I facepalmed before getting the mount of my dreams

Sunday night offered a mixed bag of WoW moments.

It started with a huge /facepalm, one of the worse “I’m an idiot”-realisations that I can remember from my years of playing. However it ended with a beautiful ride where the hero rides off into the sunset. All is well that ends well, isn’t that the saying?

Facepalm moment
But let’s start on the bad side.

Have you ever felt stupid in WoW? I mean REALLY stupid, angry with yourself for being incredibly thoughtless and careless and what-not? This was one of those occasions.

It was initiated by a spontaneous application from a mage, posted on our forums, as all apps are. I had a look at his Armory profile and was a little bit concerned with one of his choices of glyphs. It wasn’t the standard one which EJ recommended, at lest last time I checked them out. But I wanted to be sure, so I went to my own profile to have a look at my glyphs. And that’s when I got the shock.

I was specked arcane, but my main glyphs were intended for a frost spec! No kidding. Where I expected to find Arcane Blast and Arcane Missils, I stared in disbelief at improvements of Frostbolt and my non-existent Water Element!

I don’t want to think about for how long this has been the case. It’s for long, that’s for sure. I remember experimenting a bit with a second arcane spec, which replaced a frost offspec that I put up with the intention to see if I was capable of aoe-farming (which never came any further than to an idea). I can clearly see why and when the mix-up happened.

Not having your main nukes glyphed is a massive downer, and I feel really horrible about it. Our guild is doing hardmodes, for crying out loud! We’re bringing pots and flasks and buff food, squeezing out every little inch of dps we can. And I make a major error like this? It’s on par – or worse – than not using the maximum rank of a spell.

However you can’t change the past by dwelling on it, sulking and hitting yourself in the head. What’s done is done and what counts is that I’ve fixed it and that I’ve learned my lesson. From now on I’ll be paranoid about checking my glyphs.

Ulduar hardmodes
Let’s move on to the pleasant part of Sunday night, the sunset.

As always on Sunday nights we were gathering a 10-man raid to go and grab some more hardmodes and achievements in ICC, where our goal is to get mounts to everyone. We have quite a few already but since especially the ranged dps has to rotate a lot, some of us still are missing out a couple of achievements.

This Sunday night first seemed to be a disappointing no-go, since one of our tanks had technical issues and couldn’t log into the game. We were left with 9 raiders, no main-spec tank and one off-spec tank. Not be best setting for ICC hardmodes, not even with the 30 percent buff.

We didn’t let this stop us though. One of our dps:ers switched to an alt paladin, geared for tanking, and off we went to Ulduar, to do some hardmodes for the Rusted Proto-Drake.

First off was Firefighter. How much hadn’t I heard about that fight? Supposedly about the hardest one you could find in Wrath. And I’m sure it was back in time before everyone was overgeared. Now we got him down on second try, and it really isn’t much to brag about. But nevertheless it was really fun to run around in a sea of fire, looking out for dangers coming from all directions. “Don’t stand in fire” has definitely got a new meaning after seeing this fight.

When we were about to face General Vezax, our ordinary tank had managed to come online, so we did him quick enough with a full group before we moved on to Yogg-Saron.

Last time I faced him was back in January in a 25-man group, when we went back to finish the legendary mace. And before that it had been ages since I set my foot in Ulduar. So it felt slightly awkward to try to remember this fight, now with added difficulty, such as not having any access to sanity wells. It turned out to be as fun and chaotic as I remembered – or even better – in this spiced-up version. We didn’t have to struggle too badly though, and after a few tries I could see him go down.

Oh, the joy! Sure, we were way overgeared and I’m perfectly aware of that it doesn’t give me any bragging rights, at least not compared to what it would have one year ago. But nevertheless – it always gives me a nice feeling to tick of another check box, to reach completion of a goal. My Glory of the Ulduar Raider achievement was finished and a brand new proto-drake was awaiting me in the mail box.

I added it to my collection, headed for the flight point in Dalaran and took of into the night. The model was the same as my seasonal-achievements-mount, but the colour was more down-to-earth, rust instead of purple.

Isn’t it a bit funny by the way? A brand new dragon that comes full of rust. Reminds me a bit of the denim trousers that are sold worn out, complete with holes and everything.

I’m totally happy about it though, and it will surely become my mount by default. At least until I get the ICC one.

My next goal
What remains now for me now is to get the hardmodes in ICC I’m missing for the mount and to kill Algalon. Yeah, and Halion. Due to my vacation I haven’t made it into any of those raids yet. After that I think I’ll consider myself pretty much done with Wrath, ready to face whatever lies ahead of us in Cataclysm.

I know one thing for sure though. In Cataclysm I’ll see to that I always have the right glyphs.

Why I don't want to hear another "WoW is too easy" statement

She began her post in the best way you can if you want to stir up some feelings and cause a bit of buzz in the WoW blogosphere, tossing out a classic torch:

Here’s a dangerous statement: Wrath of the Lich King (Wrath) made World of
Warcraft/Crack/Crass(WoW) too easy.

The words come from Mimetir, a guest writer at World of Matticus, who has written the first part in a planned series of articles about the social effects of WotLK. Like many a good blogger she invites the reader to a discussion, concluding in a question: "How easy is WoW these days and how do you feel about it?"

And of course I can't resist to take the bite and rant a bit about it. Because to be honest I'm pretty much fed up with the constant whining about that WoW has become too easy. What annoys me so much is that the loudest criticism comes from players who themselves are far from having cleared all the current raid content.

Hands on heart, how many of you have actually killed Yogg-Saron 25 man? Not quite that many. As a matter of fact, people seem to have given up about him altogether. I haven't got any scientific evidence that this is the fact, but from what I read on the blogs, it appears that most raiding guilds have stopped aiming for an Ulduar clear. They make ToC, Onyxia and not much more than that.

Why? Well, I guess they find him too hard compared to the upgrades he offers. The wipe/gear quota isn't favorable. And fine, that's their choice. But don't come and tell me that the raid instances in Wrath are too easy!

The choice is ours
I've praised the hardmodes before and I do it again: they're there for us to be able to put the bar at exactly the level where we want it to be to get the kind of gaming experience we're looking for.

Sure, there are people who don't enjoy wiping and prefer to kill bosses in one or two goes, pick up the loot and rejoice at their epics. The normal modes are there for their pleasure.

Then there is this other kind of raiders, who enjoy playing under pressure, who want to curse and be cursed at, who want to be frustrated and grind their teeth, who won't hesitate facing a long learning curve, who always try to bring their very best performance and who rather raid to enjoy the sweet first kills than to get gear. The hardmodes are for them.

And of course there are all sorts of shades and nuances in between. Actually I think we're all moving a bit back and forward between the categories, depending on our mood of the day. In our guild we've stopped raiding Ulduar on normal mode, but keep going for the hardmodes, since we've still got one more boss to see there. We do the normal ToC every week, in spite of the lack of challenge, after all it's hard to resist the T9s. It's a lot of loot for very little time, just above an hour. But I think everyone enjoy the following hardmode attempts more. That's where the real raiding is.

Some players could argue that doing both normal and hard modes in ToC will be too repetitive and boring. But then I wonder: since when did it become mandatory to run the raid instances on normal mode? Is there anything at all preventing you from skipping the faceroller raids altogether and stick to hardmode Ulduar and heroic ToC? Nothing. Nothing at all.

I know that there are many players out there who are much more skilled than I am. And maybe WotLK is completely sickening easy for you. But speaking for myself, I'm still challenged over and over again.

Enjoying the learning
I'll give you an example from my everyday life in Adrenaline. It's what I would call a "good" raiding guild. We've never topped the ranking lists of the server, and we probably never will, but we're steadily among the 10 best raiding guilds on the alliance side, which is fine if you look at how much time we spend on our raids.

In the last week I've had a couple of wonderful learning nights. One night I was lucky enough to get into a 10 man raid for Ulduar hardmodes on an offnight. We did Freya+3, and although the guild had done it a couple of times, it was the first time for me and some other raid members. It was such a thrill, going from wiping on one of the first waves, then slowly getting longer and longer into the fight, and then finally, after quite a few wipes, nail it, exhausted, with a big smile on my face.

A few days earlier we had the same kind of learning process and Thorim hardmode 25 man, the Lose your illusion achievement. We had to work for it, just as we had done the weeks before when we got our Hodir and Iron Council hardmode kills. We worked for this kill, not only in the raid situation, but also in between, when we were tweaking strategies and discussing what we needed to improve.

Finally, this Sunday night we started to work seriously on Northrend Beasts hardmode. Previously we had only made it through the first phase. After one hour of tries we got a glimpse of phase three. Yay for progress! I'm sure we'll get it right pretty soon. Easy? I don't quite think so.

Message to whiners
In my opinion the only players who really are entitled to say that the raiding in WotLK is too easy are the ones that are farming Algalon and clearing ToC hardmodes without any effort. How many are those? Well, according to WoW Progress 0,13 percent of the guilds have done A Tribute to Insanity (25). I'll be prepared to listen to what those players have to say about the skill level in WotLK.

The rest of you whiners? Go grind something. Switch to Aion. Or give yourself a challenge in the WoW They're still there for you, if you want them. Trust me on that. But please (and now I'm going to use one of those horrible abbreviations, which I normally detest, it's just that it's appropriate this time) - STFU.

Hard mode excitement and an “I’m a noob moment”

This weekend we finally killed Hodir. Or rather: brought him back to his senses, if I’ve got the story right. To be fair, we’ve done it many times before, but this was the first time we did it in hard mode. And that’s quite a different thing.

Level of happiness
I know the player base is split in their views about the concept of hard modes. Some players couldn’t care less, thinking that Blizzard is cheating. They would rather have new encounters, harder bosses which put up proper resistance from the beginning. Doing the same thing over again with just a bit more of health, more damage taken or lesser time available doesn’t give enough variety to be pleased.

Personally I’m of the opposite view though. It’s a cleaver way to make sure that most players have a fair chance to have a ride at most of the attractions in the amusement park, while at the same time offering some real challenge for players who enjoy the process and efforts of progressive raiding. There’s no way that Blizzard can keep every single player happy about their decisions, since our wishes are so disparate. Hard mode is a compromise, and a pretty good one.

So, “killing” a boss we’ve killed before, but in a new way, how does it count on the scale of experienced raiding pleasure? Very high actually, much higher than I would have expected. There is a distinct correlation between how much effort an encounter requires and what level of happiness I reach when we succeed.

The new bosses in ToC may offer better loot, but they won’t offer the same “kill kick”, at least not in normal mode. When we downed them as they arrived, one new every week, it didn’t feel much like progress, more like “meh”, was that all there was to it? They lacked the genuine flavour of a first kill, a flavour that Hodir had, even though this was far from the first time we saw him go down.

Mental blockage
Of course the sweetness of this kill was increased by the fact that I’ve had (and still have to be honest) so much trouble with the execution of this encounter for my own part. Moving around while casting has never been my strong side. I’ve got some seriously bad habits and badly chosen key bindings, which will take a long time to change, if it’s even doable at all.

Hodir is the ultimate moving fight, and there have been nights when I’ve literally been crying after the raid, shreading real tears out of pure frustration over my own shortcomings. There’s no way you can escape the hard facts from the wws chart, mercilessly showing that you’re doing about half the damage you’re supposed to do as a mage, barely above the tanks. “Will Adrenaline EVER be able to do this boss as long as they’re dragging around Larísa in the raid” is a question I’ve asked myself more than once. And obviously the answer was: Yes. And at least for the kill attempt, it seemed as if did a fair amount of damage and wasn’t dragged at all, if the Recount report someone whispered to me was correct. This gives me hope. Maybe I can finally overcome my mental blockage about this guy and move ahead from now?

The raid moved ahead anyway. Hodir is behind us and our eyes are now fixed on our next hard mode targets: Thorim and Freya. (Steelbreaker and XT already done). Once again we’re on a countdown timer, since the news arrived last week about Icecrown incoming in a not too far distant future. Will we be able to see Algalon before it arrives and our focus inevitably will be drawn towards the new raid content?

Still high on the spirit from a good progression night I can’t say anything but: yes!

Anything is possible.

PS The night wasn’t all about success. I also contained one of those “I’m a noob moments”, so embarrassing that I have to share it with you to get it out of my system. It was at 19.59, one minute from our official raid start and we were all assembled, just about to buff up. I hurried to throw up a mage table before my fellow mage had got a chance to do the same. After all my biscuits taste better than his, right? It was just this thing that I didn’t make any mage table at all. I did a portal to Dalaran, which looks exactly the same. A second later, there was a “WTF”, and a couple of players were FAR out of range for any buffing whatsoever. And of course we didn’t have any warlock in the raid. You could almost think that it was an evil prank from me, but I’m afraid it wasn’t. Just a miss click. A very unfortunate one.

/blush

A few notes about what I’ve been up to

Yogg-Saron has died. Again. I wonder how many times he dies every night, if you add it up, every kill on the realms all over the world. Night after night after night. No wonder he looks like a jellyfish. Who wouldn’t?

The special thing about this kill last Tuesday though was that it was the first time that Larísa did it. And the first time that Adrenaline on EU-Stormrage did it in 25 man. A small step for WoWkind. But a big step for us.

I wouldn’t say that the step was huge though. It didn’t carry that enormous relief we felt when we eventually killed Archimonde last autumn. The joyous cries at vent were quite few and discrete. I guess we never had the opportunity to assemble enough of wipe nights to build up the right amount of frustration.

I think we all felt that it would have been even better if we had gotten the kill before the 3.2 patch. We lost the race against the nerf timer this time. It was a hard race to win in the middle of the summer vacation, with the lack of 25 man raids that comes with it. Given the opportunity, we would have been capable of killing him on the old terms.

All in all, nerfs or not, it was sweet to get it done, it was a good raid, where we went better and better with every attempt until the well deserved kill, and I definitely look forward now to do some more serious wiping on the hardmodes i Ulduar that will follow. We have the capacity of doing it. I know that.

New Computer
This night was special to me in another way as well: it was the first one where I tried out my new computer.

Yep. After all the trouble, ups and downs I’ve been through with my old PC, I finally decided that I was done with it, when it completely refused to start at all last Saturday. And once I settle my mind I tend to get things done quickly. A new one was ordered promptly from a local computer building firm, and to my own surprise I got it home and put it in order so quickly that I was able to raid just a couple of days later.

It was a new and different experience to be able to raid with a relaxed mind, not constantly fearing that the screen would freeze and the computer crash at the worst possible moment. I never realized this put such a tension on me before.

Now I’ve got a lot of things to learn and get used to. I can turn up my graphic settings and enjoy the scenery. I can start running addons like Recount, which I deserted ages ago to keep down the lag.

And I’ve also taken the step from a normal mouse to a gaming mouse. You know one with a pretty bizarre look and several extra buttons that you can bind to different spells. Woot! Yeah, I know, it’s probably quite normal for most PPI readers, but for me it’s a huge thing. It makes me feel like a naughty kid. Am I supposed to handle one of those things? A GAMING mouse! In my hand. Who could have thought this three years ago?

I’ve never thought about myself as a Gamer. But I guess I am. And actually a very happy one at the moment.

Yogg-Saron dead. Computer alive and working as intended. Next raid instance will contain 31 bosses. Could it really be any better?

Heaven and Hell

The raid bosses may be scripted, but the players aren’t, that’s for sure.

For a while our guild has been doing a sort of pendulum movement between failure and success, it’s been like Heaven and Hell, with a bit too much emphasis on the hell part to be honest.

This frustrating experience has shattered our self image quite a bit. We’ve always seen ourselves as a very good guild. We can’t compete for the top five positions on the server, but considering we’re just raiding three nights a week, with modest attendance requirements, we’ve been doing really, really well and we’ve always taken pride in our serious, at least half-pro approach to raiding.

Going backwards
This was until a couple of weeks ago, when our progress didn’t just halt, but even started to go backwards. The worst moment of humiliation was probably one night when we wiped several times on Kologarn, in a mess that looked worse than my work desk (and that is bad, trust me.). Our poor raid leader was so frustrated that he didn’t even come around to give a harsh speech. And I think that silence on vent was even worse than anything he could have said. The air was dense with frustration and disappointment.

Then our guild anniversary came, a blast for everyone. Maybe the break from the routine would help up a bit and make people get back on track? Disappointingly enough it didn’t. Last week we had some really bad wiping on General Vezax, far below our normal standard, which ended up in a prematurely ended raid night.

What was the problem? This was the same players who had killed him without too much effort a few weeks earlier, so it couldn’t really be about lack of knowledge of tactics or skill. It was rather an issue connected to mentality and focus, and the question was how to deal with it.

An intense discussion on our forums followed where we honestly and straightforwardly vented the situation and what to do about it. Not only the officers, but everyone participated. The question was: what’s up? What’s our problem? Do we really want to do this or have we for some reason lost a bit of our focus and interest in the game? Would we be better off taking a break from our 25 man raiding, reloading our batteries, getting our energy and focus back again? Were people getting burned out from running Ulduar 10 man in the offnights as well? Maybe we should take it a bit cooler with those optional offnight activities, making sure we’re in top shape for our 25-man raids?

The discussion ended up in the conclusion that we really did want to go on. And if people got a bit fed up with Ulduar, they should be mature and responsible enough to recognize the signs of burnout, sticking to our 25 man raids, which is the focus of our guild.

Raid resets
So came the new week and the raid instance reset.

The resets always make me think about the wonderful movie Groundhog Day, where the main character has gotten into some kind of time loop, living through the same day over and over again. After experiencing it enough many times he’s slowly starting to learn from it, seeing that the outcome and experience of the day will be quite different, depending on his decisions. The day may be scripted, but he isn’t.

Sometimes the raid resets feel like a nuisance. You’ve been working so hard the whole week to get to the end boss, and if you only could have gotten a couple of hours more, you’re sure you would have gotten him. Now it’s all in vain and you’re starting the long uphill struggle again.

But sometimes it’s the opposite, a blessing. It’s a fresh start. The disaster from the raid the week before is forgotten. It’s a new situation – yet another opportunity to get it right from the beginning.

And this week was one of those blessed moments. As we approached our vehicles to start the long climb, I could hear the Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe", which wakes up Bill Murray every day in that movie. “Here we go again” I thought. “I wonder how it will go”.

Back on track
And soon I knew. It was the same bosses, but it was all different. There were no silly mistakes. We were once again transformed into a raiding machine, efficiently making its way through Ulduar, oneshotting more or less every boss we encountered. We grabbed the chance to prove to ourselves that we deserve to be where we are progression wise. We came back from Hell and went straight to Heaven.

And this trend continued the next raid. The very same guild that wiped for hours on Vezax last week oneshotted him now without any problem whatsoever, with several minutes to spare on the enrage timer, which means that we’ll have an entire night at our hands dedicated for Yogg the next raid.

How come? I have no idea. The discussions on our forums following the defeats last week didn’t offer any rocket science solution, any new strategy or shortcut. We hadn’t kicked or benched any players due to poor performance.

But suddenly the focus was there that wasn’t before. If you ask me I think it’s all about what’s happening in our heads. To succeed in raiding you need to know basics about the gameplay, about your class, the strategies in encounter, raid mechanics and so on. But it can only take you so far. Without the right mentality and mindset you can still lose it all.

And that, my friends, is what makes raiding so fascinating to me. It’s not about “seeing the bosses”. They’re all there at YouTube to be seen for anyone who’s curious. It’s not about the epic drops. That’s just pixels and will be exchanged at next content patch anyway.

No, it’s about the never-ending learning of how to make a group perform at its full potential. Every raid reset gives us another chance to deal with it better than the one before.

And who knows, when we’ve done it perfectly maybe the raid won’t reset, but something else will come? At least in my imagination. A brand new day would dawn, just like in Groundhog Day. I wonder what it would bring to us.

Running against the Nerf Enrage Timer

Normally I like enrage timers in raiding encounters. They put some pressure on the dps squad, forcing us to be on our toes. We can’t just play for safe, we have to take calculated risks as well, pushing towards (but not over) the threat cap. The enrage timers make my heart beat a bit faster. Sometimes it’s frustrating, when you fail with the margin of a few seconds. But most of all it’s fun.

The Nerf Enrage Timer
However, there’s another kind of enrage timer that I don’t feel as happy about. I’m talking about the Nerf Enrage Timer. Ulduar has been out for two weeks, and they’ve already started to nerf some of the bosses. This makes me nervous. And don’t get me wrong now. I don’t care if they do minor changes to the bosses we’ve already downed (in the moment I’m writing there’s seven of them.) It doesn’t in any way diminish my satisfaction of having killed them if other guilds, that started working on them at a later point, will have an easier ride than we did. I know what we’ve done and that knowledge is enough for me. What worries me is the nerf of bosses we haven’t yet come around to kill.

Ensidia cleared the whole instance right away and that others have followed. I know that our guild isn’t capable of clearing it as fast as they have. But seven bosses in two weeks isn’t too shabby, considering we’re only raiding three times a week. I’m convinced we would be able to clear all of the bosses at the same level of difficulty as they were when Ensidia did them – if we were only given the chance. Now it’s taken away from us. If they keep nerfing the bosses we will clear another instance than they did. And that makes me frustrated.

The 3.0 nerf
As far as I can tell the nerfs that have been made so far aren’t huge. It’s not like the final 3.0 patch in TBC, which became a mile stone, where everything downed before the nerf was considered a “real kill” and everything after was a “sightseeing tour”, offered to all players so that they could “see the content”. The real challenge was taken away from us. We knew the timer was counting down and worked against it. I’m happy to say that we did Mother Shahraz before it hit. We did get use of the insane amounts of shadow resist gear that we had crafted. A week later it was unnecessary. Was this wasted effort from our side, thinking about all this gear that we only used a couple of times and then left rottening in the bank? Not in my opinion. The feeling of accomplishment was completely different before and after the nerf. I could proudly say that we did this boss properly.

The nerfs we’re facing now aren’t game changing 3.0-sort of nerfs. They’re subtle. But they still make me worried. Will we see a constant flow of nerfs in the weeks to come? Will Ulduar gradually get easier and easier until it’s more or less Naxx 2? When will this stop?

I want to get the chance to bang my head against some walls in there. We’ve longed for this wall for long now and we don’t want you to start smashing and moving it away in front of our eyes before we’ve even had the opportunity to touch it.

Summer incoming
We’re running against two timers right now. One is the threat of Blizzard nerfing things too quickly since they think that the raiding population isn’t progressing quickly enough in Ulduar. The other timer is the upcoming summer vacation. From mid June and two months onwards I don’t expect anything but struggles to fill the 25 man raids. Last year we managed to raid through the summer thanks to cooperation with another guild in a similar situation. It remains to see how we’ll solve it this summer. If we decide to make a halt to raiding for a few weeks we’d better clear the place before the break. Because when we come back we may face crimpled raid bosses, nerfed to the ground too early.

Yeah, I know we’ll always have the hard modes to test our skills against later on. But I’d like the normal mode to be left as it is at least a little while longer.

From chaos to order – slowly climbing the learning curve once again

Once again I’ve been tossed into chaos with the arrival of the Ulduar patch. It happens every time there’s major new content added to the game or they change the game mechanics or user interface. I get lost.

It doesn’t matter how quick the major blogs and fansites are to publish informative guides on how to beat the new raid instance or perform the new dailies. I read it but I can’t apply it straight off. I have to see with my own eyes and experience it myself. I have to try and fail a couple of time before I slowly, slowly start to get the picture of it and it finally “clicks”.

Slow learner
This process is rather slow these days. I don’t know what to blame. Maybe it’s my age. Tobold has talked a lot about this lately, how the aging population in WoW has problems with new game mechanics that most of all demand quick reactions. Honestly – we DO learn quicker when we’re younger. My mental hard disk isn’t what it used to be. Either I need more brain cells or a defrag to speed up the processor. I won’t speculate on the cause. It could also have something to do with my lack of gaming experience. But the fact remains: it takes time for me orient myself in the new post-patch landscape.

My limited gaming time doesn’t make the learning process easier. While some guildies already have spent four nights in Ulduar – trying it in 25 man as well as in 10 man – I’ve only been able to see it once. I would be tempted to do like many others do and increase my gaming time to enjoy all the new shiny stuff. I know better though. Now it’s time to stick to the agreement I’ve made with my family when it comes to raiding hours, no matter what.

This will make me miss some of our guild first boss kills and it will also mean that I get less practice in the new fights. This sucks a bit. But after all I know I’ll see all the bosses and do all the bossfights eventually, as long as I manage to balance real life and playing. If I fail in this I’ll end up in game over and that would be much worse.

First impressions
So what did I think about my first peek into Ulduar? Well, it certainly was chaotic enough. I’ve had a little practice of the siege weapon concept in Wintergrasp, but that’s far from enough to be able to perform well in a vehicle fight. I feel lost without my normal action bars and abilities. I would need to explore the new interface that suddenly is presented at my own pace, without any pressure to get on with the fight. There’s no time for figuring out things, experimenting on your own. You have to get the hang of it asap.

I was assigned as a demolisher passenger and even though I read about what to do on WoWwiki and even watched some videos, I was quite clueless when it came to execution. All I could see around me was a mess of vehicles, mobs and explosions and doing the trash I shooted all around quite randomly. Luckily enough my guildies are more cleaver and quick at grasping the situation than I am. I didn’t take us many tries before we downed him. And when we succeeded I actually managed to use the catapult mechanism and get an achievement for taking down a tower, so I guess I did something right after all.

Figuring out Razorscale
The rest of the night as spent on figuring out how to kill Razorscale. It was a wonderful learning experience. While there are strategies published, they’re still not polished and discussed in the community until perfection. There was still room for doing our own trial and error, step by step working out a strategy, analyzing what to change after each wipe. And that’s exactly what makes raiding interesting to me.

Once again my first impression of the fight was: complete chaos. There were mobs spawning everywhere, some of which I was supposed to sheep – preferably before someone had damaged them. There was fire and there were random bombs and unlike for instance the Heigan fight it wasn’t enough to just stay alive – you had to push out decent dps as well. Quite a challenge! To be honest I died way too quickly to begin with. But in or last and best try, which ended at 53 percent, the encounter suddenly didn’t seem quite as chaotic as it did at first. There was a pattern. And I knew that we would get him pretty easily the next time. (I was right about that – it didn't take long before my guildies killed him in the following raid).

From chaos to order
Tonight I’ll hopefully be drafted to our third and last 25 man raid in Ulduar this week. A new encounter awaits me: XT 002-Deconstructor. This will be challenging to me, who wasn’t there for the first attempts, but I’ll do my best to catch up. And slowly, slowly I’ll climb the learning curve of Ulduar. Finally I know we’ll sort it all out and the place will be on farm. That will make me a richer girl, but it will make it all much less interesting. And we’ll ask ourselves how we could have such problems with those “easy”, free-looting bosses. Because so short is our memory. But by then the magic will be gone and we’ll be craving for something else.

If someone asked me what aspect of raiding I love most and I only was allowed to pick one, it would be this one – the process of learning an encounter, to see the transformation from chaos to order.

From what I saw of the first night in Ulduar, it will offer me exactly what I’m looking for in the game. Resistance, confusion and a riddle to solve. Wipes and trials, eventually followed by triumphs. We’re not Ensidia, and we’ll have to struggle quite a bit before we’ll have it all sorted out. I’m quite sure it will keep us occupied until the next raid instance is released and another chaotic period can start.

Do I need to tell you I’m happy about this patch?