Corking the Bottle

So the latest WOW expac is likely to be Dragonflight, apologies to Anne McCaffrey I suppose. 

Want to discuss The Dragonriders of Pern?
I'm ready.

 

I am conflicted about this, but not likely for the reasons that you might expect.

You see, having been reintroduced to the dragonflights by way of Classic, I miss how they were presented there, and I long for a return to that level of storytelling in WoW, where the Dragon Aspects were these remote beings that were simply not seen or heard from directly.

Even in Burning Crusade, the dragons you met operated as their own agents, and always undercover, posing mostly as humans or elves. (Chromie is not seen in BC, although her flight did have a significant part to play.) At best, in Classic and TBC you met the prime mate or the matron protectorate of a flight, not the Aspects themselves. Even then, it was pretty explicitly stated that the flights were not to interfere with the affairs of mortals, and was only the depradations of the Black Flight (and the Gronn) that forced their hand. The best they did was provide some guidance and support; anything more direct seemed doomed to failure (see Sunken Temple and Blackwing Lair for example).

Even though I did like a lot of Wrath –it was my introduction to the game, after all—that expac began the shift in how the dragonflights and the Aspects were presented. The result was to make them more familiar and mundane, which kind of ruined them as a part of Azeroth.

It can be hard to express my sentiment here without an analogy, so let me put it this way. If you are an average French citizen circa 1700, King Louis XIV is some remote figure that you knew of but didn’t have a personal relationship with. The Sun King was no Prince Hal out of Henry IV. But if he did start hanging out with you, having you over for dinner and asking your opinion on the politics of the day (and not threatening to have to imprisoned if he didn’t like what you had to say) he would cease to be the Sun King and instead just be closer to “Lou the Baker” who lives next door. The mystique would be gone, and with it the familiarity that replaced it would make the storytelling less by comparison.

Which is what happened in Wrath and Cataclysm.

I will freely admit that the first time I was summoned to Wyrmrest Temple and flown up top was kind of daunting. 

Ever had that feeling you're in over
your head? Yeah, like right about now.

 

I just didn’t know how daunting that would have been to someone who’d been playing since 2004 (or earlier), seeing Alexstraza and company for the first time. Of course, the members of the Accord being 15 feet tall* didn’t exactly make them feel all that chummy either...

You were always the smarter sibling,
Neve. Kneeling is a damn good idea.

 

...but by the end of that entire expac you were on a somewhat first name** basis with the entire Wyrmrest Accord. Which when you think about it, is rather…. Odd.

You started off your career killing some imps in Durotan or Defias in Northshire Abbey, and now you’re talking to the most powerful beings on Azeroth as if you’re on equal footing with them.

Go figure.

Then Cataclysm came along, and while it is very much the Thrall story***, it is also the story of the dragonflights and their Aspects. Over the course of the expac you end up being very chummy with the Aspects, as in “we’ll have you over to dinner and gaming next week” sort of chummy.

I do have to admit there are a few nice
perks being friends with dragons.

 

Set piece-wise, very cool. But story-wise from a logical standpoint, that makes no sense at all. You are not one of the most powerful people on the planet; there’s a ton of others hanging around Dalaran or Stormwind or Orgrimmar right then and there, so either you’re far more powerful than you thought or the Aspects are far less powerful than you thought. Either way, this serves to completely undermine all of the storytelling that went on in Vanilla and TBC.

And I’m pretty sure that the WoW story team doesn’t see the problems inherent in that, but once you uncork that bottle, you can’t stuff the genie back in.

***

Heading back to Wrath, the entire subplot about Malygos going crazy was completely lost on me at the time, because I didn’t have the backstory or the weight of in-game history. But now I do, and I can now say with a degree of certainty…

WHAT THE FUCK, BLIZZARD?

You really took one of the four most powerful beings on Azeroth and just up and had him decide to go bonkers one day and decide to kill all of the arcane wielders just because? Except for those who hung out with Malygos, of course, because that was what he did: he wanted all the magic for him and his entourage. Hardly any explanation, and he was given an Onyxia-style one shot raid that was hardly worth it when compared to Discount Naxx, Ulduar, and ICC. Hell, Wintergrasp’s raid was more well attended in the guilds I was a member of than Malygos’.

So what was the point? That Malygos was out of the way so that Jaina could be making out with Kalecgos, the Aspect-in-absentia?

/sigh

Anyway, I’m aware that in Legion (or thereabouts) Ysera dies too, so I guess I should be glad I didn’t play that expac. It certainly seems that the in-game lifespan of a Dragon Aspect throughout WoW isn’t exactly very long. At times it feels like the Roman Emperor Commodus lived longer than some WoW leaders. Or the average Doctor Who companion in the New Who era. And yes, that’s a snap at the WoW story team; I didn’t sign up to watch leaders go crazy or die or whatever just because you needed a good dramatic setpiece. Work harder at crafting a plausible, well told story and you won’t have to rely upon a virtual bloodbath whenever you want drama.

***

But in the end the familiarity, the deaths, the inconsistent story, and a lot of other small things add up to the dragonflights not being a big deal compared to what they once were. And while I should be excited that the dragons will take center stage, I don’t know if there’s anything you can do to give them back their majesty and remoteness that they once had.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get the grill started. We’re having Alexstraza and her Consort over for steak and roasted vegetables, and we’ll be playing Concept afterward.

"The easiest route is to take I-75 north
across the bridge and get onto I-74..."

 

 

*I presume they could be any height they wanted to be, since dragons were master manipulators of the arcane even before the Highborne. It’s just that they chose to be gigantic to intimidate the lesser races. But as I’ve pointed out before, I suspect that at least someone on the WOW dev team had a thing for giantesses.

**When I was first typing this post out this little section autocorrected to “you were on a somewhat first base basis”. I snickered, because Jaina certainly was during the events in at least one of the books. 

"So you're the one that Jaina is shacking
up with? You know, you ought to do more
to disguise yourself. The super size
look and blue hair kind of gives you away."

 

And for people unfamiliar with the baseball analogy, each base corresponds to a certain level of physical intimacy. First base is kissing/french kissing. Go look up the rest in urban dictionary if you’re curious, because the quickest way to get me to blush and stammer is to have to explain to a girl/woman what second base and third base are, let alone a home run.

***I’m calling it here now, that if part of the expansion is the restoration of the Aspects and selection of new flight leaders, then Jaina will end up leading the Blue Flight. Because that’s a natural yang to the ying of Thrall being whatever the hell he is these days. And that Blizzard can’t seem to help themselves with the Mary Sue and Marty Stu that are Jaina and Thrall.

Who Gets to Decide?

Puritanism — The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
--H.L. Mencken

 

I remember the day, as clear as a bell. 

Back when the LFG tool was shiny and new, I got onto a run of the Halls of Lightning instance.

For the uninitiated, it's one of two five person instances attached to the Ulduar complex. This is where the Titans created Earthen and the iron giants that serve Keeper Loken in "keeping Yogg-Saron in prison". Yes, in traditional WoW fashion, Loken has been corrupted by Yogg-Saron, and the Old Gods created the Curse of Flesh that turned Earthen and the iron giants into the first Dwarves and Vrykul (yes, Viking Giants). At the end of the Halls of Lightning you confront the corrupted Keeper, but to get from here to there you have to kill a lot of things in a place that looks straight out of a Medieval Astronomer's hideout.

When you zone in, you have to navigate some ramparts that are part Harry Potter and part The Vikings*, which can take some time to clear even if you skip a lot of the trash.

Well, on this particular day, I zoned in with four other random people, and the tank just up and takes off. He begins pulling. And pulling. And pulling. Until he pulls the entire room. 

Oh, he wasn't done there. Oh no.

He kept right on pulling, up through the next room, until he finally died.

"WTF are you doing??!!!" The healer cried.

"I'm having fun!" was the reply.

After we rather predictably wiped, the tank got back on and tried doing the same shit again, which led once more to a quick death. One DPS dropped, their replacement almost instantly died and dropped group, and their replacement kept saying "OMG! OMG!" while running to us.

Randoms like that were things that made me question my sanity, especially given that this was in the pre "merge" LFG, where you theoretically got to know people on your server even through random LFG pugs.

The thing is, Area 52 - US was a huge Horde favored server back in the day (10:1 Horde) which is now even larger and almost completely Horde (there's something like only 3 Alliance guilds on the server compared to 1130 Horde guilds, according to WoWAnalytica). With a size like that, a random asshat will almost never be seen again by people in LFGs, so they could afford to behave so poorly.

But I was reminded of that run last night when I was reading Horde LFG chat on Myzrael-US while I was on Neve, grinding some mobs in Eastern Plaguelands for their Runecloth.**

When I popped in, people were talking about what I can only describe as hentai with a side of "WTF are you talking about?"

After about 10-15 minutes of rather R-rated discussion, one person had finally had it and started reporting and ignoring people. 

"He's just upset we're having fun," someone replied to that person's leaving.

The response I did not say --I decided to not get involved-- was "Whose fun?"

***

In a multiplayer game this sort of question inevitably comes out. How people define "fun" to them is going to be on a pretty broad spectrum, and one person's "fun" is going to be another person's "annoyance".

Or, in the case of that so-called LFG Chat "discussion", much worse.

And I don't know if I can answer that question effectively.

There ought to be some sort of community standards in place in multiplayer games, especially when they're advertised as T (for Teen) as World of Warcraft is (and, I believe, SWTOR and LOTRO are too). Sure, Age of Conan and it's M (for Mature) gets a bit of a broader allowance for shenanigans, and EVE Online is, well, anything goes. But still, my point is that you kind of have to adhere to the rating you aimed for (and received) on the box.

But chatroom behavior just one aspect of multiplayer games.

There's behavior out in the field, in a group context, in raids***, in battlegrounds/PvP, and just general "off time" behavior in game you have to navigate. What is applauded in one area might not be in another.

For example, ninja-ing things are applauded in battlegrounds, but are rejected in other forms of group content. The quickest way to find yourself ostracized on an MMO server is to become known as a loot ninja in groups or raids.****

I'd like to think the easiest way of saying how to behave in a multiplayer format is Wheaton's Law: "Don't be a dick", but what that really means is up for interpretation. Some people are more strict about what being a dick actually entails than others, and that disagreement can spark issues. 

For example, I've always considered it unseemly if I, as a raid lead, got loot ahead of others. When discussion about the Legendary Twin Blades of Azzinoth that drop in Black Temple came up, I was surprised and shocked that on the 2x/week raid one of the raid leads was fingered to receive the weapon. I found out that the other Rogue on that raid team was a bit upset, but she figured she'd lost her chance at the legendaries because she wasn't picked to be a raid lead. I said in our internal raid lead chat that was the reason that I would pass on the weapons on principle, as I'd never want anyone to think I used my position as a raid lead to influence whether I should receive the two blades. 

"You're a better man that I, Brig," another of the raid leads replied. "I'd take it. But I wouldn't be part of the conversation, either."

Regardless, what is fun for people can vary enough that in a multiplayer format I don't know if there's a happy medium that can be reached. Some people have to have a defined set of goals to achieve, others don't. Some people like the grind (yes, they do exist) and others don't. Some people like group content, and others would rather avoid groups like the plague. I guess the question remains as to whether an MMO can be all things to all people, and yet still try to push players in a specific direction. Can an MMO such as WoW, which is all about the Endgame, still be broad enough to accommodate the player for whom the journey is far more important than the destination? Can an MMO, which like so many other video games is focused on the acquisition of things, accommodate people who are not interested in the new shiny?

***

Anybody else remember the Sparkle Pony?

If you're of a certain MMO age, you probably remember it. The Celestial Steed, if you want to use its formal name, was the first mount in the Blizzard Shop that you could buy using actual money and use in game. I certainly remember my first encounter with a Sparkle Pony, as I was on one of my toons handling some Auction House work in Silvermoon when a player rode by on one. I did a double take and asked the player where they got that mount. "Oh," they replied, "It's from the Blizzard Shop." 

"Oh."

Within hours we were inundated with Sparkle Ponies all over the damn place, and the mount went from "hey, that's kind of cute" to "WTF" to "those damn things" just like that.

Over a decade later, despite the tempest in a teapot that was the controversy over the Dark Portal Pass Deluxe Edition, there were tons of people using the Phase Hunter Mount and the Dark Portal Hearthstone skin. Obviously those people who bought both mounts off the Blizzard Shop were having fun, despite the visible annoyance to a lot of other people. 

I guess the best thing we can do make our own fun, so long as it's not done so as to annoy others. After all, it could be worse. Such as using an honest to god ERP brothel in an MMO.

*Yes, the cheesy old Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis movie.

**Sometimes, you just have to kill things for their drops. In this case, I wanted enough cloth to level Tailoring so I could make some Frostweave Pants for Neve. Yes, she's a Frost Mage, so getting a bonus in Frost damage is always a good thing, especially if it means she's not totally outgunned when she crosses the Dark Portal.

***Raids have a separate dynamic from smaller group content, so I identified them separately.

****Of course, a quick name change --and maybe a guild change-- and you're back in the saddle, ready to ride again. Kind of sad if you think about it. Blizz laughs all the way to the bank, and the player gets off (mostly) scot-free.

 

Letters from Outland Part 3

Dear Card--

Things have been hectic for me, so it's been a while since my last letter home. I'm currently sitting in a tavern called The World's End, located in the slums of Shattrath City, having a drink while a band plays on a makeshift stage.

Yes, that is an ogre behind me. No, he
didn't try to eat me.

 

Everything is makeshift in the slums here, formally called the Lower City, where refugees from the numerous conflicts across Outland have congregated. The denizens of Lower City share a commonality* that transcends their original alliances, be it Horde, Alliance, Avian, or even the Burning Legion, and have bonded together for their own survival. Yes, you read that right; some ex-members of the Burning Legion can be found here, as apparently the Legion doesn't take too kindly to people who defect.

Speaking of defections, I was not expecting to find Sindorei who were formerly allied with Illidan in this City.

The Horde allied Sindorei are one thing, but apparently a large group of Sindorei who were among Kael'Thas Sunstrider's best and most powerful people defected to the service of the Naaru here.

They may look like fancy lights, but
the people who have seen them defend
the city speak of their power in hushed tones.

 

Oh yes, there are these, well, things called the Naaru that alternately rule and protect Shattrath City. They showed up right as things looked very very bad for the Draenei, and the Draenei took one of their... ships? to Azeroth. I've been told by Zarleigha that it crash landed on an island near Teldrassil; you might want to go investigate if you've some time.

Anyway, I arrived in the city looking for assistance for the Expedition, and I found it. 

According to Zarleigha, most of the Draenei were slain when the Orcs abandoned the old ways and embraced the Burning Legion, but you'd never believe it if you came to Shattrath City first.

Draenei are everywhere, including their High Priestess.

And naturally, I almost interrupted
a prayer session. I need to work on being quieter.

But don't be fooled; Shattrath is not only a refuge from the fighting outside its borders, it is also a staging area for the fight against the two common enemies: Illidan and the Legion.

And wonder of wonders, I found someone that we in Stormwind were certain we'd never see again: Khadgar.

He looks smaller than his statue makes
him out to be.

No, I didn't mention Mistress Evelyn or Elsharin to him, but he was polite enough with me that he summoned an arcane servant to show me around. 

 

I think he meant it to be strictly complimentary, but I found enough tension in this place that I'm surprised there hasn't been fighting in the streets.

 

 

That... thing on the left is an ethereal.
No, I have no idea how they got here.

That brings me to the oddest part about this place: were it not for the Naaru here, I'm sure that Shattrath would have been destroyed. Not from enemies, per se, but from within. The Naaru themselves hold everything together politically, but just barely. If you recall the tension within Elwynn when the Defias were at their height of power, it's kind of like that. Only worse. 

It's not like the Draenei don't have a beef against the Sindorei here; they were enemies who invaded and slew their kind, and here they're forced to play nice in service of a greater cause. And the Sindorei are apparently nursing some major abandonment issues caused by the fall of Quel'Thalas and how they were treated by Lordaeron afterward. I imagine Elsharin knows more, but I don't think it's a wise idea to broach that topic with her. 

But I've discharged my current duties and word is that I'm to be heading out to points east of the city. Some of the Legion's allies are in the surrounding forests, and I presume I'm going to be helping to assault their positions.

I heard from Jas that a few of your friends stopped by to try to recruit you to come to Outland, but I'm glad you're staying put for now. I will keep an eye out for some of them here, but no guarantees. This place is larger than I thought it would be.

Be well, and write soon!

--Linna

 

*See? I can also use those words that Mistress Evelyn drilled into our heads during our lessons.

It's a Brave New World, and I'm Just Living in It

The other day I did something that I hadn't done in, well, ages.

I logged into Azshandra and went herb farming.

Hel-loooo, Plaguebloom...

 

This whole thing began with Spring Cleaning.

I have two bank alts, and in both cases their entire bank slots are taken up with, well, junk from Classic: Old mats, some spell scrolls, some green gear I never sold on the AH (or disenchanted), stuff like that. What that included were a ton of old herbs I'd farmed in preparation for making potions for Naxxramas, and those herbs had been languishing since around last May. So, I figured, I might as well toss them up on the Auction House and see how it goes.

Much to my surprise, those herbs did sell, especially the 'big three' out of the Plaguelands: Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom, and Dreamfoil. And not for a discount price, either.

Oh sure, they weren't selling at their high point in early/mid Naxxramas, but 20 or so gold per stack is nothing to sneeze at. 

Therefore, I thought that it might be worth it to spend about 1/2 hour back in the Plaguelands just to see if that was just a one off or whether there's still a market for some of these herbs.

***

The first thing I discovered is that I've spent entirely too much time going through the Old World as a max level toon, because I forgot two things:

• Az is no longer max level
• An L60 in the Plaguelands can't steamroll over the mobs there.

Uh, oops.

My fingers were trying to remember
Az' old rotation. Eventually they did.

I at least had the decency to remember to repopulate my talent trees, unlike the last time I logged onto Az*, but there were still a few fights that I had to remember how to Vanish and run so that any DoTs wouldn't have me instantly reappear in front of the mobs again.

But still, once I got used to giving a wide berth to mobs I wasn't interested in fighting, the time spent picking herbs was rather pleasant. And I even found a Black Lotus early on, just lying out there without anybody else around.

That made me suspicious, because the previous King of the Herbs was so rarely found out in the wild like this, so I checked in /who to see who else was around and....

o_O

Oh. 

Oh wow.

This never happened in Classic. There was always --always-- someone else around in Eastern Plaguelands.

Okay, so it truly is a brave new world.

I went ahead and finished my circuit, forwarded along the herbs to a bank alt, and put them up on the AH again just to see what'd happen. Wonder of wonders, they sold.

Well, almost all did. Can you guess which one didn't sell?

Yep, the Black Lotus.

In a way, that makes sense: not only are the flasks you make out of Black Lotus not worth as much in a TBC world, but the hassle of going into Scholomance or Blackwing Lair to make the flasks isn't worth it either. 

So, I kept the Black Lotus in my bank for posterity's sake and made a mental note that I could make about 60 gold in 1/2 hour's worth of 'work' just cruising through an empty hellscape for a while.

You know, I bet that if I take Azshandra across the Dark Portal and get her trained in Master Herbalism, she could come back to the Plaguelands and likely get about 2/3 of the way to max skillset in Herbalism before all of the herbs stopped giving her skill ups. After all, Plaguebloom alone only just became pickable before she hit max skill level in Classic...

 

*I crept into Zul'Gurub with my questing buddy to do some "farming" there. She brought her L70 Druid, so she was able to zip around mobs that Az couldn't.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

 Today feels.... Weird.

And no, I don't mean April Fool's Day sort of weird.

This is the first time in over 20 years that I no longer work at my old job.

Oh, I work for the same employer overall, but from 2001 to yesterday I worked in pretty much the same job for the same company. Admittedly most of that time was spent as a contractor, but still it feels weird to not have that anchor to my life.

At the same time, I'm completing my 2nd full week at my new job location, so at least I've got some continuity.

I'm not used to having my work day start later than 7:30 AM. Or that some of the meetings I'm in last an hour when in the old job they'd last half that. Or that I no longer have access to servers, so I can't just hop on to find things out myself. 

***

Which brings me to recurring urge to discover what I'd find if I were to hop on one of my old toons. Just because, I suppose.

I can't go back in time to see what I did at jobs in the 1990s, but I can see what I was doing in Retail when I unsubbed back in 2014.

I had a brief discussion with Shintar today about somehow playing together, and she'd mentioned that she'd created a free account on the Americas servers, so I thought "Maybe I should do that for the EU servers." That morphed into "Maybe I should reconnect with my old toons and see about what I can do with them." And so I hopped onto several toons.

Well, that was the idea, anyway, but the second or third toon I logged into was the original Balthan, and I discovered that the old bloggers' guild that Rades had created --Puggers Anonymous-- was still active with Balthan as GM.

 

Yep, Ironforge. Wait....

Then I saw it.

Yes. Those were Rades' toons.

Back in the days when Vidyala's guild, Business Time, was a top guild on Strict 10s progression*, Rades had created Puggers Anonymous on Moonrunner-US just so several of us bloggers could hang out together. Alas that almost all of those bloggers are gone from the game now, and the only toons left in the guild are Rades' and my own. 

And Rades will never login again. 

After staring at the screen for a few minutes, my curiosity evaporated and I quickly logged off.

I'm the GM of a dead guild started by a dead friend for friends that no longer play a game that is no longer recognizable to me.

It's hard to describe my feelings better than that statement, although "profoundly sad" does come to mind.

***

But.

There is a balancing out of things in MMOs.

Last Friday, one of the regulars that would attend our alt runs in Classic and is now part of the Monday raid joined the guild. I asked her what happened, and after Karazhan finished she pulled me into a private conversation and we talked. I can't divulge what was said, but let's just say she was given a raw deal.

But, she told me, she's much happier to be in a place with friends.

I definitely agreed with that one.

Then she said that people come to the Friday Karazhan raid because they love me and the way I run things.

"Uh...."

"You don't feel it? You're really well loved within the guild."

And here I was mostly feeling sorry for myself.

So... Maybe that's a hint that I should shut up a bit about some things.

*For those interested, what was meant by "Strict 10s" was that you raided only 10 person raids and equipped gear only from 10 person raids. Nothing from 25 person raids was allowed, and a raider from a Strict 10s raid team couldn't even venture into a 25 person raid at all. This meant that Business Time was really good at progression within the strict confines of 10 person raids. I still remember the time when, back in Mists, my Rogue --the original Azshandra-- was progressing through Pandaria and needed an assist on a pair of mini-bosses. Vid happened to be on, so we grouped up and she wiped the floor with those bosses. Az, in her green questing leather gear at L88 or so, had only half of the health of Vid's Mage, Millya, who was tricked out in full raid gear (I think 5.2 patch's raids at the time). If you ever wondered whether raid drops from Strict 10s was good enough to be a top progression guild, that should answer your question.

It Belongs in a Museum!

Saturday's Zul'Aman run came and went.

We survived. Barely.

It was not a pleasant experience, that's for certain.

***

Okay, I should clarify things a bit. 

We had enough people sign up that we were able to field two Zul'Aman teams, and how the teams broke down the three remaining Monday raid lead team people were on Team 1, and I found myself riding solo as Raid Lead on Team 2.

I saw that and cursed; I knew I was going to have to put in some extra time studying the entire ZA raid if I was going to be going live without backup.

So, most of my free time on Friday and Saturday was spent reviewing videos and walkthroughs, making notes, and then comparing those notes with the "official" ZA raid guide assembled by the "other" progression raid lead team, as they'd gone into the PTR and run it a couple of times beforehand.*

Saturday evening arrived, we assembled, and then we were off.

"Greetings, Doctor Jones...."

 

***

For those who haven't a clue about Zul'Aman --such as me-- it is what is known as a "catch up" raid. Supposedly, Zul'Aman allows a player to gear a toon quickly so they can then jump into the current "main" raids without having to spend all sorts of time running the four previous raids. The raid operates on a completely different lockout than the "main" raids, 3 days per lockout rather than 7 days, so it allows a player to run Zul'Aman multiple times per week.

Sounds great in theory, right?

Well, in practice Zul'Aman is harder than it looks.

Part of that is the main reason why progression raiders want to run Z'A: the warbear mount timed event.

It's less a Warbear and more of a Tank.
Put a gun turret on top and you'd have your
own personal Sherman tank.
(From Wowhead.)

 

Akin to the timed events in Stratholme and Shattered Halls, a captured person is going to be executed by the Big Bad if you don't engage a specific boss before the timer runs out. Unlike the other two events, the Zul'Aman version actually has a bit of flexibility built in, because of the following conditions:

• You have to defeat the first four of six bosses, not the last one, to finish the event.
• Two of the four bosses you defeat in the event will actually add time to your timer.

However, completing a "Bear Run" as it's known means avoiding trash where you can, moving and deafeating trash and bosses quickly, and one more thing:

DON'T GET LOST

And yes, in case you're wondering. We got lost. Or rather, the main tank and I BOTH got lost.

It's not very difficult to get lost in Zul'Aman, especially if you're running it for the first time, but that was not a warm fuzzy feeling when running around and the main tank is going "I thought it was this way."

"Yeah," I replied, "I thought it was too."

"It's over here," the Hunter spoke up. "I thought we were running the wrong way, but...."

"Dude," I said, "if you want to say something don't hesitate to say it. I'm not gonna be offended or anything."

In spite of all that, we actually got really close to making it on time to the last boss. Alas that we accidentally pulled the last two groups at once and wiped, causing us to miss the timer by 1-2 minutes.

Oh, and just so you know, part of the Bear Run strategy is to leave some of the chests behind for you to pick up afterward, and, well.....

I GOT LOST RUNNING BACK TO GET THOSE TOO

***

But I'm not here to discuss my map reading foibles, but rather the misadventures after the Bear Run portion of Zul'Aman.

You'd think that with the Bear Run finished --one way or another-- the next two bosses wouldn't be that hard.

Well....

Let me introduce you to Hex Lord Malacrass.

The Hex Lord has four mini-bosses with him, supposedly people he's hexxed into being his slaves, and he has a very annoying mechanic: the longer you fight him, the harder it is to do damage against him and the harder he hits you.

Yes, you read that right. The longer the fight goes on, he puts a stacking buff/debuff out that mitigates damage against him and amplifies damage against you. 

So you have to kill him off as quickly as you can, and those four mini bosses stand in the way.

Oh, and to make things even more fun, he'll steal the abilities of a class that's attacking him (it's a random selection) and use those abilities against the raid. So he could steal a healer's abilities and constantly heal himself, which is bad enough, but if he steals a Paladin's DPS abilities he gets to use such abilities as Consecrate against all the melee.

And guess who kept dying to Consecrate because he couldn't see it being laid down because the main tank --a Protection Paladin-- was also using Consecrate?

I just realized that my gear hasn't
changed since before the New Year,
over three full months ago. /sigh

Yeah, this woman.

The first couple of wipes things would start out well and then the main tank would bite it, and that was pretty much that.

So after the second wipe the off tank (also a Prot Pally) decided to step back and heal, since they weren't really adding DPS value to the fight.

That got us farther, but after a certain point I would die and without the interrupts I'd provide as an Enhancement Shaman the raid would eventually wipe by slow attrition.

After that happening about 3 more times, the main tank asked me what I was dying to. 

"I'm dying to.... Consecrate??"

"Aha! It thought it might be that."

I should have known better. I mean, 30% of the raid were Paladins, so it was highly likely that the Hex Lord was going to steal a Pally's abilities. "Okay, I'm going to stay back and just pretend I'm elemental. That should keep me alive."

We made that switch just as one of the raid team spoke up and said that they were going to have to leave soon. "I wasn't expecting this to take more than 2 hours," he admitted. 

"Neither did I," I added. "We'll have about 1-2 more pulls with you around, and we'll see if we can pull this off."

The first attempt with only the main tank in melee ended in a wipe, but we got much farther than we had before, so I felt confident on the very next pull.

It was going to be the last pull with our off tank around, so we had to make it count.

And, wonder of wonders, it did. In gymnastics slang, we stuck the landing and got the Hex Lord down.

"That had to be the hardest boss here," the main tank said after the cheering had died down.

"I agree," I replied. "That was nuts."

***

After the Hex Lord, Zul'Jin was a walk in the park.

Well, relatively speaking.

We did wipe once or twice, and our Mage announced that he had another raid in about 10 minutes so he was going to have to leave, so we managed to get Zul'Jin down with 9 raiders at the very last possible moment before the Time and Date Boss got us.

Team 2 finished Zul'Aman by the skin of our teeth.

***

Throughout the whole raid, I was receiving updates from my questing buddy. She was originally supposed to be on my raid team, but because of a last minute swap she got pulled into Team 1. Right about the point where we were about to engage the last boss in the Bear Run, Halazzi, she began whispering me about how they kept dying to trash.

It was really discouraging, she admitted, that they weren't going to finish the Bear Run.

And then, while we were busy keeping everybody's bank accounts low by wiping on the Hex Lord, she was telling me about a whole lot of other wipes they were having. In the end, Team 1 ran out of time before people had to leave for other commitments, and they only got down 4 of the 6 bosses.

That kind of weighed on me, because if you'd have asked me which raid would have had an easier time of it, it was Team 1. It certainly wasn't due to my brilliance, but afterward when people congregated into the same Discord channel we felt that the presence of a Priest on Team 2 helped us considerably, given that Team 1 didn't have a Priest at all. 

But that didn't help the Monday's overall raid lead, who was crushed by her team's inability to finish the raid.

I spent some time in a side channel consoling her, because it's one of those things that just happens. Some of it is being new to the raid, some of it is composition, and some of it is thinking that we can steamroll through content that turned out to be harder than we thought.

And in my heart, I knew that gear definitely played a part in this.

The Monday raid had been falling farther and farther behind in gear compared to the 2x/week raid, and this was the most obvious manifestation of the gear discrepancy.

I mentioned that I didn't expect this raid to be this hard, and our main tank pointed out that "In the videos it's easy to steamroll it when you're in Black Temple BiS gear."

As for this raid being a "catch up raid", I have to wonder if a raid team composed of people who are fresh L70 toons could complete Zul'Aman, never mind the Bear Run, without fine tuning the raid's composition and having plenty of experience. If you've got your critical pieces to the raid in at least some Serpentshrine Cavern/Tempest Keep pieces, yes you can do this. After all, Team 2 did. Even then, you probably have to give up the Bear Run until you get plenty of experience running ZA. 

***

I want to keep running Zul'Aman, because I think that the raid composition can be fine tuned to a significant degree, and once we get used to the raid itself we'll be that much better of a team for it. Gear can hide a lot of significant problems, and it's better that we as a team without all that gear learn how the raid runs and what strategies work so that as raiders come and go we will be better off to handle them.

As long as we don't end up like this...

 

 

*This is the 2x/week team. They'd also run ZA on Thursday with two teams of their own, so they all had a lot more experience in ZA than I had. And if you're wondering why I didn't get into the PTR myself to check out the raid beforehand, there are two reasons: I didn't have the time, and even if I did have the time I'm not a fan of PTR environments in general. I'd rather not have the story and/or raid spoiled just so I could speed run something. That second piece is kind of at odds with my raid lead position, but I've also found it easier to take notes while examining videos rather than trying to stop and take notes while actually running it myself.