Interview with da' boss.

Recently after a raid I "sat down" so to speak with my guild leader Xaas, a Draenei enhancement shaman (and a fury warrior's best friend), to get his thoughts on WoW, raiding, and and online gaming in general.

Me: Alright then, well first off how long have you been playing WoW? How'd you get into it and into raiding?

Xaas: Well, lets see, I started playing WoW, in open Beta, So October of 2004. How I got into Raiding, Well I dont really remember this was back int he days of UBRS being the endgame instance. So I suppose when Molten Core launched. Which was mid 05'? That basically resulted in a guild of PvPers being bored, looking for something to do.

Me: What was raiding like then as opposed to now?

Xaas: Ha! Has it changed. Yes. Back before Mod's and threat meters, and neat UI's And not to mention 40 people in a Raid, so you could really bring a special needs kid in, hell 10 of em, and still get things done. Consumables, yeah weren't in the game really aside from the bare minimum, No flasks. Classes were either Pro or Noob, and thats how it went. Now anyone can be any thing and pull off raiding. Even a Ret paladin has a spot these days.

Me: Why do you raid? Why do you think others raid?

Xaas: Why do I raid? The opportunity to yell at 24 people and feel superior with my pixilated amazingness. Why do others raid? To be yelled at by my pixilated amazingness.

Me: Speaking of your pixelated amazingness, how'd you end up being raid/guild leader, and what's it like?

Xaas: How did I end up here? Proces of Elimination and too stubborn to let it die. Whats it like…hmmm well I guess the best response to that would be, It has its ups and downs, It’s stressfuly the more serious you are about it. I myself am kind of passionate about it. I believe I should be able to expect from others what I put in. So its fun when you win, but if people screw the pooch, well I start to hemmorage.

Me: Alrighty, last question. Where do you see the future of games like WoW going, and the communities and guilds that go along with games like it?

Xaas: Interesting question. I think the MMO community as a whole has just begun. It’s a level of gaming that brings people from all over the world together to well lets face it, live a reality they couldn’t otherwise. As far as the guild concept that’s all in the hands of developers. If they deem to push more towards casual gamers, then I think Guilds in their large numbers will wither to nothing honestly. But as long as there is raiding, and as long as there is pixels to make us feel like we accomplished something, I will always be here to yell at my raid and make sure it gets done.

We were heroes

Thalassar smash!

Over the last week or so Acies has seen some improvement and then of course our inevitable regression back to morons. We took out Azgalor again (finally) and got a few nights worth of attempts on Archimonde. In the World of warcraft ore Archimonde is one of the most powerful beings in existance, and the general of the Burning Legion's armies, so naturally he is anything but an easy raid boss. The bad thing about Archimonde is that if anyone dies, ANYONE at all, it will most likely result in a wipe (everyone dying). Now, half the time I am surprised that 25 people can breath at the same time, let alone be coordinated enough to avoid the many different agonizing deaths that Archimonde offers his victims. Snaking trails of doomfire that have minds of their own, a curse that can kill you in seconds, constantly being shot up in the air to a height that is very fatal on the way down, and let's not forget his entire raid fear, are just some of the many ways in which you can die to Archimonde. Not so bad right? Oh wait I forgot to mention if someone dies he deals a nasty amount of damage to the entire raid using a soulcharge, which can often kill someone else and give him ANOTHER soulcharge and so on and so forth. So yeah he's a jerk.
I recently switched Thalassar's main specialization from protection to fury, so I'm not a tank any more, but now I am a damage dealer. My fury gear was really just random stuff I picked up while tanking that no one else wanted, but after a few weeks of effort I have a decent set of gear, enough that I can top the damage charts on quite a few fights. This means though that I like many dps can tend to concentrate a little too much on the damage meter and a little too less on not dying. This is represented well by my 100+ gold nightly repair bills. But anyway, I digress.
Everyone is pretty frustrated right now because it just seems like too many people are coming to the raids thinking that the rest of us are going to pull them along without them putting in their 100% effort. Because of this we've been wiping a lot to bosses that we've killed easily a million times, like Na'Jentus and Supremus in Black Temple, which is all we killed last night in four hours of raiding (Rage "Looterchill" Winterchill too, but he doesn't count). Raiding, like any team sport or competition, requires every single member to be contributing and giving their all in what they're doing. So many of these difficult fights are unforgiving to mistakes, and if a healer dies or we lose too many dps and can't kill a boss fast enough, it can mean death for us all. Constantly wiping on the same boss is horrible for guild morale as well, and raiders require a constant supply of dead bosses and loot to keep them happy and entertained, because when you get right down to it this is still just a game and people need to enjoy a game to play it. Xaas our GM is stressing out right now trying to get us to get our act together, and I only hope that we can. Acies has been #1 on our server since it was created over two years ago, but a Horde raiding guild called The Leage has tied us in progression (they've killed all the bosses we have) and for the first time in our server's history we are in danger of being second best. More updates to follow on how this stressful situation resolves. Hopefully the next time will involve the news of a dead Archimonde!

Slideshow

/headdesk

Hi my name is Ryan, but for the purposes of this blog I am Thalassar, the level 70 Night Elf warrior from the famous guild of Acies. Well ok we're not technically that famous, unless you're on the Sentinels realm of World of Warcraft, where we are the stuff of legend. Acies the the top raiding guild of the server, and home of the strongest and most skilled heroes on Sentinels. What's raiding you say? What's World of Warcraft you ask? Perhaps I should take a moment to explain myself, aso just click on any of the highlighted words if you don't understand a term. Raiding is the term for a raid of players that cooperate together to achieve a goal in a game. A "raid" is the gaming term for a group of players larger then 5, whereas 5 players and lower are considered a "party". Follow me so far? Anyway, when a raid is "raiding" that means they are in an instance attempting to complete it. One has to fight through many trash mobs in order to reach the many bosses in the instance. Raid bosses have millions of hp and hit like a truck. Many of them have specific tricks and gimmicks in order to kill them, and believe it or not, it can be very difficult to have 25 people working in perfect unison.
Last night we went into Mt. Hyjal again, and we easily downed Rage Winterchill, Anethron, and Kaz'Rogal, but that stupid jerk Azgalor gave us some trouble again. The main gimmick to the Azgalor fight is that he periodically casts "Doom" on a player, which basically automatically kills you no matter what, and spawns a doomguard (big scary demon) in your place, which a tank (the guy who takes the damage) has to pick up. Now all the doomed person has to do is run away to a pre-determined tanking spot, but our dps (damage-per-second aka damage dealers) can be less then intelligent at times. We only got one good attempt on him though, because it was getting close to the end of raid time (We raid from 8-12 Sun-Thurs) and we wiped on the 20 minutes worth of Scourge (undead/demons) trash waves that come before every boss in Mt. Hyjal. Not a big deal though, I think we got him tonight, even though we've killed him before, for the last two weeks we've been /headdesking on him, and our guild leader Xaas is starting to become quite unhappy with us. Anyway, that's all for now, I'll update again soon with some pictures from our raiding shenanigans.