Do you ever wonder what might have been?

Vok, who plays on the same realm as us, ranted about Priests in his Healing Q&A. Obviously he’s played with some terrible Priests this expansion, none of which, it seems, can remember to click Fortitude. Or perhaps none that can afford candles.

But Vok doesn’t realise how close he came to raiding with me.

When Lathere and I needed a new guild at the start of Wrath we came as a linked pair. A buy one, get one free type deal (I think Lath was the one they were buying and I was the freebie). We joined a raiding guild called Defiance – a step up for us, or so we thought. Some of our other friends followed us and we were happy to have them with us.

But I wasn’t happy in Defiance from day 1. I argued endlessly for reform. Their DKP rules were grossly unfair to newcomers and favoured officers and long term players (even ones who I’d never even raided with). And the prospect of winning cloth armor seemed hopeless. There were no rules to protect us from leather/mail/plate wearers and the raid was lousy with Warlocks, Mages and Priests. I won more gear from PuGs than I did from guild runs.

The night we first stepped foot in Ulduar I gquit. I’ll admit, it was a spur of the moment type thing. Yes, it was that bad. And Ulduar wasn’t as forgiving as Naxxramas. Lathere and 2 raiding friends of ours quit too.

We had no other guilds lined up. We were un-guilded. And we were a four package deal: me, Lathere, a Resto Shaman and a DK. And the guild that we just left? Hated my guts.

Remember how I said quitting was spur of the moment decision? Well the next day Lathere called me and gave me the older sister sensible speech which boils down to “how could you be so reckless? look at what you’ve done!”. While I had been ranting about unfair DKP rules and awarding loot to players who consistently disconnect for entire encounters, Lathere had been planning a more sensible exit strategy.

We both try to keep in touch with the nice people that we’ve raided with over years no matter where they go and it’s fair to say that there’s someone in most of the serious 25 man raiding guilds on Barthilas that we have some history with. Perhaps you could even go far enough to say “we have friends in high places”. Nah, that is going too far.

But Lath and I got talking and we soon realised there was really only a couple of guilds that we wanted to be part of.

One of those guilds had stolen two of my favourite people from me: a Hunter by the name of Stardown (back in the days of BC) and a Shaman by the name of Rumbrb (at the very start of Wrath). Stardown was Obsolete’s Hunter class lead and an officer. And he definitely deserved the position. If I wanted to wind down after a raid I would just ask Stardown a Huntery question, or use the words “Attack Power” in his presence, and the steady stream of numbers would put me right to sleep.

The other guild had coughed up an (alt) Protection Warrior who tanked with us in the Burning Crusade. He had managed to steal my best friend away from me in-game. For at least six months all I ever heard was “Caco and I are doing x instance” and “sorry Caco just invited me to do something”. Tanks and their healers. What can you do? Anyway I figured if Maria liked him, he must be alright. Caco returned his alt to his raiding guild, Vitare, in Wrath and became an officer.

And do you know, while I’m writing this, I just realised they have the exact same first name in real life? I’ll give you a hint… it starts with the letter m.

There were actually two other potential guilds that we considered less seriously:

One guild had pinched another one of my favourite people, a Mage. I still remember the first conversation I had with Majesty on-flight to Tempest Keep. And it still makes me smile. Unfortunately the guild he joined in Wrath, Exiztence, also contained the most annoying player (and a Priest! for shame!) on the server. Plus they seemed like tight-asses. So they were out.

The last guild we considered, Annexation, had grabbed up quite a few (at least five, I think) of our players at the start of Wrath just at the time when we were desperately trying to get consistent numbers for 25 man raids. I’ve always thought of them as poaching our players. So they were out, too.

So I logged in the day after we /gquit and Caco, from Vitare, whispered me within minutes:

“So I heard you left Defiance…”

Stardown, from Obsolete, didn’t log in until an hour later. He offered us a place in their next guild raid and a standing invitation to join Obsolete. But by then I was already somewhat committed to our (at the time not yet written) Vitare application. I politely refused his offer to raid with them because I didn’t want to be saved in case Vitare wanted to bring me to a trial raid that same week.

So we joined Vitare. And we’re still there.

Annexxation disbanded. All our friends/guild members who left us for Annexation are now in another guild altogether. They’re doing quite well.

Exiztence very nearly disbanded. Or disbanded and reformed. It’s hard to tell. A chunk of their raiding team left to start their own, extremely successful, guild. Several of their members, including my friend Maj, changed factions and joined a successful Horde guild on Barthilas. I’m still a bit sad that I can’t chat with him anymore.

Obsolete have had a rocky time of it, too. They had their GM step down. At one point it looked as though they were going to stop running 25 mans altogether. And it seemed as though they were forever recruiting a decent Priest (which explains Vok’s hatred towards Priests). My friend Stardown stopped playing WoW while we were all still in our Trial period with Vitare. My friend Rumbrb no longer raids 25 mans and raids 10 mans instead with some of the original Obsolete raiders.

And Vitare? Doing better than I had ever hoped.

But I can’t help but think how different it could have turned out. If Caco hadn’t been online when I logged in that day and it had been Stardown who asked first? We would have joined Obsolete, I’m sure of it.

Do you have your own World of Warcraft sliding doors moment? One decision, or a twist of fate that lead you in a completely new direction?

When a guild disbands: It's not pretty.

On Sunday night while Vitare was bashing their heads against Heroic Northern Beasts, we got some pretty shocking news. The #2 Alliance guild on the server was disbanding. These were the players chasing the leading Alliance guild for fastest progression on the realm – and sometimes winning.

I normally take this kind of stuff with a grain of salt, but seeing I have some friends in this guild, I thought I would try and find out what was happening. It didn’t take long for confirmation to come through – the GM and 2 officers were quitting the game. This had left them short of their GM, Main and Off Tank, cornerstones of a stable raiding guild, so things were looking pretty shaky.

This is not the first Barthilas guild that has fallen since patch 3.2 either. Another Alliance guild that consistently ranked in the top 5 on the server changed their goals and pace from “hardcore” to “semi-hardcore”.

I think the reason for these disbands all stem from the completely unreasonable and terrible server instability raiders are experiencing on Barthilas since Trial of the Crusader was released.

Disconnects and Demoralised Raiders

It took us 30 attempts this raid lockout to get Heroic Northrend Beasts. We tried perhaps 20 attempts the week past before giving up and returning to Ulduar.

Each attempt we had at least 1 (more often than not up to 5) players disconnect during the first phase of the encounter. After the third disconnect, people started being replaced. When you’ve played with these same people for months and never seen them disconnect before, at some point you can’t keep blaming their ISPs (or as our GM always claims, their low “upload speed”).

Disconnecting frequently or experiencing 5 second casts times for your instant spells only inside Trial of the Crusader is not normal. At some point you realise the problem is bigger than yourself and your raid and, whatever it is, it’s at Blizzard’s end.

When it comes to heroic modes, you need everyone to be performing their best. When 3 people are dead before phase 1 finishes because they lag or DC during fire or a Snobold drops on them, you have next to no chance at completing the encounter. Just losing 1 DPS temporarily to a disconnect will set you behind the enrage time.

Disconnects and lag impacted a good 90% of our attempts.

We found that the lag spikes occurred in both phase 1 and phase 2 for Northern Beasts. The biggest problem with this was that healers couldn’t reactively heal Impale and we experienced plenty of tank deaths.

Progression Cycles

While Vitare chose to persevere, I have mates in other guilds who have instead elected to work only on Ulduar Hard Modes because wiping due to lag is simply too frustrating.

I think Vitare probably shocked quite a few guilds by downing Heroic Northern Beasts – this pushed us into the top 5 guilds of the server. We are lucky, Cass and I joined after quite a few of their core players left/stopped raiding with the release of Ulduar. The healing team was in tatters. And many other raiders were trials during those early Ulduar weeks.

Sure, this probably slowed down our Ulduar progression, but now for Trial of the Crusader our core group of players (especially the tanks and healers) are strong, experienced at working together and we are determined. If there were players or officers feeling the slightest bit “over it” or negative I’m sure things would have gone very differently in the Trial of Crusader.

A guild will have lows and highs, progress quickly then hit a roadblock or suddenly struggle for numbers. Be confident that you will pull through it. And if you have a dedicated officer team, agree on what your goals are, chances are, you will pull through.

The Last Straw

The guilds that have disbanded on Barthilas in the last couple weeks were used to competing for server firsts. They were the hardcore of the hardcore. The type of players that you would invite to a PuG run of anything and they would (usually silently) kick ass and pull out some weird tricks on a boss fight.

How can you manage a serious attempt at a boss when your long term raiders keep disconnecting? You know your players have the skill, but you are forced to remove them from the raid because they do more harm than good if they disconnect.

Do you recruit more players? Do you keep only those whose connection seems to cope better than others? How do you evaluate their skill when everyone is affected by lag and are performing worse than usual? What if Blizzard fix the server-side issues tomorrow?

At the end of the day, the current server lag issues are outside of our control. Until they are fixed I expect that many guilds with players of great skill will see little progression. And the officers of those guilds will have to perform a difficult juggling act to keep their raiders happy. I can completely understand how, at some points, the urge to quit becomes incredibly strong.

The Fall Out

Vitare are recruiting at the moment. As with any major content release the officers have been evaluating who stuck around when things got boring in the previous patch, and who didn’t.

Many of our new recruits will not make it through their trial period. And not because they are bad players. Because they disconnect.

I expect we’ll see an influx of applications from members these guilds who have disbanded. But I don’t quite think Vitare raids with the same mindset or intensity as these other guilds did. Many a raider has been kicked from the guild for what essentially boils down to loyalty (or lack thereof) and many an applicant has been turned down for questionable behavior in their previous guilds/realm.

I hope to see a new “hardcore” guild or two start up in their place on the server. There ought to be a stepping stone in skill and dedication between us and #1. Or am I just arguing that there are degrees of “hardcore”?

I hope that Barthilas guilds don’t server hop to try and find a more stable raiding platform, there is already such a select pool of players and guilds to choose from at the progression end. I hope Blizzard fix whatever is causing the problem/s before it gets to that point.

Lathere and I came somewhat late to the raiding game in Burning Crusade, dipping our toes into Karazhan several months later than the serious raiding guilds on Barthilas. We were pretty noob. We wiped, oh man, we wiped. But, in our casual two-nights-a-week way, we understood we would be forever playing catch-up, and we didn’t mind. We kept raiding and trying to kill bosses at our level.

Greater rewards for more difficult challenges? Nah.

At the near end of the Burning Crusade, Blizzard created a ton of purchasable items for players using Badges of Justice, the precursor to Emblems, in order to bring newcomers and recently turned level 70s up to Tier 6 item stats (the items were equivalent in stat level – not actual Tier armor pieces) and therefore have a chance to participate in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple raiding. They also removed the attunements so you didn’t have to complete the Tier 5 raids – a significant challenge on its own.

Well at the time I can tell you that I was absolutely a “casual” player. And I ran Karazhan over and over again for Badges in order to upgrade my gear. Did it push us to do Tier 6 raiding as a guild? Not really. All we did was spend more and more time collecting badges.

Sunwell Plateau, the final raid instance of the expansion, was released at the same time as all this new Badge gear. I knew that I would never be skilled, geared and committed enough to enter Sunwell Plateau. Guilds who cleared Black Temple each week impressed the heck out of me. But I thought, if we could just get a bit better and wipe less, maybe one day we’d be good enough a group to gain entry into those raid zones.

Let me repeat, when the rest of us were clawing our way to Tier 6 equivalent items, the leading guilds were given a shiny new raid zone with depth to experience. We’re not talking just one or two bosses here completed in a hour or two.

When Wrath of the Lich King was released it only included one Tier level, Tier 7, implemented in the game. Naxxramas, whilst having a ton of bosses, was simply too easy/quick to complete. Obsidian Sanctum and Eye of Eternity are both really really short – 1 boss. You could do the three combined within a few raid nights per week.

Ulduar has satisfied me as a raider (and as a semi-serious raider at that). The early fights are easier than the last bosses. There are unusual challenges along the way. The instance itself is a good length to clear in the space of a lockout week once you’ve downed each boss. Friends who have beaten some of the tricky hardmodes earn my respect.

We’ve been in Ulduar for about 4 months. In that time our casual friends from Burning Crusade have talked about doing 10 Ulduar on and off but it never seems to happen. Doesn’t really surprise me, because they tend to organise events on the spur of the moment based on who’s online. You could have 8 people ready to go and then one person will change their mind and say they’re going to log off to watch some TV.

In comes Patch 3.2. Theoretically I knew that Emblems of Conquest were going to be made freely available, instead of limited to Ulduar bosses, but the reality is much more disturbing than I thought. Two points of view:

Option A – Miss Dedicated

• “Experience” Ulduar as soon as it is released
• Attend as many of your guild raids as possible and be patient when you wipe. Make time to do 10 mans as well because Emblems of Conquest drop there too and it takes weeks to get enough Emblems for a Tier armor token.
• Consider splashing out gold to get Runed Orbs to upgrade your belt and boots… nah too expensive
• After 4 months be content with your gear – it’s not the hardmode stuff, but it’s good, and sprinkled with Naxx 25 items anyway

Option B – Mr Patient

• Know that eventually you and some mates will go check out Ulduar when you’re ready
• Run raids when you feel like it, DC when you’ve had enough
• Consider splashing out gold to get Runed Orbs to upgrade your belt and boots… nah too expensive
• Hope you’ll get lucky and get the BiS Naxx stuff – Torch of Holy Fire ftw!

After four months. If only WoW were a fashion parade...

Now, 4 months later, all Mr Patient has to do is run alot of heroic instances (something he finds pretty darn easy) and he too can get Ulduar equivalent gear and three pieces of Tier 8.5 armor. If he got those BiS Naxx/OS/EoE stuff, well his gear models might not match as prettily as someone wearing 5/5 Conquerors, but the stats will be as good.

I’m not being stereotypical here. Mr Patient is my brother. I live with him. When I’m up 4 nights a week to dutifully complete my raids and not leave before raid’s over, he’s watching TV. On the weekends he’ll make an effort and PuG Naxx, but after a couple wings he’ll DC and take a break. In the last few days he has earnt more Emblems of Triumph than I, does daily dungeons while I raid, and has already gotten his Tier 8.5 helm.

He has been running the new dungeon – the 5 man Trial of the Champion – on normal and heroic and has picked up several great epics including the tanking one that my guild’s main tank – in full Ulduar gear – is desperate for. Even I swapped out Cosmic Lights for a new neckpiece from the heroic for my healing set. And the heroic wasn’t hard.

It’s as simple as this. You can’t compare the difficulty of Ulduar and Heroics and give out the same rewards.

This is a complete turn around from Blizzard’s stance at the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. When it was announced that each raid instance would be tuned for 10 man group (normal) and 25 man groups (heroic) they made it clear that the item level of dropped loot would be different, just as the Emblems would be different. And the rewards would be commensurate.

People are not jumping from Tier 4 to Tier 6 here. They’re going from the easiest, entry level raid (Naxx – Tier 7) to the next tier of gear (Ulduar – Tier 8). Is this the way of the future? Wiping the slate clean with each new patch?

Has nothing been learned from the Badges of Justice days?

So my brother, Mr Patient, can close the gear gap now. That’s true. Is it going to open up “doors” for him and allow him to experience Ulduar and other end-game raids? Nope. He’ll just keep running heroics and Naxx 10. Why not?

I wouldn’t be so disappointed by this if it weren’t for the new raid instance: Trial of the Crusader. We’re being given 1 new boss per week. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, you can’t try it on Heroic mode until you’ve cleared the whole place on Normal. The Northrend Beasts encounter was fun. But it took up 1 hour of our time. Then we headed back to Ulduar, uncertain if it was worth pursuing Ulduar hardmodes at all. Trial of the Crusader is where our next Tier upgrades are after all.

So, other than Algalon, I’m pretty confident that I’ve experienced all the end game bosses available in Wrath. Yet I have nothing left to strive for. Blizzard can dream up a new boss and drip-feed it to us each week in the Trial of the Crusader and until they believe it’s gone on long enough. And then they can open up Heroic mode.

In the days of Burning Crusade I knew it was my skill that held me back. Now there is no boss/raid to anticipate and strive towards implemented in the game, Blizzard will give it to us when they’re ready, not when we are.