56 Bosses in 12 hours. The Jane Doe Guild All-Night Raid.

25 men and women. 7 raid instances. 56 raid bosses. 12 hours. The Jane Doe Guild All Nighter.

The plan.

Take down 56 bosses in 12 hours from 6pm until 6am in one glorious night of raiding fun.

Black Temple

Sunwell Plateau

Naxxramas

Eye of Eternity

Obsidian Sanctum

Trial of the Crusader

Ulduar

The preparations.

Some choose Red Bull, some ProPlus, others stuck to coffee and some choose cider. Here's the fuel I choose to get through the night.

The final tally.

33 bosses. 18 achievements for Deme. Realm 4th for Poke in the Eye. Realm 4th for Must Deconstruct Faster. Realm 6th for The Keepers of Ulduar. I realise most people will have these ticked off for months (if not a year or more!) but our little realm was only created with Arthas and there was a stronger focus on 10 man in the beginning.

Maiev gets a bit depressed.

Personally, I had a few bumps along the way last night. My tanking wasn't up to par in my own opinion and having only ever done Ulduar in any progression sense, once (in 10 man and I've never seen Yogg), it was tough to take it all in. To get up to Yogg, before we decided we weren't going to get any further, was a great achievement in itself. I think that was about 2 or 3am.

Mimiron 25 man. /flex

We then went on to Sunwell Plateau where I had a loregeekgasm moment when I saw Kalecgos. ZOMGWTF he's bad?!! Oh no, he's not he's been possessed. Having not played the game in BC, I wasn't fully aware of Kalecgos's story, so I got a little bit over excited at the end of that raid when I realised I could click an orb and become a blue dragon. Not ride one, not talk to one. BE AN INTERNET DRAGON.

Deme has a quiet moment to herself.

Having seen the blues in Sunwell, we felt it only fitting to head over and see the Patriach himself, Malygos. Love him or hate him, this fight is a lot of fun in my book. I'm riding a dragon ffs!!

Dying is the only way to get a decent picture.

Finally with about an hour to go (I could be wrong my mind is a little fuzzy on this now) we headed over to Naxxramas. Sure it's old. Sure it's been cleared by every man and his dog and no one cares about it any more. But at 5am after 11 hours of raiding, with people now falling by the way side and 19 left fighting through the sleep deprivation, it's like a welcoming old friend who has a cozy mattress waiting for you. We cleared the Spider Wing, got Arachnophobia for those who hadn't got it and then someone mentioned the Plague quarter.

With something like 20 minutes left we headed in. Tiredness was clearly apparent as we died on trash. A quick run back and a dash through and we were good for Patchwerk. With Verde saying "10 minutes to go folks!" we dropped it like it was hot. And then some clever sod said "Let's do Grobbulus!". I cried inside and felt all the pain of last autumn coming back to me. Not him, please not him. I don't want to die to that stinky fucker at this time of night. Haven't we done enough? Aren't we happy now? Apparently no, we had not done enough. No we were not happy yet. I don't think he made it 1/2 way round the room. Take that bitch. Take that in your stupid injection arm. Take that in your ugly face.

All in all, 33 bosses went down. The rest are on notice. God dayum it was fun. Shoddy video below of our Dragon Parade high above Dragonblight at the end of the night.

Off to sleep,

Deme

How the Noobs Got on.

Last week I posted about noobs and how we all need to remember that we were noobs once too. I even said I was putting my money where my mouth is and leading a nooby noob raid through 1 qtr in Naxx, not a bad way to spend a Saturday evening.

I planned the group to include a few experienced players too, one per role ideally and this seemed to work well. The group composition looked like this:

1 nooby warrior tank and one experienced warrior tank
1 nooby rogue and 2 experienced DKs
1 nooby Boomkin, 1 experienced Warlock,
1 nooby disco priest, 1 experienced resto shammie and 1 uber geared tree who switched between dps and healing as needed (but we didn’t tell the tanks that, till now).

So all in all, there were more experienced players along, but what can you do, the purpose of the event was still there.

As it was an “introduction” to raiding, we stuck to doing just one quarter and choose Arachnid. I believe as a starting point for raiding you can’t go far wrong with Arachnid, I mean who doesn’t love squashing spiders?! With 3 bosses, trash between the bosses and some interesting mechanics, it’s a great learning ground.

Anub Rekhan in these days of ilevel 245 emblem gear, is pretty simple, no one bothers kiting him and as long as you have a sound Off-Tank to pick up the adds and can all run from Locust Swarm, you should be in a position to drop him. Which we did. 1st time. Hoorah.

Now on my first run (and every one since) on Grand Widow Faerlina we’ve beaten her up good and proper by dropping all the adds first. I had no idea until this weekend that this tactic was the “achievement” strategy. We did talk through the strat and even as the fight was taking place, pointed out when we would have dragged a mob over to sacrifice on Faerlina’s soft enrages. Again though, this fight was smooth and she went down with no issues. The cherry on top was the nooby raiders all getting [Momma Said Knock You Out].

The merry bunch made our way towards Maexxna with a little over 40 minutes gone. Not at all bad considering we were talking through all the strats, pointing out roles and making sure everyone knew about buffs, gish* and the like. The big spider dropped first time although we did loose one player to the webs. It's not a raid without one death though right? Oh. Well there is The Undying. Maybe we'll go for that this weekend.


*Gish = Fish, blameama.com

Help a Noob Day

I'm going back to the beginning this week. Well, if you believe the game begins at 80 that is. It's easy to become complacent when you've been 80 for a while, even if you're not at the cutting edge of end-game stuff, if you can run a HC in 15 minutes, your patience can on ocassion be a bit short with those who can't. Imagine bumping into a complete noob then. In your class and fannying around with a mix of gear including some very odd choices. How do you react? Are you tolerant? Do you offer some sage advice, do you say some derogatory comments about 'noobs' or do you just ignore it?



I was forced to ask this question myself this week when a newly dinged 80 whispered me at the Argent Tournament asking how he could get the aspirants seals. I was in a good mood, so I offered to help him. I talked him through how to get the seals and then what he would need to do next. He said he was after some gear for his DK and he knew about the T9 set. I asked if he'd been running heroics and he said he'd levelled entirely through questing. This knocked me back a bit. I'm not a huge dungeon runner myself, but I was shocked that he'd done none. Not. One. Nada. A closer inspection of his gear revealed this to be more apparent. I made a few recommendations of websites to read up on and suggested he ran some dungeons for experience before heading on my way. He thanked me and asked to add me to his friends list.

It took me all of 10 minutes to pass on some help and advice. Now I'm known for being a bit patronising so I do have to be careful when I dispense the 'advice', even so, most people I've encountered seem grateful as opposed to annoyed.

So I've decided to do this a little more often and try to remember those people who helped me out when I was just starting out. This saturday I'm hoping to take a bunch of guild noobs through Arachnid in Naxx, just to give them some experience and I'm wondering how the world of Azeroth would change if more people dropped the complacent attitude and helped a noob every once in a while.

Why Do You Raid?

As the title suggests I want to know why you raid. There was a rather heated debate on our guild chat channel the other day about people not wanting to raid Ulduar 25 man because they didn't need the loot. This was swiftly dismissed, with most people agreeing that the achievement and the pleasure of playing with 24 other like minded people was incentive enough. As often happens to my brain when I'm reading guild chat (on this occasion over my spousal unit's shoulder) I started wondering about people's motives to raid.

What makes you want to raid? Are you a phat lewt and purps demon? Do you lust for the thrill of the fight and the "whoosh ding" of the achievement? Do you just want to play with a like minded group of players, take out some more difficult bosses and have fun? Perhaps you are driven by seeing the inside of all those amazing instances and following the lore.

This may pique your interest into why I raid so here's my reasons.

I'm a wee bit ashamed to say that Deme is still effectively in Naxx. Sapp and KT are proving to be a bit of a bugger for us. We really should be facerolling it because we're overgeared for the instance so there's something wrong somewhere. Anyway, the point is, we're there because we want to do it. We want to say we pwned that stupid undead floating dress and his bony pet lizard. There is very little loot that would be of interest to most of us. Even as a relatively casual raid group, we spend most of our time enjoying other aspects of the game and so our gear is mainly from emblems, we certainly don't need stuff from Naxx particularly.

We also wanted to do it to bond as a group of 10 people before we moved onto the harder raids. We've had people come and go and had to replace a few members here and there so that hasn't helped. However I'd say we are now settled and have a great team who all know their roles. The raiding has helped us bond and learn to trust each other to do the role required.

I must confess though, for me, I am addicted to the "whoosh ding". I've even grown to like the little one you get when you complete a random dungeon. I adore the noise, the sense of pride, the shared sense of achievement with 9 other people and most of all, the cheers that go out on TS and the over guild chat. I also get a kick from downing bosses. My biggest geekgasm to date has been from downing the Twins in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. I'd spent a long time wiping on them a few months before and for some reason we never mastered them. This time we did and boy did it feel good! Better even than downing that horrid big green bag of pus Grobbulus. Loot? What loot?! I was level 80 and this was a level 60 instance! We did have a level 60 drood with us who loved it, but for me, I wasn't bothered at all. Not even if it was pretty. I just grinned from ear to ear for dropping those bitch slapping brothers.

Do tell what makes you go back again and again to those raid instances.

Deme the Under-Achiever

btw I know I'll never see that mace, but damn is it sweet.

A Death Knight Beginning and A Lich King's End

I rerolled a DK on an alternative server a few weeks back to enjoy playing through the starting area again now that I'm not such a noob and have some idea of the lore behind the characters I met there first time round. This just happened to coincide with a little thing called Patch 3.3 a.k.a. Arthas's Doom, or the official Blizzard title, Icecrown Citadel which will arrive in mere hours. Whatever you want to call it, the Lich King is gunna go down. Oh yeah!

Considering where I am with Deme right now, this is great timing, we're off to bash in KelThuzad tonight. If we just put Ulduar to one side it feels as though I am right in the middle of the Northrend battle, smack in the middle of the beginning of the Lich King's demise, with one eye on the horizon and the inevitable final goal.

Looking back on the death knight starting zone, I definitely took the phasing for granted in the past and I'm very glad I had the chance to run through it again. The quest I remember most is rescuing Koltira Deathweaver from the extremely annoying High Inquisitor Valroth. When I first tried this quest I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to kill that stooopid cloth-wearing squidgy, failing and then having to wait for Koltira to kick the bucket and the room to 'reset' as it were. This time round I think it still took me 3 goes to beat Valroth's head in.

I took great pleasure in taunting Noth with 'Where's Heigan?' especially since I was in the midst of wiping on Heigan a lot on Deme (for the second time) and spotting Gothik and thinking, 'You're not so tough! We one-shotted you!' was extremely satisfying. All in all, spotting the bosses that my raid group had recently slaughtered in Naxxramus was a real giggle. I also spotted a few people who I wondered about. Who the hell are these princely brothers? What happens to Orbaz Bloodbane after the Battle at Light's Hope?? Shamefully I've not met Bloodbane in Ice Crown yet and although I've bopped Prince Valanar in the Last Rites quest, I'd no idea at the time who he was. Having re-met him, I did wonder if he would appear in Icecrown Citadel and lo and behold, him and his dastardly brother are in league with Taldaram, yet another cheeky monkey who has popped again although we've all slaughtered him umpteen times in Ahn'Kahet. Maybe killing the Lich King is like killing the Sire of the Vampires, you kill the sire and all the others die too?

Whatever way the fight goes down, I'm just as excited as the rest of Azeroth.