Project Lore

World of Warcraft has been out for over four years now, and Blizzard has done a lot of great things, along with a few not so great things. Blizzard's approach of never being satisfied with their games makes for some very exciting evolutions. Every new expansion pack makes WoW become a whole new experience. Before the Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft was a pretty hardcore elitist game with very few people progressing through all of the most difficult endgame content. Now with the Wrath of the Lich King, the game has evolved once again to allow more and more people to experience the great content that Blizzard has created. With all the good WoW does, there is one issue that needs to be addressed, random drops. Blizzard has been on record saying they enjoy the PvE content that is out right now, they like the level of difficulty that having multiple tiers of encounters each person and guild can attempt. I believe that the duality of drops, and emblem gear is a perfect mesh but I would love to see it taken a tad further. Each 25 man raid has its own specific achievement. Sartharion has its 3 drake achievement, Malygos has You Don't Have an Eternity, and Naxxramas has tons of achievements with the hardest being The Immortal. Why not allow these achievements to open up gear available from the new vendor. If you complete the Malygos achievement kill you open level one allowing the trash epic drops, and the first boss epics to be bought with the vendor. Each different achievement would progressively be harder, and thus be rewarding the guild that is able to complete these tough achievements. On top of that, this could also give long time raiders a reason to work for the achievements, and help them stay motivated and raiding. The vendor would use the Emblems of Valor marks to help keep balance and to also help emblems to stay relevant for hardcore players. I know in my guild there are a ton of people that have no more use for the marks, this would help partially resolve that issue. This could also give people a lot more freedom to spec the way they want. A lot of the time people who are specced a certain way for a raid must only roll on gear for that spec, if you enjoy PvPing or if that spec is bad for soloing, you can use the Valor marks to help with these offspecs without having to compete against your guild members. What kind of gear can you except from this new vendor? I would suggest all Naxxramas gear before Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad, excluding all Valorous Tier 7. Why this gear? Well I have looked at all the loot that drops, and I personally feel all gear except for Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad loot should be accessible. I wouldn't like to see some of the best items in the game like Betrayer of Humanity or Journey's End become nothing more than an emblem grind. In terms of how many emblems the gear costs, that is really in Blizzard's court to balance. If this idea was to ever be implemented this would be well after patch 3.1 and Ulduar. This vendor would only help to create new ways for guilds to get loot, and with more loot, the faster they can progress to see the new and harder content. Most people are going to stop and say wait a second, this seems unfair, why should hardcore raiders be rewarded in this way? With hardcore raiders blazing through the new content with little to no challenge except the the few achievements I've posted, I think it's time Blizzard rewards them for keeping at it. I would like to see an element introduced aimed exclusively to the super hardcore, I think they've earned it. So, what's the verdict people? Would you feel angry that only a small percentage of people would get this vendor or would you feel they've earned the reward?

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Anub'Rekhan dead before the raid even started.

The spending spree that I went on wasn't just to make me feel good, I wanted my DPS to perform in raids. Despite being Mutilate, which is the butt of all Rogue PvE DPS jokes, I wanted to be able to lay waste to Naxxramas as much as the next guy.  Some 2000+ gold later and I felt that I was more than prepared.  Believe it or not, I was actually correct for once! My new guild has been running Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and tons of heroics for a few weeks before I joined.  Their combined ambitions caused my spending spree to keep me in the range of acceptable DPS, rather than the realm of "ponzor."  Of course, I didn't expect to dominate the charts with only a few heroics under my belt, but some of the DPSers emasculated me.  They made me feel that I should have spent far more gold.  Personal failures aside, it was good to be raiding again. Naxxramas has certainly changed since the 40-man days.  We are only doing the 10-man thus far, but there are far fewer trash mobs in the instance than before.  If you triple the mob count for some of the corridors then perhaps you'll be back in the realm of the old school Naxx.  Yesterday's raid started at 8:00 PM, by 7:50 PM we had already downed Anub'Rekhan.  Yea, we had a boss down before the raid started. As a side note, I dunno how likely it is that we hit the heroic side of Naxx.  Unless we begin recruiting I doubt we will see the 25-man edition without a good collection of PUGs.  That'll make it pretty difficult to upgrade my Mutilate build with the Omen of Ruin/Murder and Webbed Death.  But enough about the future, let us get back to the excursion. Things went fairly smoothly through the Spider Wing, although we did wipe to Maexxna.  She eventually dropped her Femur, which was offered to me, but I love my daggers.  Still it hurts to see Rogue loot getting DEed.  The Military Wing, well that was a different story.  We didn't hit a wall on the content or anything like that.  No, no.  You could say that the Military Wing was a different story on a personal level.  You see, my face was repeatedly smashed by the mobs with Whirlwind.  Being the only non-plate wearing melee DPSer in the raid meant that my deaths stuck out like a sore thumb...that had been cut off.  I heard quite a few quips about it. "Oh look, that gnome is dead again." "The rogue needs buffs, again." "That midget owes me a stack of Symbol of Kings." "Holy crap, I lived through one!" The jokes didn't stop until a pack of mobs decided to desecrate every part of my body.  On the second leg of the upper level towards Instructor Razuvious, a triple pack of whirlwinding mobs came at the raid.  Letting my bravado get the best of me, I charged in to DPS the skull with reckless abandon.  My head was found 30 feet away, separated from my torso which was remained connected to my legs by what was left of my intestines.  I was whirlwinded by three mobs at the same time.  Uncontrollable laughter was all that could be heard on Ventrilo.  At least my failures lightened the mood. After Razuvious dropped nothing of interest - actually no one did, we have tons of Abyss Crystals now - we continued on until reaching the Four Horsemen .  These bastards troubled my pre-TBC guild till no end, stopping us from proceeding to the Frost Wing.  It was relieving to see them go down, but it wasn't much of a fight in 10-man.  After clearing two wings in a few hours time we called Naxxramas for the evening and cleaned up Obsidian Sanctum before closing the raid.  My next challenge is to convince the GM to run the other two wings next Tuesday rather than Thursday so I can finish them, then the Frost Wing, and Malygos.  I am coming for you slowly but surely Bastosa! We still haven't managed to take down Sartharion with any of his buddies alive, but we did have a pretty productive and efficient night.  Only nine more badges to go before I can get a much needed trinket upgrade.  Now if we could just stop getting Hunter/Shaman loot...

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One of my favorite things about playing World of Warcraft has always been the sense that the game is unbeatable. There is always something to do, always ways to improve yourself, and always something to suck up your time if you want it to. Getting a bit of a late jump into TBC raiding, the sense of things I hadn’t done and bosses I hadn’t seen was overwhelming. I loved having far off carrots to chase after and drive me to work on my character day after day. Lately though, I have grown concerned. I know lots of people are saying it, but I am honestly starting to believe that the current amount of content is very inadequate. I have long ago downed every boss in the game. When I saw Malygos go down for the first time, it was bittersweet, but I knew there was lots more to do because of the achievement system. I was content with the fact that while there weren’t any new bosses, there were plenty of new and challenging ways to kill those bosses. The problem now is I’ve spent the time over the last month or so and earned a lot of those achievements. And now I’m faced with the feeling that there aren’t even enough achievements left to keep me very interested. Sure I will likely keep farming Naxx until I have my gear looking exactly how I want it, and I still have the matter of killing Sartharion with 3 drakes up, but I very much want a longer laundry list of things I could still be doing. I consider myself a fairly strong raider, but I am nowhere near as hardcore as a lot of people. If I am running into this issue, I’m sure there are many more than myself who feel the same. In my eyes Ulduar can’t come soon enough, and if Blizzard wants to keep its more dedicated players interested there isn’t a moment to lose.

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Achievements are many things, they are fun ways to pass time, they are ways to show off some accomplishments, but there are just a few that seem to carry a little bigger meaning. These achievements are truly achievements, and they are not easy. Tonight I will start my 3^rd week of working on such an achievement: The Undying. And let me tell you, it is unlike anything I’ve worked toward in this game before. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the achievement it reads like this: “Within one raid lockout period, defeat every boss in Naxxramas on Normal Difficulty without allowing any raid member to die during any of the boss encounters.” Or in other words, it demands absolute perfection from every member of the raid. As we learned the hard way, even the tiniest misstep will end the entire attempt. First time we tried this we had zero deaths up until Kel’Thuzad where a Soul Weaver knocked back a death knight into a void zone just as it went off. It was heart breaking. The worst part about this achievement is that as the run goes on the more stressful it becomes, and if you happen to be the unlucky one to take the first dirt nap you really feel that you let down your friends. I’m sure it is not a good feeling (fortunately I do not know this firsthand). All of this is why I say that going for the Undying is unlike anything else in the game. It's tough, it's emotional, and its unforgiving. Luck plays very little role as you must play well for the entire run. For all its stress, I think it is great. If you see someone with the title, you know you are looking at a strong player, and likely one that was not carried by his friends. I plan to continue work until I have earned this one, and a true “grats” to any of you that have already done it.

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Snow is no fun alone.

Last night I did something that I have never done in my MMO career, I gquit.  Even when I quit the game for a few brief months around The Burning Crusade's launch, my fingers never actually typed that sequence into World of Warcraft's command prompt.  In fact, at that time of my relapse into real life, I was the second oldest member in the guild.  And no, the GM wasn't the longest-standing member, my IRL boss was.  It stayed that way until my subscription ran its course, then I was promptly gkicked.

Upon returning to World of Warcraft more than a year ago I found it fairly difficult to readjust.  Going from arguably the best guild on the server to bouncing from guild to guild as they repeatedly disintegrated was a drain on the soul, and my intentions to continue playing.  My former guild finally "collapsed" - GM quit and guild was reformed under a new name - shortly after TBC's launch.  The pieces were quickly picked up by a few of the dedicated members and reformed as a hardcore, min-maxing powerhouse of a guild.  Not something I wanted.  I fought through the ups and downs, and eventually stumbled into a guild of close knit friends.  Not only were many of them real-life friends, but they happened to be French-Canadian. They were a good group of people, some of them excellent players, others, not so much.  They made a good run towards the end of TBC to get through all of the raid content.  They brought me along on those raids when they could, but I never felt that I was part of the guild.  I was just that rogue they'd bring along if they needed some melee DPS.  I was the guy who could get anything cooked, or would waste time fishing.  I was the gnome that was always at the AH.  I was the dagger lover they'd ask lore questions to.  I was the uneducated person who couldn't speak French.  I was THAT guy, not one of them. Nevertheless, I did have some good times and late nights with them, and thank them for the support they showed me and instances we ran together.  I even scored some going away gems along with the well wishes and good lucks. With my trusty rogue finally at level cap and geared enough to enter Naxxramas, it was time to look ahead.  Wrath of the Lich King brought more than a few friends from my old guild back to the game, so I created a private channel for us to chat in due to our guild separation.  Slowly the channel filled up as old friendship were re-kindled or re-discovered.  Loot drama forgotten - a priest taking tanking loot to use the stamina as a PvP item - we have fallen back under the same banner one by one.  A banner that I will join as soon as the GM gets online.  Till that time, Solidsamm remains guildless, but this time on his own terms.  Soon, I shall return to dominating Naxxramas! It feels good to be excited to raid again.

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We all knew that there would be plenty of people out their racing to hit level 80 as soon as possible. Not you racing against your friend or guildmate. I mean someone who would take vacation, go without sleep, eat dry packets of Ramen (hey, the saliva will hydrate it) and pee in empty bottles of energy drinks, until they finally dinged level 80. As Juggynaut mentioned, this happened less than two days after Wrath went live on the European realms.

Since then, I am sure many of us have witnessed server wide messages proclaiming the first of this class or race to hit 80. Even the North American realms, which are a bit behind due to timezones, have plenty of 80s roaming Northrend. It was only a matter of time before people began taking on the 10-man and 25-man raid content.

For TwentyFifthNovember, that time was under two days after Nymh hit level 80. TFN is the General Electric of World of Warcraft. A guild conglomerate put together by SK-Gaming (Curse) and Nihilum to achieve world first kills and to create “one of the best World of Warcraft community sites.” Their fancy new site is set to launch on November 25^th, well after they started putting up new content. If you head over there now, you will be informed that they have beaten all of the raid content that Wrath of the Lich King has to offer.

Getting a group of players together that fast is an achievement of itself. The guild took it one step further by beating the re-tuned Naxxramas and swiftly moving onto Malygos, the hardest boss currently in Wrath. 68 hours and 30 minutes later, and TFN is standing on top, waiting for Patch 3.1 and Ulduar.

These guys are obviously good at WoW, but damn that was fast. TFN's announcement post wasn't entirely self-congratulatory though. The team questioned Blizzard's tuning of the raids, even suggesting that Blizzard may have made them easier to put the “large casual player base...on equal footing with end-game raiders?”

What do you guys think? Are they just too good, or is Blizzard trying to appease the larger audience? Hitting 80 inside two days is one thing, beating Wrath inside a month, let alone three days is another. Comparatively, it took almost five months for Nihilum to beat The Burning Crusade's PvE content.  Of course, if I mention TBC had more raid content, it isn't really defending Blizzard...Seems like Ulduar cannot come soon enough.

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