.

We started on the initial trash, doing well on the first pull. The second pull went very badly, and multiple mob groups descended on us. We put up a good fight, but we ended up wiping. One of the tanks left the group, as did one of the healers and two DPS. Man, these kids are so impatient! There was a lot of trash talk about how such a wipe should never happen, etc. Which is bogus because even guild runs can wipe here if something goes wrong, not just PUGs. It was looking like this raid was going to fail, too. For the fourth time?

But we had a melee paladin in the raid who volunteered to switch to tank spec and be the second tank. We found a paladin to replace the shaman healer that left. DPSers weren't hard to find, and we were soon back in business.

We started again and cleared our way to Lord Marrowgar. By the way, the raid leader did not have vent, and no one else could offer a vent channel, so all instructions and discussions had to be done through raid chat by typing things out. With this kind of group, though, everyone was assumed to know what they were doing. Against Marrowgar, all we needed to know was whether the boss would be tanked at the door or at the center. It was a center strategy, and we wasted no time getting started. Marrowgar died. We were on our way, and by killing that first boss Wild was now locked to this instance. Wild hoped for the best.

Wild was third in healing with 5921 hps, but was blown away by the shaman (7361 hps) and the holy priest (8574 hps). The other druid was 5th with 4277 hps. That was some awesome healing by the top two. Over the course of the evening Wild almost caught the shaman in total healing, but the priest was out of Wild's league.

We then proceeded to kill Deathwhisper. A ring dropped, but not the one Wild was after.

Next up was the Gunship battle, and the raid leader turned on Heroic mode for this fight. The Gunship is considered the easiest encounter to do in Heroic, although none of them are easy. To even be able to do that, someone in the raid had to have killed the Lich King. Wild has never done a single ICC boss in Heroic mode.

The trickiest part of the fight is always when raiders jump to the other ship. Wild and the priest kept the jumping group alive through several jumps, healing them as we stood on the edge of the railing of our own ship. There is higher damage done, and lots more rockets shot at us, than in normal mode. Several times Wild had to break off healing to run to a safer spot when those rockets came flying over. Perhaps it was inevitable, but one of those times Wild slipped and fell off the boat. I really hate it when that happens. Fortunately you don't die. A miracle occurs and you fall back onto your own ship. Wild likes those miracles, because Wild fell off twice during the fight. We beat the encounter, though, and Wild had his first Heroic victory in ICC. The [Ring of Rapid Ascent] dropped. It wasn't the ring Wild was after - it was better. Since it was a Heroic drop it was an i277 ring instead of the i264 ring Wild was looking for. Too bad, though. Wild lost the roll.

We moved on to Saurfang, and this usually tough fight went very smoothly and down he went. Four bosses down. Saurfang dropped a druid token, a token Wild could use toward getting his T10 gloves. But again, Wild did not win the roll.

We had a trash talking elemental shaman in the raid who tended to boss people around and criticize them. He was mostly ignored but he started to get under the skin of the paladin off tank. By now anyone with sense could see that this "off tank" was the one really doing the main tanking. He and the raid leader tank had apparently reached an agreement that the raid leader would handle moving people along, loot distro, etc, and the other tank would handle the battles. It was working very well. Until that shaman started in.

We had cleared trash and the shaman had died. He complained about the healing. The shaman healer then had some nasty things to say back at him, and commented that he should shut up as he (the shaman healer) and the priest were doing all the healing. Like I said earlier, Wild was doing just as well as the shaman healer by this point, not to mention the contributions of the other two healers. So we had two shaman big mouths.

We picked up the weekly quest, the one that requires that we "trick" both Festergut and Rotface into giving us debuffs that are used to get the quest done. It worked, but apparently there were some problems. The nastiness got more heated, the paladin tank was drawn into the argument as more raiders added their opinions, and when more accusations were tossed around our battle leading tank left the raid. Our raid leader was stunned. "ARE YOU GUYS NUTS!" he hollered in raid chat. "That guy was good!"

We stood around for a bit as most of the raid descended on the elemental shaman that instigated the whole thing. He admitted no wrong, but was thankfully silent when the tank was talked into coming back. I think the shaman was probably told to shut up or we could easily find a DPS to replace him.

I'm not sure why we decided to go after Rotface next, since Festergut would have been a much easier fight. That's what we did, though. We made a strong effort, getting Rotface to 6% before wiping. Wild and the main tank were the last two standing. There was a lot of grousing - PUGs can't STAND to wipe - and want to immediately start blaming each other, with such eloquent verbal attacks such as "YOU FAIL!!!!!" repeated several times in a row with even more exclamation points.

Surprisingly, the raid held together for a second attempt. It was another good attempt, but we went down again with Rotface at 10%.

That ended the raid. Wild thanked the raid leader and the other tank since they did a very good job. The group was talented enough to go much farther than we did, but that wasn't the fault of the raid leader. The personal mechanics of PUGs make perseverance a dirty word.

Wild got a few frost emblems for his effort, and was happy to have been a part of that raid. No new gear, but all Wild wanted was a chance, and he got that.

Thursday (2 Sep) - JB's Surprise

Thursday (2 Sep) - JB's Surprise

There was no G2 ICC raid Thursday night. Two raiders had relayed to the raid leader that they would be a half hour late. When that half hour became an hour we called the raid. It was not a complete loss, however. During the time the rest of us were waiting we had some pretty serious discussions about the two new bosses we are working on, Putricide and the Princes. Wild had also done some additional research prior to the evening, and I think we made real progress in laying out strategies for both that will work for us. Getting that time to talk about the fights was probably more valuable to our raid than a night of wiping on those bosses would have been. It was time well spent.

When the raid was called those of us that were still hanging around wanted to do something. Several raiders still needed to do the weekly frost raid, which was the boss Noth in Naxxramas. Both Wild and Philly had already done the weekly and were locked out of going back into Naxx this week, so that was out for me. However, I stayed on vent to listen in to what was going on. Our paladin off tank mentioned that he had never had chance to tank Naxx, and had seen very little of that place. The group planning to do Noth expanded their plans and decided to bring the paladin and do as much of Naxx as they could.

Well, that sounded like so much fun I couldn't resist. As far as both FS and MM are concerned, I have only two level 80s. JB, who is also a level 80, is technically part of my wife's account, and does not raid. So imagine JB's surprise when Wild asked if she wanted a chance at Naxx.

I introduced JB to the guild as a toon on another account that I had access to, which is true, and that she was an elemental shaman and not all that well geared. Also true. Could JB come with you guys? Sure! she was told. JB hurriedly gathered her belongings, cleared some bag space, and headed for Naxx. JB had changed her spec to elemental awhile ago, but had not had much chance to practice it. So there was a lot of fumbling around trying to remember her spell rotation, locate her spells, set up her totem groups, etc. After all that she still had to do a relog since JB didn't have the addon Deadly Boss Mods (DBM) which is an important addon for boss fights. Then, after getting that straightened out, she had to ask for someone to share the weekly raid quest with her since she'd forgotten to pick it up before she left Dalaran for Naxx. At least she remembered to ask for the quest.

There were seven of us for this ten man raid. I'd say five of the raiders were way over-geared for Naxx, and for the Noth fight in particular. JB and a death knight were the two least geared.

Wild entered Naxxramas for the first time on 15 Jan, 2009. Here is the summary from the post of that night: "Wild died 13 times in Naxx. But at last we're actually in there! And despite the wipes it was still a glorious start in what's shaping up to be a very fun dungeon." That raid killed only one boss - that boss was Noth.

Today Noth is considered the easiest boss in Naxx, and probably the easiest boss of any 10 man raid. For JB, I believe this was her first appearance in Naxx.

We had no trouble clearing trash mobs, and no trouble killing Noth, either. There was a second elemental shaman in the raid, and he led in DPS with 3846 and 24.5% damage. Philly came in 5th, ahead of the healer and the new death knight, with 2043 DPS and 13% damage. Philly was very happy to have stayed alive throughout the fight and was able to contribute (and it didn't hurt that she at least did better than one other DPSer). We worked on some more trash mobs, but two raiders suddenly had to leave, and we didn't go any further. JB had fun, though.

JB will likely return to her anonymity and her potions and herbs. But she got a moment in the spotlight on this Thursday night, 2 Sep, 2010.

Wednesday (1 Sep) - Fail

Wednesday (1 Sep) - Fail

Where to begin. Last week's ICC downed 7 bosses over two nights: Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, the Gunship, Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface, and Dreamwalker. While Rotface and Dreamwalker still require several attempts to kill, we do know we can kill them. The only other boss we have attempted, Putricide, we have yet to come close to killing. We agreed as a raid last week that we needed to spend more time on the later bosses, and we needed to do it while we were fresh, instead of at the end of the night. We agreed to lock the raid so that we would be able to start with Putricide this week.

Scroll forward to Wednesday night. We have two new raiders, one who is unfamiliar with the fights and another (a friend from FS) who had recently returned to the game who knew the fights but was playing on a toon that hadn't been in ICC yet. Before we started the evening, the raid leader wanted to take a new vote on whether we should maintain the lock on the raid or restart it at the beginning. I don't know what prompted a new vote, but I would guess that some raiders had questioned last week's decision. We had one raider offline when the vote was taken, and the vote went 5-4 in favor of maintaining the lock. Had Wild not publicly come out in favor of the lock vs two folks who supported a restart, I think the vote would have gone the other way. Those in favor of the restart are content with collecting frost badges from the first bosses and what few pieces of gear are left for them to get from those bosses. Some are likely frustrated and discouraged by our lack of progress on the rest of the bosses in ICC. Wild is frustrated, too, which is why I wanted to spend a full two nights working on fixing that.

I have to admit that it didn't work. We made four attempts on Putricide, and then gave up on him. Our best attempt got him down to 63%, which is a long way from killing him. We have yet to get past the second phase of this three phase fight. More unfortunately, I don't think we learned anything from those four attempts. We are still making the same mistakes.

After throwing in the towel against Putricide, we moved on to learn a new encounter, the Blood Prince Council, usually referred to as "the princes." There are three bosses in this fight. They share one health pool, and only one can be attacked at a time while the others must still be tanked and can do damage but can't be hit. There are a lot of things for raiders to remember and a lot of things for raiders to avoid in this fight. Wild has done this fight with ICC25 and I think it's a fun fight. I also think it's easier to learn and master than Putricide. Our raid leader, sigh, was not prepared and could do no more than read the strategy for it off the website. Frankly it may have been the first time she looked at it. As raiders we should have done more to be prepared for it too, but most of us came from G1 at one time or another and we have really gotten used to being spoon fed the strategy down to what each of us individually is required to do. That doesn't happen in G2, and if we are going to get anywhere past where we are now we are going to need help. Perhaps tragically for us, the G1 raid leader who could do that for us has been out of the game now for a couple of weeks on RL issues with no firm date of return.

I'll give us credit for making six attempts on the princes. We did change strategies midway even after saying we weren't going to do that, altering the tank strategy. We did slightly better with the new strategy in the early going, but I think ultimately it's the wrong approach as it gets harder and harder for the tanks as the fight progresses. The best I can say is that we've now seen the fight. I don't think we have a clue how to deal with it yet.

We'll be back to starting from the beginning next week. I'm strongly considering bringing Philly instead of Wild for the first night at least. That would mean having three priests in the raid, which is not really optimal. Cr, one of the priests, also has a level 80 paladin healer that has been in ICC raids. A swap there might be something to talk about.

Ideally, we need to have someone in our raid who can really run the raid and who knows how to explain the strats. Even the small suggestions I made on the guild website to improve our time management has been ignored. Our current raid leader is a master at organizing a raid and getting players to come. She just needs some help with the tactical side of keeping us moving forward during the actual raiding. I'm going to talk to the MM guild leader and see what he might suggest.

Monday (30 Aug) - All Over the Map

Monday (30 Aug) - All Over the Map

Many turns of the moon ago Naithipe was in Feralas. She was doing a little special questing and another lower level player that was in the area had asked Naithipe for some help. She obliged. With two players the quest was quickly completed, Naithipe got a thank you, and the player went on his way. All very normal stuff. What got Naithipe's attention, though, was what happened when she first entered the quest area. A banner appeared telling her that she had completed the exploration of Feralas, earning the Achievement for that accomplishment. The date was March 26th, 2009.

That planted a seed within Naithipe. It wasn't an obsession (and Naithipe certainly has her obsessions), but after that Naithipe made it a point to seek out exploration achievements during her travels. The urge to explore grew even stronger as the time of the Cataclysm drew closer. There was great uncertainty about how exploration would be affected by Cata, but Naithipe knew that no matter how that turned out, it was important to her that she see this world in all it's entirety before Cata altered it completely and irrevocably.

No one in Naithipe's adopted family had ever completely explored the world they lived in. She was determined to be the first to do so. This past weekend she set out to see just how far she could get. Now it was an obsession. Before she could begin, though, Naithipe needed to determine where she had already been. After all, she had been gathering exploration achievements ever since Feralas. But how much was left to do? There are four major areas of the world of Azeroth: the two continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Continent (which make up the original world); the Draenei space debris called Outland that settled into the skies (during the Burning Crusade); and the great island of Northrend was discovered (during WotLK). Within those land masses are 61 individual zones of exploration. Within those zones are literally thousands of areas to explore.

Naithipe was all about the doing of things, but not necessarily the recording of things. Where photos exist of her explorations, she'll share them. Some of those areas will no longer exist or be greatly altered by Cata.

Since Naithipe got her first completed exploration in Feralas, which is a zone within Kalimdor, Naithipe decided she would document in pictures the original exploration achievements she completed in Kalimdor. All of these accomplishments occurred in 2009. You'll have to excuse Naithipe for not showing a photo of each one - Feralas is shown, since it was the first. The rest is a compilation on one shot. Note that there were still more zones in Kalimdor to complete. Naithipe was far from finished.


None of these zones were that difficult to complete, although having to use a ground mount to get around required a lot of traveling. Naithipe also got a peek at the dungeon Dire Maul in Feralas, and was lucky enough to see a rare spawn of Skarr the Unbreakable. Skarr is a Champion npc that takes on all comers inside The Maul, which is an arena located outside the instance. Naithipe does not have the key required to get into Dire Maul, but she did know the way through the underground passages and into the arena area. Skarr was far too tough for little Naithipe to challenge. She was just happy to have gotten a glimpse of him.

Next, Naithipe will take a look at her early accomplishments on the Eastern Continent.

[Cata Note about Exploration Achievements: There are questions about how those achievements would be changed in Cata. It would really suck to complete the explorer achievements pre-Cata and then find out they have to be redone in Cata due to the changes in existing zones. It would seem to make sense to provide a new achievement for exploring the changes in the Cata world. Some have suggested that pre-Cata achievements should be made Feats of Strength that can no longer be accomplished in the "old world" once Cata hits. Others think that the achievements won't change, and the only way to tell whether they were done pre- or post-Cata would be the date it was accomplished. I hope it becomes a Feat of Strength, but as yet no one seems to know how that will fall out. Also, as an aside there is a great project that has been in progress for some time to record in images the original two continents for posterity. It's called "Scrapbooking Azeroth" and can be found at

http://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=120478 ]