Further Speculations on the Release Date of Cataclysm

The temperature in the WoW community is rising again, as we get further glimpses (or rather are flooded with pictures) from the world that is awaiting us.

Cataclysm is in alpha since a couple of days and the data miners are working night and day to keep anyone interested updated. To everyone else: close your eyes! Apparently the NDA flew out of the window, and maybe it’s a wise call from Blizzard. They need to get some buzz going, because frankly it’s felt rather dead for a while now.

This gives us a reason to speculate a bit further on when we should expect to line up for a nightly event to finally get our hands on the new release.

I don’t know why we’re so obsessed with this topic that we bring it up over and over again, but after all I think the release date affects our gameplay quite a bit. Once we know when it will happen we’ll start to plan the rest of our time in Wrath. How long should we keep raiding, when should I start to sell out the stuff I have in the bank, should I hurry up levelling an alt I want to have ready? Everything depends on the release date.

The February prediction
We did a bit of speculation once before here at the inn, in what turned out to become the most commented on post we’ve ever had: “Cataclysm release date February 1st”. It was published in October 2009, and people still love to go there to write a triumphant “fail!” in the comment section.

Mind you, it wasn’t I, Larísa, who made this prediction, but my former bartender and co-host of the blog, and frankly I never quite agreed with his prophecy even as it was published. I believe it reflected his wishful thinking, since he was a non-raider and was growing pretty bored with the game, running out if content as early as last autumn. He couldn’t bare the thought of having yet another six months without any good new content for non-raiders.

Still I suppose I can’t entirely take away my hands from it. After all I was the senior editor and approved of the publishing, so I’m somewhat responsible for it going live. But on the other hand:- as all blog readers should be aware of - bloggers aren’t always right and we don’t claim to be either. We make guesses and speculate just like anyone else. And if I could predict the future perfectly well, I’d rather take a job as a stock broker than blog about WoW.

Anyway: for all of you who like to think about and discuss what release date we could expect, I’m putting up this rather lengthy post, so you can argue in a fresh spot rather than in the failed prediction from six months back in time. So feel free to move over to this thread if you like to keep talking!

As a food for thought I’ll give you a few observations:

1. From announcement to launch
The elapsed time from the announcement of TBC (October 2005) to the release of the game (January 2007) and between the announcement of WotLK (August 2007) and the release (November 2008) was exactly 15 months, in both cases.

Cataclysm was announced in August 2009. Following the pattern, the release will be in November 2010.

2. From Alpha to launch
For TBC they needed five months from the start of the friends-and family Alpha testing in August 2006 to the release in Januari 2007. For Wrath the Alpha testing began in April and the release was in November, which meant seven moths of waiting. The Alpha testing in Cataclysm started in the beginning of May. If you take the average of the previous two expansions – six months from Alpha to release - this indicates a release date in November 2010.

3. The Content nerf
The pre-patch for TBC was released 1,5 months before the launch, including Christmans and New Year’s break. The pre-patch for Wrath was released 1 month in advance, without any major holidays interfering. The pre-patch for Wrath didn’t only include new builds and other sorts of adjustments – it also meant that they nerfed the raid content heavily – around 30 percent if I remember it correctly – thus making it possible for everyone to have a look at it before the expansion.

They’ve picked a slightly different approach to nerfing in Wrath with the ICC buff, increasing with 5 percent every four weeks. If they stick to this schedule ICC should be up to 30 percent – the equivalence to the 3.02 patch nerf in TBC – by the end of July. Giving the players one month to enjoy the maximum buff, this would suggest a release towards the end of August.

4. Ruby Sanctum
In February they announced the upcoming 3.3.5 patch with the “extra” raid instance Ruby Sanctum. We haven’t heard a word about it since then, it’s not on the PTR and frankly I wouldn’t be overly surprised if they’d linger on releasing it until August, as something to use as a lure to get players back to WoW after the big Summer Exodus.

5. Blizzcon timing
Then there is the timing of Blizzcon to think about. My innkeeper thought that Blizzard surely couldn’t have to nerve to announce Cataclysm at Blizzcon 2009 and then wait for over a year and let another Blizzcon pass before getting it out on the market. But actually I think they can. History shows us exactly this.

TBC was announced at Blizzcon 2005. There was no Blizzcon held in 2006 and then it was released in 2007. Wrath was announced at Blizzcon 2007. Then there was not only one but two Blizzcons arranged in 2008 – one in US and one in Europe. Neither of hem had Wrath as a major attraction. In US the Big News was about Diabolo. Blizzard could very well hold a Blizzcon in October with some other major piece of news than WoW. They have more games on their menu, remember?

However it seems highly unlikely that they would let the Cataclysm release coincide with Blizzcon. To get out as much publicity as possible of it they should do it either a few weeks before it or after it. And from a media point of view I would rather see the convention coming before the release, since it would be convenient for them to arrange media meet-ups, interviews and photo opportunities. I can’t see the point of doing that one month AFTER the release when Cataclysm is already “old news”.

6. “But Ghostcrawler promised…”
It has been pointed out many times that Blizzard has stated that they have the ambition to increase the pace, getting out one new expansion a year. But what is that kind of statement worth, really? They’re also known – and respected – to not make premature releases of half-done games, but keep working on them until they’re up to the standard they should be at. I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on the one-year-goal when trying to predict the launch date.

People also have made a huge issue out of a few words uttered by Ghostcrawler at Blizzcon last year, where he said that we would be “complaining about goblin rogues” in the next Blizzcon. Seriously. I don’t think you can read anything into this. And regardless of if Cataclysm is released or not at that point, he’ll be right anyway. We’re having pretty intense discussions on mechanisms in Cataclysm already, based on the information that has been handed to us. We don’t need to have the game in our hands to talk about it.

7. We're bored and will quit!
The pace in the game is really slow now and has been for a while. It’s apparent that many players are cutting down on their WoW presence heavily or even taking a break in their subscriptions to check out other games.

Some players seem to think that Blizzard should be overly worried about this and therefore feel the urge to get out Cataclysm asap in order not to lose subscribers, but personally I doubt that they’re governed by the day-by-day statistics to that extent. After all the company seems to be doing fine financially, and if they would need some extra cash they could probably just toss another sparkling mount into the store.

Just because people are taking a break in their subscriptions it doesn’t mean that they’re done with WoW. I would be highly surprised if not the majority of those who quit now will come back for Cataclysm again, regardless of at which point during the autumn it will released.

Some final thoughts
I suppose I should end this post with a prediction of my own, so you can come back and mock me and call me a fail blogger if it turns out I’m wrong. It’s more fun that way, isn’t it? Even if there are a few observations above pointing to a release early in the autumn, I’m leaning towards a November release. The Christmas Factor can’t be neglected. So let’s say something…closing my eyes, pointing randomly in my calendar… November 17!

It sounds like a long wait, and no one would be happier than me if I turned out to be wrong. However, judging from the gallery posted at MMO Champion today, (SPOILER LINK, look at your own risk) we really have a lot to look forward to!

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.

Attunements back in Cataclysm - sure, why not?

The developers are seriously considering to bring back attunements to raids and heroic dungeons in Cataclysm. This according to WoW.com, referring to a blue post from the Spanish (!) forums.

First of all I must admit that I find it a little bit odd that they release news about Cataclysm in this form. I'll probably never quite understand what's in the minds of the Blizzard staff when they decide upon how to inform and interact with the player base. Maybe this is some sort of test balloon they're sending out to see what reactions it will cause. But why in the Spanish forum of all places? Is it a slip of tongue or do they do it on purpose?

Either way, I can't say I'm sad to hear that they're considering it. But then I never suffered particularly from the attunements in TBC.

By the time I reached SSC, TK and BT, the enforced requirements had been removed from the game. I actually did those questlines later on at my own willm getting my Hand of A'dal and Champion of the Naaru titles alright, but it never was mandatory, just a fun piece of distraction. I can vividly imagine how frustrating it must have been for a guild to have to run new recruits through old content, just in order to give them access to the current content.

However there was one attunement in TBC that I too was "forced" to get through, namely the long questline to get the key to Karazhan. And how I loved it!

Obstacles and excitement
I'll never forget how excited I was as I ventured to Deadwing Pass for the first time, sending shy looks to the crowd of players who were hanging out there. I didn't quite understand why they were there, since the whole concept of raiding was unknown territory. But I talked to the NPC to start the quest chain, just as a guildie of mine had told me to do as soon as I had dinged 70. I didn't have a clue about what was awaiting me.

And do you know what? The process of getting attuned never felt like a burden It was an adventure, a step into the unknown and the start of a new chapter in the story of my WoW life. It was a fantastic chain that brought me into a bunch of instances. And as I proceeded I didn't just gear up; I also learned the basics of group play and prepared for what was awaiting me in Karazhan. It was a shining example of my favorite kind of learning - the one you do unknowingly.

Was it free from obstacles and frustrations? Oh, absolutely not! The worst part of it was probably Black Morass. I've successfully erased most of my horror memories of humiliating failures to deal with the small adds on my own. This was something everyone expected a mage to do, but it was pretty tough if you were inexperienced and ungeared. It took me quite a few tries before I finally got through it, thanks to a kindhearted guildie who offered to be my pocket healer in every PUG I could find for it and didn't give up before I was done.

As I finally received the precious key that would grant me access to the mysterious castle, I was way prouder and happier than I have been about most so called achievements I've got later in the game, probably on par with Sarth+3d.

All in all, my attunement experience was on the positive side. I was new to the game and nothing came easy to me, but this never put me off from trying.

Why attunements might be good
I don't think it would be a horrible idea if Blizzard decided to have an attunement questline for at least the first raid instance in Cataclysm.

Of course it mustn't be grindy in any way - not in the lines of the nightmarish shard collection for legendary weapons as an example. And it shouldn't be unreasonably hard either.

But I believe that some sort of attunement is a handy way to offer proper training and introduction to all those brand new never-played-WoW-before players who are likely to turn up with the launch of Cataclysm. They need to be pushed a little; they need to get incentives to at least complete a few decently hard instances before they throw themselves into raiding. They might pick up a few gear pieces, just like I did myself back in the days. But above all they'll get a basic experience from group playing, which is far more essential for any wanna-be-raider.

And what about the veterans then? Why should we be bothered by attunements? Well, if nothing else you could see it as a bit of added content. You don't have to be a lore addict to appreciate a well written questline with crumbles leading you into a raid instance. It adds atmosphere to the game and give you a sense of purpose and direction in your adventures.

If the attunement will delay you slightly before you can start raiding in Cataclysm, so what? I'd rather see that they make the game last longer this way than that they use more artificial methods for gating, such as limited attempts.

It remains to see if this idea will make it the whole way into the game. They could stay at just making a small attunement for a bunch of five-man instances, like they did in Icecrown where you had to make them in a certain order the first time. They could also bring back an attunement chain to raiding, and that would be a way bigger deal, especially if they'll make it slightly demanding as Karazhan.

I know where I stand though. Bring it on!

Edit: I gave this blue post a second thought. It sounds highly unlikely the developers would be considering a real attunement quest line in the lines of the one for Karazhan at this point. Cataclysm should be more or less ready to ship and they've just announced that the friends and family testing is starting now. So if there will be any kind of attunement it's probably just one quest or running one instance. It was a nice thing to dream about though.

Preparing to plunge into Vashj'ir

It's Friday night at the inn and I suspect that you'd prefer to have something stronger in your glasses to sip on than water. And you'll get that soon. But first let's talk a little bit about something water related.

You see, a couple of weeks ago, Blizzard released the first pre-hand information about Vashj'ir, the new underwater zone that will come in Cataclysm, and I don't think it's been given the proper attention in the community. I don't think it's because we're not interested, it was just insanely bad timing from Blizzard, since the announcement was squeezed in between the mega-huge news about the class changes and the changes to raiding. There was more information going on at the same time than we could deal with.

But now that we've agreed on moving on after this week of intense debating about 10vs25, time has come to think about the idea about an entire zone situated under the sea level. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Are we looking forward to it?

Mixed feelings

My own feelings are a little bit mixed. I think the glimpses we've seen from screenshots and concept art look awesome. I've been snorkeling a bit myself at coral reefs in real life, and considering how breathtakingly beautiful it can be, I think it will be a very good addition to the game - especially since they've hinted that they've found new ways to simulate water in a better way.

Bear this in mind. I am basically very positive about it and I'm looking forward to see what they've come up with. But now I'm nevertheless going to talk a little bit about the possible downsides. My doubts are entirely based on the experiences we have from under-water-playing up until now. They might have learned something from it and improved on it.

The Nagas

So let's dive into my first concern: The Nagas.

To be honest I never was a huge fan of naga fighting. They all look and behave pretty much the same, either they're camping a beach in Zangarmarsh or Ferelas. I have too many memories of annoying silences from spellcasters, and they all look about the same, either they're camping a beach in Ferelas or Zangarmarsh, and they drop annoying loot such as shiny fish scales and fish oil.

I can't really be bothered to see more of them and I sincerely hope that this zone will come up with many entirely new creature models as well, to mix up with the fish people.

The Swimming

My second concern is Swimming.

I would expect that there will be quite a bit of it and every since I did my first diving exercises in that little lake in Redridge, I've just hated any quest involving diving. It was slow, it was annoyingly hard to orient yourself in the water, your character didn't move as you're used to and before they increased the underwater breathing from 1 minute to 3, you had this horrible counter to pay attention to, getting up to the surface for air every now and then.

I have especially bad memories from that pipe in Zangarmarsh that you had to swim through to get to the Coilfang instances. I never knew what was up or down in it, so if I even managed to reach the end of it, it happened just as often that I accidently had turned back to the surface as I actually reached the instance. It was a nightmare when you had a group waiting for you to arrive.

For a long while I relied on my stack of Nagrand Cherries, a reward from a poo quest. At that point they gave you 30 minutes of underwater breathing and that was enough even for me to get through the tunnel. When I ran out of them I started to mass produce underwater breathing elixirs, which I always carried around. The humiliation to drown in the pipe running out of air after 1 minute was just too big to endure (not to talk about the running back after a whipe - when everything turned white there was absolutely no way I could tell where to go. I always put myself at follow.)

Towards the end of TBC they extended the breathing to three minutes, and that has helped a lot. Nowadays even I manage to get most underwater quests down without an elixir.

However, an entire zone under water.... I wonder what that will be like? I suppose I'll spend most of my time in the pocketed undersea caves they're talking about in the preview, where you're free from the water's grip.

The vehicles
And then there are of course also the promised vehicles that are supposed to help you. But this is also my third concern: the vehicles.

Without any doubt we can prepare ourself for vehicle fights in Vashj'ir. And we all know how much we like that, don't we? I sincerely hope that they'll find some way to make submarines easier to manage and more intuitive than the infamous dragons at Eye of Eternity and Occulus.

The name
And now over to my last concern about this zone. The very name of it.

Are they making up those tongue-wrenching names on purpose just to laugh at us? How are you supposed to get that "j" into the picture? I suppose we'll do what we always do in those cases - finding up a nickname that we can pronounce. "The Naga place". "The underwater zone". Or - most likely - just "Vash".

Oh well. I may lack swimming skills and I may not fall into trance at the thought of fighting nagas. But I suppose they'll have sorted this out the day I'm standing there at the shore, ready to take the plunge into the sea. And if not - well then I'll just start mass producing breathing elixirs again.

Now have another drink in your glass at the expense of the house - water, ale or rum, whatever you prefer. May your weekend be joyful.

Cheers!

Looking For More Once Again

The biggest challenge in the game right now isn’t Lich King, if anyone thought so. It’s the R&B boss, read as Real life interference and Boredom with the game

This lethal boss has lately been snatching a lot of players from the game and our guild has also been affected. He’s a mean bastard and the only thing you can do about it is to keep your spirits high, move on and recruit to fill the gaps.

I don’t accept ads at The PPI and I'm normally reluctant to spam the blog with recruitment announcements. But this is one of those times when I’m making an exception.

So here we go:

• Are you curious about how hard the hardmodes in ICC 25 really are?
• Would you like to enter Ruby Sanctum in a dedicated, solid and focused raid team rather than messing around in Dalaran looking for a PUG?
• Are you playing on an EU-account?
  

Then you might want to consider applying to Adrenaline of Stormrage, which is my steady home in WoW since almost two years.

We currently need a bunch of dps – melee and ranged without any specific class or spec breakdown. We’re also looking for a healer.

Recruitment ad is up here.

Basically I think long-time readers have a fair picture of Adrenaline from my postings over the years. But if you’re wondering what the guild is like and want some references, you’re of course welcome to ask me.

Sorry for the interruption of the conversation. But there are moments when you need to give a hand to your guild and try to help out in whatever way you possibly can. And this is one of those occasions.

Edit: As added by our GM in a comment, we're also open to the possibility of absorbing the right 10-man guild who have 25-man ambitions but who are struggling.

Guides on What to do if you’re Raised as a Ghoul

The other day I made a confession about how clueless I am when I’m raised as a ghoul. I also made a not-so-subtle request for someone to make a how-to-ghoul 101-guide, since I couldn’t find one as I looked for it.

I admit I was a little bit lazy as I posted this – why didn’t I do some research, making the post by myself? But just it seemed more efficient to try to let the people who actually knew something about this share their knowledge instead of me starting from scratch.

The response was fantastic, beyond anything I would have expected. Within just a couple of days three different bloggers have put together brilliant, easy-to-follow guides on how-to-ghoul. And from now I don’t have any excuse whatsoever to just stand there as a clueless ghoul. And you don’t have that either. It’s all very clear in those guides, so go and have a look at them.

I’ve put together this little post to give those bloggers some link love and to hopefully bump them a bit so people will find them in a Google search.

So I present to you three good guides on How-to-play-a-ghoul 101:

Dwism: How to play if you have been Raised as an ally by your friendly neighbourhood Death knight

Digital Incorrectness: Your request is my Post if it’s interesting enough

Death & Decay: Ghoul School
This post also includes some advice to the deathknights who are using this spell, including a suggestion for a macro:ed whisper to send to the selected target.

Well… that’s all I suppose. The ghoul request was an inspiring experience. Next time I’m wondering about something and won’t find the answer easily in a web search, I’ll just put my question to you who are hanging around by the barside. You're an amazing bunch of people, sitting on a wealth of knowledge!

Why we're so upset about the changes

Yesterday I decided to write a post about ghouls, because I thought that I as well as the blogosphere needed a break from the debate about the Cataclysm changes to raiding. I imagined that if I looked somewhere else my bad stomach feeling about what will happen to my own raiding in Cataclysm would go away.

I was wrong, of course. Shying away from worries will only rarely make them dissolve into thin air. Talking about the ghosts normally works much better. So let's talk a little bit more about them. After this post I think I'll be done with this for a while and can focus on the sources of joy in the game. Yeah, I still have those - my resilience for close-to-the-end -an-expansion-blues is pretty solid.

Feeling uneasy
But first: one more therapeutic post for the road. Somehow I can't help feeling a little bit uneasy at the big rift that is running right through the community in this issue. And my own reaction surprises me. Can't I just enjoy it for what it is: a good discussion and a fun exchange of thoughts, aiming to broaden our views, bending the arguments around and giving us new perspectives?

Apparently not. I'm getting way more emotional about this than I want to. I tell myself in a rather severe voice that I should just get the hell out that emo crap.

"You are an adult, this is just a bunch of pixels, a freaking game for crying out loud, and those changes mean NOTHING and by the way are you really that kind of conservative nay-sayer, I'm disappointed with you. Everything - including WoW - changes and you just have to live with it. Grow up! And besides, what does it matter to you what anyone else thinks? Cut this bullshit!"

Do I listen to myself? For a while. But then I read yet another of those triumphant posts :

"Wohoo for those changes, now I can raid with my closest friends (/flex, I'm a member of a tightly knitted little imba group who have been together forever). You e-peen infested 25 manners should just stop whining - if you can't get a 25 man raid going in Cataclysm it's because 25 man raiding sucks in the first place, so go and die in a fire. QQ a bit more. And besides you're probably just horrible players who are carried by others and are just in it for the loot. "

Well it isn't exactly written like that. But it's the spirit. And then I feel a pain in my stomach because it comes from bloggers who I normally love and respect and regard as friends. They're happy for a change that I believe is a threat to the kind of game I love. It's totally childish and weak to thing this way, but nevertheless I feel a little miserable when I see stare into this fence that come between us.

The split within Blizzard
Actually this split seems not to only go through the blogosphere; it's also seems to be a topic for a lot of heated discussions within Blizzard, reading the replies from Zarhym in a forum thread if you read between the lines:

"we know very well that this change may impact some guilds, as did the removal of 40-player raids and addition of 10- and 25-player versions. Just as there isn't a lack of feedback on these forums about the proposed changes, there isn't a lack of internal discussion about how to make this system work so that it doesn't hurt the 25-player raid game."

"The internal discussions that take place on any given topic can get quite heated. We all push strongly for what we feel is best for the game, but ultimately try to listen to dissenting opinions. Eventually a decision is made, but that's not before a good number of people with very different play styles get together, fight, and then hug it out. ;p"

I guess that's what we're doing now. Regardless of if we're in Blizzard or just plain players, we're fighting. Some of those crying loudest believe that they're arguing out of unselfish reasons, "objectively" looking at what's best for the game. But unless you're a Blizzard employee, I would say most of us in fact are just trying to protect our own little worlds from falling apart.

So we're fighting. And eventually we'll hug it out and move forward into Cataclysm, except for those why will move somewhere else - to RL or another game, since WoW has lost its appeal.

Fear and hope
In the end, I think the fighting comes out of our own, personal, strictly selfish fears and hopes, even if we don't admit it to ourselves.

Every expansion is a huge challenge to any guild. Of course players re-evaluate their playing all the time, but around an expansion every single one has to do it at the same time and you don't know the outcome. Who will stay in the team, who will want to try out something else, who will quit gaming or going casual? How many will you have to recruit to keep the raid machinery going? And looking at it from a member-perspective - can you rely on your officer squad to stay around for yet another round? You never know - you just have to put your trust into them.

We all have those questions. Will my guild still be around on the other side of Cataclysm? Will it still be raiding 25 mans or will the "best" players rather move over to the 10 man format so they can compete better for first kills and achievements? Or if you're in a 10 man guild you might ask if some people will leave for 25 man raiding, although I personally doubt we'll see much of that. (I could be wrong though, you're welcome to tease me if it turns out the opposite.)

Anyway. It's a bit like playing Musical Chairs, before you know it you might end up without anywhere to sit.

The stir-up that comes with the changes will without any doubt lead to changes in the guild structures. Many have made comparisons to what happened when they removed 40 man raids, and so does Zarhym:

"we know very well that this change may impact some guilds, as did the removal of 40-player raids and addition of 10- and 25-player versions."

The thing is that if you've raided in a guild for years, spending hundreds and hundreds of hours learning, laughing, grumping, joking, yelling, pissing each other off, everything on the scale from love to hate, it isn't just something you walk away from easily. Separations hurt.

I believe that the many of the 2 000 comments at MMO champion on this topic are written out of this fear. "What will happen to me and my guild? Will we survive this?"

I'm lucky enough to be in a guild which I believe is quite stable. We're approaching our two year anniversary and we've seen loads of 25 man guilds on our server breaking down over the course of time. We're one of the very few who manage to stay around, still going strong. Because of this I have faith in that we'll be around for Cataclysm. But you can never be entirely certain about anything. There's always a little room for a gnawing doubt and we won't be absolutely sure until we've run our first 25 man raid in Cataclysm.

Chasing out the ghosts
So. Now I've definitely seen enough of those ghosts. Time to get rid of them. Shoo! Get out of my inn! And you over there, yes you, please open the door and let in some sunlight and fresh air!

There's still so much fun going on in WoW. Yes! There really is! TB might be bored out of his mind according to the last show, but I'm certainly not.

Right now I'm super-excited about our steady progress in the final fight in ICC, the defeat of the Lich King. Who said we couldn't manage those twitchy defiles? Last raid, after two more spent wipe nights, we had him to 17 percent in the typical last-for-the-night-so-make-it-count-try. This means in fact only 7 percent from a kill and I can't wait for our next raiding week. If nothing unexpected happens it sure won't be long before I can call myself Kingslayer!

And the split in the community and my silly worries suddenly seem very distant. Vanished even.