Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 - 9:40 pm - dılɟ#

A little over two months ago, as a few of you may know or have guessed, I decided to quit WoW. Primarily, my reason for doing it was because after five years I was sick of the life I was living. Going to bed at around 10am and waking up at 6pm was just too much for me to take after so long. Similar to what Bert did with me, my hope was to be able to pass the guild onto somebody else and have them carry on without me but it wasn't to be. Any guild losing their main tank is a huge blow but while leader I took everything on board myself. There was no real hierarchy in place, no subordinates I burdened with anything so when I walked away there was just a small amount of power diluted among those left.

Still, even if I would've handled things differently I'm not sure the outcome would've been any different.

By the time I quit, we'd been farming Black Temple and Hyjal for absolutely months. Pretty much everyone had pretty much everything and people were tired of what the game had become to them. Those that didn't outright say as much showed it in their raid performance or attendance. I think a lot of people had gotten to a point where they just felt obligated to log on and raid despite not enjoying it and were happy when I quit as it was a way to quit themselves without guilt or drama. Off the top of my head, in the two months that have passed, eleven people (not including myself) have completely quit WoW, several have sold their character. I've never been someone who treated people I met online as just another screen name and I cared about every single person I ever raided with so knowing that I essentially destroyed everyone's home, no matter how stale or frail things were, is a burden I'll carry. I still hope that people can empathize with my reasons for quitting as I haven't had any snide comments or animosity passed my way in the interim.

So onto the next part of the story - Final Fantasy XI.



I don't know why but since being gone from WoW, the urge to play FFXI just built and built inside of me. Last week I finally asked Bluetonberry what his thoughts on going back were. Surprisingly, he was quite enthusiastic. I checked to see if my account was still there and it actually was. I was half-expecting it to be banned for third party tools or something similarly retarded. The reason I say that is I logged on POL at some point around Christmas '06 and saw I'd gotten a 72 hour suspension despite having not played for two months. Anyway, yeah, it was there, and so was BTB's so I fucked around in JP POL and reactivated my content ID's.

Upon logging in for the first time, a few things hit me.

- How much it fucking hurts my hand to play with the movement keys on the numerical keypad.
- There's no keyboard shortcut to bring up the map.
- I can't look at a map for somewhere outside of where I am.
- It's not possible to invite someone unless they're in your region (I actually facepalmed at this one).
- It took me over twenty minutes to get from Mhaura to Whitegate.

Obviously I knew about all this stuff before I decided to play again but it wasn't until actually experiencing them again after two years of WoW that I was amazed at how primitive FFXI is. I just felt so constricted and limited in what I could do...

Anyway, I dealt with it and decided to carry on. BTB had 21 million on him (a phenomenal amount in todays market) and gave me 3 mil to help gear myself up. I did that to a decent standard and got to thinking on what we could do. Naturally, Goblin Wolfman for a Parade Gorget was the first thing on the agenda for how involved I thought I was in trying to unravel the enigma back in the day. Three attempts to get mine at a total of about an hour then another four wasted trying to get one for BTB. It really was as if the game was giving me a "welcome back" in making us use three hours of our time to get me one trivial piece of gear and him one wave of disappointment.

In thinking what else we could do, we decided to try and catch up on the ToAU missions that had come in the time we were gone. That amounted to a ton of running around Whitegate, Caedarva and Aydeewa for some lengthy cutscenes then a trip to Navukgo Execution Chamber where we duo'd the Khimaira 13 BC. I'll give FFXI one thing, it does do missions and storytelling extremely well and I quite enjoyed myself here.

The only other thing I could think for us to do was to grab Awoir and attempt Assault. For whatever reasons, we didn't get that done but in the waiting for someone I decided to go through the lists of rewards for the five sets of Assault's we're done in the past and saw they'd added nothing extra in nearly two years. Nyzul Isle seemed pretty interesting and had some surprisingly good rewards but then I found out you need a full, well-balanced party of six to stand any chance of succeeding at it. As someone who wants to play casually and fit the game around other aspects of their life for once, it doesn't seem like something I'd be able to adhere to on a regular basis.

Even if my time did somehow allow it, the one thing I ruled out before I'd loaded up the game for the first time was rejoining a HNM LS. At some point during my WoW career, it dawned on me what an elitist douchebag I had been through the majority of my FFXI time. The way I treated Chikami in particular disgusted me and I couldn't even bring myself to open a window and make an apology to him. The nature of FFXI as a game when mixed with my unrelenting desire to excel didn't mix well. In WoW, time and effort are guaranteed to pay off and I think that standard of reward helped level me out in all sorts of ways.

While watching iMPACT on Friday, I did some reflecting and wondered why I was playing FFXI again. I initially went back because all the offline games I was enjoying ultimately lead to an end whereas an MMO doesn't. Ironically, I couldn't see what my main aim was in FFXI. Why merit when I have no desire to put them to any real use in endgame? I was sick of Dynamis two years ago, Assault is a way to kill time with no true goal and making money still sucks even if the ratios are better.

I simply don't feel like FFXI can reward the level of time I'm willing to give an MMO at this stage in my life.



I haven't completely closed the door on FFXI but I'm not far off. I feel really, really guilty that BTB came back with me and bought the expansion pack only for me to realize it was a mistake a few days later. We'd even discussed transferring to Bahamut to play with Kytele but alas...

I've ordered the EU version of WoW. I really want to still be able play an MMO but I need to be able to manage my time in doing so. WoW is an excellent game and I love pretty much everything about it. In WoW I can log on, play for two hours and log off having achieved something, no matter how minor. It pretty much is everything I need from an MMO at this stage in my life and it'll be in my timezone. I don't think I'll be able to convince Ky or BTB to play EU WoW with me so I'll be on my own for the first time in a while. I don't actually know anyone who plays WoW on EU servers but I think being independent might just be okay. I love tanking and I became pretty obsessed with what a a Protection Paladin was capable of toward the end of my time on Mal'Ganis so I think that's what I'll end up rolling as. Server or faction I don't know, I'll decide that at another time, but I'll aim for a primarily English speaking PvE one on GMT with medium-to-high population.

(75 lost | Enter the storm)

Friday, March 21st, 2008 - 10:56 pm - Hi H.T.

blink drone

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 - 12:06 pm - Baaaaaaaaaaaawl

An occasional source of humour over at /v/ this past month has been the periodic threads consisting of screencaps of posts like these from SmashBoards.

I had the original N64 version of Smash Brothers on the day of release and played it religiously. I loved it so much that anticipation for Melee became one of the precursors for me in laying out a hefty sum of money for my JP/US switched GameCube. If I'm honest, I don't remember a whole lot about the original version other than I played Ness when I unlocked him because he felt so much more advanced than the handful of characters available. Melee was obviously where the real addiction set in and my copy has about 1500-2000 hours logged into it. Sadly, my friends were never too keen on it, preferring to play Winning Eleven and Halo instead, so aside from the combined month I spent playing with my old Phantasy Star Online friends Aseuk and Atrox, the majority of that time was spent fighting computer players. Still, I liked to think I was pretty good at Melee with Jigglypuff and, primarily, Roy despite my lack of human competition.

I can't recall when but I found out about a huge competitive scene for Smash Brothers and decided to look into it. However, upon further inspection, the beat-'em-up so different from all the others that I regarded fun had been stripped of all of that and reduced to playing Final Destination with Fox, Marth and Sheik with no items on. I read of a story where Hyrule Castle had to be banned because a Fox player could shoot the person once and they spend the remaining time running away from his opponent until the clock ran down. Morally, where do you draw the line? If someone had done that to me I would step back and ask myself what the fuck I'm doing associating with people devaluing such a great game like this.

Someone said that Sakurai was the ultimate troll for removing all the unintended glitches "advanced techniques" and hilariously making characters occasionally trip and I wholeheartedly archive him for such an epic win. How on earth can you argue that all the characters being balanced now is bad?? Another screencap that I read was someone feeling sorry for his friend because he couldn't talk him out of using the character he found enjoyment in playing (Roy) to switch to a "top tier" one. One other was a guy crying because he'd spent the past few years saving up $2000 to tour the country playing Smash Brothers tournaments...

When I got the Japanese version I decided to sign up at those boards because I had read it was the largest community of players. I thought that I might be able to help contribute to it with unknown information or to answer questions people had but it quickly became apparent to me that the only voices people wanted to hear were their own. Threads consisting of little more than "I haven't played it but here's what I think..." reigned supreme and I quickly left. SmashBoards seems to be to Brawl what Allakhazam is to FFXI.

(23 lost | Enter the storm)

Thursday, February 14th, 2008 - 12:54 am - shit was SO cash

Russta - 3179-5441-6395
Rex - 0817-3022-1571

If any of you have Japanese Smash Bros Brawl, add us and leave your code in a comment!

(26 lost | Enter the storm)

Friday, January 4th, 2008 - 5:29 pm - 20 minute free-form jazz odyssey

We're coming up to the end of our three week break from World of Warcraft and boy do I feel better for it. No matter which way I've sliced it over the past month or two, it's hard not to come to the predictable conclusion that raiding just isn't fun anymore. For that reason alone, so many of our members needed such a lengthy break over Christmas and the New Year to recharge their batteries. Anything in WoW is a challenge until you beat it at which point it's (usually) instantly on farm and you move onto the next stuff. But what do you move on to when there's nothing left to move on to? As we seem to have discovered, each other. There were times where the guild atmosphere felt saturated in cabin fever so I stopped caring who was or wasn't in Vent nor if people were tabbed out for nearly every trash set for weeks on end. I mean, it isn't that I don't care per se, but what's the point in trying to squeeze a maximum performance out of everyone daily when it's going to take a night and a half either way? At this point in the guild's life cycle, it feels far more important to let people raid in the way that they themselves find the most fun. If that involves listening to Black Out on Winamp or talking in small groups rather than listening to me dictating Flame Crash movement, so be it.

A lot of my time away has been spent reflecting on where I currently stand and how I can improve things. Lord knows I've certainly been in better shape socially than I am now, so I'd like fix that where possible. It's pretty tough trying to strike a balance between what each and every person from our different strata define as fair and just. As a sort of New Year's Resolution for within WoW, I wrote down a flow chart of how to make decisions that involves my officers liberally and penned a few methods of spreading out the assets of the guild better. The issue of gems for PvP was something that sat as top priority for me considering many of our members are hardcore arena players and help earn them too. I'm also determined to tighten up DKP for The Sunwell in lieu of it actually being released. That's something I plan to seek advice and suggestions for from every raiding member of the guild. Having a system tweaked by the very people it affects built on our strong existing framework seems a logical step in fairness and keeping people happy for our final dungeon in the Azeroth that we know.

Aside from this, the weeks I was away, and quite a few preceeding them, were spent catching up on a lot of Wii games I've had build up since my Birthday. I'd like to share my experiences with them as best my memory allows.

Mario Galaxy

Aside from my beloved Zelda franchise, the two games I went to such lengths to get a Wii for were Super Smash Bros. Brawl and this. I always anticipated it to be good but in an age where the hype for games can hit ridiculous heights they're never going to to hit, this was a grand exception. I've had people say that the game was too easy but I felt the difficulty curve was spot on. If you wanted to just get the minimum amount of stars, the game would be pretty simple. Once you decide to start going for the comets, it takes a step up. The one I recall being a pain in the ass was having to beat Bouldergeist on the Daredevil Comet. That was still nothing to the frustration of the trial galaxies from the three green stars or some of the Purple Comets (the Dreadnaught and the one on the giant 8-bit Luigi spring to mind). Amazing game I fully intend to play through again soon and genuinly one of the best games ever - but Super Mario World is still better.

Metroid Prime 3

Buying this game, or asking for it as a gift rather, was pretty risky for me. I bought the original game on the GameCube and simply couldn't get into it. I don't know if it was because I was heavily into something specific on FFXI at the time, but that's how it was. Obviously I never bought the second one either.

And despite this, Metroid Prime 3 is my game of the year by a considerable margin.

The graphics, sound, atmosphere and especially the controls are incredible throughout this game. The levels had a bit more linearity to them than I would've expected from my days of Super Metroid and I found Bryyo dragged on just a tad too long but that was something Elysium more than made up for with the SkyTown level. One of the concious decisions I made was to play the game on veteran based on Darm's suggestion and it wasn't one I regretted. Well, to be fair, it did cross my mind when I sat there screaming at my TV how fucking impossible it was trying to pull down the three levers while defending them at the Titan guns preventing my ship detroying the barrier over Bryyo's Leviathan. The game was extremely challenging but in a way that never truly felt impossible, a feat seldom achieved in games these days.

A very special mention must go to the boss battles, they're epic. I can't remember a game ever having them this good. From wondering if the thirty minute battle with Mogenar was ever going to end to the absolute awesomeness of the Omega Ridley and Gandrayda fights, they were consistently impressive. I've shown a few people videos of them on hypermode and they're such enthralling spectacles that they've watched them in their entirety and expressed a strong desire to play the game. Keeping someone who previously held zero desire to ever play it hooked on a ten minute video is testament to the game's greatness.

I haven't felt so strongly toward a game since Resident Evil 4 and can't recommend this enough to anyone who'll devote the time it desires which, for me, was 18:56 for a 100% clear.

As a final note, if anyone with the PAL version of this game happens to be reading, post a comment as I'd like to trade some friend vouchers and it can't be done with my NTSC loving chums.

Super Paper Mario

Not gonna lie, I was slightly dissapointed with this game. I can't help but wonder if my choice of when to play it assisted in that or not though as I felt I would enjoy an easy, relaxing game after the difficulty of Metroid but found myself craving the same challenge. I like what they were trying to achieve with this game in creating an easily accessible RPG without any of the hardcore RPG elements but, in truth, it was hard to see that at times when it felt like I was playing a cross between Metal Gear Solid and some outsourced platformer hiding under a shiney Nintendo coat.

I do sorta feel guilty saying bad things about this game as it did have a nice charm to it and, on more than one occasion, made me laugh. The third chapter with the stereotypically fat weeaboo Francis in particular was a riot. I also couldn't help but snigger in my mind everytime Tippi spoke too as I would've named it Okan if it was possible. The art style was incredible to me too, but then I genuinly believe Wind Waker is the greatest looking game I will ever see in my lifetime.

Almost up there with Lego Star Wars as a true kids game amongst all the woeful licensed games palmed off as them but contradicts itself a bit with the monumental amount of text to read. I'm really not sure where I stand on this game.

Guitar Hero III

I've played this a few times in the past in various arcades and friend's houses but never actually owned it myself. I did want to but I refused to buy a third PSdouble after my first two broke, though my brother eventually caved in and did. All the custom song videos on YouTube over the past few months really sparked my interest up again though and I almost bought Guitar Hero II a week before the third was due to come out. I held off though and asked for the latter for Christmas.

The majority of my life revolves around music and gaming, frequently at the same time, so this seems a match made in heaven. Even so, I'm pretty amazed at my level of addiction to it. Though I want to be "that guy" who can play expert Dragonforce without looking, I've kept my progress through the game slow and steady, being sure to five star each difficulty before moving onto the next. After much swearing today, I finally got done with the final song I needed to do (Raining Blood) and moved onto hard where I must actually learn the songs for finger placement incorperating the orange button. I've been playing online with Rex a lot and started learning hard 'cause I was so sick of how stagnant medium had become. Something I did to ease the transition to hard was by playing bass online and it helped a lot. And if anyone feels like it;

Wii - 3527 1895 9401 7635
GH3 - 232048480250

(9 lost | Enter the storm)

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 - 7:46 am - Kashmir

I've always had a checkered history when it comes to shields in WoW. Even going way back to the original Russta on Anetheron, I had to run Shadowfang Keep way too many times to get Commanders Crest. Then, in an infamous act which still gets brought up today, I "ninja looted" the Imperial Qiraji Armament from Satura for Blessed Qiraji Bulwark in my first ever raid just a few hours after hitting 60.

Moving onto The Burning Crusade, I guess I got lucky with Shield of Impenetrable Darkness dropping pretty quickly from Nightbane. The next upgrade to that, Ondori Legacy Defender, dropped on our tenth Gruul kill and even that was memorable to me because Bert had it on master looter and when he told me it dropped, I didn't believe him. Even though I'm pretty sure I was the only one that ever gave the fact that I said something untoward more than a moments thought, I still kinda feel embaressed about saying anything remotely insulting.

That's pretty much where the shields stopped for a long time. I used that beautiful looking shield through all of Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep, Hyjal and Black Temple and even blessed it with an ironic sorbriquet. Over the span of just under six months, Vashj, Kael'thas, Archimonde and Illidan all took the full force of Ondori until a shield finally dropped for me to be able to upgrade to. The one Kaz'rogal's Hardened Heart we got in seventeen kills I simply couldn't justify taking over Inffest, who was still using season two arena shield at the time. I caught some flak in the hypocrisy vein for it and it was two months between Heart and Bulwark but it's still a decision I'm glad I made and have never once regretted.

The only tanking equipment I'm missing now is Band of the Abyssal Lord, which isn't a big deal, and Myrmidon's Treads, which is. It's kinda ridiculous that in eighteen kills we still haven't seen a single pair. That we have to raid five days a week for four months in Black Temple to keep getting shafted by the random number generator when Joe Casual can spend two hours a week losing ten games in arena to pick the item he wants after a month is really fucking backward. But that's another argument for another day. I've finished my tier 6 and got my exalted Hyjal ring (even leveled Enchanting just to put +4 stats on it) which were big goals of mine. Now I aim to just relax and enjoy what little raiding we do until Blizzard sees fit to release Sunwell.



I had for the longest time intended to just do Zul'aman with the same exact people I did Karazhan with for many months. For whatever reasons, that didn't happen. When I sat down with my illuminous yellow Post-it and blue ball point pen, I fleshed out a balanced group of ten from within the guild that would greatly entertain me with good chemistry on Ventrilo. I'm very happy with the group I put together. They're all exceptional and reliable players and they make it fun for me everytime we go. Having Darm, QQbits and myself in a room together is a pretty solid guarantee of hilarity if I do say so myself. I don't need any equipment from the place really, I'm just doing it for fun so when it ceases to be that, I'll step away.

There's not really much to say about Nalorakk. One person tanks the Human form that does bleed effects, one person tanks the Bear form that multiplies the damage those bleed effects do tenfold. It's a simple yet ingenious concept for a fight, one that doesn't take a whole lot of explaining. I remember when we did him on the PTR and we kept getting Taunt resists, which is pretty much a wipe. He's single handedly the reason that all taunt's were changed from spell hit to melee hit which is great because even with zero of each, it's gone from a 16% chance to resist to 9%. I'm still not really sure how it kept that archaic mechanic for so long but at least it's changed now. I still haven't checked if you can taunt while silenced now though.



Akil'zon was the only other boss we managed to do on the abomination of a server that is known as the PTR. Unless we magically got better at it, it seems like they made his electrical storm a lot more forgiving. I seem to remember taking a phenomenal amount of damage when running from him to the designated cloud back then but not it seems negligible. The only problem I have with this fight is dealing with the fucking eagles. They're incredible annoying and impossible to traditionally DPS. Even with the two Warlocks in my group, SoC and DoT's don't really get rid of them sufficiently. I guess it's a simple enough fight to not really complain though and boy does that storm look pretty.



I think Jan'alai is an incredibly fun boss, probably up there with Thaddius.

In this game of full out DPS on anything and everything, the key here is to focus it perfectly in the correct area. Kill one hatcher, let the other pop a certain amount of eggs, kill him, kill birds and repeat that while being sure not to push him over 35% until you know you're not gonna get overrun and sodomised. From the few times we're killed him, it seems as though you wanna have pushed him into enrage just after all the birds are dead, which is a pretty steep DPS requirement for what I feel Zul'aman is aimed at. I'd be interested to see how groups wearing primarily Karazhan gear deal with all aspects of this fight. To us, it feels as easy as the other bosses but I can imagine it's a decent jump in difficulty when you aren't wearing tier 6.

His fire bombs still enamor me when he throws them out. It's such a treat for the senses.

A special mention must go to his trash here, most notably Amani'shi Scouts. We haven't successfully gotten to the point where we're rushing through it yet on the timer due to some pretty fucking epic fails by us but I have no doubt that these will be the biggest cockblock for all attempting it. We've tested several methods for killing and controlling them and I think we have it down now, however, that doesn't stop the massive gayness that is their respawning. How fair is it that you're fighting a four pull and, while in combat, a Scout spawns in the hut behind you and runs to a drum ten feet away from him before you can react? Yeah, as shitty as it is, sure, have them spawn and despawn between huts but in combat? Fuck that, it's not fair.



Incorperating Mother Shahraz, Fathom-Lord Karathress and some random pet, this guy is pretty easy. I still haven't figured out what's going on with his HP when the Spirit of the Lynx splits out but there's not really much to it. The totems taking forever to die brings me back to all the shit we had with our Rogues not wanting to waste combo points on Spitfire Totems.

The most interesting thing about this fight is not the fight itself, but the loot. While we were taking a short break before moving onto Malacrass, QQbits decided to tab out and look up the stats of a ring he wanted. Upon doing so, he noticed a marked down comment on Wowhead that said there was an urn inside of Halazzi's room that you can loot if you angle the camera correctly. When everyone was back, we ran there to see if it was true and, sure enough, there inside the jar was a chest containing... an Amani War Bear! We told the other group about it and, when they tried it, they got a mount too which was pretty suspicious. I told Chilicheese but his group got Signet of Primal Wrath. I asked him this morning if Halazzi was the third boss he'd killed and he said that it was. So, upon some discussion on EJ, the forth chest has 100% drop rate on Amani War Bear. Seeing as you don't have to try or put any effort in to get one chest, if you make sure Halazzi is the last boss you kill, you'll get a free mount every three days until they fix it. Then, you'll have to actually try.



I love this guy, not least because he drops the only item I truly want in Zul'aman (Tiny Voodoo Mask). To me, the concept of having a mob pick someone and use their class abilities against the raid is amazing. It adds such a fun, random element to the fight that'll never get old as long as we're doing this. The worst one we've experienced is definitly Paladin. Avenging Wrath and Consecration for 2.5k a tick is brutal. The adds are pretty much a non-issue and we keep one shackled, one banished and kill the other two. I think they just wanted another Moroes in here.

The one aspect of Malacrass I feel that would be pretty tough is his shadow volley but like so many other fights in WoW, we're able to negate that with our game destroying Shadow Resist BT gear.



Zul'jin is pretty easy for being the last boss. I'd be amazed at any guild able to get through the first five bosses and being unable to kill him. Still, I guess retard attrition during phase three could negate previous luck.

Phase one: Pretty straight forward. The only nasty thing he does is a high damage Whirlwind but considering there's very little other damage going on, it's hard to complain even if it does make topping off to remove the grievous wound type debuff more work.

I lol'd at being unable to disarm him.

Phase two: Starts hitting harder, but, again, straight forward tank and spank. The paralysis debuff is easily taken care of by two or three single dispels then a mass one on the rest of the raid.

This is the best phase of any fight ever due to the amount of Terry Schiavo jokes we can squeeze out in the 20% it lasts.

Phase three: Everyone, including myself, swears bloody murder at this phase but it's really not that bad if you stick to the Archimonde mentality of "live first, DPS second". After instilling that into peoples minds we didn't have a single death the last time we killed him. Just don't get cornered... not rocket science. The 1250 damage penalty for spellcasting is really, really shitty though.

Fun fact - you can use the tornados to knock yourself out of the arena at which point you can kite it around till he's almost at 40% and then use it to knock yourself back in. Do this if you're a worthless caster.

Phase four: Needs Sweeping Strikes for epic lulz. This phase is stupid. It's just nothing. We were using all manner of threat switches to put the debuff on me and he dropped in no time.

Phase five: I read that the flame debuff thing that stacks up on people acts as a sort of enrage timer in that it will stack to a point where the Heaven's Punisher will just one shot you. That made perfect sense until we were able to have the stacks reset without even trying.

(3 lost | Enter the storm)

Saturday, October 27th, 2007 - 1:00 am - #fortune

Your fortune: Godly Luck

(9 lost | Enter the storm)

Thursday, October 18th, 2007 - 10:55 pm - WoW Halloween > Every FFXI and PSO event combined

it doesn't get any cooler than this

(7 lost | Enter the storm)

Monday, October 8th, 2007 - 11:48 pm - How long must we fold by hand?

209th World Kill, 92nd US Kill, 8th Battlegroup Kill

In all honesty, this should've happened weeks ago.

I've long held a dream of raiding with the same twenty-five people every day. It's one I just wouldn't let die. I came close to it, floating us at around twenty-seven people for a month, but, ultimately, when just three people needed the same day off, we were left in an unpleasant predicament. No matter what anybody told me, I felt it would be better to miss a day or two of raiding and let everyone share in benefits of the same vision than upset a ton of people I couldn't guarantee raiding spots to.

Then we got to Illidan.

Standing in front of his slouching form without enough people being online to even make attempts on him, let alone stand a chance of killing him, was humiliating. To think that we'd worked so hard to get to this point only for a few people with more of a life than a majority of us to ultimately ruin it sucked. It then happened a second week and, instead of risking it a third, I decided to recruit and attune people and bolster ourselves to the point where this would stop.

I hate recruiting, I really do. I was never scared of it, I just hated it. Seldom does anyone agree on who would be best for the guild, everyone wants to push their friends in beyond all reason and it doesn't help my conscience struggles to deal with allowing people to transfer over to us only to tell them they suck. Not that the latter was a problem this time around as we've disallowed transfers while the cooldown of Inffest, Qubits and Strep disappear so we may get off this backwater server and onto the far more populated and advanced Mal'ganis come November 9th. Maybe then I can slink back into the level of anonymity I enjoyed when first starting WoW. Or maybe not.



Illidan could never be the kill that Kael'thas was to us, at least not to me anyway. Five weeks of struggle and barely keeping the guild alive upon having the mantle thrust onto me was just never going to succumb to mere logistical issues. Truth be told, Illidan isn't even that hard, it's just overcoming some very obvious personal boundaries for certain members in phase two then a mild degree of coordination for the rest of it. It's fun, oh boy is it fun and a very fitting end to the current tier of progression, but not hard.

I really didn't enjoy watching phase 2 learning. It took Zylch a very long time to "get it" and, as much as I understood, it drove me crazy that there was very little I could do about it. At least once that phase was coined, all issues from there were just minor things - me blocking Sheer, the Mage dealing with Parasites not getting doubled up on constantly, melee timing their DPS on Shadow Demons around Flame Burst and the whole raid being super-efficient on spreading out while waiting for them. Last night, we would've actually killed him on our second pull had he not instantly destroyed me the second we were released from the Shadow Prisons at the start of phase 5. That was quite humorous and I hope it makes it into Bus' video as she hinted at.

I'm not sure how I'd rate my actual tanking performance on him last night. I'd promised myself before the raid that I wouldn't take a single sheer and I sorta stuck to that. The only one I took was on the time we actually killed him. Maiev teleported behind me, the raid called the trap and I started backing him up into it. The only problem was she'd fucking dropped it half way inside a wall and as I tried to get him to run into it he ran around it and Flame Crashed me as my camera jammed in the wall behind me. This along with the raid screaming about Parasites made me completely lose my composure, take a sheer and die. Suffice to say I would've felt like shit if they hadn't managed to whittle down his final 3%. Oh yeah, as seems customary for many guild's first Illidan kills, we completely wiped to Parasites after beating him.

Drops were okay, I guess; Cursed Vision of Sergeras, Shroud of the Highborne and Paladin and Warlock bodies. Aside from one of the Warglaives, I'm not sure what everyone was expecting but the silence on Vent when he was looted was eerie. And we're a guild (read: Kuai and I) that have a habit of screaming when anything drops from trash. I was a little disappointed Bulwark of Azzinoth didn't drop but the satisfaction of knowing I didn't fail as leader is quite the consolation prize.

Here's to three day raiding!

(9 lost | Enter the storm)

Monday, September 10th, 2007 - 10:43 pm - Heaven is a feeling I get in your arms

Bipolar is a word that gets thrown around a lot in our guild. We could go and one shot Archimonde only to then spend the next fifteen hours wiping to Supremus for absolutely no reason. Not that that has ever happened, but you get the general idea. It doesn't really bother me to be honest as I realize it's something that would be uncomfortable to fix and is just another trait that convinces us all that, in some twisted way, we are the best guild in the world.

Our initial Mother Shahraz kill took us three hours when all accounts suggest it should've perhaps taken something more akin to three days. Looking beyond the superficial roadblock born from the necessity of having full raid wide SR crafted, really, it probably should have. It may be a horribly broken fight that has more legitimate luck factors than Archimonde but three hours is astounding considering how most things in WoW are on farm after that crucial first kill. Not that I ever expected her to become that mind you, but the psychological factor that it will never fails to materialize, whatever the circumstances.

Having our expectations of how hard Mother Shahraz was going to be artificially crushed, it was only natural that we strolled into the Grand Promenade like Big Man Tough expecting to brush past the Illidari Council and be on Illidan within the night. Ohhhhh but of course, our polarity shifted and we spent the entire night wiping to it!

Fast-forward to the following Thursday and we spend around four hours wiping to Mother Shahraz after one-shotting Reliquary of Souls. Until the impending patch, I'm not really sure how to go about her because the guild are usually really cheery and don't let the wiping get us down. The majority of us advocate the bad luck factor verbatim yet a part of me wonders if we were more focused we'd have it down more efficiently.

Jump forward again, this time to Sunday, and south is once again north as we one-shot Mother Shahraz, walk into Illidari Council and one-shot them.

Illidari Council has to be the most boring fight I've ever done. I'm not really sure how it is for the others but all I have to do for Gathios the Shatterer is move out of Consecration, move out of Flamestrike, move out of Blizzard, Spell Reflect every other Judgement and... well, that's it. Considering how much HP they have and how it unfairly ticks up due to the stupid mechanics, it just drags on for so long. I guess that's the idea of the fight though - to have twenty-five people executing their role perfectly for ten minutes. You'd just like to think they'd have something more creative picked out for the second-to-last boss in Black Temple.



And so my prophecy from two months ago that we'd have Illidan down before any other guild on our server kills Kael'thas is tragically looking likely. From speaking with some friends in our server's second best guild, I wonder how long it'll be before they or anyone else actually manages it. There's only so many pointers you can give on the road to success, even less to stop the best players walking away because they can.

I spent the first few hours of my time online yesterday begging my guild mates for Ancient Lichen because there were none on the auction house and I need a colossal amount of Ironshields these days. I already mentioned the issue we've had with getting green SR helms and how it's nearly impossible to recruit exceptional members before but this is just another nail in the coffin for Azshara. We're closer to server transferring than ever now and, come November, I'm fully expecting it to become a reality. A few of the people that seemed unsure in the past have stirred too and seem a lot more receptive to the idea but I have my fears. I worry we'd lose two of our current best raiders, or that we'd be unable to agree where to go, or something else equally stupid. In all honesty, I'd rather just stay on Azshara and have Blizzard fix our problems for us but their apparent stance over the past few weeks has finally assured me that won't happen. I have a real deep seated fear of an impasse causing the break up of some of the best people I've ever known and my desire to exist like this dying.

(4 lost | Enter the storm)