Andromache: The Witching Hour

And with the downing of Rotface on Monday (after several weeks of wiping) the Shattered Ravens are are the half-way point in Icecrown Citadel. Of course, it's the easier half of the raid (and we can manage the lower four and Fester without too many hassles now) but it's the first time we've been significantly through endgame raid content while its current so I'm happy. The closest we've been previously was Zul Aman in Burning Crusade where we reached Halazzi (with two more bosses to go) before 3.0 and the nerf bat dropped and things became trivial (though to be fair without Wrynn's  ICC buff we'd still be in the lower part of the citadel)

It's likely to be tough going from here on in. Next up are Putricide, Dreamwalker and the Blood Princes, fight's we've "looked at" and died on miserably, but then it doesn't seem that long ago that Saurfang (or even Marrowgar) were wiping us as quickly. The trick, I think, will be maintaining sufficient impetus to keep interest in the raids as far as the Lich King. We've got 2 or 3 months for this (as I don't envisage Cataclysm dropping before October, and November would fit the pattern of previous releases) so we'll have to see ...

While wandering round Dalaran the other day Maebh, my hunter, happened upon a most unusual sight - a gnome the size of a giant, constantly drinking and shifing between various guises (Iron Dwarf, Furbolg, sheep, mounted).

Of course, this quickly drew a crowd and eventually the secret of the unatural growth - Thunderbrew's hard Ale - became apparent (hence the constant drinking as the effect wears off after 10 seconds and needs to be kept fully stacked).

Last night the Ravens finally laid to rest one of the ghosts that have plagued us for the last month or so - Deathbringer Saurfang finally fell and we could push onward into the Upper Spire. Of course, it wouldn't be a Ravens kill without some oddity - most of us were going "damn, so close" when the kill message popped up. You can see how many of us were still standing ...

We took a brief look-see into Upper Spire (or should that be the Death Star , given teh rather strong resemblance) killing Precious and Stinky before being annihilated in our first clash with Festergut (before lag, communications difficulties and bad tempers prompted an end to the evenings fun).

You'll note that I'm not playing Andro but rather my paladin, Buliwyf, despite his being rather less well geared than Andro as we're a tad short of tanks at the moment. It's an interesting change from DPS (albeit terrifying at times) that on the one hand is less intense than DPS - stand at point X and hit the baddy, taunting at appropriate times - but involves a large degree of trust that the healers will keep you up. I'm not deadfully experienced as a tank, so people are placing a fair deal of trust in me but in many regards its less stressful than fights like HoR heroic.

Having just spent 95 badges on a shiney new (and very ugly) hat Andro is taking abreak from heroics too (while hoping for a fourth piece of T10 to drop in VoA). She'll occasionally come out to play, but Buli and Maebh, my hunter, can still benefit from Triumph badges and drops to some extent and so are the priority (as well as my mid-60s Druid and baby Warrior). After a couple of months of little in the way of ranged weapon drops, Mae spectacularly broke her duck this week, finally aquiring the Epic crossbow from Ingvar then the bow from Ick in Pit of Saron (the highpoint of a run that ended with a bugged boss :( )

Leafshine just pointed out (one of?) Blizzard's April fools japes - check out your armoury profile and in addition to seeing your transmogrified selfs, check out how much cheesing and ninjaing you've been doing (and the state of your fishing skills).

Quite cute, though neither of the girls are particularly happy with their dumpy new look (or the mustache). Not much of a change for Buli :)

EDIT: Don't foget to check out Blizzard's other offerings: the Battle.Net Neural Interface or the Equipment Potency EquivalencE Number.

On 11 February 2005 the European servers for WoW launched and the Shattered Ravens were founded. Yep, the guild I'm in is five years old today.
 
We've moved servers since then (we were on Argent Dawn for the first 11 months before moving to Steamwheedle Cartel-EU to escape the lag) and seen expansions take us to Outland and the Northrend. Friends have come and gone over the years, and while I don't recall how many of the initial characters are still active (Andromache didn't come along for a few weeks I don't think, but my palatank Buliwyf was a day-1 character, as I believe was Leafshine), but we're still here and doing our own thing - not always successfully, but having fun nonetheless.

We've seen guild drama and loot drama, and had spectacular loot drops. We've killed raid bosses, and wiped repeatedly. Friendships have been made (and broken). We've laughed ourselves horse, and cried bitter tears.

And we're still here, a wary eye on Icecrown Citadel and it's evil overlord while working our way through Ulduar while heeding the signs of the imminent Cataclysm. We may never face Arthas directly (our numbers are too few and our focus is more on fun than achievement which rather hampers raid progression) but we've played our part in this war.

Will we be here another five years? Who knows? The next expansion will bring sweeping changes to the game and it remains to be seen if that encourages people to play or prompts them to depart. What I am sure of is that I've yet to see an MMO that has the same depth and breadth as WOW, nor the same level of fun.

While not overly original, the new armoury features are pretty nice to look at (though the RSS feed is probably more practical use than the model browser. Anyway, a test to see if they work in MT (Sneaky bit of advertising there I see ... kinda preaching to the choir though :) )

And the RSS feed.

The Ravens haven't raided since before Christmas (a fact that has prompted a number of our more hardcore members to head off and form their own raid-focussed guild and after the pre-Christmas Heroic fest (and the completion of a number of Achievements) there's been a major attack of apathy. I sidestepped this for a while by levelling my baby hunter (not so baby now at lvl72) and doing some lowbie stuff but now I'm back at work I'm finding myself lacking the motivation do do much online.

On the one hand it's like the traditional seasonal overindulgence -  having gorged on the pre-Christmas additions to the game something of a break is called for - but there's also a measure of realization that we're once again in the endgame of a WOW expansion and the options (for Andro at least) are rather limited. She's about as geared as she'll be without raiding (a few additions left, but not stuff she's chasing madly) and she has minimal use for Emblems of Triumph. There's a couple of achievements left in reach, but PvP (BGs are a joke on Ruin) and Raiding form the bulk of those she has left to do, so the odds on completing them are slim - the Raven's are never going to be end-game raiders and I'm not going to move somewhere else.

Intstead I think it's going to be a quieter run up to Cataclysm that'll see Buliwyf (my Palatank) kitted out some more and my hunter and priest levelled to 80. I'll also finally get Eben, my Tauren Druid, to the level cap (he's languished around lvl40 since summer 2005!), but probably by bringing him Alliance-side so he can benefit from the resources of his Alliance cousins.

Assuming, that is, I don't get dragged into Star Trek online (seems unlikely) or one of the other MMO's out there (I am, in fact, contemplating dropping the LOTRO account I've had since Beta, though I may dip my toes into Eve once more). 2008's Wow challengers all proved to be damp squibs (Champions Online and Aion) and prior to that only Lotro and WAR held my interest fore more than a couple of weeks. Realistically, only Star Wars: Old Republic or Final Fantasy 14 have any chance of gaining a foothold (particularly as I still have Dragon Age to play), but you never know.

Last night the Shattered Ravens returned to Ulduar (our second guild visit, though some people have done it independently), but first more important things: Andro's fashion sense.

For the last few months Andro has been kitted out in T7/T8 and then T8/T9, including the Tier 8 chest. While a nice piece of kit, it's a tunic and so Andro has (in the words of our gnome rogue, Rivelinho, been "showing off her legs"). Being a modest kinda gal she's not been too fond of the various flavours of tights she's worn during this time  but thanks to all the Emblems of Triumph she is finally kitted out in four pieces of T9, including the robe. Yep, back in a dress at last! Oh, and shiny new dagger, wand (x2) and staff!

The Ulduar trip was slightly delayed by work-related issues and so after some personnel substitutions we quickly visted Obsidian Sanctum and promply salughtered the inhabitants (with, IIRC, only one death). In addition to a super-speedy kill of Sarth Andro managed to get Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows!

With out group finally ready, we headed to Ulduar and had something of a mooch in vehicles killing everything and generally being chaotic before taking a pop at Flame Leviathan (which we failed at on the first attempt, but did handily on the second. next up was XT Deconstructor, who was a boss many of us hadn't fought before and who proved to be good fun (even though Andro died).

Next up was Ignis, who we'd seen on out previous visited and whom was promptly one-shotted. Following that we headed to Razorscale who, despite a little bit of harpoon confusion and Leafshine needing to force a reboot mid fight ended well for the Ravens with both the armoured drake felled and the "Siege of Ulduar" completed.

More personnel substitutions followed as the hour was getting late, but we wanted to see more of the complex and so pushed on into the Antechamber of Ulduar. After the trash pull from hell (prompting comments of "so that's why they leave those up") we paid Kologarn a visit. This proved to be the most troublesome fight of the evening (as fatigue and/or alcohol took its toll) but on the fourth attempt we got him down. A couple of notable moments here: the tank discovering that Kologarn really was sitting in a bottomless pit (splat!), a rogue following him in the next fight (oops!) and a mage who can't tell her left from her right (who, me? Looks innocent).

And that's where we left it for the night (it being gone midnight, not that that stopped us taking a quick trip to Pit of Saron HC) but with plans to return to Ulduar in the near future to continue where we left off.