World Of Warcraft: Part 2

So where did I leave off. Oh yes, Endless Nightmares. After Mortality went down a guild called Endless Nightmares was recruiting new members for their raid group. I had switched my hunter's spec from Marksmanship (which I had leveled with, bad idea at the time) to Beast Mastery. Oddly enough, my wife's hunter had been Beast Mastery, but ended up switching to Marksmanship when she joined Endless Nightmares.

Thus began our time as raiders in WoW. This was probably the most fun period for me (my wife not so much, not sure if the guild leadership didn't like her or what, but there were times she was left out of raids that left us scratching our heads).

Anyway, my first raid with them was temporary. One of the members (a warlock), was running late, so I filled in for a couple of bosses in Karazhan. The first boss, Attumen the Huntsman, dropped the schematic (engineering recipe) for the best scope in the game at the time (attaches to a bow, crossbow or gun for I think extra crit). The warlock was an engineer at max skill, so he could make it, but of course, was not in the group. I was the only other engineer, so even though my skill was still too low, I got the pattern. What was funny, this was only my second time on this boss. The lock player was understandably annoyed, as he was at Exalted reputation with the faction that deals with Kara (The Violet Eye, I think) and had never seen it drop (he got it the next week though). That provided me with motivation to level my engineering skill, which also yielded the schematic for the second best scope, although I had no reason to make that one.

This would prove to be the height of my WoW powers, though we only barely got into tier 5 content by the end. We raided Karazhan weekly, and eventually had enough people for 2 groups (it was a 10-person raid), one for members who needed gear, and one more as a speed run (by this point, I was in the latter). Typically there was a competition of sorts among the damage classes to see who would top the damage meter. Usually our mage would come in first, while second place would go back and fourth between my hunter and the warlock.

Finally we had enough people to start 25-man content (Vanilla WoW raids were 10, 25, or 40 player raids. TBC had a couple of 10 player raids but most were 25 players). Gruul's Lair came first. I think we actually got through the first boss just fine (more or less). It was actually 5 bosses at once and required a fair amount of coordination. This is where my wife and I could really shine. One of these bosses was ideal for paired hunters to tank. He had only ranged attacks, and would polymorph whoever was highest on his threat meter, so two hunters stacking damage and trading polymorphs was one of the recommended ways to tank him (the other option is to have a Balance druid in Moonkin form tank him solo, as transformed druids are immune to polymorph). I remember we screwed up once, as the call went out for all DPS to move to another boss, so, being hunters, we just kind of went and started on that boss before our assigned target was down. Oops. Other than that, having my wife and I tank this thing was a great way to go.  Gruul gave us a lot of trouble, though strangely, once we got him down he was practically on farm.

Magtheridon's Lair came next. Interesting fact: I never got to be straight DPS on this guy. First time playing it was in a pug (our guild leader was in the pug and they needed more players so a few of us got invited), and I was assigned as a cube clicker. He has some kind of overpowered nuke, and 5 players in the raid had to click on these cubes in the room to banish him and prevent him from casting it. I was perpetually a cube clicker after that. I seem to remember him being fairly easy. Not sure we ever wiped actually.

To be continued...

World Of Warcraft

I started playing World of Warcraft back in January 2007. It's not the first MMO I've played and I doubt it would be the last, but it's probably the best, at least so far. Most of the fun was in the early years; admittedly it eventually became a grind and I don't think I'm getting back into it any time soon.

Back in 2006, around, April-May or so, I started a club in Dark Jedi Organization called United Marine Brigades, supporting Battlefield 2 and the Special Forces expansion, eventually adding Battlefield 2142 as well. My wife joined as well and (after I stepped down as overall commander) moved up to second-in-command. Ultimately, World Of Warcraft brought this club down. We had become somewhat bored with BF2 and didn't see another multiplayer shooter on the horizon to help reinvigorate the club.

Virtually all of my officers ended up moving on to WoW. One of them convinced my wife to download the trial (at the time, I think it was a 14-day trial). After taking a look while she was playing, I decided to give it a shot. Then my friend and neighbor (he lived upstairs from us at the time and kept his laptop in our apartment since he pretty much always played with us) decided to try it as well. Next thing I know, we're buying WoW and signing up for subscriptions.

The Burning Crusade era

We began not long after the first expansion was released (sorry, we can't wax nostalgic over vanilla WoW, because we weren't there). I initially created an Orc warrior named Axisomega, but by level 12 decided I wanted a hunter, which was a bad idea since my wife was playing one. Hers is an Orc, mine is a Tauren initially named Axisomicron. We joined our friend's guild (named Awesome Squad) on the lightning's Blade PVP realm (bad plan) and began the quest to level 70. My neighbor played a Tauren warrior (named Brenyeto) but ended up falling way behind, as he kept selling his quest greens and buying vendor gear. So our main players consisted of two hunters, an enhancement shaman (Shadowmurk), a shadow priest (Geekranger) and a rogue (forget his name; we called him Slicer but I don't remember for sure if that was the name of his toon). We later added a warlock (Oddun) and a holy paladin (Jiir), and a balance druid (forgot his name tho). See our problem? No tanks! We knew an Orc warrior named Ragrim who occasionally tanked for us, but he had guild obligations and eventually quit. Once we got to level 70 and wanted to get ready to start raiding we were in trouble. Jiir was willing to tank but Shadowmurk was adamant he would never heal. Brenyeto was way behind for a while and I was still too far behind on my paladin. So we had to pug tanks for a time. Eventually Brenyeto got caught up, and we set about to getting him tank gear, which involved me smelting lots of felsteel (I was mining/engineering) and then tracking down a blacksmith, who made him the felsteel armor set and charged him way too much for the service (usually it's a small fee or even free if you provide your own materials; this guy charged some 250 gold). He never really got the hang of tanking though. I think he still plays but he mostly plays hunters now.

Anyway, during this time some of us started Alliance characters on the Duskwood realm. All Night Elves too somehow. Shadowmurk rolled a warrior, my wife a priest, and myself a druid. Smart! We had a healer, and a tank, and someone who could do whatever was needed (Shadowmurk needed more help with tanking than my wife did with healing, quite the opposite of what was expected). We initially joined a guild called Ozrael's Dominion, which was part of DJO. Eventually we decided we liked things better on the Horde, and transferred our toons to Duskwood (my hunter and paladin, my wife's hunter and warrior). We initially joined a guild called Mortality, but they lasted less than a week.

Eventually we joined a guild called Endless Nightmares, and that's when we finally took to raiding.

(To be continued)