Project Lore

In late March it was revealed that Blizzard is hard at work on a new Battleground for an upcoming patch.  Just shy of a month later and not one, not two, but three separate blues announced plans for a new 5-man dungeon.  Being Blizzard employees, there wasn't much to the announcements.  All that we know for sure is that the dungeon will be part of an upcoming patch - you'd be insane to think the BG and instance will come in the same patch - and that it "can be compared to what we saw with Magister's Terrace."  Naturally, we have no idea if the comparison that can be made refers to the scope, size, difficulty or a combination of the three. New content is fantastic, and I can't wait to see what direction they take the instance.  Will it be released alongside a raid?  Will it have anything to do with the growing Arthas storyline?  Is it going to contain machinima like MgT?  An endless amount of questions, with a catch.  Sadly, the announcement of the new 5-man content has shined a light on the current crop of 5-man instances and their heroic alter egos.  Frankly, they are beginning to feel incredibly stale. It is this very reason that I bring up a topic as old as heroics themselves, heroic Old World instances.  Blizzard, if you can't get new content out fast enough, I am sure that many of your subscribers wouldn't mind revisiting some retuned old content.  Just think of the advantages of doing so.

• A large percentage of the players joined World of Warcraft after the launch of The Burning Crusade.  Therefore, a good amount of the old world instances - especially the mid-range instances - were ignored by the playerbase.
• Retuning is far less time consuming/costly than creating a new instance.
• Trickling out retuned old world instances would keep players busy between major content updates.
• Many old world 5-mans are far longer - and larger - than the current crop of dungeons.  The varied length would likely cater to the hardcore audience who tend to be fond of more diverse and deeper offerings.  There's no reason to expect that the casual players wouldn't enjoy it either.
• You've already recycled content in the past (Naxxramas , Caverns of Time) and that was accepted.  No need to worry about that stigma.
• The old world would see a (small) population increase, rather than its current state of being largely abandoned.  Essentially, more than just Northrend would be relevant.
• Come the next expansion, you could sprinkle retuned TBC instances amoung the content patches.
• Being "old school" is still hip...or so I tell myself.
• You'd shut me up.

Just think of the possibilities.  LFM Heroic UBRS - Rend Run.  The return of Dire Maul ledge walking.  More Barman Shanker grinding.  Discovering the secret boss in Blackfathom Deeps.   Getting lost outside of Maraudon, only to be farted on when you finally get inside.  Van Cleef.  I'm giddy over the prospects already. Many of us have run Wrath's heroics dozens, perhaps even a hundreds times.  The question is, would you have the any interest in the four year old content or are you content waiting long periods of time for all-new encounters?

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You know you're a WoW addict when... the lore of Azeroth and its wide cast of characters follows you into slumber. I have had many a night, usually after an action-packed evening of playing until I can't keep my eyes open any more, in which my main character continues her conquests in my mind, while my body is at rest. Unfortunately, usually when this happens, I can't remember all my awesomeness when I wake up. I just have a feeling that whatever Locomomo was up to, she kicked some serious tail. But there are a couple of dreams, at least, of which I retained hazy bits and pieces. The first time I remember dreaming about WoW also was when I had a terrible cold. I stayed home from work, and made a couple feeble attempts at playing. Each time, the game made me feel dizzy and even worse. So I gave up on that idea. But apparently even trying to play left an impression on my medicated and sleepy mind. Maybe it was the cold medicine; maybe it was withdrawal from leveling. Either way, my head hit the pillow, and I was seeing my rogue in double vision. Patches of neon colors swirled around her as she stun-locked a random, made-up giant with a combination of ambush, gouge, backstab, gouge, eviscerate. She may have been controlled by an out-of-it mind, but she still knew how to put up a decent fight. My other, more recent dream memory is even less clear. But I think I fought a really powerful, undead frost dragon. And single-handedly tore him to shreds. Looking back, I hypothesize that the wyrm could have been Sapphiron, who now haunts those unfortunate enough to disturb his lair in Naxxramas. Now just how my level 71 rogue could have taken him out on her own? That is her secret that she will carry to the grave. Or maybe the Spirit Healer. The biggest downside - when I wake up, all the experience I could have gained from such an epic encounter is wiped. Something that awesome could have taken me way past the level 80 cap. Old school, I'd be all the way to level 99. If only. Yes, there are many tell-tale signs of a WoW addict. And every now and then, I'll be detailing the symptoms here at Project Lore. So do you know someone who has been sleeping erratically or gurgling "Arthas..." while thrashing in his or her bed? Perhaps yourself, even? You know the cure: more WoW.

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After a Tuesday full of wiping, I was looking forward to grinding out some reputation and tackling a new Heroic on Wednesday.  The last thing I really wanted for the Heroic Wednesday session was a repeat performance.  I may enjoy the hardships due to the end results, but success is plenty fun too.  It so happened that Gundrak - a rather easy Heroic - was the Daily, so I wasn't worried that the group comprised two newer members.  I am sure you have guessed by now that things didn't go as planned. Slad'ran brought us down without much of a hassle. Looking at the Recount data it was painfully obvious what the problem was.  The DPS-specced Death Knight couldn't perform, with less damage dealt than the tank, who was also new.  The freed DK's collection of green and blue quest gear was the obvious culprit. We could have pulled through the issue - Slad'ran wiped us at ~10% HP the second time -  but at a lousy 800-900 DPS, it hardly seemed like a good idea to struggle.  After all, the later bosses pose a much greater threat, and who wants to spend a few hours in one heroic?  We didn't abandon our new Death Knight friend for some other Heroic ready member, we kept it real.  As a group we decided to move our endeavor to another instance so he could gear up for next week's heroic night.  After all, this is what a guild is supposed to do, help its members.  And yet, the new guy seemed a bit shocked that we would run him through a non-Heroic when they offered the rest of us "nothing." Apoxz noted in a comment the other day that it is incredibly difficult to find a group for a none-Heroic instance.  I completely agree with the statement, but have you guys found it difficult to even get your guildies to help you out with such things?  I won't, without fail, help someone, but if I have the time I am more than happy to lend a helping hand for the betterment of the guild.  Has this bit of comradely disappeared with all the PUGing that is going on?  Or am I jumping to conclusions based on a bit of anecdotal evidence? By the time I had to leave, the former green DK had two new blue items of far superior quality.  Therefore, the time I spent in your basic dungeon was well spent.  Oh, and I guess you could say my acceptance of the move to a non-Heroic wasn't all altruistic.  SolidSamm scored himself a bit of Kirin Tor reputation from his Champion's tabard, and caught his first glimpse inside Ulduar and the Halls of Lightning. When was the last time you lent a helping hand to a guildie that you didn't already have a rapport with?  Wondering how last night's 25-man Naxxramas went?  Two words for ya, much smoother.  One-shotted Grand Widow and Maexxna, some bad pulls on Instructor, but that happens.

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When I said that SolidSamm's guild "canceled raiding for the foreseeable future" I knew it wasn't going to last long.  For starters, the GM has been a big PvEer since EverQuest, and many of the officers and other members have been with him since then.  Two of the members outside of that group are formerly from a hardcore guild - where they met the current GM - who still take the game very seriously, but can no longer dedicate the same amount of time.  Thus, they never lost their itch to dominate content, just the time required to do so.  Lastly, the Heroic Wednesday event that I initiated has been quite a success in its short life, with numerous dungeons being run on the formerly inactive day.  The indications were obvious that the Warriors were ready to head back into Naxxramas, so we gathered up the troops and dominated Kel'Thuzad's stronghold in record time. Actually, that is a lie.  We failed.  Epically.  The Warriors of Faith wiped for hours, downing a single boss - Anub'Rekan - over the course of a night.  Yes, yes, it certainly sounds pathetic but the repair bills are forgiven because we attempted to move up to the big leagues, Heroic Naxxramas.  Hey, even Ghostcrawler said 25-man Naxx is "too easy to pug", we just wanted to test out his statements. Our little guild barely has enough raiding ready level 80s in its entirety to fill a full raid, so we had to flesh out the ranks with non-guilded friends and a handful of random players.  Where does the blame for the collection of graveyard runs go?  On everyone.  We allowed pugged players with terrible gear and little knowledge in the raid, we had our own members with inadequate gear, and we even failed to research the subtle differences in 10-man, 25-man and 40-man encounters.  I ended the night with something along the lines of a 110 gold repair bill. Am I upset, annoyed or angry at our failures?  Not at all, we tried something a bit different and difficulties are to be expected.  Heck, there is actually an upside to what didn't go down.  A few of the PUGs joined the guild and have already begun to gear their toons at last night's Heroic Wednesday run.  How those went?  Well, that is a story for another day.  I just hope that our morale stays high and these new members stick around for the long run.  After all, if tonight's second attempt at Heroic Naxxramas doesn't go a bit better, members may just disappear until Ulduar.  But I don't believe our core members expect instant gratification or to be carried through. As masochistic as this may sound, I absolutely love these times in a guild.  Despite the numerous setbacks we are sure to face, they help weed out the weak players or those who are just in it for the good times (read free loot).  They push players to the edge, getting them to eek out every bit of DPS, mana or threat-per-second their class can muster.  They breed competition, creativity, interesting discussions and strategies.  From these difficult times comes good, long-lasting members and friends.  And when there's finally that taste of success, it becomes that much sweeter.  It's the digital equivalent of being in the trenches - just without the trench foot, machine guns, mustard gas, shell shock and death.  See, just like it.

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Seen this kind of image?  Then you aren't casual -via ElitistJerks

Recruiting issues promoted me to write the latest in the line of DPS guides.  By the end of the day, the guild's officers and GM had tossed in their towels and canceled raiding for the foreseeable future.  For most of us the news wasn't exactly shocking.  Over the past few weeks the mighty force in Naxxramas known as the Warriors of Faith had degraded into Warriors of Whenitseemsnecessary.  Sign-ups remained incomplete, those that did lend their John Hancock were no where to be found for invites, and players began disappearing earlier in the night than normal. It isn't that the guild is dead, far from it.  The former trio of raid leaders simply got fed up with all the extra work they were putting into the guild, with little to show for it besides stress.  After all their recruiting, hand holding and calming efforts, raids failed to materialize.  Rather than continue their struggles, they have put the pressure on the rest of the guild to step up and form raids ourselves.  The irony is that this is exactly what many of the newer members were doing rather than joining the guild runs. I think that the current raids have harmed casual guilds.  Being a group of older players, our time is often limited by other obligations (family, friends, work, this blog).  This in turn means that many of us have unexpected things come up fairly often, causing us to miss invites, sign-ups or raids altogether.  Who cares when you can PUG all of the available instances?  My point is this, since you don't need a guild to get through the content, most players feel less inclined to actually support their guilds.  This is especially the case if they have no other reason, like long standing friendships, to guilt trip them. At first, I simply thought that it was just our little guild that was having issues.  But if my other WoW playing comrades are anything to go by, that isn't the case.  According to them, their guilds are also struggling to get guild runs together.  Their plight is for the same reason, many members are running PUGs on their own time.  Hopefully, most of you will read this post through before commenting, because here's the kicker.  It isn't a big deal.  Yea, there are some hiccups to scare out, but casual guilds won't be going anywhere, ever.  The early raid content has shaken things up a bit, but as Wrath of the Lich King matures and Blizzard ramps up the difficulty - we are looking at you, Ulduar - the guilds, all guilds, will collapse back into themselves. It's just interesting to see how fleeting these online relationships can be.  One minute you are joking about this druid's mom or laughing about how the RL proposed that all Gnomes are drunkards IRL.  Then a freeze on raid leader lead raids is handed down, and boom, a fistful of long standing members gquit.  It's fine that they are leaving to pursue what they want from the game, but I have never been one to guild hop.  How are the more casual, small scale guilds doing for the greater ProjectLore Society?  Possibly more importantly, how goes those Heroic Naxx/Malygos PUGs?  I have been somewhat successful in my PUG attempts, still haven't managed to take on the Eye though.

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BigRedKitty bring us along as they venture into the Arachnid Quarter of 25-man Naxxramas. Watch as BRK squash this oversized bug with the help of a couple dozen other people. Addons mentioned in this video include: Omen Threat Meter Mik's Scrolling Battle Text Power Auras - check out some more tips from BRK about Power Auras here. Deadly Boss Mods Remember to vote for Project Lore on the streamys at http://vote.streamys.org/

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I remember a time, pre-BC, when the Blackrock Mountains were the place to group and raid. I unfortunately also remember having to pug to get my Light Forge Spaulders. I wasn't much of a guild person back then, so I would have to do the obligatory "Lvl 60 Paladin LFG for UBRS, PST".  There were always 3 strikes a group would always face heading into UBRS. 1.) Does your group have someone who's keyed? 2.) Do you have the DPS for "The Beast"? 3.) Does your group have the understanding of how to fight the General, (ex. the kiting strategy)? I can remember countless times when groups would just fall apart after one attempt of the General or when someone finally got their shoulders off the Beast and they'd say they have to leave because of something in real life and just force quit. Here we are two expansions later and we have a lot of new players to the game. I know quite a few people who joined in the middle of Burning Crusade's lifespan and never spent one minute in the old world dungeons. So they were lucky to have avoided the Excedrin (yes, the headache medicine) popping moments. But I'm wondering why were pugs in those dungeons so bad? I bring this up because since Wrath of the Lich King was released I've had to pug a few Heroics and even Naxx on occasion. The thing I've noticed is how smoothly the runs seem to go. Last week I pugged a 25 man Naxx group. Funny thing is we downed 3 quarters in under 3 hours. People listened. People did their jobs and did them well. This was incredible. Usually the more people in a pug the more drama, crying and problems you have or at least you would have had been back in the day.  Two weeks ago I main tanked a 25 man Obsidian Sanctum without vent and we downed it with ease. Even a run in Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle went surprisingly well. So here are three different experiences with the same results. Have players grown up? Are people finally "learning to play their class" as the old complaint use to be thrown around?  Has Blizzard done anything special to the game mechanics to make it easier to communicate without voices? You could say vent servers have helped but people have been using them for years and still have bad experiences. I'm just really curious to see if I'm the only one who's noticing this nice change in pugs. If you are experiencing a change why do you think it's happened? While I still prefer to run with my guild I can say that I really don't mind the pugs as much as I use to in the pre-bc days.

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A long, long time ago, in Stranglethorn Vale, our guild started Zul'Gurub. At the same time, the elite guilds had finished ZG, Molten Core, Black Wing Lair, and were doing AQ20, AQ40 and Naxxramas. We had Dungeon Set 0 and epic PvP gear, they were decked out in Tier 3. There was a huge chasm of raiding experience and gear-level between us and them. A long time ago, in the Caverns of Time, our guild finished Mount Hyjal. At the same time, the elite guilds had completed Black Temple and Sunwell. We had 4/5 Tier 5 and they were decked out in Tier 6. There was a significant difference in gear-level and raiding experience between us and them. As of this week, our guild has completed all 10- and 25-man raiding content in WotLK. The only challenges left in front of us are Sartharion with two and three drakes up, and some raiding achievements. The elite guilds have finished the "hard modes," but there is no raid-boss they've seen that we haven't. We are 13/15ths of the way to being totally decked-out in Tier 7.5 gear - they have a better necklace and trinket than we do. They also have the gun from Kel'Thuzad, those rotten {expletive (plural) deleted}. There is no real difference in gear-level, and while they have many more years of end-game content raiding experience than we do, we’ve walked where they've walked in the new expansion, and not years after they have. So what’s the deal? We've heard over and over that the content is easier. Bullpucky. We remember our first kills in Karazhan. We remember going to Maiden and being sure it was going to take many hours to kill her. We remember warning the guild that wipes were the price of success. Then, we one-shot her. /kapow! "Don't move when Flame Wreath is cast!" And if you didn't move, and you had the DPS, you'd beat Shade of Aran. Learning the skill took time, as did getting a high enough raid-DPS, but once the skill was learned, never again did a movement fight cause as much fear. Thaddius in Naxxramas is a movement fight, and people don't freak out about that guy nearly as much as they did about Shade of Aran. The problem with Karazhan was two-fold: First, an entirely new population of WoW-players suddenly had access to raiding content, and they weren't used to it. Second, in a 40-person raid, you can have a screw-up. In a 10-person raid, a single person could easily wipe everything. So in old-school raiding, the old-school raiders learned to raid as they were "carried" through Molten Core. They made mistakes, they were mostly hidden, and the raid kept on trucking. By the time they got to Karazhan, they knew how to raid and thus breezed through it. In contrast, a new generation of players learned to raid in 10-man Karazhan, and they learned to raid as they wiped. Karazhan was hard, not because of the difficulty of the content, but because individual mistakes were magnified and the results were much more severe. Was Gruul or Magtheridon much harder than Karazhan? No, because these 25-person raids required Karazhan-geared people to attempt them. And once you've gotten gear from Karazhan, you probably knew how to behave in a raid. The difference between 10- and 25-person raiding isn't much, the only difference is in specific people learning their specific roles. Once the trick of the boss is mastered, the basic raid skills needed are already known. (i.e. don't stand in the fire or the black circle, don't take aggro from the tank, etc.) Then we get to WotLK and the new Naxxramas. Is 10-person Naxx easier than Kara was? Yes. Is it because the content is easier? We say No. We say that people crushed Naxx with such relative ease because there were no new skills needed to defeat the place. If you raided Kara, you could raid Naxx. There is no skill needed for Naxx that was not taught in Kara. And who didn't raid Kara? What percentage of people who are raiding Naxx do you think didn't step foot in Kara? Five percent? That means ninety-five percent of the people with their eyes set on Naxxramas just had to level to 80, then they'd have the gear and the Kara-learned raiding knowledge to defeat the place. And they did, foshizzle. So now we have the promise of Ulduar. What's the big scary thing there? Vehicle-mounts for combat. /shudder What fight do we have right now with something like vehicle-mounts? Malygos. What raid boss do people dislike the most? Malygos. Why? Phase three - The drakes. People dislike the drakes because they don't get to play their own class, and because it's a new mechanic. We love Naxx because it's just an extension of Kara. We've mastered Kara, so Naxx is easy. We have never had a vehicle-mount boss before, so people hate learning Malygos. Defeating one, two, and three drakes-up Sartharion is a matter of gear, positioning, and DPS. All three of these things are easily comprehended by Kara-experienced raiders, and thus three drakes-up Sartharion, while technically a much greater challenge than Malygos, does not inspire the same dread and hostility as Malygos does. Ulduar is bringing vehicle-mount boss fights to an entire new level, like it or not. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to farm Naxx for fun and profit? Are you going to go for the hard-mode achievements and beat 10-person Sartharion with three drakes up? Or are you going to practice your vehicle-mount combat skills in Malygos? Just as the Aces High! daily is practice for Malygos, so is Malygos himself practice for Ulduar. If you have the choice, we recommend you get your happy little tuckus out to Borean Tundrea every week, do both 10- and 25-person Malygos, not so much for the gear, but to get used to the dynamic. The skills you learn in Malygos are going to prepare you Ulduar, just like Kara prepared you for Naxx.

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During this week's raid, an odd thing happened.  Something that has never happened in my entire MMOG career.  The event was shocking enough to leave me speechless.  Literally.  In the middle of our run through the Military Wing of Naxxramas, the Ventrilo server kicked the bucket. For those of you who may not know, Ventrilo is a popular voice chat application that many players and guilds utilize for communicating while playing WoW, among other games. Once the raid realized that the issue was guild-wide rather than personal, the chiding set in. "Looks like someone forgot to pay the bill." "The economy is so bad that even the Ventrilo hosting companies are laying people off!" "This guild can't kill Sarth + 3D or even keep their Ventrilo up?!  I am outta here," followed by a joke /gquit. The server went down during the early trash of our second wing of the night.  After a slight pause to let the Warlock admin reboot the box, we moved on.  We were at pre-Instructor Razuvious trash, so no worries.  Who wipes on trash, right?  I don't know if it was the distraction, the need to type again or random chance, but we nearly had our first - and what would have been our only - wipe on the second to last pack of Death Knight Cavaliers.  The raid pulled out of the lengthy skirmish with a healer standing and a few DPS.  Thankfully, things shaped up after that. Once the initial excitement and near wipes dissipated, an unusual calm set in.  Macros were patched together in haste for boss fights, tanking and stun rotations were set way in advance to compensate for the inability to voice our directions (Yes, I know WoW has built-in voice support now, but I don't know a soul who uses it).  The adaptations allowed us to continue on for the night, but holy crap was it an entirely different experience. I and many other guildies never realized how boring a raid would be without the pointless banter.  No more mom/girlfriend jokes to distract us during trash.  No more lore quips about Thaddius and how he is composed of women and children.  And political/religious chat?  Who the hell would want to type all of that stuff out?  None of my guildies, that's for sure.  Normally the GM has trouble shutting people up, but Ventrilo goes down and even text-based conversation drops to a minimum.  Damn, I should have done /tumbleweed.  I am sure that would have got a few laughs. Have you ever had to suffer through a Ventrilo-less guild raid?  It is one thing to be a part of in a PUG (and usually, you are smarter for not signing on that Vent).  But when you aren't conversing with people you know, the game certainly loses some of that social aspect.  It was one of those eye opening experiences.  You will never realize how much you enjoy Ventrilo until it is randomly absent.

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PUGing can be a brutal experience.  The lack of coordination, responsibility and inability to read a player's worth is a soul-draining experience.  A few bad Heroics or 10-man Naxx's can force even the most patient and understanding player to swear them off for good.

What happens when even your guild fails?  What do you do then?  QQ, abandon the "newbs" and find another guild?  Hold out for the next raid and see if the situation is repeated?  Go on a tirade in Ventrilo about how the tanks can't generate enough threat-per-second and that the healers don't know how to heal out of group?  Sit there and cry?  Or, do as I do, blog about it. This past week, SolidSamm's new guild failed to down even one boss in 10-man Naxxramas one night.  Yes, the same dungeon that is done by PUGs on a daily basis and that we fully cleared the week before, held us up.  In all fairness, we did not have the normal group together.  The raid was initially delayed an hour due to scheduling conflicts.  At 8:30 PM we decided to go with the 10 we had online.  The ragtag bunch included only two healers, one of which was our main tank on his fresh level 80 alt.  Thus, the off tank became the main tank, and a feral druid had to take over the off tanking duties.  We knew the night would be a tough one, but we all figured it was worth a shot. Our first boss of the night was to be the poison spewing mob known as Grobbulus.  Attempt one was a mess.  I'll be honest and admit that I did not notice how poorly we were doing until only the tank and myself remained alive.  From what I was told after I asked wtf happened, someone dropped a poison on the casters.  The wipe was caused by an easily correctable mistake, so we ressed and went at the abomination a second time.  While the second attempt got us to 8%, we still failed to drop the fat ass, causing the raid to be canceled for the night. Eight percent.  Grobbulus had less than a quarter million HP at that point and the raid was called.  I hate repair bills as much as the next guy, but I hate leaving a boss up when he is killable even more.  I voiced my opinion politely, but it was decided that due to the raid's composition, the undergeared healer, and the replacement off tank, things just weren't going to go our way.  Yea, we may have been able to kill Grobb, but could we have gone any farther?  Doubt it. Two hours, 20 something gold, a collection of consumables, some additional gray hairs and I have nothing to show for half a nights work.  I did get to play the sweet boyfriend and pretend I left the raid to hang out with the girlfriend.  Brownie points for sure.  How does your guild decide to call it a night, and under what circumstances?

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