Raiding commences

So... SiB took it's first turn back to raiding this week. I seriously think that's the most fun i've had spending basically 6 hours dying (over 2 nights) ever. Don't get me wrong, we weren't completely unsuccessful. We downed Magmaw on the first night, after... 4 tries I think? And then we spent the rest of the first night working out the kinks on Omnitron Defense System. We came back on the 2nd night and wiped for another few tries, before finally taking them down. Holy donkey fucks these fights are intense. Magmaw isn't terribly difficult, just took a few tries to perfect what was going on. Omnitron, again, isn't really TECHNICALLY difficult... there is just a SHIT TON going on, and the healers are pretty much in a state of panic for the entire fight. There's a brief bit of the ODS killshot video here. It's taken from the point of view of my dead GM on her death knigget (...say that with a french accent).

Aside from raiding (since that really only took up a small portion of my in-game time), i've been spending a lot of time on my priest doing Archaeology. At first I wasn't really a huge fan of it. I gave it a brief shot a week ago, or something like that and got bored with it REALLY quickly. So, at the time I gave it up as a bad job, but something got me back into it... I don't even remember what it was. I think it was the amusment I was getting from one of my guildies' inability to find Tyrande's Favorite Doll... so I told myself that I bet I could level arch from the ground up and find the trinket before him. Well, today my archaeology hit... 418 I think? I'm pretty sure I need to be 450 before the good stuff will have a chance to come up. Last I heard there's still no luck with the trinket for my guildie, so I do have a chance to catch it before him still. we'll see.

That's pretty much how I spent my time this past week. It felt good to get back into raiding. I leave you with a couple killshots. Expect more info when we down Halfus and Valiona & Theralion next week.

More babbling

So i've been neglecting my blog... apologies everybody. I have no intention of stopping blogging, I just haven't had much jump out at me as something that OMG I HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THIS in the last month.

I guess, what i'll do is talk about what i've been doing in game lately. I've not been playing my fuzzbutt as much. Not because I don't like playing him anymore, but more or less he's well geared enough in my mind and we haven't started raiding yet. It was my decision to wait till the last week of January to start our official raiding, and i'm not entirely sure *why* i picked that date... I just kinda did. I figured that it would give everyone who wanted to more than enough time to get themselves "acceptably" geared for raiding, as well as give them time to look over fight strategies and... well... decide on where the fuck we're going first.

I put a post in my guild forums asking all the raiders where they wanted to go first, between the 3 raids (Bastion of Twilight, Blackwing Descent, or Throne of the Four Winds), and it has ended up being a 3 way tie between them... go figure. After that, I asked twitter. I think I may have done that too early, because now I don't remember what most people said... go me. I think it was a lot of Bastion of Twilight, but we'll see lol. (I'll take any opinions in comments as well, so feel free to tell me what you think we should do first ;D)

So... if i've not been playing my druid, what have i been playing? One of my other cadre of 80s? Oh no no, because that would be silly. No, i've actually been playing the absolute *shit* out of my priest... who is now level 85 (that makes a 10th toon over level 80...geeeeeeez. Only my 2nd 85 though). Anyway... After trying to play a priest several times over my wow career, I was finally successful with one, and I think it might end up being my secondary main once the new patch comes through and they fix shadow priest dps. Shadow is pretty fun, and I only died a couple times while levelling to non pvp-related things.

My priest is a female worgen, and I must say... after 85 levels of looking at that model, i'm pretty disappointed in the way they look. The female worgen models look *terrible* to me. Especially after having race changed my druid to a male worgen, which look incredibly badass. I think I might race change or re-customize my priest. Don't know just yet.

I feel like i've kinda been babbling on this post. Hell it's been sitting in my unfinished listing for almost a week. Oh well, I still have a normal subscriber base, so no one's left me yet ;D Thanks for hanging with me all. In other news, SiB raiding starts wednesday and i'm disturbingly excited about it. I should've had us start a week or two ago. Oh well. No excuses now, for people not being ready. I guess that's all for this post.

ALL OF THE ALTS

Fuck.. I hit publish on accident... If you're seeing a blank post, my apologies.

Anyway.. Lately i've been reading a lot of the backlog of Hyperbole and a Half... I literally can't be upset at anything when I read her shit, but I digress. That's what inspired the title of this blogpost. I actually had some more useful-type shit slated to post, but I had a lot of brain stagnation that kept me from fleshing it out properly... I still plan on writing it, I just need to unfog my brain. Not sleeping on a regular schedule will really screw with me.

So, i've been doing a lot of alting lately. I haven't been able to stabilize my schedule to the point of where I can run heroics with my guildies as much as I like. Working overnights sucks you guys.. argh. anyway. I can't even decide on one alt to play over the others, but right now it's mostly been my priest. I levelled as disc until I hit.... 32? I think that's what level you get Shadow Word: Death, and that seemed like a great time to dual spec (bwahaha only 10 gold now) shadow, and try it out.

So, I had a kind of vague idea of what I was going to post, but a discussion JUST popped up on twitter that gave me something a little more interesting to talk about. I want to thank Oestrus (who blogs on World of Matticus and Divine Aegis) for the idea. Inititally her and I had discussed something else, but we had a brief discussion on twitter about whether 10-man and 25-man raids should be held on the same progression chart. She said they should, and I said they shouldn't.. Here's how the conversation went.

Oestrus (to twitter at large): At risk of sounding elitist, I really, really don't like that 10/25 mans make no difference in terms of progression.

Me: How come?

O: I just feel they should be seperate. Maybe it's just old habits dying hard. *shrug*

Me: Eh. I disagree. There are points where 10s are more difficult than 25s, and vice versa. Makes sense to me /shrug.

O: I don't mean it as an insult to 10s, quite the opposite. They should be judged on their merits and we on ours. If I were working my butt off in a 10 man guild I wouldn't want to be competing against 25-man folks.

Me: Oh no, I wasn't taking it as an insult from you. But if they're seperate there will always be those who feel that 10s are inferior than 25s for whatever ludicrous reason.

O: I did 10-man hard modes in ICC for a time. It is work, absolutely. I hated being made to feel less than.

Me: Oh, I agree but like I said, there are others who will always feel that 10s are inferior to 25s if they're not on the same playing field. Hell some people STILL think 10s are inferior. Whatever to them lol.

That's the end of the conversation but it sparked a little thought process in my mind. For all of Wrath 10 and 25 man raids were judged on a seperate scale of progression, with 25's being the "real progression", such as it was. Prior to Wrath, if there was any difference in the number of people required for a raid, then it was specific to that raid, and they were all in one progression line. For instance Kara was 10-man, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon were 25, Zul'Aman was 10, etc, but they were all in progression, in that order. I think Wrath's way worked much better because splitting 25 man raids into two-10 mans doesn't exactly work out right, nor did joining two 10-mans into a 25-man. However, having two seperate progression lines, one for 10s, one for 25s made things a lot easier. You didn't have to combine raid groups, or split them up to reach different raids if you didn't want to... but at the same time it was still flawed in a way.

As I said before, 10s and 25s always competed with each other. 25 man dropped better loot, and was considered the "real" progression. 10 man raids were just inferior, in spite of (at times) being more difficult in one fashion or another. Mistakes tended to be more... life-threatening. Going without a healer could make some encounters un-survivable... going without a DPS could mean you wouldn't beat the enrage timer, etc. But at the same time, 25s had their own issues. There was less room to run around and avoid things (Especially range-oriented things like malleable goo or defile), and there were usually more "obstacles" (3 valks on the lich king fight) to avoid, but mistakes weren't quite as punishing. You could lose a healer and still have 5-6 more.

My point is, 10s and 25s both had their ups and downs, but 25s were held in a higher regard than 10s, and I don't think that should be the case. As it is, Blizzard has changed their focus, and made it so that neither 10 or 25 mans are ranked any differently. There are no more separate achievements for... say killing a certain raid boss on 10 man and 25 man difficulty... there's just the achievement for killing the boss, and that's it.

So, what do you all think? I'd love some feedback... leave me comments!