Month: August 2010

This is primarily a message to the interwebs, looking at the stats for this site there are masses of searches going on for information about the models / artwork / general look of the Worgen female.  Sorry everyone there is no new information, nada, nothing, zip, zilch and so on.

You can be sure that as soon as there is information out there (and assuming I’m not afk for an extended period) then I’ll be throwing up screen shots, details and possibly movies (yes, I’m contemplating fraps) onto this blog.

Until then, enjoy your search through the black pit of nothingness which is the information surrounding the Worgen forms.

The best yet has to be the “drowning in an inch of something”, we’ve seen this in two places so far, one where the toon was standing ankle deep in a stream, and also in Mt Hyjal where the ‘stream’ was of sparkly stuff not water but “if you don’t get out of this soon you’re going to drown” bar came up.

Somehow I think they’ve not defined the depth properly for those areas yet.

My gnomish rogue finally hit 80 yesterday, it’s been a long road for him even with a massive RAF boost.  For a hellishly long time I simply couldn’t get my head around the whole sneak in, stun, stab stab stab thing or how to deal with those occasions when it goes horribly wrong.  On the paladin it was simple enough, pray and run as fast as my legs could carry me while hoping like hell the armour would save my hide from a corpse run.

I have however finally worked out the whole “stun on the pull”, “stun as the stun wears off”, “stun again” and so on all the while stabbing away.

He’s now chain running heroics as much as he can for gear and I’m working out the change in rotation and approach needed for tank focused damage rather than “solo surivial”, it’s nice to get the one class to 80 which I thought would fester as my banking alt until the end of time.  As with all alts in Wrath gearing to the higher levels of content is a dream, I’m hoping this isn’t nerf too heavily in Cataclysm as it will gimp the ability to do anything interesting with alts without sinking vast amounts of time into running the earlier raids.

Where next?

I’ve three slots which aren’t capped:

• Hunter:75, I’m not actually enjoying playing him at the moment, there’s a strong temptation to realm change him (again) out onto the ‘other’ realm I lurk on and re-roll something completely new.
• Shammie:34, I’m in two minds here do I keep pushing him as he is or wait until Cata and roll up a dwarf shammie for levelling through the reconstructed world.  I may do both so I can experienment with Shaman healing before cata.
• Mage:7, she’s my slacking alt, nothing much planned as she’s scheduled for an untimely end at launch to become a worgen.

In the meantime there’s always the gearing grind and the beta.

There’s one little detail which just tickled my fancy with the beta.  In Kezan, the initial goblin zone, you get a hotrod.  When moving forward both sets of rear lights are fully lit.  When reversing they flash.

So, what silly little details have you noticed?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcejITJRXw0]

We’re now starting to push harder against the achievements for the red drake, last night was our second attempt at zombiefest after nabbing it up last time by nuking boss#2 far too fast.  This time I stood there with autoattack off and ate the damage (ohh… noes I broke a fingernail) and periodically blowing some cooldowns to push my threat above the healer.

There then followed the grand… run around like a nutter popping some defensive cooldowns collecting the zombies, pausing to heal and then.. the nutter dash into the gauntlet watching the achievement pop and trying to recollect the elites before things went pear shaped.

Not many to go.

Only a brief wander around tonight as we were planning other things, I can report that the Redridge bridge is complete, so all that work collecting iron spikes and the like wasn’t completely wasted.  There’s a dismount bug in the swamp of sorrows and that I’m sightseeing my way down towards STV

Now, a screenshot, it looks like the Iron Dwarves need beating back into line.

The raiding guild I was in finally imploded yesterday afternoon, if we’re all honest it’s been building for about 6 weeks or so, pretty much since Arthas was safely dead and the bulk of the raiders got their 25-man Kingslayer.  While progression was maintained for a while on heroic modes it was clear that sign levels were dropping off, it took truely massive efforts on the part of the officers to get a second LK kill in for those were standby on the first one.
We’ve dropped a raiding day to help us through the lull, but even with that signs for the two remaining days were dropping off (we barely scraped enough for one raid last week).  This week, the first raid is dead in the water before we reach invite time, 18/25 signed, pathetic.  So the officers have officially called it and the guild is offiically closing for business on the 29th, it’s 5th birthday.
What killed the group

Split personality

Realistically the group never really worked out what it wanted to be, hardcore raiding, friendly to people with a life, there to have fun etc etc.  Based on our progression and after reading some thoughts from Kevlon I would have to place the group in the ‘hardcore’

Personalities & Expectations

There are some in the guild who don’t hide their expectations that it was a hardcore progression guild which shouldn’t have had time for new raiders, only wanting experienced players who’ve raided a lot.  All those who were in the guild will be able to point at one or more names easily.  Their true colours have been showing through in the post-announcement chat on the channel, “I hope she doesn’t have to experience a true raiding guild” “we coddle too much” and so on.These are people who I don’t think really grasp where the guild was in global progression or indeed within the server, decently progressed, certainly more cleared than a goodly proportion of the global raiding community but at the position in the food chain where we’re seen as a friendly entry point or a stepping stone to the top guilds on the realm.

The comments from one of the officers about not letting teenagers into a raiding guild are particularly laughable knowing one of the teens and that he was a teen himself when accepted and I would still consider him to be pretty much a kid and in need of some hard life lessons to knock the arrogance off.

Too long in ICC

It’s been a hell of a time, ICC opened in December 2009, by the time Cataclysm goes live on the servers it will have been open for 11-12 months, a year near as dammit.  The first push through on normal keeps people interested but there are problems at the choke points where the wiping raid after raid on a single boss which can’t be skipped is just painful.Coming back to the heroic modes on some is just a joke (lolship particularly) and others we have a solid challenge to beat, but fundamentally we’re still doing the same damm fight as before with a few extra bells and more health on the boss.

Boredom / end of Wrath

This is one of the core parts of the failure, I suspect that over time knowing who was leading the chairteam it would have morphed more into a hardcore raiding guild and been more demanding on the raiders it was looking for.  However the simple fact that we have seen the content for nine months with no new solid lumps of content in sight before Cataclysm members simply weren’t signing.  The depressing thing is that they didn’t have the manners or simple thought to let the team know they wanted to step back, go do other stuff and so on, I suspect that it was a case of “off playing something else, I should have a slot in the raid when I want to come back” without thinking that all social enterprises like raiding require some extra push from everyone to keep it going through the barren periods.

Could it have survived?

I’m in two minds about this, the group could have gone on a raiding hiatus with ad-hoc raids being organised for those needing their fix, however the group would have lost some core raiders doing this as they moved on to pastures new looking for something to bridge the gap into Cata (it was happening already).  So the structure would have been there but it would have taken work in the initial phase of Cata to bring the roster back up to scratch.

Something may yet arise from the ashes, we’ll see.

Where next

Probably a break from progression raiding until Cataclysm with some pugging / Team Pirate runs.

Let’s see, first there was the run with the Paladin wrecking ball of doom, take H:HoL, a good healer, good dps and a tank rocking in his raiding gear and let’s see just what can be pulled without pausing.  Just for reference for any poor dps/healer partied up with a silly level gear paladin, they will chain pull because of the 14 second window between the last melee hit and Divine Plea dropping off.

Things were a complete breeze, even when we pulled several packs in the room of spinny death and managed to aggro a further pack (one dps ended up inspecting the floor).

Moving on a quick H:UK with the bear, I’m definitely getting the hang of how he works, mostly I lost aggro on a mob just as they were about to drop due to focus fire from the ranged dps.  So that’s cool.  I still need to get my head around the extras (bash, roars and so on) and the “oh shit” health button needs to get moved to somewhere decent on a hotkey not requiring me to get the mouse moved.

So before the next beta report and raid guild emo, Game On