Author: Laura Highcove

Lich King clear!

Laura Highcove

So it was quite the busy week for all of us. We did two runs through Horde cities and got a fair portion of our members their Black War Bears. Lots of fun and lots of lag. Still a few people who missed a boss or two due to the laggy disconnects, so we’ll be going back some day.

Cleared out Naxx25 again and picked up a new achievement and had some fun while we were there.

Then we headed to Obsidian Sanctum and killed Sartharion while leaving Tenebron up.

And finally we got around to taking Malygos down, getting many people their Champion of the Frozen Wastes achievement.

With that done, we’ve finished all Lich King has to offer in way of progression, so now it’s a month (at minimum) of finishing off achievements for cool prizes and shiny epix.

More dead things

Laura Highcove

Sartharion25 was finished on an off-night. Then for our raiding week, we ran through the rest of Naxx25 at nearly a sprint.

That done we broke into two groups to clear out Naxx10 just for some more gear. (I know…OOB farming gear. It’s craaaaazy.)

Fun stuff

Laura Highcove

So I hit 80 in wow the Wednesday after it came out. Since then we’ve cleared 25-man Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum (all drakes down) and have worked a little bitty bit on Malygos. I’m working on my gear and rep, but I also found out about a really rare spawn that I’ve been camping since I hit 80 to no avail.

NaNoWriMo was a flop, the lure of WoW was just too great. Had the expansion come out in any other month I would’ve been fine. So my goal now is to finish off Shifting Winds (Only another few chapters) and then start posting Silent Wings and finishing that off. As such I will have another chapter of Shifting Winds up tomorrow and I’ll go from there.

Continuing with the Left Foot

Laura Highcove

So Sunday I was off doing non-WoW things (Yes they are out there.) when I got a call from my brother saying we were doing Naxx-25. On I hopped, short on consumables, but higher on expectations. Maybe all the nerfs had been just for the casual 10 man… So in we jumped with all of the people who had made 80 since Thursday. And we cleared two wings and Patchwerk.

Despite the clamoring to keep going, or coming back Monday to try and get server first Kel, it was decided that we would wait until our normal Thursday raid.

Starting off on the Right Foot

Laura Highcove

So Wrath of the Lich King came out November 13th (Thursday), and for the next week it was not uncommon to see 30+ people on at all random times of the day. Our first people started hitting 80 on Monday and by Thursday we had enough for a 10-man jaunt into Naxx.

It was easy…like really easy. Most of us had only replaced a piece or two, and several of us were new mains, but the only boss that gave us more than one or two burp wipes was Grobbulus, and that was only because one of our paladins had a talent that cut the duration of his diseases by 50%. >.> After going into Karazhan @70 and having our tank get three shot by trash, it was a bit of a surprise, but I guess my expectations of the instance were too high…or my expectations of the guild were too low.

Either way, a three day clear. We got some great upgrades. (There was a *lot* of leather and I think I heard Alt had every appropriate weapon available by the end of the night.) And we actually did the Heigen dance! Despite the numerous comments of “man they really nerfed this place” throughout the nice, I guess it was mostly fun.

AND that wasn’t even the end of the weekend. After we had finished off Kel, we decided to jaunt over to the Obsidian Dragonshrine and take out Sarbagtherion. (Yeah, that name won’t stick…)

Nano Update! …and LK too.

Laura Highcove

Well technically you can see my current word count by clicking on the little button I put up, but for those of you too lazy to do so: 15,802. I’m a bit behind, but I have been since day two or three. I just kind of keep following the goal by a few thousand words each day. Whatever works I guess.

So yesterday was patch Tuesday for WoW. Servers went down around 8, came back up around 2 as planned, and went down again almost immediatly. They didn’t come back up last night. Apparently there was a problem where everyone’s mail and auctions just disappeared, but this morning they say they’re working on a problem where people were buying arena items without paying the correct amounts for them, which is why it’s still not up. Pretty horrible way to lead into the day before the newest expansion. Won’t do people much good to go to the midnight release tonight if the servers are still down.

That being said, I am still very excited about the expansion, and I know they’ll fix it eventually. Leveling up for BC was one of the more fun times I’ve had in WoW, just because everyone on the server was leveling up at the same time. Pugs were successful because the good players who usually hide away in their guilds were out there looking for groups, and everyone was helping everyone else with quests because everyone needed to do the same quests at about the same times.

At the same time, I am feeling that my decision to switch my main was a good one at this point. I got extremely lucky that the pet that I went back and leveled ended up being the best raid pet, but now that that’s changed I see less alure in the hunter class. I mean there are always going to be cookie cutter specs. There will always be talents that are just necessary to do the most damage, but those are built into the hunter. For me, changing my pet is changing that character. I know, RP crap, but that’s how it is. The fact that I would have to go out there and get a devilsaur (which I hate) or a spirit cat (which are cool) like *everyone* else, no options…yeah it’s just a bit much. Same reason I’ve hated cats even though there is such a variety of skins. Either way, I’m probably being whiny, but I’m allowed. It is a game, and I’m in it to have fun.

Now I’ll still be leveling and gearing Nabith. I think I did a good job of gearing Near outside of raids, so I can do that with Nabith as well. I also think I want to gear Pandemonium. While tanks won’t be in as short supply (hopefully…) just having an aoe tank has come in handy a lot, and so I want to have the option when I need it. Amebil will continue to just exist as an alchemist/skinner, and same with Isrio. Neither will get fabulous gear, but I still have all my bases covered.

Hopefully the servers come up sometime today so I can get everything set for tomorrow, including filling my bank to give me more bag space, and positioning myself in Menathil (still can’t spell it) Harbor for transfer to Borean Tundra as soon as I have LK installed.

NANOWRIMO

Laura Highcove

So every year in November this happens. In short, it is a wildly popular event in which people all over the world sit down and challenge themselves to write a novel (50,000 words) between November 1st and 30th.

I have not participated in years past for the basic reason that, even though I have tons of ideas, I have started on every one of my stories, and one of the rules is that you can not have started on the story (sans outlines and notes and the like) before November 1st. So since every idea I have for a story has been started, I’m technically disqualified.

However, this year I do wish to participate, and as such I am going to by throwing out what I have already written for my story Silent Wings, which I really want to start over from scratch anyway. I suppose it’s a little bit of a stretch on the rules, but I’m letting it go for the sake of trying to power write a story in a month. (Unfortunate that Lich King is coming out the 13th, but I will prevail.)

You can see the outline I have online for Silent Wings here. I probably won’t post it as I go, unless you really want to see the trash that might be coming out. The next four days, I’m going to be working on my outline and reworking my notes.

Move over M’uru

Laura Highcove

It always feels good to down new bosses, even with some of the pride taken away by the fact that the bosses lost 30% of their health and we gained 51 point talents. (It’s Bacon!) Still it was great to be able to take a few two-three week learning curves and toss them on their butts. M’uru is a fun and easy fight, made even funner by only having to spend a night and a half to learn him.

Our only issues involved bad timing in ending phase 1, and some positioning problems in phase 2. On our kill the first was a non-issue. We managed to down him seconds before the adds were finished off and in time such that no more adds spawned.

With M’uru behind us we headed down to the Sunwell. We got in several solid attempts as we worked with the dragons and making up macros to switch among dps targets. I see no problem with assuming we’ll get him down before the expansion.

OOBer Buffs and Nerfs

Laura Highcove

So about four weeks ago, OOB ran into an odd problem. We didn’t have enough dps. Our tanks and healers were spiffy, but when it came to Brut we could no longer put out the raid dps. After a night of Koi wanting to rip his hair out, he called raiding until the patch.

Our raiders went off to do other things. We ground for rep, pets, mounts and we invited for LK. Some of us went to raid with other guilds for the break. It was a good break, full of beta and happiness.

So the patch hit. Many of us cleaned up with inscription, and Thursday we came back and started raiding again. Felmyst was much the same, fail because of encapsulate and someone was just learning to see her pre-breath movements. Anyway, death.

After that we learned the gauntlet in all it’s post nerf glory and wiped on the twins pull for the rest of the evening. (And a little conflag.) But after a bit more preparation we came back and downed them as well.

Then it was finally time to see the guild breaker M’uru and we beat in his face in as his adds beat in ours.