Project Lore

Yes, I know it’s popular for everyone to want to get easy loot off of easy bosses, but not everyone feels that way. I personally love a challenge, and I know I am far from alone.

It is for this reason that Naxx was somewhat disappointing to me, I know it was their plan to make the first tier of raiding accessible, but after farming for months on end, I feel it got somewhat mind-numbing.

It is for that reason I was fairly nervous going into Ulduar the first time yesterday. While I knew it would be harder, I was concerned that it too would quickly become another boring farm grind. I was really hoping they would give a challenge.

Man, did I get my wish! Ladies and gentleman, I am happy to report the bosses in Ulduar are SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult that those in tier 7, and even harder than I had ever expected. Now I’m sure there are those among you that will disagree, no doubt some of you crazies out there went in and demolished the place, I even saw that Ensidia has downed Yogg-Saron. But for me, I’m pretty confident this content will keep me busy for a while.

My guild was able to make quick work of Flame Leviathan (one shot, dare I say he was easy? :p), but man did things take a turn after that. Ingis was incredibly challenging, and after a few hours of diligently wiping we moved on the both of the other bosses that are available after Leviathan goes down. While both Razorscale and XT-002 seemed much more manageable, we were unable to down either of them. I’m feeling pretty good that at least one of these guys will be going down tonight, but I am just thrilled at the new mindset this has put me in.

No longer do I expect to clear half the instance in a day, I don’t even know if we can clear half the instance in a month! Ulduar is a challenge, and we haven’t even hit the hard modes yet. I couldn’t be more excited for the level of difficulty lying ahead of us.

How are you guys doing in there? More importantly, how do you find the difficulty? Are you guys knocking down bosses because it is too easy, or are you hitting your head against a wall because it is too hard? I’d love to hear your experiences.

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So in case you have been living under a rock, Ulduar is here! It is finally time to do and experience everything we have been reading about and looking forward to for the last several months! It is an exciting time to say the least.

I know I had developed quite a shopping list of things to do. So many, in fact, I am having a hard time deciding what my first stop will be when I can finally log on!

The Ulduar instance is obviously my number one priority, but I have a few stops I am going to make before I hit the zone it. I logged out at the trainer so I could pick up my dual-spec right away, after that I’m sure I will head to the AH and see how bad I am going to get gouged for new the glyphs.

Of course I will have to take some time to set up toolbars, gear, and glyphs for my new spec. Then I’m sure I will have to fight with some newly out-of-date add-ons.

Once I get all that house keeping squared away, I am heading straight into Ulduar-10! The idea is to see if I can get some boss tries in before our schedule Ulduar-25 run later tonight. I’m not going to lie, my guild is planning on hitting Ulduar 25 hard, so I imagine I won’t find much time for anything else once we get in there.

That being said, I definitely see the appeal of looking at some other stuff before charging right in. After all The Argent Tournament sounds like great fun, and of course doing some heroics with dual specs in place could present an interesting challenge.

There are lots of new directions to go! So what are you guys going to be up to the moment you log on?

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Anyone who attempted to login this morning realized why the servers were being hit with extended maintenance, it's officially patch

day.  I am sure most of your are feeling like the Nintendo 64 kid, as I am, but let's be realistic, I doubt the game will be very playable tonight.  My pessimism is based entirely on previous experiences, specifically that whenever a content patch is released, the day of its release is often a wash for a collection of reasons.  First and foremost, downloading the patch generally takes longer than the maintenance itself, then we must often update all of our add-ons.  And forget about raiding, most of my guildmates - past and present - don't bother to start the download until they get home from work, school or simply wake up.  While we can now pre-download most of the content, the majority of us still don't, which guarantees that we won't be ready for the day's raid.  But hey, I am not here to QQ, I have accepted these issues as necessary evils to new content.

Rather than complain, I figured we could dive into some of the lore for Secrets of Ulduar.  Specifically, the lore presented by the all new trailer.  Before reading on, check out the trailer here.

Welcome back.  How did you enjoy the machinima?  Personally, I thought it was pretty awesome, a far more captivating trailer than the one created for Sunwell Plateau.  In fairness, that may just be because I didn't care too much about the Kil'jaeden storyline.  That may be part of it, but the bulk is simply how inclusive the lore presented by the Secrets of Ulduar trailer is.  In the short clip, we see a collection of some of the most recognizable faces in the Alliance and a pair of big names from the Horde, together.  We watch as Brann Bronzebeard narrowly escapes some sick eye lasers.  With knowledge of Yogg-Saron's escape in hand, Brann rushes off to Dalaran to warn Jaina, Rhonin and Varian before they are interrupted by Thrall and a very agitated Garrosh Hellscream.  Varian and Garrosh quickly go at it, only to be separated by Rhonin.  After a promising speech, Varian and Garrosh leave the summit in rage, destroying any hope of the Alliance and Horde working together to take down a far greater evil, Yogg-Saron.

Aside from "who will face Yogg-Saron," the trailer does raise some other interesting notions.  Is the Alliance or the Horde even going to support our efforts as they did in the Isle of Quel'Danas - through the Scryer and Aldor - or are we on our own?  With Garrosh constantly disobeying Thrall, could he be planning a devious coup?  Will Varian ever get over his struggles as Thrall did, or is he to obsessed with his past - which doesn't differ much from the Warchief's - to let it go?  Perhaps he just needs to see Garrosh perish? Brann seems scared out of his wits, so I hope the Yogg-Saron fight is pretty epic.  At the very least, the trailer should get your pumped up for this new raid!

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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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The moment that achievements were announced I knew it would quickly become one of my favorite aspects of the game. The reason is because I spent most of my days in Burning Crusade doing them before they were even implemented. You may wonder how this works, but it is really quite simple. You don't need a shiny rectangle to appear on the screen to know you have accomplished something out of the ordinary (although it doesn't hurt). Myself and a few friends have a long standing tradition of trying to push ourselves. Back in the day we would often try and complete heroics with only 3 people, or 10 man raids with only 8. There is a great sense of adventure in trying to do things in a way that makes them more difficult. Other variations included doing a heroic without a tank, or without a healer. These exercises make you get creative, and that is one of the aspects of the game I really enjoy, solving problems with a group of friends. Looking at the in game achievement list can be a spring board for new ideas. So there is an achievement to 8 man Naxx? Great idea, but how far can we push it? How about a 7 man, or a 6? It really makes you stretch and ups the challenge immensely. So in a time when many people are making great progress on their achievement list, and dare I say, running out of things to do, I urge you all to give it a try! It's an amazing way to milk even more enjoyment out of this game. For my next project we plan on trying to do Naxx10 with only one healing spec'd player. Think we can do it? What about you guys? Have you done any achievements that are not listed on your character? If not, what do you think would be a fun challenge? I personally would like to see someone 20-man Sarth 3D!

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My GM made a call to the general members when the guild hit its raiding roadblock the other week.  I took up the call and set up a heroic night where members who needed badges, reputation, gear or something to do, could have a dedicated night where others would know to be online.  I even put a little thought into it.  I selected a weekday that the guild doesn't raid on, ensuring that the heroic night - should it become popular - would not interfere with the general operation of the guild.  The plan was to have separate groups, or some sort of rotation, that would enable us to run a few heroics over the course of a night.  Brilliant, I know! The first week was not what I would call a raging success.  I was only able to notify the guild via the little used forum, which don't garner too much attention.  After about an hour sitting around in Guild Chat a group consisting of a healer, tank and ranged and melee DPS was formed, a PUG was found and we were off to tackle the Daily Heroic, The Oculus.  It became the most agonizing instance run of my life, an amazing feat considering that we only wiped once. I've run my fair share of piss poor PUGs, but that punishment came from other players due to messy pulls, not paying attention, bad play or what have you.  Never have I gotten frustrated at the title's design itself, until last week.  The Oculus is one of three instances inside Coldarra, the others being another 5-man dungeon, The Nexus (also the name of the area) and the 25-man raid against Malygos, The Eye of Eternity.  Many of us have likely completed the other 5-man dungeon, as it is one of the easiest Heroics to participate in.  The Oculus is known for the opposite reason, being one of the most difficult and least run heroics that Wrath introduced. For me, the instance is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst instance ever.  The dungeon is high on the fail meter from a culmination of its length, inspiration, execution and general boredom.  You spend most of your time flying around the outside of The Nexus killing trash mobs as you make your way to various constructs.  The fights with the guardians and constructs are basic, uninspired quick kills.  As if that wasn't boring enough, the trash is followed by uneventful tank and spank boss fights.  It isn't until the third boss, Mage-Lord Urom, that an encounter becomes interesting.  About 90 minutes after we zoned in - no wipes up to this point - we finally pulled Eregos, the only enjoyable aspect in the entire dungeon.  Many players hate the final encounter because it's a very fickle battle, requiring knowledge and near perfect execution.  Thanks to a fantastic explanation and constant communication, our group downed him in only our second go. The designers attempted to make The Oculus heavy on vehicle combat but it just didn't work.  The battle against the blue dragonflight is painfully boring mainly due to all the crappy trash you have to clear to do anything of consequence.  Hopefully the team behind The Oculus learned from their mistakes, and passed that knowledge on to the team responsible for Ulduar's vehicle-based encounters.  At least those fights inside Ulduar will enable gear to make a difference. The Oculus was a valiant effort at trying something new, but it didn't come together.  If you feel like torturing yourself then you can run it, just be prepared for agony.  We ended on a high note, as the the entire party received a chuckle after we downed Eregos.  This came by way of the Guild's GM receiving six, yes a half dozen, achievements all at the same time.  As for Solidsamm, he shall never return there, daily or not.

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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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The difficulty of World of Warcraft has been a hot topic since Wrath of the Lich King released last November.  The second expansion brought players three raids (four if you include Vault), raids that were conquered in only three days.  Most of us wanted to reserve judgment on the latest expansion until the "normal" players had a crack at the high end content.  I would wager that we can call it now, the raids are indeed incredibly easy.  My evidence?  The fact that completely random PUGs are able to tackle all the raids.  Back in The Burning Crusade I considered Karazhan a challenging PUG, constantly dreading the raid when it wasn't a full guild run. World of Warcraft's upcoming content patch hopes to change the issue of difficulty, if only a little bit.  Ghostcrawler stated on the boards that the encounters in Ulduar - there are fourteen of them - have been designed to be more difficult from the get go.  However, everyone is hung up on the announcement of the upcoming mana regeneration nerf.  If you missed that bit of news, Blizzard will be nerfing base mana regeneration by 40%, forcing users to conserve and use mana regenerating abilities properly.  Paladins will have a different set of buffs due to the way they regen, but the nerfs will effectively match other healers' pain. At first glance, the nerfs seemed to be an artificial way to make the game hardier.  Rather than designing some difficult encounters, Blizzard simply nerfed healers.  On the surface, this would only make WoW more difficult for the nurturers out there.  It is really so much more than that.  Ghostcrawler defended the move, giving a soon to be classic example of why healers needed to be nerfed. The decision came down to the fact that raiders could simply "stand in the fire" and be carried through the damage by healers that wouldn't run out of mana.  This is obviously a bad way to play the game, taking easily avoidable damage just because it can be outhealed .  Blizzard wanted to make this kind of boss burning strategy obsolete in Ulduar, hence the mana nerf.  Off the bat, I expect most raids to use the age old scapegoat of blaming the healers for the raid dieing.  Until players actually learn the encounters, get out of the AoE or avoid any damage that can be nullified by player abilities, Ulduar should be a step up in difficulty.  Which will make PUGing it more challenging. If the raid is managing to play the encounter correctly, but healers run OOM, then Ghostcrawler has two points for those players.  You either don't have the correct gear for Ulduar, or you are playing the encounter incorrectly.  Oh, and by no means is Mr. Street attacking the priestly classes, "if the idiots stand in the fire, guild kick them." So yea, Ulduar should be more difficult, due to design and a retooling of the various healing classes.  All that being said, Ulduar is no Sunwell, "it is not a huge leap up in difficulty from Naxx, but it is a step up."  Before you start complaining that Ulduar is two easy, be sure to have all 11 of hardmodes comepleted.

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The daily cooking quest varies from day to day. You may have seen Dr. Dorkins recently complete one for Achivementology. However, achievements are not the only benefit of doing a cooking daily quest. One of the greatest draws of the daily cooking quests are the rewards of Northern Spices. All of the best food buffs come from items that are cooked using Northern Spices. And the cooking daily quest is the only way to get them! If you are doing any serious raiding where you are required to have consumables, it can get expensive. Buying potions, elixirs or flasks, and food can really add up quickly - especially if you are progressing through new content and are subject to dying or wiping. A typical cooking daily will get you between 2 and 6 Northern Spices depending on your luck. If you have extras, you can use Dalaran Cooking Awards to buy Northern Spices in stacks of 10. However, for many players this is not enough. Thus, a market is born for Northern Spices for players who either don't bother to do the cooking dailies or who need more than they can get themselves. Depending on your server, you can get different deals on these. The typical range is 2-6g. If you can get 4 spices a day from luck and 10 more from trading in a Dalaran Cooking Award, you are looking at getting a good 40 gold. Even if you aren't raiding, there is a good profit to be made in doing your cooking dailies. Any character of level 65 and up with a cooking skill of 375 can cash in, so start early and cash in. Stock up on Chilled Meats and Rhino Meat to prepare for whatever daily might come your way - Awilo Lon'gomba and Katherine Lee await your service!

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In all my time raiding in WoW I have not seen an issue quite as polarizing as the Sartharion Encounter in The Obsidian Sanctum with all three drakes left alive (commonly called Sarth 3D.) This has been especially true in my guild lately as it is the last major hurtle we still have to overcome.

This encounter is commonly regarded as the most challenging fight in the current end game, and is something only a handful of guilds have accomplished. The incentive for winning this encounter is an achievement, an awesome title, and a rare mount that will only drop in this encounter. For me, there is also the sense that you have beat the hardest fight in the end game, but for many that is not enough.

See, there has been a lot of debate in my guild if this is something worth striving for. The guild has been split sharply into two separate camps. One camp, the camp I am a member of says: yes, this is important. My reasoning is simple. It is progression, it is the only fight we have yet to win, and I want to win it!

The second camp says: no, its is not worth all the time and resources we put into it. They say it is not progression, as it does not add any usable gear to the loot table, there are no new bosses behind him, and downing him will not help us at all in Ulduar. Essentially they see it as an achievement and nothing more.

While I am full aware that the 3 drake loot table adds no gear over the 2 drake loot table, I am going to have to express my opinion against camp 2. For me, raiding has never been about the loot. I’ve downed hundreds of bosses without the benefit of receiving loot personally. I play the game to overcome challenges. More importantly overcome challenges with my friends and guildmates. That’s why I play the game, to do something fun and challenging! This is the last challenge left for our guild.

Now I am aware that people have different priorities in this game. Some like raiding more than others. I for one love raiding and am not bothered by wiping for hours on end, as long as it is a means to an end. Some people clearly are bothered by it, it can be frustrating, and more importantly expensive (repair bills aren’t cheap!).

While we continue to grind away, and I am hopeful we are close, there is an undercurrent of internal conflict on every pull. For me it seems that Sarth 3D is something you have the motivation for or you don’t. My guild is unfortunately split on the issue. How about you guys? Is this a worthy goal, a waste of resources, or something you got out of the way a long time ago?

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