Summer seems to be an interesting time for WoW. Students have considerably more free time, being free from school, yet guilds everywhere seem to be dragging a bit. A lot of people are attributing it to a pre-expansion lull. And though I was playing last summer, I don't remember enough to make a comparison. I didn't have any level 80 characters and I was working my first full-time, i-have-to-commute-every-day job.
Memento, too, is struggling. As I've mentioned, we have gained and lost players over the last few months. At our present moment in time, we've gained exactly one more player than we've lost. A slightly noobish paladin that happens to be the brother of some other player nobody in Memento can stand. Good times.
So, reduced to our core set of people, Memento is left in the position of pugging 2-4 raiders for anything we want to run. This is not a problem for the weekly and VoA runs. But lately it has been hard to pug spots for ICC.
Have so many people downed the Lich King that its not interesting anymore?
I don't know if this is due to a summer lull or pre-expansion jitters but I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to get to smack Arthas in the face sometime before I hit level 85.
Any pug can go 6/12 in ICC, I think. I mean, certainly if we can do it nobody else should find it terribly difficult. Don't get me wrong, we're good. But we're mostly dps. Picking up good tanks and healers is altogether a more difficult thing.
Also, the idea of there even being a pre-expansion "i have nothing to do" experience blows my mind a little. There's SO MUCH that I want to do before Cataclysm comes out that I don't even know where to start.
For example, all of the Vanilla Dungeons and Raids. I haven't done all of them. I hadn't even done most of them before a couple days ago. I mean, yeah, Aioka was randomed into most of them over the course of her leveling, but most of those never completed. Pugtards at levels 50-58 can't even follow basic directions.
So, I've seen... parts of them. Several bloggers recently have talked about how epic Blackrock Mountain is. Blackrock Depths in particular. So I took Mara and went off to pay Blackrock Mountain a visit. I was halfway through UBS before I remembered I had done it and Blackwing Lair before. So that only left the other two. Of course, Aioka randomed into both BRD and Lower Blackrock Spire several months ago. Doesn't mean I knew how to get around them. Because she was never in a group that completed them.
One particularly memorable event was in LBS. The group wiped to a bunch of dragonkin outside a locked door in the room to the left of the entrance. I now know that this section is the entrance to UBS and we had no business being there anyway, but at the time I just made the run back to Blackrock and waited for the rest of the group. And waited. And waited. After ten minutes or so the "Rez me" and "Res me, I'm lost" started coming in. And the reason I remember this so clearly is because NO ONE SAID 'PLEASE'. If they had, I probably would have done it. Even though I'm totally against it; if anyone had ASKED I would have cheerfully hunted down their broken corpse and shoved their spirit back into it just to continue this already clearly pointless adventure. When the tank, who apparently was smart enough to find the entrance, started in with "Why don't you just res them? ffs" I lost it. I ranted about the lack of courtesy on the internet and how impolite people are and how fucking lazy do you have to be to skip typing "pls" and I ragequit. I quit the game and turned my whole computer off because that's how DONE I was with Blackrock Mountain and retarded random groups.
I can admit now (now that I'm far enough removed from levels 50-60) that both BRD and LBS are epic. They have just a huge scope: they actually look like cities, there are a ton of bosses and mobs to kill, and the storylines that exist there are also pretty epic. The downside of these huge and involved instances is that I spent an unholy amount of time lost. Even with the advantages of the Dungeon Guide and, you know, the internet I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing.
When I got as far as the room outside of Emperor Dagran's room, Ann had to tell me about the two fire braziers that have to be lit within a certain amount of time or the doors won't open. Oh yeah, and the room is packed to the brim with non-elite mobs. This isn't too big a deal for a level 80 warlock who actively enjoys slaughtering things. We've all had those days, I think. And when all you want to do is kill things, wow certainly delivers.
When I finished with BRD, I went over and attuned myself to the Molten Core. I spent a few minutes staring in awe at the Black Forge. Then, because I'm lazy, I asked Ann to group up with me so I could walk into the portal to MC so that when I walked out again I would be back in Blackrock Mountain.
Well, Mord saw where I was headed and thought I was going to try that for my next solo project. He said it couldn't be done. Turns out, it can be done. (Youtube link: Ragnaros) Maybe not necessarily by me, but other warlocks have certainly tried and succeeded. Maybe I will give it a shot one day.
LBS was a bit easier in terms of getting around than BRD. I noticed that in LBS there's mostly only one route to follow. Any other route involves jumping down off bridges and stuff. Which is viable - or so I read. If all you want to do is kill Wyrmthalak, which is all you need for the achievement, you can skip most of everything else. It involves jumping off a ledge in one of the early rooms. If you're anything like me, you'll never find it.
Other things I'm trying to complete before Cataclysm include the Keymaster achievement and Karazhan (also soloable, I've heard). I've done all the Outland dungeons except the Shattered Halls. I've toyed with the idea of chasing the Loremaster achievement. But I haven't committed myself to it. Yet.
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