Well it was St.Georges Day

So yea it was St Georges day yesterday and what better way to celebrate the patron saint of England then to slay a dragon in his name, and you know what, that’s exactly what we did.

It was another long and hard night in Ulduar last nigh, although to be fair the time did seem to fly by. Flame Leviathan was fairly straight forward. For last nights attempt we still had some new-commers and so played it safe and took down all the towers, however next week I think we are going to leave one up!

Onwards to Razorscale we went. Having spent the best part of a raid night on him last week we were fairly confident with our strategy for this fight. Although we wiped 3 or 4 times it was far more promising than previous attempts, and we were consistently getting him down to 20%.

Finally we wiped ourselves down, got back up and had another go. This time we were successful, and in the process I actually managed to pocket [Shackles of the Odalisque]

There was more action to report from Ulduar last night, but I think I’ll leave it at that for now!

~Cav~

A week ago

So it’s a week after returning to wow, and how do I feel? Well suffice to say at the moment I think everything is going pretty well. I have managed to slot back into the raid calendar quite nicely and whilst im not logging in on a daily basis, im still managing to integrate into the social side of the guild.

I have quite a few goals still left to achieve in wow, but im not in any urgent rush to accomplish them. If I have half a day to play one weekend then I will, but im not devoting anywhere near as much time as I once was, and for the most part im not sat wishing I was playing wow, which in itself is quite refreshing.

I didn’t mention at the time, but Sunday’s raid itself wasn’t all that successful. In fact we just couldn’t take down Raz? No matter how hard we tried. It wasn’t through lack of trying though, and im pretty confident that we have nailed down a sound strategy. However 3 hours of rinse and repeat wiping is very tiring, and may well have had an affect on Monday nights raid sign-ups. Come kick-off we only had 22 raid members, which just wasn’t going to cut it for Ulduar, so instead another wipefest occurred in VoA when up against Emalon.

So with it being a Thursday today the obligatory raid is scheduled and numbers permitting we will have another crack at Ulduar, and maybe even kill some stuff!

I would be interested to hear from people on there raid make up though. How many healers are you taking to Ulduar in these early days and are you finding DPS more of an issue than healing?

Fail

Originally this post was going to be very positive for me, I was going to comment on my personal feeling of success since the February re-launch of the blog!, but then on reviewing my initial goal I realised that I haven’t really achieved anything.

I vowed that this time around I would do things properly, and I would aim to be a more vocal presence in the blogsphere and make sure I was up to date on all the latest news. I vowed I would post once a week (minimum) to keep myself writing… failed there to!

So what is there to be proud about? Well, I did a redesign of the blog, which was very satisfying on different levels, and prompted me to set some other cogs in motion, such as hooking up to sitemeter.

The latter upgrade was introduced both in order to inflate my ego, but more importantly to give me a better idea of where my readers were coming from and how. Site referral is a funny old tool, and it gives me a good indication about what people are searching for when they find me….

In terms of ego inflation I hadn’t really set targets in terms of site visit numbers, but I was excited to learn today that I am creeping ever nearer towards 1000 visits, which I find almost mind blowing. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t seem like a lot, but to little old me, it’s a massive number, that I hadn’t even really imagined in my wildest dreams.

All this aside, im still not satisfied! I haven’t kept to my original targets for this year and that’s something im going to work on over the coming weeks, along with my articles which aren’t quite as thought provoking as I had hoped! Maybe bloging is going to turn out to be one of those things that you can never be 100% satisfied with, but we’ll see.

~Cav~

When the Going Gets Tough

I for one have been supremely satisfied with the new raid content that has landed with 3.1. Since wrath launched all those months ago everyone within the warcraft community has been waiting for some new, exciting, and most importantly, challenging raid content, and that is most certainly what we have received.

For those people that are bemoaning the content as over-buffed, pull your thumbs out of your arse and do some fricking work!

Before this patch was launched, we were blessed (if you want to call it that) with some real cake walk content, which has had a significant effect on how we now approach raiding, and not for the better.

We (collectively) have become arrogant, lazy and impatient, and rather than becoming excited by every kill, we criticise every wipe.

I recall a time not so long ago, where every kill was an achievement, a badge of honor you could wear proudly amongst you piers, and its about time those times returned.

For the record, by guild have only managed to clear the first encounter in Ulduar thus far, but we are not down heartened and we are not calling for the content to be nerfed! We are calling for a time where you gave 110% on every encounter, wasted every pot and every cooldown you had to ensure the raid success.

Warcraft is not all about easy kills and new gear! For some it is the excitement of seeing new content and knowing that they worked hard to achieve new goals! This is why I still play, it might also be why I came back, but the exhilaration of succeeding in an new encounter for the first time outweighs any ingame cost to you or your guild!

So next time your raid wipes, don’t be disheartend! Release, Rez, and try Again! And when you succeed! Celebrate!!! That first kill only comes around once!!

~Cav~

A month is a long time in wow

I made this very same comment in yesterdays post, but it wasn’t until last night that I fully understood its meaning.

Having logged on to wow last night I came to realise that whilst some things always remain the same in wow, as in real life, trends, economies and allegiance’s all change.

There was unfamiliarity about wow last night, about dalaran, about the people I have come to call friends. I’ll grant you it was a raid night and people were busy, but it seemed quiet, It did not feel like a living, breathing MMO, but a stale, dark, RPG.

The reason I return to wow is not because I have an abundance of spare time, in the same way I don’t write this blog just because there is nothing better to do. I play wow for the enjoyment it has given me, for the friends I have made, and the things I have, and still want to accomplish.

I have been secretly building up to last night for a week or so, planning my return to the game that has given me so many good memories, and maybe my expectations were to grand, maybe it was just a bad time to return with all that’s going on, maybe im looking for something that doesn’t exist anymore.

Im hoping to get involved in a raid this weekend, hoping that it will spark off that comradery that you only feel in the middle of battle. Maybe I’ll spend an hour or two before hand setting myself some real targets…. I do like achievements.

Anyway, the little posting I have done of late has all been quite dark and depressing, so, to the few people that may be reading this (and yes I know you’re still out there even if you’re embarrassed to admit it), here’s a few posts around the blogsphere to keep you occupied (and informed)….

Matts Guide to Healing Flame Leviathan
The Dueg’s First Impressions of Ulduar
What did Kestrel Think?

Keep up the good work guys

~Cav~