Discovered: Black Temple

I wish I’d been quick enough to take a screenshot of this yellow sentence shining in my face. It was one of the big epic moments of my time in Azeroth after all. But I missed it.

Ill make it up with a little picture of my romantic date with Supremus (he literary chased me around the place, so much did he love me. ). This is the proof that I tell you the truth: the other day Larísa entered Black Temple for the first time in her lifetime.

Who could ever have thought that would happen? Not me. Not the people who saw me corpse running in Westfall one and a half year ago, desperately trying to figure out how a squishy should deal with those mean Defias people without pulling three at a time and getting instantly killed every single time. A year ago my dream was to be able to clear Karazhan at least once before the expansion. Something I deep inside doubted would happen. And here I am.

It’s been a fantastic journey, an adventure, which is still going on. For the most of the other people in the raid I attended it was farming content and they sighed a bit at the ridiculous amount of trash mobs at the courtyard of Supremus. I on the other hand was in heaven, with a big smile on my face during the whole raid. I was doing the one thing in the world I love doing most.

A new exiting instance to get lost in! New bosses to learn how to master (three of them this night)! And I even got loot, woot! Ring of Ancient Knowledge. Not a bad one for a mage and it will be just awesome when I respec back to fire.

How come that I suddenly find myself in this spot? Has my guild started to make some very rapid progress? To be honest – no. I’ve actually switched guild.

I’m really not the guild jumping kind of person, so it was with a sad heart and very reluctantly that I did it. There are some awesome people there and I’ll miss them a lot, even though I hope we’ll keep in touch, I’m still on the server after all.

The challenge

There are several reasons for my decision. One was that I followed a friend who wanted a change. But it was also very much a choice of my own. Most of all I think the problem was that we were unable to recruit and that people already in the guild stopped to play – due to real life reasons, vacations, upcoming expansion, apathy, whatever. It's not an unusual situation - many, many guilds that want to keep raiding until the expansion have a pretty rough time these days.

I’ve also got a lot of support and input from the blogging community when I made up my mind. It isn’t something I’ve discussed, but I’ve been lurking around, reading about others who’ve been in similar situations. They've described how they've felt sort of stuck, not challenging themselves the way they’d like to, and what they've done about it.

Especially two posts by Lassirra at The Hunter’s Mark, Casual by Circumstance and More casual/hardcore musings made me think. Among other things Lassirra wrote:

Stop trying to convince yourself, for whatever reason, that things will change. That things will “get better”. You need to decide which you want more: a bunch of buddies in-game to chat with, or a guild that will fulfill your desire to progress.

Loronar of 35 yards out also wrote a post (inspired by Lassirra) how he pushed himself to aim a bit higher. I think this sentence of his is right on the spot:

“If we don’t get out of our comfort zone, we never get to experience what is out there.”

The difference

I’ve definitely got out of my comfort zone now, joining a small (but hopefully growing) raiding guild. It’s doesn’t openly define itself as “hardcore” and the required attendance isn’t more than two nights a week, which is exactly how much my real life allows me to raid. But it definitely isn’t casual.

It’s a guild where there’s no question that you’ve looked up on tactics, that you show up on time, ready to pull the very minute the raid is supposed to start. It’s a guild where the TS is pretty much silent during raids since people are focusing on what they’re supposed to do. It’s a guild where WWS reports are taken from every raid and analysed in detail. It’s in short very different from the casual environment I’ve been in until now.

Of course it’s a bit frightening when you’re not used to it. Every single encounter is new to me and the pace is very high (although some complain that it’s too slow – currently we’re raiding in a raid alliance which probably makes things a bit slower since there’s quite a rotation on players). I really have to keep focus every single second to keep up.

What if I fail?

What’s most scaring is the fact that I’m on trial. It’s very possible that I’ll fail, that I’m just not skilled enough playwise to pass and be accepted. And what will happen then? It really wouldn’t look nice in my next guild application: reason for leaving your former guild? “I sucked and they didn’t want me”.

It is a risk but I face it. I want to challenge myself, I want to aim a bit higher and see what I’m capable of. If I’ll fail it will be an epic failure. But I’ll learn something and I’ll hopefully recover in time, after some therapeutic ranting in this blog.

I discovered Black Temple the other night. It really happened.

I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been willing to put myself under pressure. Even if I’ll fail it has been worth it.

To be continued….