The Only Escape

The last raid week was tremendous for us, as it was very similar to every piece of the puzzle clicking into place. Three new bosses died. Three new bosses may not seem like allot – and there are allot of folks that love to debate 10 versus 25 difficulty but here is just one simple fact- in the same room, 10 characters will have more space to spread out. End of argument. Mechanics, etc aside, this is one fact that cannot be argued. Everything else is equal. For us, it was synergy. Things clicked, and bosses died. Bastion of Twilight was cleared for the first time.

This week, we’re right back up to Cho’gall. Everything is cleared but end bosses – and we’ll spend the rest of the raid nights working on progression kills after we kill Cho’gall early this evening (oh, and Conclave). Nefarian is the main focus. Stepping back into Bastion of Twilight, we were somewhat pushing to get through the bosses quickly but also to get a feel for these achievements. We’re not ones to waste time. We feel like we’ve wasted enough getting “gelled”. This specific achievement was extremely easy to accomplish, so if you haven’t tried it you should.

The method we used- mind you, we had Time Warden, Nether Scion, and Slate Dragon, was to release two drakes, bring them down equally, and then kill Halfus Wyrmbreaker. In hindsight, it may have been faster with the reduced health pool to go ahead and burn on drake, (still releasing two at the start), release the third, and bring these two drakes down equally for the increased damage buff. We did succeed with this strategy on the first pull, but the burn on Halfus was slower and the loss of that third buff from killing the 3^rd drake was noticeable. We did use three tanks, but that’s a normal strategy for us. We rotate between having six or seven healers- and with holding a drake up longer, we went ahead and kept 7 healers. It was successful.

We also got a look at how difficult the next couple of raid achievements may be for us. Next on the agenda- Heroic Halfus.

Everything Ends

It’s been awhile since I’ve written. I’ve watched guilds struggle. I’ve watched guilds come and go. I’ve seen a huge decline of 25 man guilds as they dropped into 10 man raid groups, or just 10 man raid guilds, never completely making the transition back. One thing holds true – No Quarter Given has – to itself. We are still a 25 man raid core. We still have our same principles that this guild was built upon. We still go through the same effort to keep things just as drama free and as transparent as possible, while maintaining calmness – not always an easy thing when someone is ranting to you about a pixel or fails to realize, you’re just as human too.

Cataclysm has brought so many changes to World of Warcraft and it’s no where near being close to the end of many ripples Azeroth will feel. I’ve met so many great people through this game. I’ve sealed off some friendships, but I’d also like to point out – those friendships are only sealed as long you let them be. I took this last week to remove those barriers. People leave guilds for a variety of reasons- and they give a variety of reasons. This last week, well, I’m losing yet another dear friend to the “real life” raid boss. It happens.

The irony is this is that I’ve seen it many times. I’m not mad about. I, of all people, do understand. This is game. It’s a game I’m often told I take a bit too seriously – and it’s a game that I put allot of myself into by way of this guild, its day to day organization, and its structure. I would never want anyone to stay in this guild that is not happy, but more so, if real life takes you away from us- and I mean us, this guild, this extended family, it is just the way the dice roll. We pride ourselves on being adults. We will hate to see you go, but it doesn’t mean we lose all contact. There is real id, we have our guild Facebook, and there’s email. The best compliment even on the way out is that, while we all realize the commitment cannot be made anymore or the dedication to raiding, you enjoyed your time here. The atmosphere you described is what every officer in this guild works very hard to try to maintain as behind the scenes as possible.

I can think of many people that have passed through our “doors” to other guilds, or even just to leave game. Quite a few I still indeed call friends. They are still on my Facebook pages. I still chat with them when time permits. Nothing is forever. Enjoy your friendships while you can, and enjoy raiding with your friends. You never know when the “real life” raid boss may come for you.

Battle Resurrection Changes for Cataclysm

Cataclysm raiding is supposed to be a change. It is going to be different. Players all have “Oh Crap!” buttons now to preserve their life, and somewhere I know Ghost Crawler or another predominate World of Warcraft figure made the comment that each person would be responsible, to a degree, for staying alive.

This is the beginning of the end of healing the DPS that stands in ooze puddles or fire, the DPS that forgets what first aid is, how to pop a health stone, or a health potion. In conjunction with this same mentality, Blizzard has taken it to another step. They are setting limits on the number of battle resurrections that can occur during one boss attempt. This reminds me of how they change Hand of Protection from working on Deathbringer Saurfang, or the change where you could only use one potion during a boss fight. I remember when you could consume potions every 2 minutes, and they didn’t share cool downs.

This change will impact the druids’ battle resurrections, as well as soul stones that a warlock can use. It hasn’t been determined yet at this time of posting if ankhs on shamans will be impacted the same way. In addition to this, they may make the change that soulstones can be cast on a dead player to revive them. The latest posts on this topic show one battle resurrection for 10 man raids, and 3 battle resurrections for 25 man raids. With the cooldown changes of druids’ resurrections back to the 10 minute mark, and the warlocks’ soulstones on a 15 minute cooldown, it brings some interesting possibilities.

It removes the one thought of letting people die by stacking druids, and bringing them up afterwords to avoid dealing with game mechanics. It also makes one wonder if this is the functionality that may be bugging out the druid battle resurrections on the live servers. In some ways, I am very anxious to see how Cataclysm unfolds and if it brings back the feel Vanilla World of Warcraft had to the raiding scene.

4.01 Changes and Impacts

With 4.01 hitting the servers live, here at No Quarter Given, we went ahead and implemented all of our Cataclysm main changes, solidifying our raiding core. We’ve been recruiting to fill the empty slots with talents folks that both offer the skill and the commitment we expect from our raiders.

This patch brought some changes into guild, with the character switches, as well as a hard look and re-evaluation of our guild goals and ambitions. We did some tweaking on our Raid Conduct, trying to cover the loop holes we have noticed over the last couple of years, and taking a different approach with our tiered raider rank system. This change was implemented because we currently have a few members that are valuable assets to the raiding core but their attendance could not be met for our 85%. We’ve really restricted this rank to existing members whose work schedules change weekly. While there is no difference on “loot”, “effort”, or “raid slot”, there is a difference of attendance requirements.

As far as game mechanics go, World of Warcraft has been buggy in itself since the landing of patch 4.01. About half the guild had their 310% drakes, so the riding mastery was free. We’ve been struggling with the adhoc changes in ICC, as well as the lock sharing between 10 and 25 man content. Our guild is extremely focused, and the new raid core has tons of synergy, welcoming our new members. While we were recruiting hard for Cataclysm, we’ve slowed to a crawl in an effort to evaluate what we have and how these people are meshing with our community and atmosphere- and above all else, our strange way of doing things.

Cataclysm launch is roughly a month away, with a major holiday in right before. We are still maintaining our raid schedule, and making great progress for the remaining heroic mode bosses. It’ll be interesting to see how far we get.

Rusted Drake Farming

Our off night groups have taken a detour to visit Ulduar. We just got a second 10 man group through to get their drakes – minus a few people needing a few more dwarves, the meta requirements are completed. Not only is it nice to have completed this a couple of times, but to have a 310% mount as well for those that do not complete the holiday achievements. Alagon is on the agenda, holding the Starcaller title. For our 25 man raids, and this guild's focus, we are working through the same meta for the ironbound drake as well. For now, here's a picture of the 10 man drake:

Purchasing your titles - a Cataclysmic future

As always, in World of Warcraft, the time before an expansion usually sees many guilds folding, or some guild even go dormant. It's also a time where you see many new guilds get created. On Eitrigg, this time period had shown the return of a guild that was strong in Burning Crusade and around the beginning of Wrath only to disappear as people transferred off server. The top guilds on any server rarely completely disappear. The guild is still usually in existence when these types of things happen. Usually alts are kept in the guild to preserve the guild tag. In this case, the tag became active again. A few people transferred back in, and the previous members on server, who had left to join the remaining top end game raiding guilds, returned "home". The reformed guild started recruiting again. It completely crippled the top raiding guild on server, and threw server rankings out of synch at two guild ranking sites – since they allow cumulative kills to count. The reformed guild became server 2^nd – in a quick swoop just by the members it added on most ranking sites, without actually clearing the content as a group.

Most of this is just what happens these days with guilds, and maybe that will change with the guild changes in Cataclysm. What really just bothers me is seeing posts like this:

This is a post on the Eitrigg forums - selling drakes and titles. Yes, this is virtual currency. Yes, it is up to them if they want to do this. But has this become what this server and the gaming community here is about? The guild below is currently ranked number one, yet due to the mass departure of several of it's members, you can see below that they are asking for people to come and fill their raids with an enticement of the top performers getting gold. (Guess that means they have their own discipline priests and tanks.)

The point is.. back to why do you raid? Is it the prestige? If so, what prestige is to be had from buying the title so you can show it off, or the drake? There's other ways to make money for your guild. What's even worse is that most of the guild doing the selling of these virtual items hasn't cleared most of this content as a group on 25. 10 mans, yes, and rightfully earned that but as a guild, the 25 man achievements/hard modes were basically grandfathered in.

For me, a raid is about the guild. It's about the thrill of the kill. I've occasionally ran a friend through Stockades, or something similar to help them level, but I've never sold my services as in the post above. It makes the achievement or kill that much sweeter to earn it, than to be carried - to complete it with friends, with your raid group, and know that you did this on your own.

The expansion has obviously shaken up a few guilds on the server, but definitely not this one. As a guild that still farms drakes, we generally have people their titles in the first week of being in guild. It just is a bit shocking to see a guild selling these services when they still have folks that don't have it within their guild.

More achievements

Last night we spent some time on Deathbringer Saurfang Heroic mode, but without much avail – our composition was really light on ranged. We did complete Festergut and Rotface on heroic, which was by a vote since we could have also done Flu Shot Shortage as well. With that said, both bosses went down easily and we got our first look of Putricide Heroic. This is going to be a fun fight. It will also really put the pressure on people to keep up their situational awareness. Controlling the unbound plague is the most challenging part of this fight. After giving it a couple of attempts, we went ahead and flipped it to normal. We did the Nausea, Heartburn, and Indigestion achievement so that some of our newer members could get their achievements. After that, we quickly went to Frostwing Halls and healed Dreamwalker up on heroic mode. Great job Pallies!