My name is Hardmode and you killed my...

Well the new content, new loot, ToC and some other novel little bits Blizzard have been doing are turning out to be not all that bad. After my resolution to 'just have fun' thats pretty much what I've been doing. Even my doom and gloom predictions turned out to be wrong... we are still making progress in Ulduar as well as ToC, and very well too.

We managed to get Fraya Hard Mode last reset and with a 1-shot I might add. It was very impressive and satisfying. After that we lost our mojo and ran out of time before early maintenance... that and we 1-shot Anub in ToC on our first time looking at him. Overall another fraking awesome reset.

Hardmode ToC was an interseting eye opener though. It felt a lot like "no! come back when you have more gear". We tried a few strats and executed them well a couple of times - it was simply that we were not capable of it. So for now a bit of gearing up and we'll try again in a few iLevels :)

The recent series of announcements regarding the next expansion continue to paint a game changing picture. It's taken a little getting used to the ideas being thrown around, but it's not unusual for A LOT to change when an expansion lands. In this case the return to very basic stats. Yes it's more over simplification but I think it's a good thing this time. Easier balancing and gear itemization will hopefully create an overall better result (IE Individual results will not vary). I'm looking forward to it.

3.2.2 is also just around the corner, with a fun poke at Ony to get us excited about the new old world content.

Good times ahead.

Too much info

Well I'm back after a short break from WoW with a new found excitement and a fresh outlook on the game. Isn't it amazing what 2 weeks can do.

One of my epiphanys during my break is that the amount of information about the game is to large. What would it do to you if you knew what would happen to you in 6 months? I'd bet it would make whatever you are doing today feel meaningless. It's the same with WoW. If I didn't know that Icecrown was around the corner{ish} with all new loot then I wouldn't feel like my current loot was pointless.

It's comparing present with the future which is the problem. It's just not fair, the future has better marketing.... but even more than that, it's the focus, my focus, that has been my downfall. I've fallen into the trap of caring to much about loot and not enough about the real meaning of the game; spending time with my friends. Even if we were raiding old content, *cough* Onyxia, *cough*, it should be about doing it with friends and the fun times we have.

My second epiphany is that I'm a mage, and we are very, very late in the gear scaling curve. I should have recognized it earlier but this is always the stage when caster fall behind. And boy have I fallen behind... the solution? New play style, new experiments, new fun. As long as I continue to contribute to the raid then it's open season on crazy idea... and the first crazy idea - raiding arcane!

My final decision was to take a back seat from raid leading. Many thanks go to Eve for stepping up and taking the reins of our motly crew. I'll continue to lead some fights but the removal of critical desicion making is going to make my life much happier.

For the Horde!

The in-between

I try to keep a strong feel for where Blizzard are taking WoW, what their intentions are and where they are focusing their efforts. It's easy to do if you read patch notes and blue posts.

However at the moment I'm not even sure they know what they are doing. The current climate in WoW raiding isn't one I'm very happy with. The results of the changes highlighted in my previous post have been the opposite of what I hoped.

1st off the new instance is shit, releasing 1 boss a week is a stupid idea and a cop out on Blizzards part. It's apparent that very little effort was put into the instance, the effort was put into the new Battleground (which was long overdue).

Now my complaint isn't that the instance is lacking, it's that the instance is lacking AND that the loot levels where changed. For those who weren't aware the loot out of the new instance is a full tier higher than anything else available. This change ALWAYS means the previously available loot is replaced. Whatever tier 8 / 8.5 you are wearing has just gone the way of tier 7,6,5 and all the previous. You wont want to aquire it and you'll want to replace it.

This leaves all the raiders with new loot to go aquire (a good thing) but NO WHERE TO GET IT FROM. From my stand point as an end game raid leader, the game currently has no instances to raid.

Personally the only mistake was changing the loot values, had the new instance simply been an addition to the current loot tables and raiding instances I would have said Thanks Blizz and kept farming loot from Ulduar hardmodes.

My personal reaction is simple; time to take a break from WoW. I'm taking the approach that Blizzard hasn't released a new instance yet and I'll return when they bother to. (When this 1 new boss a week crap is past us, I'll start raiding again)

In the mean time I'm taking part in The Heroes of Newerth Beta at the moment, and all I can say is it's look very very good.

Changing the rules

Well we cleared Ulduar again this reset and just in time to. Minutes after 1-shotting Yogg the servers went down for maintenance. Thanks to Q and Mith for coming along, and good work.

And with maintenance came the 3.2 patch. The big content patch that effectively resets all the loot levels back to fresh 80. Out 10 man raiding gear is now effectely 'fresh 80' gear and with little effort anyone can gear to the iLevel that took a lot of skill and effort to achieve.

But such is the nature of the beast and we're now all looking forward to the new instance and new challenges. The Coliseum itself looks pretty good but it's clear that not much effort was put into it. I'm hoping that after the dust settles everyone will still have good reason to spend time in Ulduar... but it's too soon to tell on that one.

For now, we're planning to go into The Coliseum on Sunday instead of our regular Ulduar run, and all things being equal I'm optimistic that we will blitz through normal mode and get through a large part of heroic.

Probably the biggest side effect (read mistake) of this patch is the fact that heroics are back in fashion. They will provide Ulduar level loot badges however they haven't been changed and are still boringly easy. I guess it does give us something else to do and is still the best way to get easy gear and epic gems.

Oh and epic gems... thanks for the free 40 spell power.

All in all the changes are good, there are some very nice toys and patches are always a good way to polish off WoW and return it's appealing shine.

See everyone on Sunday.

Living on the edge

Building on the momentum of our Yogg kill we managed a couple of new successes; We did FL 3 towers with Freya's tower up and learnt how to deal with those adds. We also managed Hodir hardmode, which we knew we would get.

On top of those we came tantalizingly close to two other achievements; 3 drake Sartharion and Thorim hard mode. We should easily get both next reset.

Our progression continues to be swift, and as we set our expectations of ourselves ever higher, that far off goal in the distance seems just a little closer. Algalon, we're coming for you buddy.

Victory!

Yogg-Soran died 10:20pm, Tues 28 July 2009.

What more can you say about the best raid lockout we've had in a very long time.

Web stats for the night (oddly Yogg doesn't show up) http://wowwebstats.com/25jwt5f5zurpe

I've also ordered everyone a Shirt of the Yogg-Slayer.

I continue to be surprized by our raid team as we one shot Frayer with 1 add up and proved that even Vezax-hard is well within our reach. I look forward to seeing how hard and fast we can push ourselves as we work on more hard modes.

In my mind Ulduar is clear, the hard modes are a bonus challenge. I'm now looking forward to The Coliseum more than ever. It was so long ago I was worried about not clearing Ulduar before it was released, but now I'm worried that The Coliseum wont be challenging enough for us.

In the coming reset we will 3 tower FL again with the Life tower up this time instead.

We'll kill Razorscale but otherwise skip optionals and go straight for Yogg.

After Yogg is dead we'll go back for the optionals working on partial Hardmode Council to get the quest started.

But for now we can bask in the glory of our success.

Awesome night

A fantastic start to the week with our 1st 3 tower FL kill, and hardmode XT. Once again I was impressed with how quickly we all learnt and perfected the required strats for these 2.

A push in the right direction and our raid team shines, showing why we are the guys who 'got out of the eye beam". The bar has been set high now and I'll be looking for some serious progression from now on

Webstats for the night: http://wowwebstats.com/v3psxat1t4qos

Tuesday we'll give frayer a quick try with one of her adds alive but I'd like to get to and Kill Yogg for once!

Bring your A-Game on Tuesday.

Ulduar 10 - 22 July

This week was once again subject to our far too casual raiding team.

We only managed our Tuesday raid night but still managed to clear to Mimi.

Web stats: http://wowwebstats.com/e5d4igl1bkahw

We had Ceegee and Fizzipop along and it was a nice oppertunity for them to get exposed to some raid content and Fizzi walked away with a few nice pieces of loot.

They both did very well and (though I shouldn't be) I was surprized at how quickly they picked up the fights.

This just re-enforces Blizzards belief; take the player not the toon.

Awesome news this week is that Fontera has signed up as our 3rd healer to replace Penthe who is on a boat... and is going fast and...

I look forward to finally killing Yogg with him on board, though last night proved that we are capable of 2 healing most of Ulduar, which we'll continue to try and do from now on.

Good work team.