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.

C'thun and Mor Grayhoof down

With C'thun down a major milestone on my Classic journey is completed. We still have Viscudus (the real end boss of AQ40?) to go, and then in a way I'll have seen all that Classic has to offer (having completed Naxxramas in the Lich King expansion).

It's interesting what a step change the end bosses of AQ40 are, with the Twins requiring warlock tanks and good raid awareness and plenty of stress on healers, C'thun really putting responsibility on everyone and Viscudus it seems requiring extreme preparation. Our first kill of C'thun involved 7 wipes (including a obligatory run-in-too-early half-wipe which doomed the attempt) but for such a complex fight seemed easier than the Twin Emperors in the end. Our second kill took only 2 wipes, but the same evening involved two wipes on the Bug Trio and 4 on Ouro so we're a long way from having mastered the instance.

Our struggles seem to be symptomatic of a slight malaise in Classic at the moment. Our guild has lost some key players to burn out and in two cases to more "hardcore" guilds, we have in turn recruited from a couple of disbanding guilds. There are rumours of the final phase of Classic coming around December time which I've seen suggested as too soon but to me seems about right - Classic definitely has a shelf life.

I've also nearly finished the dungeon set 2 upgrade chain to the point where I've got the Idol of Rejuvenation (and a rather nice off-hand, at least until my Alterac Valley rep grind is complete) from Mor Grayhoof. I'm pausing there for now so that I can help the guilds other druids summon him (since I don't yet have the set 1 chest piece and so can't complete the chain). The annoying thing about this is that the quest items are taking up 3 bank slots, which are in short supply at the moment!

There are plenty of things in the game for me to still see and do, but I'm not sure how many others have the same mindset.

Roundup - First steps into AQ and other patch content

Things have moved on somewhat from my previous post but I wanted to blog a few things while they're relatively fresh in my mind.

As I mentioned previously one of our tanks was aiming for the Scarab Lord / sceptre quest which, shortly after the patch released, seemed like a bit of a fools errand. One of the hardcore guilds on our server had finished the fragment collection within a couple of days and, with a fairly limited number of people helping him initially, our guy was languishing at around 10% of the way through and morale seemed to get quite low. However eventually a real team spirit built around the collection effort and more players got involved, to the point where our guild pretty much claimed one of the Silithus hives as our own. This has become one of my favourite periods of Classic so far - although the bug grind is a slightly odd form of fun, with frantic tagging of newly spawned mobs interspersed with periods of waiting and occasionally surrendering to taggers with clearly better latency, the guild effort and community that built around it is an experience I'll remember. On top of that is the fact that I never saw this aspect in the original game (and wouldn't have this time around either if not for the guildmate who decided to try to complete this ridiculous chain).

A family holiday meant that I missed the later raid- and world-boss stages of the chain, although I followed along via the guild discussions. We were all pleased when our guy, through luck or superior latency, became the sceptre-holder to bang the gong and get emoted across the realm. A few members of some of the "proper" hardcore guilds were a bit put out for our lowly guild to receive this recognition, which seems to show that although the hardcore / casual divide from the original game has softened a bit it's still there in some players' hearts.

Our raid calendar meant that our first experience of Ahn'Qiraj was the 20-player Ruins which, apart from Ossirian the Unscarred, gave us very little trouble. I'm fairly sure that my vanilla guild never completed this raid which reminds me again of how much has changed in nearly 15 years since this was last new. My mindset is now that of a regular raider (with BWL-level gear to show for it) but more broadly there are now PUGs easily competing this content whereas on my original server PUGs would only really take on Molten Core towards the late stages of the game.

The 40-player Temple is giving us somewhat more trouble - in the first reset we downed Princess Huhuran after several attempts (insufficient nature resistance preparation) before thoroughly wiping on Viscidus, giving us a 5/9 completion including the bug trio. This last week our achievement has been to get over the hurdle of the pre-Emperor trash before failing to down those bosses. Our performance improved over each attempt so hopefully we're not far off, but so far the coordination of DPS and bug handling is evading us.

On the dungeon set upgrade chain I'm at the The Left Piece of Valthalak's Amulet stage, so near-ish the end but still a fair way to go. Again this is something I never fully experienced in the original game - I remember parts of it, including gathering the ectoplasm, and I'm sure at least my shaman had the Extra-Dimensional Ghost Revealer but I don't think I got much further than the 45 minute Stratholme run. The stages I'm on now seem to be class-specific so I'm really hoping I get a summon for Mor Grayhoof at the next stage (since I don't yet have the chest piece of the dungeon set so obtaining that from Upper Blackrock Spire will be quite a bump in the road). On the plus side most of the expensive steps are now behind me so I can start rebuilding my character's finances.

And my final current to-do of Alterac Valley reputation is slowly proceeding - I'm now 5,000 into Revered. This has been quite demoralising over the last few days though, with constant losses and (no doubt related) increasing blatant AFKing (or perhaps it's now that I know what to look for?). Unlike the rest of the game this part really has become a grind instead of a pastime.

One last thing to mention is that the game seems to be heading towards its end - our guild has had players dropping away for some time now, and some previously staunch raiders who we expected to return with the launch of AQ haven't. I know a lot of people are looking forward to the rumoured re-release of the Burning Crusade, but my feeling at the moment is that, assuming it happens, it will be a much smaller event than I would have thought it would be a few months ago.

Wizards, warlocks and bugs

A few weeks ago I was feeling about done until AQ released - my raid gear is missing only a few of the rare bits (rings / trinklets / weapons) so, seeing as one-handed weapons seem better for healers here onward, I was planning to mainly grind some Alterac Valley reputation.

Also, having had a dabble with warlock alts a while back, I also planned to get my level 17 warlock up to level 20 so he could be a summoning taxi for the guild.

But of course, having spent a lot of time PvPing, there was an irresistible temptation to dust off my Horde side. As my shaman is level 16 I tried some Warsong Gulch in the twink bracket, he was of course hopelessly undergeared by comparison but I feel I managed to contribute to some degree to the one game I played. However, having looked into what classes are in demand on the Horde side, and considering what classes I've had at 60 already, I thought I'd try out another Forsaken mage. My original mage became my banker after I totally failed to get my head around the class, but this time I'm enjoying it a lot more - there's a lot to be said for levelling a pure DPS class. Having just done some levels on a warlock I really miss Life Tap, but my attitude to drinking mage water has totally changed and the speed with which he takes down enemies, and the good degree of crowd control, keeps things interesting.

The AQ patch has also brought a load of new content, notably idols for druids and the Sceptre quest which one of our tanks is attempting. On the idol front I've collected the Idol of Ferocity (since the boss who drops it is soloable) and, having collected most of the dungeon set for nostalgia value, I'm now working on the "tier 0.5" upgrade quest mainly to be able to summon Mor Grayhoof who drops the restoration idol.

I'm also trying to help with the carapace fragment collection in Silithus which is sort of fun and an impressive feat of players shaping the world - the hives have gone from being highly dangerous to totally camped by players desperately trying to tag mobs as they spawn. It can be frustrating since there are so many players there, but it's quite a sociable guild activity with the occasional bit of world PvP thrown in.

A bit of a lull

My guild has gone into slight pre-patch doldrums - we've struggled to fill our last few raids and some players are playing less or not at all. A good number will return for Ahn'Qiraj no doubt, but presumably not all.

Meanwhile I'm mainly working on Alterac Valley reputation, primarily for Lei of the Lifegiver since single-handed weapons seem to be the best for healers from here on in. It's a slow and sometimes dispiriting process, I'm not sure how many games I've played but I've only been on a winning Alliance side there twice, and not at all since I started going to the battleground again.

At the current rate I reckon I have around 32 hours more play needed, which shows how very different my approach is to the game this time around. I'm sure this isn't just true for me either, given how much more raiding there seems to be than in the past. As a druid the grind is slightly improved by there being several different items for various specs at the end of the tunnel.

The games are sometimes quite fun though

I tanked a raid!

Over the last week our guild has organised four runs of Zul'Gurub and across those runs only two of our regular raid tanks have signed up. As a result my signup for last night's raid, where I was expecting more of an off-tank role, turned out to be a proper tanking role.

There were not-so-good moments including a terrible pull of mine in the spider boss's area and a rather grumbly wipe on Hakkar's pyramid due to some poor raid positioning and communication but also some good experiences on some of the bosses where my challenge was to see exactly how much threat I could put out.

I imagine I'll be back again, probably not next week as the constant respecs are draining my gold, but perhaps the week after. The frustration is that there are several healing drops I'd like from Zul'Gurub but only one possible tanking upgrade, however if we continue to have plenty of healer signups but a shortage of tanks then duty will presumably call.