When progression raiding becomes a grind

She looked surprisingly elegant, not the destruction and death you could expect from a pile of bones coming alive. Her wings moved ever so smoothly as I took off from Krasus Landing, as if they were put together by baby soft, weightless feathers.

I couldn't stop smiling. Finally, after all those wipes, The Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher was mine. I experienced a sensation of lightness, as if I had been released from something. A burden. Most definitely a burden, even if it felt a bit odd to use that word. After all, weren't we talking about a game I'm supposed to play for fun and relaxation? But I think I simply was relieved that I got it done before we were hit by the enrage timer of any raiding in this expansion.

Getting the meta achievement
Sunday night I completed the 10 man version of the Glory of the Icecrown Raider meta achievement - my last, serious goal for Wrath of the Lich King. This doesn't mean that I've stopped raiding entirely. We've got a few more drakes to get before we're finished. But we're closing in, oh yes, we're so closing in.

It has been a strange couple of months, where our guild has been put at test. I knew we had a strong sense of belonging, but the guild loyalty and comradeship has gone beyond my expectations.

In theory it doesn't sound too bad, does it? You grab 10 players, you head off to ICC and you progress through the hardmodes and achievements, wiping a little, learning the fights one after one until the box flashes up on your screen. Glory of the Icecrown raider, yay! Shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks at our gear level and with the ICC buff, should it? Tick, tick, tick, BAM, done!

In reality it's been way more complicated. It isn't exactly as if our guild is perfectly well balanced for those purposes. We're still a 25 man raiding guild, but until Cataclysm, we can go on a break if we want to, without risking to lose our spots as raiders. Running 10 man raids, which is what we can do with our current squad, is optional. Some players have taken the opportunity to a hiatus. Others have kept going, at least to grab the ICC mount, which was one of our set goals. The result has been a huge surplus of ranged dps, compared to the amount of tanks and healers. We've rotated a lot, which has meant that it has taken longer for the dps:ers to complete the meta, especially for the ones who also have missed a few raids due to the summer vacation season.

A painful grind
Our tanks got their mounts more than a month ago and most of our healers shortly after. They've had absolutely nothing to get for their own benefit in ICC. No achievements, no shiny upgrades, no progress, nothing.

All they've had to look forward to as they have signed up for raids has been yet another grind night with content they've done before. And yet they've kept signing. Week after week, raid after raid have they turned up, to make sure that every active raider will get a shot at the mount. In the meanwhile, our officers have made spreadsheets, keeping track on everyone's status, trying to make the achievement hunt for the guild as efficient as possible.

My mount was the 16th and it hopefully won't be too long before we've got the last few, putting an end to all this.

I can imagine how painful this must have been for those who got their Sindragosa achievement or Putricide heroic weeks and months ago. They did their share of wiping and learning back in time. They downed them and they know exactly how it should be done. The problem is that everyone isn't on the same page. In every raid there has been a couple of players, still in the beginning of their own, personal learning curve. And there are no shortcuts in the most difficult fights of those achievements. Every single player has to learn the dance steps by himself, sorting out exactly where to put the feet.

Those encounters are technically demanding, putting pressure on every individual to not make any mistakes. You can't rely on a couple of veterans carrying everyone else, since it's "on farm". Everyone has to execute it well, and while it can be useful to watch videos before an encounter, most of us need to learn, practice and wipe a few times before it eventually clicks.

Week after week, our veterans have patiently been wiping until the newcomers have learned their lesson. Hardly ever have I heard anyone of them getting annoyed. They've shared what they have been able to, and have patiently waited.

Progression - and grind
It's a strange situation. Normally it's the same for everyone. Sometimes you do farm runs, sometime progression and we learn it together. But so not in this case. While a few in each raid group have enjoyed fun, interesting and engaging progression raids, the same encounters have been horrible, tedious grinds for others. But as opposed to other grinds, those raids have included a lot of wiping.

However our tanks and healers haven't fled in terror. They've stayed. Sure, they're a bit tired, but still they keep showing up, willing to help out everyone else until the job is done. Not just their own mounts, but mounts for everyone.

I know that this attitude isn't something you find in every guild. The world is full raid groups that fall apart as soon as a few players have completed their goals. All of a sudden player will disappear without any previous notice and they suddenly start prioritizing their real life as soon as they've reached their personal goal. That's what you could expect.

The patient fight to get everyone a mount is an amazing effort and I'm truly proud to belong to a guild with such a team spirit.

I smiled as I cruised above Icecrown on my new dragon. I'm well aware of that she's not super exclusive compared to for instance the Naxx meta mount, which was brought out of the game in a patch. I've even heard first hand reports that it's common in the beta, so apparently quite a few players have managed to get her.

Regardless of this: in my eyes she remains a beauty with a very distinct look of her own and I love her. She will forever remind me of our guild spirit at its best. We are guildies and we help each other out. In grind as well as in progress.

Shadowmourne: a welfare legendary or a feat of strength?

It’s the twilight of Wrath, and many players are gone fishing or at least playing other games. But there are still a few stubborn players around who refuse to give up. They call themselves Adrenaline.

We haven’t been able to fill a 25 man raid for ages. But whenever we've managed to assemble a group of decent size - about 20 people - sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on how many out-of-guild-game friends we've persuaded to join us for the night - we've headed back for ICC 25 man. We had some unfinished business there.

The final grind

It wasn't about loot - most of the stuff that drops there these days is sharded anyway. It wasn't about doing achievements or hardmodes – with a few exceptions they're out of reach with a severely decimated group.

No, this was grind and nothing else. A collective one. For weeks we have been grinding the missing shards for our first - and most likely only – Shadowmourne. And finally, this very night, our grumpy ret paladin could complete the weapon of his dreams, an axe to match his temper perfectly. When he reached the end of the questline that takes you to the weapon, I think the guild was just as happy as he was.

Grinding can has a certain charm, as Tamarind described in a beautiful post a little while ago. But eventually it starts to get at you. As we watched the little scene before the weapon finally was handed over, we let out a sigh of relief. Done. At last. The weapon was ours as much as our paladin's. Theoretically he could of course leave the guild, taking it with him. But in reality - it just won't happen, with less than that Adrenaline will stop raiding. Which I don't think we will anytime soon. As long as Adrenaline is around there will be a Shadowmourne in it.

I tried to find some statistics on exactly how common itis, but I failed. However I stumbled upon some forum threads, and from those you sould see that some players think that this weapon isn’t quite as shiny as other legendaries.

“The most welfare legendary ever”, wrote someone, arguing that it only takes gold to get the 25 saronites you need as a starter, and that the hardest part is to convince your guild to give the shards to you.

Well, he may say so and I suppose it depends on from where you’re coming. If you’re in a huge guild with multiple raid groups, which never fails to clear ICC every week, it's probably rather trivial than challenging. And if you're a dedicated pugger maybe you can get it fairly easy these days too, especially with the ICC buff at 30 percent. But to complete it within a small guild such as ours - that's huge.

It symbolizes endurance and resilience, the ability to survive and continue, even in rough times. It symbolizes that we stick to promises and commitments. We are in this for the longterm.

A legendary achievement

I don’t know how much this weapon actually will be used before it will be replaced for something else in Cataclysm. And I don’t care, because that's not the point.

This is actually one of the very few moments when I could wish for a guild hall where we could hang up this axe as a trophy on display, once it has served out as a weapon. (No, this doesn’t mean that I’ve changed my mind about player and guild houses. I can see that some players wish for it but I don’t think it’s important enough for Blizzard to drop everything else they’re doing, putting all their resources into that. It’s just a temporary wish, OK?)

We don’t yet know exactly what the guild achievements will look like in Cataclysm. At Blizzcon last year they showed a few examples, of which one was “We are legendary”. But for that achievement you were supposed to create not just one legendary, but TEN.

Ugh. That sounds like a long term project, to say the least. I thought we were pretty outstanding, just finishing our second one (we did the Ulduar mace previously). But again: we’re all coming from different places, facing different challenges.

For some players Shadowmourne was a welfare legendary, too easily acquired to deserve the label. Maybe they're right in their universe. But honestly - I don't care.

Because for Adrenaline it was nothing less than a feat of strength.

Cheers for Eräjorma! And cheers for us!

Loot on sale

This post comes with an image, for a change. In case you use a reader and can’t see it, I can tell you that it shows a chart with a drastically falling curve.

It’s not the latest subscriptions statistics from Blizzard (although I’m eagerly waiting for Gronthe’s analysis of Blizzard’s upcoming Q2 report).

No. This curve shows how the DKP price for the best-in-slot trinket Dislodged Foreign Object has developed over time in our guild.

The top score was 161 DKP in March. Tuesday night, time had finally come to me to lay my hands on it, after consequently bidding my max DKP for it every time it has dropped the last six months. I was the only bidder this time and got it for 15 DKP, which is our minimum.

I suppose you could call it a bargain. It was also the last major upgrade I can get from ICC normal modes (which is what we’re doing with only 20 people in the raid), so it felt like coming to a closure.

To be a realist, my character progression has more or less come to an end in Wrath. This was how good Larísa became in this expansion and I’m quite pleased to be honest, at least as far as it concerns gear.

When it comes to experiences, I’m still a little sad that I most likely never will come around to even try Mimron on hardmode or Algalon. But I’ll get over it. The gear though is fine. I bet the start in Cataclysm will be smooth and hopefully it will take a couple of levels before I offer this trinket to an NPC for a couple of gold coins after getting a better one as a quest reward.

The twilight phase of WotLK
It feels as if WotLK definitely is closing down now. The DKP prices are falling rapidly since most loot is sharded or goes to off-specs. And the same goes for AH of course, where you can follow the rapidly decreasing interest for saronites. Once we’ll get a set date for the launch of Cataclysm, the drop rate will increase.

Christina wrote in a very thoughtful comment on a post earlier this week about the overall feeling that WoW is in its twilight phase.

“Summer camp has ended. Or four years of college have come and gone and staying a few extra semesters can't extend the good times from freshmen or sophomore.”

She was referring to the game in a bigger sense of course, and it’s possible that she’s right. I’ll wait until Cataclysm though before I’ll come to a verdict. I’m still hopeful about becoming super-excited over WoW again.

But one thing is for sure – dusk has fallen over WotLK. The shadows are tall on the ground; the light is old and weakened. And there are sales going on in every corner, in the few shops that still are open – I have a feeling that many guilds have closed down for this expansion already.

It’s all about emotions
I was happy about my Dislodged Foreign Object. It’s a lovely trinket – I love the name of it as much as the stats. It’s been an object for my desire for a long time and now it’s mine.

But at the same time I can’t deny that the joy of getting it was a little bit cheapened. Getting it for 161 DKP in March after some crazy competitive bidding would have made my pulse go up. Getting it in July for 15 DKP because no one else wanted it doesn’t.

It's not about rationality. It's about emotions. I know someone who frowns at this kind of stuff. But to me the emotions constitute an essential part of the gaming experience - positive as well as negative. Happiness, disappointment, despair, excitement, love and hate. Take it away and the game loses a bit of its luster.

At this point in the expansion you can't really expect to get any huge emotional kick from loot that you basically don't need for your progress (looking at You, ICC buff) and which will be upgraded within a few months.

The loot is on sale. For a good reason.

I May Look Small But I Have a Big Title

So it happened. It never ceases to amaze me - the pendulum movement in WoW. One raid is so bad that you wish it never took place. And the next one is so good that you want to linger in it and remember it forever.

Thursday night I switched my Merrymaker title for the Kingslayer one, referring to the 25 man version of ICC.

And considering the struggles we've had with this encounter for the last few weeks it felt so gooood. It's not easy to capture it in words, but if I tell you that I even got tears in my eyes as I suddenly was tossed into the win-cinematics, I think you can figure.

After 100+ wipes up there on the frozen platform, this kill felt very much well deserved. Suddenly we just pulled it together; the things that were so impossible last raid suddenly were if not easy, at least very much doable. And of course it helped quite a bit that we didn't have a couple of disconnects every pull. Actually it only took us 1,5 hours to get it done.

So now what? I've killed LK and in one way I've stretched out my hand and hit the wall in the back of the wardrobe, reaching the very end of this expansion. I'm really looking forward to start working on the hardmodes after next reset, but even if it will be fun and challenging, it won't be quite the same. This said I think we'll do just fine in there. With LK behind us we'll probably be a little bit more relaxed than we've been the last week. In a good sense.

However, before we can do that we'll have to find ways to keep ourselves occupied for two more raids until the reset next week. We celebrated our LK kill by going back to ToC to do some hardmodes we never came around to do before ICC was released, and we got another first kill for the guild, the champions. Admittedly we're well overgeared for it, but it was still a perfect way to end this magic night. "The best raiding night I've had in two years", as one of my guildies said to me afterwards.

As you can see if you read this post at the inn and not through a reader, I've done something unusual, throwing up a picture to accompany it. Old readers know that in-game photography never was my strongest side, and I apology for the crap quality. But as they say: screenshot or it didn't happen.

With those words I end this post, thanking all of you bar guests for your never-ending support and for all your encouraging comments as you have been following the struggles of Adrenaline.

This round is on the house, naturally!

Cheers!

A Hardcore Guild in its True Sense

Yesterday was One of Those Nights. I think you know what I mean.

On nights like this you’ll have to make an emergency switch to another vent server, since the original won’t work as intended. Nights like this “something” seems to be going on with half of the raid - players turning up late, disconnecting, getting unexplainable lag spikes, being unlucky or just “out of shape”, unable to bring their A-game.

It all adds up and even if you try ever so hard to keep up the focus, you will see your raid session effectively chopped into mince meat because of all the interrupts. Time passes quickly, but the flow won’t appear, and you don’t seem to get anywhere apart from possibly going backwards compared to last raid.

Yeah, it was one of those nights.

Hope and disappointment
I wrote a while ago that we had wiped 38 times on LK. By now I’ve lost track on it, but I would easily estimate that it’s the double or even more, and it has gone from the “we’re still learning the encounter” stage over to something closer to “why haven’t we killed him yet?" rage. We should be done with this by now, or at least we should flawlessly enter the final phase on every single attempt. And yet we aren’t.

Last week the ICC buff went up to 15 percent and the difference was noticeable as we more or less steamrolled through the first 11 bosses Thursday night. And I believe this adds to the disappointment after the futile efforts to down him during the Sunday and Tuesday night. We know how to do this by now and we definitely should have the necessary dps for it. But for some reason we lack a bit in the execution, playing below what we have set as our standard.

Before the raid start yesterday we were pretty optimistic about the outcome. This was it. This would be our last week of (apart from LK) rather unchallenging normal modes in ICC. How we longed to finally start working our way through the herioic modes! It was just this mean guy stopping us from it, but not for any longer. We had made the final tweaks on our strategy for phase five on the forums and victory was within our grasp. Little did we realize that this would be One of Those Nights.

The higher you aim, the harder you fall.

Revealing the true nature
When you have nights as this, your guild can easily slip into a state of apathy, particularly with the end-of-expansion-blues currently spreading in the game.

It’s in those moments that your guild will reveal its true nature. How does it look beneath the surface – are you solid when you’re put at trial? Are you a hardcore guild in its true sense – meaning that you have a core that will endure and find ways to overcome the challenges? Or are there squishies among you, players who get cranky, bitter, blaming others, not taking responsibility or just hiding away from the problems when the success doesn’t come easily?

I have every reason in the world to believe that our core is solid. We’re looking over our performances once again, we're checking if there are smaller tweaks we can make to improve our strats and we’re extending our ID next week in order not to waste any more raiding time on farmed content – it isn’t gear that we’re lacking. We’re more determined than ever to move forward into the hardmodes.

This morning as I checked out our guild forums, I didn’t just find the first reflections about our night before. I also find this little video, posted under the headline “Are you prepared?”

It’s obviously a teaser for our upcoming two-year anniversary. The one we had last year was so well done that it even was highlighted at WoW.com, so the expectations on our officers are huge.

And the fact that they’re putting this up, right after One of Those Nights is a sign of high class.

We’re a hardcore guild, in its true sense.

And LK will die too, no doubt about that.

38 speeches and we’ve only got started

So we’re facing The Lich King. The final jewel of this expansion, the last chapter in the book unfolded. I’ve listened to his minute long introductory speech 38 times by now (only counting the 25 man raids) and I expect to hear quite a few times more before I finally will make him shut up.

In TBC I think we had about 100 wipes before we finally killed Archimonde, and I wouldn’t be the slightest surprised if LK will turn out to be something in those lines.

A worthy opponent
In case you’re living in the illusion that all the normal modes in ICC are ridiculously easy, using the Gunship fight as your benchmark, I’ll tell you something: LK is playing in an entirely different division. Not that I mind - on the contrary; LK is the final of the final, a legendary boss in the Warcraft universe and as such he should doubtless be a worthy opponent for even the top-end guilds, not a loot piñata.

Apart from the whispering role playing, which is tedious to hear 38 times, not to say 100, the fight is just as varied, challenging and complicated as I expect it to be. Really well done, Blizzard!

The obstacle we’ve run into is the phase where you’re supposed to slow and kill val’kyrs that shamelessly kidnap your raid members, planning to drop them into the big void, while you also avoid an aoe-damage-thing called “defile”. This defile targets an individual but can wipe the entire raid if you make the slightest of error. The reaction time is one of the most unforgiving I’ve seen in WoW. Twitchy, to say the least. You need the reaction time of a teenager brought up on Nintendo and FPS games as well as a very good, lag free internet connection, or you’re screwed.

In theory you have two seconds to move away – not just a few steps, but getting a good distance between yourself and the raid, dropping the dreadful black pool at a good spot and not in the way of the flight path of the kidnappers. In reality the time is even less, since some of this time will get lost due to the communication back and forward between the client and the server.

The ICC buff doesn’t make any huge difference to this. Surely, we will be able to kill the val’kyrs quicker as our damage output increases, but it won’t help us against the defiles.

Incoming nerf
I will stick out my neck and make a prediction: I think Blizzard will nerf the defile mechanism in a not far distant future, probably by prolonging the casting time or the pace for it’s growing. If they don’t, this will turn out to be exactly the kind of brick-wall that they don’t want to see around anymore in the normal modes (heroic modes being an entirely different matter). They’d surely like more 25 man guilds to get LK down than the current 1,78 percent according to the charts at Guildprogress.

Will we be able to get LK down before the nerf hammer hits us? Maybe, maybe not. I think we have the capacity, but we’ve also got the same issues as many other guilds have these days, struggling with signups and slow recruitment. We’re definitely in a better situation than Matticus writes about today, but we’re all facing the challenges of keeping up morale, motivation and spirit towards the end of an expansion.

Hardmode reward
Do you know what’s funny? I haven’t thought that much about what loot LK may drop. That doesn’t matter. What matters so much more is the fact that he’s the guardian that keeps us from starting out hardmode versions of the lower wing bosses. The reward to get access to those is way more tempting and motivating than anything else.

A bunch of spiced-up, challenging encounters are waiting for us on the other side of the LK. We just have to figure out how to manage those defiles. It probably means that we’ll have to listen to his yada-yada another 60 times (do you realize that we’re spending ONE hour of game time on it?).

But we’ll get there. We’re not sissies. We’re Adrenaline.

The Impact of Paragon’s World First

Last week Paragon got the world first kill of Lich King in heroic mode. Should we bother about it? Does it matter?

Yes I think it does. It doesn’t turn the world upside down, but it might have some impact on the opinions and perceptions in the community, and that’s’ what I’m going to talk about in this post.

1. Blizzard succeeded in the tuning
The tuning of difficulty of the raid instances is always a target for criticism. No matter where the Blizzard developers put the bar, they can count on that someone will consider it too high or too low. However I’ve heard very few complaints about how long it took before we saw the first kill in heroic mode. It didn’t come the first week it was available; we’ve had to wait for it for a few weeks.

As far as I’ve understood it, the slightest little mistake from any individual in the raid would lead to a wipe. To quote Paragon:

“Quite simply the perfect end-boss to finish the expansion with, couldn’t have hoped for more. My hat is off to Blizzard on this one. I can’t wait to see if this encounter can be outdone in Cataclysm.”

Paragon had over 170 tries before they succeeded. Anything more would have been ridiculous in my opinion, anything less would have been slightly disappointing. I think Blizzard can feel fairly happy and relieved that they did it spot on this time.

2. The World Firsts aren’t given on beforehand
There was a time where the cutting-edge raiding seemed to consist of more or less one guild. And that threatened to ruin any kind of tries to bring some e-sport competition into raiding. Ensidia, Enisida, Ensidia… Nihilum, Nihilum, Nihilum… whatever. This kill shows that it’s far from a one-guild show. The competition is there, and guilds who perform at their very best will always stand a chance.

In an earlier interview, which Kungen made with Tun at Ensidias own website, they took lightly on this:

“Icecrown is coming soon. What guild/guilds do you see as big competitors?

None. It's not been 1-2 consistent guilds threatening us, so if anything happens it will be another obscure random guild from somewhere nobody has ever heard of. Stars, Paragon, Premonition, etc are all overrated.

Do you really think any of those guilds will have a chance against Ensidia in a fair race to Arthas?

Not a chance. Ever.”

Well, it turned out that Tun was quite wrong. And hopefully he’s happy about it.

The Ensidia member Eoy wrote the following in a comment to a blog post at the Ensidia website, “Has Ensidia lost the Edge?” (written by a non-Ensidia member):

“How fun would the game be if there was only one team winning all the time? Ensidia had it's primetime in Ulduar, and now Paragon claimed the throne by killing LK HM. This happens, and is why the endgame is fun to watch! You can't consider it was very entertaining when Ensidia took every single world first in Naxx before anyone else had stepped into the instance, can you?”

True. So true.

3. “Normal” guilds can also be successful
I don’t say it’s fair – as a matter of fact it’s probably a bit unfair, but still I dare say that Ensidia has a problem with their image.

Regardless of if it’s true or just a bunch of lies, rumours and misconception, the brand "Ensidia" is suffering from connotations (to use marketing language) such as sponsor deals, commercialism and strange (or even shady) relations to Saudi Arabia. As far as I know of they DON’T get paid to play Warcraft. They’re just a guild of dedicated and skilled players. But when they do those star appearances at gaming events and sponsor cooperations, they get an aura of being different. This impression is reinforced by their slick, polished and pro-style website, regardless of the fact that it has a ton of good information on it. It smells of money, and people just can’t stand that.

Paragon on the other hand, this all-Finnish guild with the chaotic vent server, has a different image (mind you, I don’t talk about if it’s true or not, just about how it appears). They make me associate to the classic myth about the local football team, starting in the lowest series, and then step by step advancing to the elite, without ever losing their soul and comradeship.

According to their website they were formed in August 2008 from two previous guilds, quite similar to how Ensidia was created. But somehow they manage to convey a different image:

“Our roots go much deeper than those two guilds. Some of our members have been playing together since before World of Warcraft and have raided together in every raid instance there has been.”

When I look at their picture, it strikes me that the average age looks fairly low. But apart from that, they look more like the rest of us out there, appearing in their own shirts and not in some sponsored ones.

And I think this is something that everyone, including Blizzard, applauses. We can keep the dream alive. Any guild – sponsored or not – can succeed if they have the right attitude. Finnish Sisu FTW!

When Eoy in Ensidia got the question about how he would celebrate if he managed to get Arthas HM world first, he answered:

“Definitely NOT by screaming on vent. I never understood that. Maybe I'll log off early and get a good nights sleep or something. Nothing special tho, it's just a game.”

And that’s why I think we can identify ourselves more easily with Paragon. Just listen to the nerdscream at their vent server during the LK kill. Those guys are raiding with their hearts!

4. The issue with mages
Then there was this thing about the mages. Or rather the lack thereof in the setup Paragon used for their first kill. There wasn’t a single mage in the raid, and the question is if this will have an impact on the market value of mages. I'm probably not the only mage to feel a bit put off by this.

From the perspective of a min-maxer the decision was easy, as Paragon explains in a forum thread:

“Yes, we figured that mage would do very slightly less dps than some other classes which we had available. So we took the setup we though optimal as it was a first kill attempt.”

Even if it makes sense, I can’t help feeling a little sorry for my fellow mages in Paragon. Sure, everyone understands that unless you have a ridiculously slimmed roaster, someone will inevitably spend the first-kill on the bench. But at least it’s nice to have a class representative in the raid.

Paragon is very clear on that they don’t think mages are generally bad, and that the dps difference is very, very small. But nevertheless, I think it might reflect badly on mages. The top guilds get many followers and I wouldn’t be surprised if some guilds will let the decisions of Paragon influence their own raid set-ups, making the demand for mages decrease – not only for LK hardmode, but on a more general level.

Trying to see it from the bright side, you can always hope that Blizzard will see it as a reason to consider giving a slight buff to the mages dps output. But so far come into this expansion, I doubt it.

5. The beginning of the End
Finally I think that this first kill is yet another landmark in the expansion. The last one. Many, many guilds have yet to kill Lich King. Some – but far from all – will keep working on it. But somehow this is the beginning of the End.

With the World First settled, we’re all ready to fix our eyes to the upcoming Cataclysm.

Can someone offer LK a lozenge?

No. No. Definitely No.

This was not what I had expected.

Finally I was standing in front of the Frozen Throne, shivering with cold, facing the final boss of the end instance of WotLK.

It was time to fight The Lich King, and I should have been trembling with fear. I had pictured myself as a David in front of a Goliath, a small gnome, looking up at a mighty, powerful, superior giant of a man. The world should quake as he opened his mouth. He would make Jaraxxus sound like a whiny girl.

And this was when it all went wrong. So wrong. I tell you – if it wasn’t for the red yelling letters in the chat window, I wouldn’t have noticed that he was speaking at all. His voice was so weak and distant that it was barely more than a whisper. I wanted to cry out: “Speak up, LK, we can’t hear you!”

Thinking of it, I most feel sorry for the lord. You can’t really blame him for catching a cold and getting a sore throat after spending all that time frozen. Who wouldn’t?

Nevertheless I couldn’t quite rid myself of the feeling of an anticlimax.

The every so curious minded Tessy moved herself a bit closer to the event, hoping that she would catch something of what was going on. However she was quickly called back by our raid leader, who thought that hanging on the shoulder of LK might not be the best position for a healer as the encounter was about to start. And who could argue with that?

But like it or not, the whispering voices are there. The scene takes almost a full minute to play up, and unlike many other bossfights with cut scenes, we’ll have to see it over again after every single wipe recovery. The fast-forward button they’ve given to Stratholme hasn’t reached the LK encounter yet.

The best way to handle it is probably just to ignore the mumbling in the distance, taking the opportunity to grab a quick bio or just contemplate and focus for a minute, preparing for the fight.

Still I can’t refrain from secretly hoping that someone one day will show some mercy.

Give the poor guy a throat lozenge or at least a microphone!

It came from the Bar: Buff me up bro and the curse of choice

Today we have a new poster who wants to share some thoughts with the other frequent guests hanging by the barside at The Pink Pigtail Inn. His name is Reptile, and he describes himself as a "geek with attitude". Reptile plays a DK in a raiding guild on a EU server in the lower tiers of the aristocracy, to follow the classification made by Rohan of Blessing of Kings. Since our innkeeper actually was planning to rant a bit a bit on this topic herself, we'll get a comment from her as well after our guest has spoken up.

Reptile:

Last night we managed to kill Sindragosa. On normal. It took us 3 hours and 12 wipes total from the moment we first saw her. It was epic and the RL on vent saying perfect while people were standing on their proper positions while being frozen was becoming trivial. So – she is dead now, and I am very pleased that we were able to pull it off before the buff. I think that the buff is in the “nice idea, horrible implementation” category. Why? Well here is my opinion on it:

It affects hard modes. Now – nerfing content so all can see it is good idea. But heroic difficulty was supposed to be the elite guilds’ sandbox where they are the only players. So – if my guild kills heroic Saurfang with no buff – it will be the same encounter which Paragon did 3 weeks ago. The community already saw first heroic LK 10 man with the buff. Congrats to Paragon for doing that. And admitting they used the buff. But here comes speculation – was the kill really in their grasp, would they have been able to down it if the buff was not implemented and so on.

There is no way to prove that your kill was pure – no achievements, no nothing. So every hard mode from now on will be discriminated by its date – you are guilty till proven innocent. Everyone will assume you have used the buff.

It is a guild breaker – what happens when half of the guild wants the buff and half of the guild doesn’t? Drama – that’s what. This is curse of choice – if blizzard just shoved the buff down our throats and said deal with it – it would have been better. Right now every new lockdown will be a source of friction between people that want challenge and people that want progression. Decoupling progression from challenge is another bad side effect. Which guild is more progressed the 8/12 with no buff or the 9/12 with it? And it requires immense amount of will not to use it.

It is way too powerful – 5% is huge – it decreases the encounter difficulty by almost 20%. 30% = insane. It will make even some of the hard modes easier for pugs and trivial for guilds.

It is pointless – it will not make the content more accessible – one person in pug is enough to chain freeze the whole raid while fighting Sindragosa. One person in melee with afk brain will wipe all of melee when fighting the Blood Queen and he gets the blood link. And the bite order will still be problematic. The raid will still wipe on the Professor if tanks don’t kite and rotate properly in third phase. Assuming they get past Rotface – which is the pug grinder currently. These big oozes will still one shot people. No matter what. And healers will still have to harvest buff stacks on Dreamwalker.

Who is this buff aimed at? It doesn’t help the elite – they prefer level playing field, it doesn’t help pugs much – not all encounters become brute force tank and spank. It decreases the firepower requirement but not the skill one. So it only help casual guilds that can stay out of the fire, but lack the DPS to make the enrage timer – are there really so much of them ?

A better solution?
How would I have done it – well simple – keep the buff away from hard modes for 2 or 3 more months – this way more of the really good guilds would have had a fair shot at them. After that create some kind of pure achievements for normal and heroic – if you down the boss with no buff – you get one of them. If you down the boss with the gear level encounter was designed for – you get the second achievement and the mount of überness.

P.S. Lich king – beware – I am coming after you. Hopefully without buff.

Larisa:

I can see where you're coming from. This is yet another version of the nerf countdown we've been fighting so many times before. I remember the pride we felt as we downed Mother Shiraz pre-nerf in Black Temple. And the disappointment that we didn't get another few weeks before the final mega-patch, which made all our shadow resist gear we so painfully had gathered suddenly become unnecessary over night. We knew we could have made it to Illidan without the nerf. We just never got the chance to prove it.

Agreeable, this way of putting up the nerfs is way better than how it used to be. At least you have a choice now. You CAN get rid of the buff, although I doubt that more than a handful of guilds really will come around and do it. The temptation to get the bosses down a bit easier is just too big, since there's absolutely no incentive at all not to use it. If we only could have gotten some way to distinguish a guild that didn't use the buff from a guild that took advantage of it, for instance by an achievement, like you suggest, or by some particular sort of gear drop, it would have been an entirely different question. But as it is now, no one will ever know. And since most guilds that are fairly serious about raiding also have a competitive side, comparing themselves to other guilds on their server, it's quite unlikely that they'll cripple themselves in the hunt for their first kills, without any reward for it whatsoever.

However, I'm not totally against the concept of making the instances a bit more accessible after a couple of months. The ranking site Guildprogress, which keeps track of 125 000 guilds worldwide suggests that somewhere between 3 and 4 percent of the guilds have killed Putricide in 25 man. 85 percent of the guilds haven't gotten as far as downing Saurfang. Mind you, there are several sources of error in this. I have no idea about how relevant their database over guilds is; many of those guilds might have ceased to exist and hence aren't progressing anymore. Then there are other guilds which might have killed a couple of bosses back in time, guilds that are still ranked, but in reality have lost their interest for raiding.

Still I think the tendency is correct, judging from what I see in recruitment ads on the forums and in the general chat; very few guilds have progressed at all further than the first four bosses in ICC, two months after it was released. It's no wonder that Blizzard wants to push the general progression a bit further. Doing the same four bosses over and over and over again certainly give you some badges and a shiny reputation ring, but it's kind of boring in the long run. So I think that we just have to live with nerfs in one form or the other.

Two things could have been made to make the ICC buff work as intended without being forced down the throat of every single raiding guild, either they needed it or not. One thing has already been mentioned: to somehow recognize the non-using of the buff. This would have given us three available difficulty levels of the encounters: buffed mode, normal mode and hard mode. It's just like taco sauce: some like it mild, others want it spicy and then there are all those boring medium types, like me. Something for everyone.

The other thing I'd like to change is to switch around, so that you don't get the buff by default. You shouldn't have to talk to an NPC to get rid of the buff. You should have to talk to him to GET it. I believe that this would make guilds think twice before using it; do we really need this or can we do without?

It's just like with children. You can't hand out candy and then tell them to think over if they really want to keep it. It's easier to say no when you don't feel the chocolate smell in your nostrils.

Are the hard mode bosses going down too easily?

So the match is still going on. Or at least it was as I wrote this post in the middle of the night, before going to sleep. I'm talking about the battle of the first world kill of the Lich King in heroic mode. The hardest boss in the final instance. The crown of this expansion. A handful of guilds are currently playing day and night, because they know that the one who snatches the first kill will be regarded as the kings of the game in the next few months.

Admittedly, most WoW players probably have no idea that this race is going on. According to the news today, 70 percent of the players who try WoW will stop before they turn level 10. People are just WAY more casual than I think any of us realize. They've never heard of Ensidia, Paragon or Vodka. As a matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of the players only have a vague idea about what ICC is. It's easy to forget this. We keep taking for granted other people share our interests in the game. Actually most of them probably don't.

Complaints have started
I don't know if I'll wake up tomorrow morning to the news that the king is dead and the race is over. Maybe. Maybe not.

What I do know though is that the complaints have already started. At this moment all bosses but Putricide and Lich King have been killed in hard modes. And people are already writing about it in the forums. This is a typical example, coming from the MMO-champion forum:

"It's pathetic that hard modes are getting crushed this easily. I was expecting a few weeks minimum before limited attempt bosses would start going down".

In one way I guess the posters are feeling a bit disappointed. They would have liked to see the Top of the Top among players struggling for a while more. It's kind of exciting to follow after all. And when they kill everything so fast and seemingly easy, isn't that a bit humiliating to the developers who "failed" to give them some proper resistance?

But in all honesty I don't agree with those concerns. I can't help thinking they're a bit silly, even embarrassing, since I don't believe for a second that most of those people whining would be capable of doing those quick heroic kills themselves. They want to believe that they're somehow in the same class of those elite guilds, when in fact they're not. They will be quite likely to wipe with the rest of us for yet a couple of months.

The whole idea that you should tune the encounters so that they should be worthy opponents to the best handful of players in the world is just ridiculous. They ARE challenged already - by the limited attempts and by the pressure to play day and night, on mains, on alts, in 10 mans, in 25 mans, just to become number 1. Sure, they're doing it within a short time span, but they're definitely challenged and have to make up a good strategy on whether to practice with their alts or switch over to their main attempts.

A cross country race
I come to think of when I ran the women class of Lidingöloppet, one of the largest cross country races in the world a few years ago. It was a 10 km run and it wasn't like anything I had ever encountered before. Where I live the terrain is flat, but Lidingöloppet constantly went either up or down, and in the very end there was a hill that resembled to a slope where you're going downhill racer skiing that you were supposed to climb.

I conquered that hill and I finished the race out of pure will, high on adrenaline, carried by the cheering masses and my own insanity. I did it on 58 minutes, blood taste in my mouth, more exhausted than I had ever been in my life, stumbling around, completely lost, on the verge of unconsciousness. But happy. My goal had been to beat 1 hour and I did it!

Sure, there were people in the race that ran it on 34 minutes. But did that matter to me? Did that in anyway decrease my own achievement? Did I think: "oh, this race was really too easy for the elite runners, they should have made them run up that hill another 10 times so they would have had some proper resistance? " Of course I didn't! They had their challenge to beat each other. I had my challenge to reach my own goals.

The nature of the challenge will always depend on the circumstances, from where you are coming.

I'm not entirely certain that our guild will be able to beat the Lich king in heroic mode before the expansion. I'm pretty sure we'll manage it in normal, but heroic? This remains to see.

Ensidia and Paragon may have beaten some of those bosses very quickly, but they're in a completely different class, just like the 34 minute runners are different from me.

To sum it up: I don't worry. I really don't. I think we'll be occupied in ICC for quite a while before we nail all those fights that are awaiting us. We will still be out in the trail, running, while the top guilds are gone, doing something else while they're waiting for Cataclysm. I'm actually not even sorry for them. Sure, they're running out of content. The trail ends there for them. But that was exactly what they were aiming for.

In a few hours I may wake up to the news that the heroic Lich King is dead. And it doesn't worry me at all. So my answer to the question I put initially will be: No. The bosses don't go down too easily. At least I don't assume it before I've tried them myself.

The Naked Raid and a strange LFG experience

I raided naked last night. Well, not literally - I did have my pants and shirt on, and so did Larísa. But it was a raid done without the normal tools we're normally relying on.

I hadn't expected this to happen in my guild - on the contrary, I was prepared to do what I normally do when there are new bosses incoming - checking up the basics about them, seeing the Tankspot video once or twice, looking up what I would be supposed to do. But this time our leaders surprised us when they told us about how they wanted to approach this new content. We would do it blindly.

So my first adventure in Icecrown Citadel 25 was done without any knowledge about any strategy whatsoever. We had also agreed to shut down every bossmod we normally use. Instead we observed and figured out on our own how to deal with the fights.

It was a very special experience. Sure, we wiped a lot more than we would have else. I felt sort of naked - in a positive way. It gave me a sense of freedom, the same sensation as you get if you've ever tried riding a horse without any saddle. The game and the fights will get closer to you.

Apart from wiping a lot, we actually managed to down a boss - Marrowgar, and lo and behold, I won the bidding on the Frozen Bonespike, which added some sweetness to the night.

Sooner or later we'll probably look at what other guilds have done in those fights, but for now I'm perfectly happy with this way of raiding and I hope that we'll stick to it a couple of raids. There will be plenty of time to get bored and tired with ICC before Cataclysm gets out, so there's really no hurry to get everything done at once.

The silent PUG
After the raid I did my first random LFG random dungeon run, just to see what it would be like. And which dungeon turned up, if not Occulus? However, due to the lack of love from the community, I presume, it had been nerfed to the ground. The result was that we breezed through it like you do with any other heroic instance these days, at least at my gear level. It was quick and efficient, but also a weird experience. No one said a single word. No strategies were discussed, no chit-chatting about what we thought about the new patch. Nothing. Just silence and a quick run-through, and I'm not sure anyone even said good-bye. I could have been playing with NPCs - I wouldn't have noticed any difference. Was it a pleasure? I'm not entirely sure.

It was only one dungeon and of course it's way too early to tell the long term effects that the new dungeon system will have on the game. The developers themselves aren't too sure about it. Ghostcrawler himself speculated in a reply at a forum post:

"I joke, but it's definitely interesting to see the outcome. I said long ago that we knew features like this (and dual spec for that matter) were going to change the game in ways that would be difficult to predict. Some of us were talking about how the ease for forming groups now might actually throw up a barrier to socialization. Why be nice to someone when you won't ever have to group with them again? Why form a guild when you don't need one to run dungeons?"

Well, I know that I'm more convinced than ever that a guild is needed if you want to experience the game the way I want to. "Naked" runs aren't likely to happen in a Random Dungeon group. Suggest them to run without mods, finding up strategies on your own, and you'll get a vote kick before you know it.

And that was the end of my first night in 3.3. On the whole my reaction is like the one I've seen at most blogs - I'm more than delighted. The only thing that made me frown a little bit was the new cat pet sold in Dalaran. Freaking 40 g for a cat that doesn't look a bit better than the ones that have been sold in Elwynn Forest since forever. The pet shop owner must be a goblin in disguise.