Andromache: The Witching Hour

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.

Spam fritters that is?

I've had occasionally spam comments on the blog (though no where near as many as many as I've had spammer invites on Twitter) but the last few days have seen something of an explosion. As a consquence, I've placed some restrictions on the commenting function so as to make it easier to weed out the spam.

Is it evil of me to think that the following isn't a bug per-se, rather natural selection in action

[Horde players do not receive a parachute when the Kor'kron Troop Transport is destroyed during the quest, "Assault by Air". ]

Work has been taking its toll on my playing recently but I've still managed to do a fair number of runs and get Andro her second piece of tier 9 (and some new trousers, prompting a revision of her enchants and gems) and for Buliwyf to slowly gear up and head off into the Epic 200+ territory.

Though I wasn't scheduled to participate (but was down as a reserve) young Buli found himself tanking the Plague and Spider wings of naxx on Monday (save for Loatheb which Awl, a druid tank, handled) as well as Sapphiron and a couple of cracks at KT. I'm still something of a novice in the tanking stakes, but it's a fun change from Andro's DPS-age. A lot to learn still (like don't turn the big icy dragon!) but my confidence is increasing and his gear has benefited greatly from 5-man TocH and Naxx/OS loot drops. I do need to work on some of his repuations (currently Sons of Hodir and Argent Crusade) after which point he'll hopefullt be a useful member of the Ravens.

In other news, the guild are trying to run 2 Raids a week - one progression-oriented on Mondays and a more general "fun" one on Fridays (though that one is heading to Onyxia tonight and is oversubscribed while Monday's Ulduar is rather healer-light!) Fingers crossed both raids will go off well (particularly as the coming Monday is the first one in 3 weeks I've not been down as reserve for - the Ony run already had 12 by the time I knew I'd be free) and that we continue to keep up the impetus. Fingers crossed too that the increased raiding keeps the guild's "high flyers" happy and that we dont' have another bout of departures to more raid-focussed guilds. We'll have to see.

Last night, on our second visit (and our fourth attempt of the evening) the Ravens downed Malygos, Aspect of Magic, ending the Nexus War (as far as our participation goes at least). On each attempt phases 1 and 2 went like clockwork save one stupid mage (that would be me) getting splatted. The first couple of phase 3s were chaotic, but we steadily improved and despite a couple of deaths (stupid mage again, and our tank) the rest of teh team were able to bring Big Blue down. Killing him also elevated a number of Ravens to the rank of "Champions of the Frozen Wastes", and there was a certain amount of title swapping going on ...

Technically, as Leafshine mentions, that means the Ravens have completed the vanilla Lich King content (so only 2 - soon 3 - patches of stuff to work on). As it was still early, we decided to head to Ulduar (which many of us hadn't seen) and promptly smacked Flame Leviathan (on the first attempt) and Ignis (on the second). Both fights were pretty smooth, though getting an achievement for being stuck on Ignis' molten "crotch pot" (as it was quickly named by the group) is a bit icky. Decent loot was had by all (including an upgraded off-hand for Andro!).

It was getting late by this point, and rather than learn a new Uluar boss fight we decided, after a bit of peopl swapping, to head to Wintergrasp and assault the Vault of Archavon. A number of us have done the bosses there in PUGs but we'd only ever done Archavon as a guild (and a couple of attempts on Emalon, defeated by the timer). Cue three one-shots (Archavon and Emalon bloodless, and Koralon with a smattering of casualties. Cue more loot (or shards in the case of Archavon's stuff), though persuading young Blayse to keep the Mage Tier9 trousers proved to be something of a challenge (there were three of us present - Blayse, Magariz and myself - all of whom lusted after the trousers). We also got a Grand Black War Mammoth for our troubles (grats to Deacus!) After something of an absence I think future visits to VoA are likely.

(Add to the raid success a quick 5-man trip to COS - with Deacs giving people a ride in his new Mammoth-taxi - wherin Andro finally managed to win the bronze drake!)

All in all, an excellent evening.

I've long been a fan of Bioware's RPGs and autumn/winter 2009-2010 is a particularly good time with Dragon Age released this week and Mass Effect 2 at the start of 2010.

Dragon Age: Origins was preceeded by a character generator and if you're online uploads your current gear/achievements (and pics) to an armoury-like part of Bioware's sire. I put together three characters earlier in the week -  Andromache, a human mage, Buliwyf a dwarf warrior, and Maebh an elven scout (sound familiar :p) and last night Andro's adventures began.

So far it's pretty good, if linear, with the right mix of fun and challenge and looks great (with your character dynamically updated to reflect personalisation/dress - how things have progressed ...). The combat is very tactical - being an offline game you can pause the action, plot what your party members will do and then let things run (until you want to adjust things). It's also bloody. After one adventure I was left wondering if the school had showers and a laundry. It doesn't look to be pulling many punches with it's 18 rating!

I presume there's a separate start for each class - my adventures to-date have solely been in the mage school (the Harrowing, a mage test, and another adventure with a fellow student) which wouldn't work for other class/race combos. I'll find out when Buli and Mae head out into the world!

Expect more pictures/comments as things progress