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.