Brutal

Naxxramas is definitely a step up in difficulty - or two...

We managed to down one boss - Anub'Rekhan - and get very close on another - the Grand Widow - but that was our lot for the night.

Anub'Rekhan we downed on our third attempt. I had a great bird's eye view of our second wipe, being dead high in mid-air from the spikes, and there's a certain beauty to the way that each player's death makes things that notch harder.

Faerlina was frustrating as we weren't getting the hang of the mind control mechanic so, while we got her down to around 10% on our third attempt, that was the best things got. In a way I'm glad we didn't kill her since that would have given us a false sense of optimism that would have been dashed the following week, this way around I'm fairly sure that we now understand it much better and so should down her this week. I'm hoping that for these mechanical fights once we understand them it will be reasonably straightforward to repeat the feat. Time will tell.

For now I'm looking forward to progression, but wondering if or when we'll hit a wall.

Sort of ready for Naxxramas

I'm looking forward to seeing Naxxramas and should get a peak tonight after our main raid (which will need to be AQ40 given the late release hour). The question of whether I or my guild are ready for it is slightly in the balance.

Emotionally its definitely a Yes. Although there are lots of things I ought to be doing with Duillnar - mainly rep grinds - I'm spending most of my time levelling my rogue at the moment. My Alterac Valley grind is stalled half way through Revered, since apart from one good experience during a battleground weekend those games became an unrelenting series of dispiriting losses with a significant part of the team clearly not trying. I ought to be getting Cenarion Circle rep in AQ20 in order to be able to convert my Qiraji Ornate Hilt into a Mace of Unending Life but it's far easier to find bits of time for levelling than to commit to a third scheduled raid. And the respec costs and lack of achievable targets (other than the idol from Stratholme, which I'd still rather like) have put me off tanking. So fresh content is welcome.

In a way the release of Naxxramas relatively soon after AQ40 seems rushed, but given the increasing number of people taking a break from the game - whether burning out, moving on to new things or otherwise re-examining their real life balance - I think it's no bad thing.

I'm not sure how big the difficultly jump will be though - I'm expecting fairly steep, especially for the final bosses. My guild finally downed Viscidus on 19 October to complete our clear of AQ40, once we'd (a) persuaded enough people to take up engineering and (b) got everyone bringing cleansing consumables. Apart from the occasional welcome clean clear we still usually have trouble somewhere in there though, most commonly from Ouro, the Bug Trio, or maybe the Twin Emperors. We're also often having to raid with a not-quite-full team, or with less core raiders filling up gaps.

So while I'm expecting us to complete a wing or two fairly quickly I'm not sure how much we'll hit a wall further on. I'm really looking forward to some guild first kills (and sort-of the wipes those entail!) but unsure how well we'll be able to keep enthusiasm and attendance up if the curve is too steep.

Overall though the timing seems quite good - certainly a longer wait for the new raid wouldn't help any of the things I'm unsure about.