Wanted: a suicidal spell

Think about a mage. What is the first thing that comes to your mind? (Apart from our general awesomeness and brilliance of course.)

Probably you’ll say something about "squishy". You think of someone who for some strange reason thinks that a think silk gown is an appropriate way to dress when you’re about to face a big evil dragon. You imagine someone who is so vulnerable that he or she will die instantly if the monster as much as look in their direction.

We’re supposed to be fragile, not to say suicidal. If there’s anything in the game that we’re good at, it’s to die quickly. We’re the Masters of Corps Runs.

Now is the time to inform you that you’ve got the wrong picture. As a matter of fact I’ve recently become more and more annoyed with my inability to die.

While we've been struggling with Sartharion + 3d, it happens all the time that wipes are called for different reasons. We've lost a tank, we've lost too many healers and there's no point in continuing. It’s standard procedure that the RL will order us to die ASAP in order not to lose precious raiding time to a futile attempt.

And this is when my usually so weak mage for some reason suddenly becomes surrounded by some sort of magical shield, making her more or less impossible to kill. (And mind you, I’m not a frost mage!) I plunge into fire walls, I look all over the place for void zones, I wave at the add elements and dragon whelps, begging them to make the procedure short. No result. I end up chasing Sartharion himself, begging him to kill me out of pity. And as one of the last persons in the raid I’m finally allowed to release and run.

What kind of a joke isn’t that? Where is all that survivability when you actually need it?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could be given a suicidal spell to be able to finish our lives on short notice when needed? That wouldn’t really count as OP, would it? And if not, why not let the alchemists come up with something? Let us make a lethal potion for suicidal purposes. Honestly, I think there’s a market for it.

Twilight Vanquisher Larísa

My Moby Dick is dead.

I normally try to avoid gloating posts. They’re really not interesting to anyone but the blogger himself. But this one I’ll make an exception. Since I told you about my Sartharion obsession yesterday, I thought that I ought to tell you that it’s over now. Thursday night we killed Sartharion and his three companions, only after an hour of raiding. It was amazing, and I enjoyed it even more since I was actually alive and kicking when he fell.

This is a completely new situation for me. I’ve never ever been on the edge of the progression before, doing the hardest encounters in the game, at the proper gear level. Since I started to play the Wow pretty late, in February 2007, and didn’t discover raiding until after a while, I did Karazhan in the autumn 2007 and T4/T5 instances in the spring 2008, and I never had a chance to do Sunwell until it was too late. Now I’m on the edge, done with the content, waiting for Ulduar to arrive.

A long way
It’s hard for me to believe, to accept, that this actually happened. Sometimes I pinch myself, wondering: do I really deserve this? Am I really that good? Am I not just some hoax, someone who slipped into this accidently?

But I guess I’ve worked pretty hard for it, when I think about it.

I looked back in my blog and found a few posts that marked big steps in my personal progression. It has certainly been a long way. (Hm, how come that the signature from ST Enterprise is starting to play in my head?)

On February 7 last year I wrote about my first impressions of a 25 man raid. We were all winded up, like school kids on a summer vacation. It was chaotic, big and confusing. But obviously I liked it.

I even liked it so much that I moved to another server and another guild to be able to do some more 25 man raiding. On March 20 2008 I was still a quite shy, starry eyed and very easily impressed little gnome girl, taking her first stumbling steps in big party raiding. For the first time I took a glance at SSC and I all but fainted.

Quick jump to August 15 2008. I had decided to give myself a chance in a little more advanced guild. I entered Black Temple for the first time. The discipline and efficiency was impressing but also a bit scary, especially since I was on trial. I was all excited when I wrote this post about it.

Things worked out though and I was accepted. And with Adrenaline, I’ve been wiping and fighting my way, first through Mount Hyjal and Black Temple (we did all the way up to and including Mother Shahraz before the big nerf) and now through the content of WotLK.

A casual friendly game?

I didn’t win the mount, but who cares? I’ve reached a goal I’ve been fighting so hard for. I survived through void zones and fire walls and hopefully I even managed to do a little bit of damage. I’m so proud over my guild that I lack words for it.

I guess it’s a sign that WoW seriously is casual friendly, when an old lady like me, without any previous gaming experience, in two years time can progress through the game and ending up doing the most advanced things. Some players don’t like this development. They wish that people like me were kept out.

But I seriously don’t care.

Coming from where I am, this IS an achievement. My Moby Dick is dead and I couldn’t be happier.

Larísa fixates her eyes on Sartharion

Let’s put it straight.

Larísa is currently completely out of balance.
She’s not moderate.
She doesn’t keep a healthy distance.
She doesn’t laugh the defeats away, shrugging her shoulders, thinking “so what, it’s just a game”.
She is obsessed. Or should I rather say possessed.

The wrong moment
This hardly seems the appropriate moment to talk about it. You see, right now the WoW Blogosphere is all shaken up by the loss of BRK. His farewell letter has touched our hearts; the 944 comments (so far) speak for themselves. As a matter of fact I haven’t been able to come up with a proper commenting hommage post; I seriously can’t think of anything to add that hasn’t already been said.

I think many of us are looking ourselves in the mirror, wondering if we like BRK are on a road heading right into a wall that suddenly will appear in front of us. Maybe we too will come to the crossroads where we’ll have to choose. An easy choice – some people may say – since “real life comes first”. But for many of us it’s not just an easy, but also a painful choice. Yeah, it’s a game, but we’ve invested our hearts in it - we’ve got friends in Azeroth, friends in the Blogosphere, and to separate from friends hurts, no matter how good the reasons are.

We’re all in a bit of a shock and if you’re supposed to blog about anything these days it seems more natural to talk about how to manage the delicate WoW-RL balance, or possibly about how to fight the lethargy and boredom while you’re waiting for Ulduar.

One single thought
This is hardly the right time to talk about passion, obsession, not to say possession.

And yet I will do it. So troll me, shoot me, throw rotten tomatoes at me, call me a freak if you want. But I tell you: right now – when it comes to WoW related thoughts (I DO spend some time thinking about my job and my family:)) there is currently only room for one thought, one goal and one desire. And that is to kill Sartharion and his three helper dragons in a single fight.

Tuesday night was the last time I was there. We did some 20 + tries on him, and actually did real progress, if you compare it to our previous wipe nights (there have been several, I’ve honestly lost count.) Our best try lasted 17 minutes and got down all adds and Sartharion himself to 3 percent before it was a wipe due to the fact that there were too few players alive to properly deal with the enrage mechanism.

It’s doable. It’s within our reach. And yet we haven’t done it. When we finally called it night, it was reluctantly. I don’t think I was the only one who wished that you could turn back the watch and give us another couple of hours. It was 11.30 pm and I was mentally exhausted after spending 3 hours completely focused and on my toes, with only a five minutes break. To go to sleep in that state of mind was still impossible and I tried to cool down a bit, doing a quest on my rogue. But all I could see in front of me was fire walls and void zones.

Insane? Yes, definitely. But currently it feels as if I’m not going to enjoy anything else in the game at its full potential until I’ve got this done.

A personal vendetta
A couple of months ago, Bre of Gun Lovin’ Dwarf Chick asked us about our “unicorns”, pieces of loot that we had hunted for a long time, but had kept evading us. Sartharion + 3 dragons isn’t a unicorn in that sense – even though I’d really appreciate the mount, it’s not about the loot. This is rather a personal vendetta, as if I was chasing Alien, Jaws or Moby Dick.

Luckily enough I’m not the only one. We’ve been told that there won’t be any farm runs in Naxx or anywhere else until we’ve done this. It’s a decision I fully support.

When I log in tonight Larísa is already parked right outside the gates of OS, ready to spend another night and 150 g on repairs. But maybe it will be different this time. We could make it into a one-hour session, ending in a beautiful, triumphant screenshot.

My eyes are fixated on you, Big Bad Dragon! Run away little girl! Your days are counted and we will make this happen.