Kalimdor Cup

My play time rotates a lot at the moment. One week I'm all about Classic, then something in retail grabs my interest, then SWTOR is king again. One activity that had my attention in Dragonflight the other week was a limited-time event called the Kalimdor Cup. I worked really hard to finish all my goals related to it before it was supposed to end - naturally Blizzard then went ahead and extended it by another week. Oh well.

When I first heard about this event, I thought it meant that Blizzard was going to unlock dragonriding in the old world sooner than expected, but that was not the case. As it stands, you still have to flap to all the race locations in Kalimdor the old-fashioned way - it's just that when you talk to the NPC that starts the race, you're put on a generic dragonriding mount and off you go. A few seconds after you finish the race, it disappears and you get teleported back to the starting point.

I still really enjoy dragonriding... though my attempts to get gold on all the advanced courses on the Dragon Isles haven't got very far. I remember falling down that particular rabbit hole one Saturday morning and it felt like three hours later I'd managed to complete only one zone - I like dragonriding, but not that much. With that in mind, I only aimed for gold on the basic races of the Cup and only did the advanced and reverse versions once or twice before moving on. I first did all the races on my evoker main, and then went back to do the intro quest on a few alts in order to get enough currency to buy all the cosmetic rewards. I think the cosmetic gear set looks pretty nifty, though it looks to me like it's made for a dwarf.

Thanks to Kamalia highlighting that the races also give a bit of XP, this served as an incentive for me to also do them on my hunter to level her a bit more without repeating the same stuff on the Dragon Isles yet again.

I really liked the way this event made you revisit the old world, and there was something quite peculiar about dragonriding across the old zones, an added perspective to just how large the Dragon Isles are and how comparatively small these old zones are, when you can basically do a race around the whole map in a minute and a half. It's such a weird contrast to zoom through Frostwhisper Gorge in what feels like the blink of an eye when I think of riding around Winterspring on my hunter in Classic to mine Thorium, how long it takes to get anywhere, and how every nook and cranny of the environment feels important.

The one that tickled me the most was probably the race around Ahn'qiraj, which effectively does a round of the open world version of the AQ20 raid. It says something about the scale of those old raids that this didn't feel all that restricting, even going at dragonriding speeds. Apparently an Eastern Kingdoms Cup and an Outlands version are already confirmed, and even more might be in the works. It's a relatively low-effort way of giving some purpose to old zones and I like it.

Raiding in Classic Era - an Update

Back in August I wrote a post about my early experiences with raiding in Classic era - how some raids weren't run that often by my guild, and how I got a lot of loot early on. Looking back at that post now, so much has changed that I thought it might be a good time for an update.

AQ20

Back in August this was the raid that nobody wanted to run... but eventually a lovely shaman stepped up to put it back on the calendar, and since then it's been run on average once a week - a good thing too, as we've had so many newcomers requesting books and idols that the guild bank has actually had trouble keeping up with demand despite of having had a huge stockpile of all of them at one point.

I'll admit that AQ20 is probably the least interesting place in terms of gear, so it didn't take long for my hunter to run out of things to get from there, other than Cenarion Circle rep, which I don't really need to max out. I started bringing my druid instead, but even she's starting to run low on items to soft reserve at this point. Still, I'm sure I'll keep coming up with excuses to go, since it's just fun.

ZG

Not long after I joined, the officer who'd been running the regular ZGs at the time had to step down from that task and since nobody else was available to take over, there was a period where no runs happened at all. Fortunately the aforementioned shaman picked up the slack here as well, and like AQ20, ZG is now being run about once a week.

I'm still going to this one on my hunter even though she stopped benefiting from any potential gear drops a long time ago, simply because the grind to exalted reputation for the shoulder enchants is looong - I never actually got my night elf to exalted in original Classic. However, I feel like I can see the end of the tunnel this time, and then I'll be happy to start taking my druid to this one as well.

Also, the other week the guild actually saw one of the rare mounts drop for the first time, Mandokir's raptor - it went to a loyal long-time officer, so even though we teased him about it, it felt well-deserved.

Molten Core

Back in August I noted that the guild rarely seemed to do full MC runs - with all the recent newcomers those times are long over as well, because we have lots of new raiders that want to gear up and Molten Core is the natural first stop. We still go for the bindings every week, but do full runs pretty much every other week, and they are no longer the severely understaffed affairs of the early days either. With a full group of forty it actually goes by pretty fast even at a casual pace.

We haven't had another Thunderfury since Tefflar's in December, but we've got two more people that have Garr bindings sitting in their bags, so it feels like it can't be too long now until Geddon will cough one up again as well.

In terms of loot, my hunter has nothing useful left to get from there, just Hydraxian Waterlords reputation for fun, so I do try to bring my druid when I can but I have to admit I haven't been super enthusiastic about it since I realised that being a resto druid in Vanilla raids sucks ass. I mean, I knew in theory that the HoTs didn't stack and all that, but even that aside, it just feels so clunky. I've seen people debate the usefulness of resto druids in multiple places and there's always someone arguing that they're totally awesome if you can only get all these specific gear pieces from higher-end raids, but that doesn't help your average druid alt at all. Even downranked Healing Touches are slow AF compared to other classes' heals, and I just end up feeling like a geriatric paladin without any of that class's fun tools.

I don't mind so much in the 20-mans because when you're doing AQ20 with only three healers, there's still something to do even for the slowest healer, but in the 40-mans with multiple Naxx-geared priests and shamans... forget it.

Either way, despite all that I still enjoy going to MC to some degree, simply because with it being the easiest of the 40-man raids, it usually has the most amount of silliness and the best banter.

Onyxia

Ony is another raid we rarely seemed to do when I started but which we now visit quite regularly - and both of my level 60s are attuned as well, hurrah! Mostly the guild needs that never-ending supply of dragon heads for world buffs, but the 18-slot bags she drops are nice as well.

Funnily enough, unlike how I experienced the fight in original Classic, the boss always dies so quickly in these runs that she doesn't even do her Deep Breath mechanic. I think I remember one run where she actually did a Breath, and everyone promptly went "oh no, she's actually doing the thing", followed by half the raid being burnt to a crisp while running around like headless chickens (including me) because nobody's used to dealing with it anymore.

Blackwing Lair

I still like Blackwing Lair. It has such great loot and bosses that are interesting without being too tough or tedious. In an ironic twist of fate, after getting Ashjre'thul in what was only my second BWL back in Classic, it has stubbornly eluded me in era for the past eight months. I've got absolutely everything else I could possibly want from BWL for my hunter, including the coveted Prestor's Talisman from Nef, but the bloody crossbow just never drops when I'm there.

As there's also been a huge influx of new hunters lately, I think I'm starting to make my peace with potentially using my Rhok until Kel'Thuzad, cause even if I'm not in the raid whenever the crossbow does drop, at least some other hunter will be able to use it. This last week I finally gave up and brought my druid to the raid instead, and it felt worthwhile. Healing BWL was a bit more fun than MC (Vael is a great boss to be a druid on for example), and I scored no less than three pieces of druid tier two, which is very strong.

AQ40

The strengthening of our roster has fortunately meant that AQ40 has become slightly less of a slog and we can actually kill C'thun more reliably. Though we still haven't ever gone for Viscidus, and for some reason we also stopped visiting Ouro after originally going for him every time in the earliest AQ40 raids I joined.

AQ40 has always been kind of crappy for hunter loot, and unsurprisingly I'm running out of gear to chase in there as well. I could technically go for the ring from C'thun, but Patchwerk is in reach now and he drops an even better one, so... I'm thinking that taking my druid there some time might be interesting both in terms of as an experience and in terms of loot opportunities, but we'll see.

Naxxramas

Naxxramas remains the main destination of interest for most of the established raiders, but progression has been absolutely glacial. Within seven months, the guild only went from 6/14 to 10/14. Mainly this was due to a prolonged shortage of healers, which turned Patchwerk and Loatheb into unsurpassable roadblocks for many months. This has now been overcome, but I think progression is still being held back by the fact that only one of the three main raid days is dedicated to Naxx, which just isn't enough to achieve much of anything in there at a casual pace. I can't say I envy the officers having to square the circle of "focusing on Naxx" on the one hand, and funnelling a never-ending stream of newcomers through the earlier raids to gear them up for Naxx at the same time.

Personally I rarely go there because the regular Naxx night is Sunday, which often clashes with other commitments for me, but I have been a few times at this point - enough to get all the intro quests done and pick up three pieces of tier three. I'm just glad that I got the whole "progressing through Naxx" experience done in Classic, meaning that I feel little pressure to achieve anything in era on a personal level. I'm happy to be there whenever I can and to see the guild progress, but there's no clock ticking down to Naxx becoming obsolete, so more bosses will happen when they happen.

Raiding in Classic Era

When I first started raiding in Classic, I quickly realised that I really liked the 40-man raid format, and unsurprisingly, it did not feel good when we downsized to 25-man for Burning Crusade. With that in mind, it's been enjoyable to get back into the bigger raiding format in era.

There basically seem to be two different approaches to raiding in Classic: the min-maxers who pump themselves up with every possible consumable and constantly try to improve their parses and clear times, and the "dad guilds". As far as the latter go, the name isn't really about having children or being male, but more about evoking the general vibes of middle-aged people who are mostly there just to hang out, tell bad jokes and might have to go AFK due to some real life disturbance at any point (which is obviously massively at odds with things like speed). Order of the Holy Fork was definitely the latter type of guild, and as far as I can tell it's the more prevalent mode of raiding on era in general. I've seen some signs that speed runners seem to exist somewhere, but I haven't seen any evidence of them on the EU PvE cluster at least.

With the generally purveying chill attitude and the small population, combined with the large number requirements to fill a raid, it's been very easy to get raid spots. (Conveniently, Warriors of Sunlight also seem to mostly raid on days when I don't have any clashes with my SWTOR ops team.) Here's my experience with each raid so far:

AQ20

This is the one raid for which I've not seen a sign-up in guild yet. The other day someone asked about it and was told that they "don't want to open up that can of worms". Basically it's not a very popular destination and I guess I'm not surprised because I saw the same in OG Classic. With a couple of exceptions the loot is pretty crap, and it doesn't have the same sort of long-term appeal that ZG does with its head and leg enchants and rare mounts. I guess the class books are something that should allow it to retain some relevance in theory, but based on how quickly I was provided with the hunter books from the guild bank, there doesn't seem to be enough of an influx of new players at max level to create huge demand for these.

ZG

I've been to ZG twice and both times were very fun. I didn't get showered with loot in quite the same way as I did during my first ZG in OG Classic, but I did win several drops including the Heart of Hakkar (again). I was kind of impressed that we did the Edge of Madness and the fish boss both times, with no shortage of materials to summon them. (Wushoolay blessed me with a very cool-looking bow.) Guildies also helped me with taming a Son of Hakkar to learn the highest rank of lightning breath for my wind serpent.

More than anything else though, ZG just seems to be the perfect place for people to clown around and do silly things, which was very much my experience in Classic as well. During my first run we actually wiped two or three times on the way to Jin'do due to trash cock-ups and I just thought it was funny because I'd seen the exact same kind of thing happen so many times before (there's clearly just something about those voodoo trolls). At one point an enhancement shaman standing next to me got mind-controlled and insta-deleted me with a giant windfury proc, which I think led to what must have been my first comment on voice chat as I couldn't help giggling: "That was amazing!" And during the second ZG, we somehow ended up with nine druids in the group. It made me smile when we were up to the first boss and instead of pulling, people got distracted by all the druids going into bear form and dancing together. These are my kind of priorities.

Molten Core

I've been in two partial Molten Core runs, because it seems to be that place where the guild primarily only goes for Thunderfury bindings, or if there's some kind of issue on the night that prevents the raid from doing something harder. I did get my Tome of Tranquilizing Shot at least, remembering with some bemusement how much stress that had caused me in OG Classic. I also won two pieces of tier one, which is pretty decent for hunters. More importantly though, Garr actually dropped his Thunderfury binding during one of those runs, which made a certain warrior very happy (he still needs the Geddon binding though).

Onyxia

Haven't been yet as I'm not attuned and while I'm working on it, the Horde Ony attunement is even longer than the Alliance one. I'm also under the impression that the guild doesn't go very often... I've been in a couple of raids where someone suggested also doing "a quick Ony" and it was always shot down.

Blackwing Lair

I've only been to BWL once so far, since it took me a bit to sort out my attunement, and once again I scored some phat loot in the form of two pieces of tier two, which is best in slot for hunters until Naxx. It's really easy to come in as a newcomer and get lots of loot because many of the regulars have been doing this for so long that they don't need that much anymore. It actually makes me feel a bit bad and I usually hold off with rolling/bidding to see whether anyone else wants the loot, but if it's just going to get sharded otherwise anyway... actually, in BWL we had a couple of ranged weapons drop that are not at all great for hunters as far as I'm aware, and one member of the raid whispered me repeatedly and seemed to get almost annoyed with me for not bidding on them. As if I wasn't already hoovering up half the drops anyway... felt very strange. On a different note, I learned that the black dragon eyes needed for the Horde Ony attunment and which you're supposed to get in UBRS also drop in BWL, which is neat.

AQ40

I've been to AQ40 three times now but only killed C'thun once. It's tough because AQ40 is where the difficulty starts to ramp up somewhat, to the point where having to underman the raid due to lack of sign-ups really hurts. I also remember this not being many people's favourite raid in OG Classic just because of how much of a slog the trash was and because most of the loot is only really useful for a select number of classes and specs. I didn't expect much of this one as a hunter, mostly just tagging along for fun and rep, and was shocked that I ended up with both the Silithid Claw and the Barb of the Sand Reaver in my last run, two really good melee weapons for hunters that we rarely saw during OG Classic and that were always in high demand.

Naxxramas

The guild runs Naxx once a week on Sundays, and my understanding is that they have six bosses on farm (Spider Wing, Noth, Heigan and Razuvious) but have been lacking the time to really progress any further. My hunter's not currently attuned to Naxx, but it is a lower-tier goal of mine to get that done eventually. I did push her Argent Dawn rep from friendly to honoured already, but I'd like to be at least revered and have better gear before I even consider going there.

However, even then I'm honestly not sure about it. The guild's current Sunday slot clashes with SWTOR for me, but that aside, while I'll always remember clearing Naxx in Classic with a lot of fondness, it was definitely another step up in difficulty from AQ40, meaning it's harder to just hang out and have fun in there because you absolutely do need to do some prep in terms of consumables and have to really focus during all the boss fights. We'll see I guess.

Too Much To Do

One reason I was originally hesitant to join a guild in Classic was that I was worried that I might end up liking it too much, leading to me wanting to spend more time in game than I realistically have available for this particular endeavour. This pretty much happened. D'oh! I sort of already wrote about it back in October, though I focused on the pull of wanting to be social with my guildies back then. However, another dimension that I haven't really talked about is that - once you get into the group content - it feels like there's just so much to do in Classic at max level, especially right now.

I've often expressed my disdain for the way Blizzard changed retail WoW to basically always be just about the latest patch, with any and all content from previous patches being obsoleted almost instantly unless you're into farming cosmetics. I will admit though that I hadn't considered just how exhausting it could be to on the other hand have everything be relevant to your power progression almost forever.

Just looking at the raids, Classic WoW has six of them at this stage of the game, with all the original content released: Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub, Ruins and Temple of Ahn'qiraj, and finally, Naxxramas. You'd think that if you're clearing most of Naxx, there wouldn't really be any reason to go back to any of the older raids unless you want to gear up an alt or something, right? Weeeell...

Molten Core is probably the closest to being truly "obsolete" at this point except for fresh sixties, however the legendary Thunderfury remains alluring, giving warriors in particular a reason to keep dragging everyone else through the place regardless.

Blackwing Lair drops some much better pieces of gear than MC, but still, most of them are superseded by Naxx gear, right? Again, weeeell... most of them, but there are some rare trinket drops that are Classic best in slot forever, giving people chasing their BiS incentive to keep coming back for a shot at those rare drops if nothing else.

Zul'Gurub was introduced as a smaller-sized catch-up raid for fresh sixties, so you'd think it would be in a similar position as Molten Core by now, but something that I didn't immediately realise was that it's also the source of the only real worthwhile enchants for the head, shoulder and leg slots. Head and legs require idols, of which you can only ever get two per run. Shoulders require exalted reputation as well as a lot of tokens farmed from trash drops. Basically, have fun farming this place forever until you've got your final BiS and got lucky with rolls often enough to enchant it all.

AQ20 is another easy raid in a similar vein as Zul'Gurub, but here the perpetual draw is that it drops max-rank spell books for three spells for all classes. At least these can be traded between players, so you don't necessarily have to go there yourself to get them all, but someone's got to keep running the place to supply the market. Those books don't appear out of thin air.

AQ40, being the last raid before Naxx, is another interesting one because while for some classes it's pretty pointless to go there if they can get Naxx gear instead, there are sets in there for certain classes and specs that don't really get superseded by anything else, meaning you'll have a particular niche of your raiders forever clamouring to re-visit this raid as well. I guess I've got to give those Vanilla game designers credit for succeeding at keeping players interested in all the raids.

Now, lest you get the wrong idea, I'm not actually raiding all these places every week, and neither does my guild as a whole. We haven't been to MC since just before Naxx release for example. But everything else... people do go back to at least sometimes, and I in turn feel a certain pressure to come along if I can, both to work on still improving my pally's gear to help with our Naxx progression but also just to simply help make up the numbers.

So in addition to everything else I'm now actually also looking forward to Burning Crusade for the simple reason that we'll only have one tier to work on to begin with, leaving a lot more "free" time to spend on alts or dungeoneering. And any character copies that I keep on original Classic realms will simply have forever to achieve their goals there, with no more changes coming after that. I guess right now there's just a sort of unique pressure to "finish off" as much as we can, as anything achieved now will benefit both characters moving forward into Classic BC and those staying in the Vanilla world.

Diffusal Blade

I just feel the urge to write about the most awesome AQ20 run I had yesterday, because I want to remember it forever. It was one of my guild's community runs - in Classic, a community run is a publicly posted raid hosted by one guild that organises the whole thing and usually brings the majority of the raiders as well, but others are welcome to sign up - usually because it's older content and not enough people in the guild are interested in running it anymore to sustain pure guild runs.

Anyway, this particular run was memorable to me because so many things went wrong in the most absurd of ways; I just couldn't stop laughing.

We were off to a late start because our main tank for the run - one of the officers who is usually impeccable in his attendance - had been delayed by real life. However, he still ended up making it inside the raid before our bard, who'd decided to join on his druid alt and was dismayed to find that we couldn't offer him a summon because we didn't have any warlocks in the raid. This is when we learned that he didn't even own a basic ground mount, "because it's only twenty percent faster than travel form anyway", so we were all standing there like numpties waiting for him to walk to AQ... on foot.

When we finally got started, we wiped after only a few trash pulls as we got three groups of wasps at once... though since we were still close to the entrance, a few people managed to run out I think.

On Rajaxx, someone did that thing everyone always says not to do and stood on the rocks. I'd never seen the effect myself but basically it can cause the fight to randomly reset... I didn't even fully realise what was happening until one of my co-healers (an alt belonging to one of our raid's main tanks, and one who is always very reliable) was suddenly running past me saying something like "nope, nope, nope". I followed him out of reflex more than anything else, and only noticed afterwards how all the waves we'd already killed had decided to respawn and had all aggroed on us at once.

This ended up killing all the friendly NPCs, and I didn't even know that they don't respawn when that happens. Without Lieutenant General Andorov's AoE healing aura we were running on fumes by the last wave on our next attempt. Oh yeah, did I mention that I was healing on my pally? I eventually blew my Lay on Hands on saving the main tank's life and fortunately the boss died and we didn't. It was exciting for sure!

On Ossirian we had a wipe because on the pull, while the main tank was trying to body-pull the boss away to a better position, the off-tank auto-attacked as the big bird ran past, which resulted in the boss comically turning around at the last second and smacking the OT dead. With one tank dead, aggro was an issue and our mages weren't helping themselves either:

I made this meme afterwards, based on a comment from one of our fire mages.

In general there was a lot of silly dying. There was the dps gnome warrior who kept faceplanting every other pull but declined my offer to replace his Blessing of Might with Salvation instead to reduce his threat. Another gnome, a mage, also kept dying but was strangely into it. We joked about how gnome sacrifices were a necessary part of a successful run and he seemed utterly delighted and even asked if he could come be our sacrifice again next time.

However, my favourite moment of all was when we got to Moam and realised that we had no warlocks or priests to drain his mana, and while we had several hunters, Viper Sting doesn't stack for some reason. Somehow this prompted our bard to ask whether rogues had a way to drain mana. (We did have one rogue in the raid, who had stated at the start that it was his first time in AQ20. I don't know how new he was to Classic in general.)

This seemed like a pretty absurd question for an experienced raider to ask, considering he's done these bosses dozens and dozens of times and should know better. However, one of our mages immediately responded in chat with "diffusal blade" and a couple of people on voice instantly agreed: "Oh yeah, diffusal blade!"

This made me pause in confusion because while I've never played a rogue to a high level, I was pretty sure that no such ability existed. However, it sounded like the sort of name a WoW ability could have, and also like it fit the theme of mana draining. Having several people bring it up was even more confusing. I found myself wondering whether it was maybe a proc from a rare weapon or something - after all there are a plethora of such oddities in Classic and I'm sure I barely know half of them.

So I opened Google on my second monitor, did a search for "diffusal blade" and got the result that it's an item from Dota 2 - and it does indeed burn mana in that game! Ahh, so it was a joke that had gone over my head... and the people who'd agreed had done so jokingly because they did get it. Pretty clever!

I wasn't the only one who hadn't got the joke though - and our bard wasn't applying his critical thinking either, but instead took it for granted that if a guildie told him that rogues had a mana burn ability called diffusal blade then that was clearly the case, so he started lecturing the newbie rogue about how this was the right boss to use it on. Meanwhile, the poor rogue must have been thinking: Dafuq?

I'm not entirely sure for how long that continued as I was laughing so hard at that point that I actually lost track of the conversation for a bit. I think in the end someone told him not to worry about it though.

For what it's worth we tried Moam with no mana burns except for that single viper sting, which resulted in him blowing up within 32 seconds and wiping us. We decided to just skip him after that.

The main tank and I were still talking about that run the next day. He commented that it was funny that messes like that make for much better stories than smooth runs and I couldn't help but agree.

AQ20 Adventure

With how well I've been finding my footing in my new guild, it was only a matter of time until I'd come along to one of their social raid nights. Currently the most popular destination is AQ20 (as the "Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj" are informally called) because like Zul'Gurub, it's an easy catch-up raid with no attunement and low gear requirements. So this was my own first destination as well. Considering that AQ20 was the first raid I ever set foot in, it seemed oddly appropriate.

I was actually starting to suffer from a slight case of nerves just beforehand as I really wanted to make a good impression, though I kept reminding myself that I knew very well what it was like to inspect a new recruit from the other side, and - considering that it was a social night - people weren't actually very likely to care as much about any details that I might be worrying about as I did myself.

I knew that no consumables were required, but I did have to face the world buffs question for the first time. I've long been aware of the "world buff meta" as a vague construct, but I hadn't really been pursuing any myself. I decided that I wasn't going to start now, but the head drop coordination Discord for the server (which I'd joined after winning the Heart of Hakkar in my first ZG) stated that there were going to be both a head and a heart drop shortly before raid start, so I thought that I might as well pick those up.

They lasted for exactly one pull, as we wiped on the second one, which made me laugh and just highlighted the futility of that meta once again.

Me saying that we wiped on the second trash pull may not sound like it went very well, but it was actually an OK run overall. As I was saying to the hunter class leader later, I was surprised by where we had pain points, such as that trash pull, and the wipe we had on Moam, which is an extremely easy boss. On the other hand we dealt just fine with Ossirian the Unscarred (whom I didn't hit once, as I was tasked with running up and down one side of the room and clicking crystals), and a ninja-pulled Buru for example. Basically, there were no real problems other than people being a bit silly.

Much to my surprise I was instantly given the responsibility of pulling trash at the start, despite of there being a more experienced hunter in the group, which made me raise an eyebrow as I wondered whether I was being tested in some capacity. I certainly wasn't left without instruction though, with one of the officers in specific sending me frantic whispers to "pull now" or "don't go any further" all the time. Despite of that one trash wipe, I don't think my performance came up wanting, as I was told that the wipe had more to do with dispels not being done in a timely manner than anything else.

There was also a funny moment later when we were pulling the Anubisaths on the way to Ossirian and I was once again asked to pull - so I ran up on my mount to get aggro and tried to quickly get back to the group but wasn't quite fast enough, so I was splatted by a meteor just before I reached them. (The damage from the meteor ability they do needs to be shared out among the whole group to be survivable.) I was actually uncertain whether I'd done something wrong or had just fallen victim to some sort of newbie hazing ritual. I think that ultimately the answer was neither, and it was more a mix of them still trying different pulling tactics for these and not fully having thought their request for me to pull alone through to the end.

I didn't get any loot on that run other than a Qiraj Spiked Hilt, which is a token that can be turned in for a melee weapon... once you hit exalted with the Cenarion Circle. Not likely to happen to me anytime soon! In fact, I didn't even really want it for that exact reason, but we had several drop in a row and by the end there was nobody else who could have used it even potentially, which was the only reason I agreed to take it.

Still, the whole experience definitely left me with a taste for more once again.

My Raiding History, Part 1: Vanilla

A couple of months ago I listened to an episode of the WoW Killer podcast in which the two hosts were talking about how they got into raiding. I really enjoyed that episode because I always find these kinds of stories fascinating. Pretty much nobody ever starts their first MMO with the intention to raid, so the journey from fresh newbie to seasoned raider inevitably involves a lot of personal growth, changes in attitudes and often humorous detours. It struck me that my own journey along the same lines would be interesting to reflect on and also make for a good subject for a series of blog posts, so here we are.

I, too, didn't start playing World of Warcraft with the intention to raid. In fact, I didn't even know what raiding was, or that it was a thing anyone should know anything about - hell, I barely knew what kind of gaming experience I was about to get myself into that very first night I loaded into Elwynn Forest.

I can't exactly pinpoint when I first learned what raids were... presumably it was through chatting with other players. A friend that was already playing and rolled up an alt to level with me had his main in a raiding guild on a different server and probably talked about it at various points. It didn't really sound particularly relevant to my interests though.

One thing I do recall very vividly however is the day my night elf priest was standing by the Ironforge bank, either just before or a little after hitting level 60, when someone whispered me seemingly out of the blue and asked me to join their guild for a raid of the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj that night. I assured them that I was wholly unsuitable for such a venture, having neither particularly good gear nor any kind of clue what I was supposed to do in such a setting, but for some reason they really wanted me to come anyway and I eventually agreed.

In hindsight I can only surmise that with the Burning Crusade already looming very close by that point, some people were rapidly losing interest in raiding, knowing that better gear and whole new adventures were going to await on the other side of the Dark Portal soon, which probably made it a struggle for many guilds to still fill their raids, presumably to the point where they were happy to bring in pugs just to make up the numbers. That's just a guess, however.

Anyway, thanks to repeated reassurances on the whisperer's part that it was completely fine that I was shadow specced and had no gear, I did show up to the raid, and even though it was "only" a 20-man, I still remember how utterly overwhelming I found the experience. This was the biggest organised group of players I'd ever been a part of, and everyone but me seemed to know exactly what to do. Mages were conjuring water and warlocks were handing out health stones, all of this seemingly unprompted. It was quite awe-inspiring to me, if also somewhat intimidating.

I remember us killing trash and people dying to it, with some questions about healing assignments being raised. I didn't really know what I was supposed to do and had the uncomfortable feeling that the deaths might have been my fault. Was I supposed to be healing that guy who died? There were no major complaints though, and it was over soon enough.

Kurinaxx and General Rajaxx had already been killed, so we were headed to Buru the Gorger straight away. Tactics were explained, something about running away when he targeted you and killing eggs. Again I remember feeling mostly useless and terrified of getting things wrong. I probably didn't mess up in any major way, or at least I can't remember doing so. I don't recall how many tries it took us to kill him, but we did, resulting in the one screenshot I have of that night:

Dead Buru with his German name tag showing because I was using the German client back then.

We then proceeded to Moam, where I was told that I was allowed to go into shadow form and should just spam mana burn on him. This pleased me greatly, as it was much simpler than anything we had dealt with previously and something I actually understood how to do! Still, I can't even remember whether we killed him or not, just that we didn't proceed any further before the raid came to an end.

I don't think I ever talked to anyone from that guild again afterwards. Maybe I was terrible and they didn't want me to come back. Or maybe they did ask me to join them again another time and I declined. I do know that while it had been a very memorable night, it had also been more overwhelming than fun and didn't leave me with any particular urge to experience more of the same.

For that, Burning Crusade would have to roll around first. To be continued!