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First off, Happy Birthday to Me! 25 years old as of yesterday (4/8) and nothing has changed except that I can finally tell people my age without having to think as hard. Anakha took me to dinner (Romano's) and a movie (How to Train Your Dragon) and we had a most awesome evening. But as much as I love my husband, I think the present from my guild was so much better (disclaimer: I have not yet been to see Cirque du Soliel, which is the gift from my husband, so this statement is up for contention come Sunday).
Earlier this week, we killed the Lich King.
I died, twice, during P3, a result of tunnel-vision and bad depth perception (really need to figure out a better way to handle my camera angles). What's great is that this was a realm first and, of course, a guild first so we're all really excited. Now, Nesingwary is like the 10th worst server progression-wise or something, so our realm first is kind of like winning the Special Olympics (no offense intended; I have known some amazing people who have participated in those!). But it still makes us swell with pride.
Well, since we extended our ID from last week to work on the kill, what were we supposed to do for the next two raid nights with no more ICC available for the week? Ironbound Proto-Drakes, of course! I was benched for the first portion of Ulduar but managed to clear a number of achievements last night from my list of remaining. We called raid while working on Firefighter with the plan of working on it tonight. Logged in late from my dinner and movie with Anakha to see 'Firefighter!' achievement spam, talk about awesome timing, haha. They downed the next boss (Vezzax or something) and then I was asked to come in on Algalon. Alga-who?
I've never done Ulduar until yesterday. Alright, the first couple bosses for weekly quests, sure, but nothing beyond that. Some of the fights are hella-awesome, but Algalon takes the cake. For one, it's beautiful. For two, the fight is rather simple but specific in its need for execution. For three, it's deadly. Even though we out-geared the fight, you could certainly see the lack of practice on the encounter with our numbers dead on each attempt. This boss, however, has only a 1 hour lifespan each week; once he despawns after that one hour, he's gone until reset. We vastly outgear the instance however and, even with a large number of casualties, at roughly 15 minutes remaining and our 6th or 7th pull, we downed him. And got a realm first achievement for it.
I was not aware that Realm-First Achievements spammed, well, the entire realm. It makes sense, I suppose, but it certainly garnered us some unwanted attention. Word is that /2 exploded immediately. Amherst said that he started receiving a number of congratulating whispers and even a Hordie hopped over to tell us congrats from their side of the realm. It was nuts! Pathoran won the roll on the quest item drop and we proceeded to the north bank to watch the in-game 'cut-scene'. Very, *very* cool. Oh, and the Celestial Defender title? Epic. Completely and totally epic.
The story of Ulduar itself was awesome, at least the pieces I was able to gather of it while in-raid this week. I'm excited to go back again soon; I have 6 more achievements needed to obtain my first 310% flying mount.
So what's next? Hard modes! And what appears to be some... friendly... competition.
There's a new guild on the block. They call themselves 'the <Solution> to Nessingwary's horrible progression', also known as <S>. The original members of this guild are transfers from another realm who came to Nessingwary and soon posted up a 'LFM' on the realm forum. Now, Nessingwary is rather small and it's really a more social server. Team Pro had been looking for more folks for their 25-man runs and now Solution was here looking for more for their own. I'm honestly not surprised the two merged; combining forces is in both their interests rather than fighting each other for raiding applicants. Team Pro was at 9 or 10/12 and Solution's transfer members were at 11/12 so they are certainly a force to be reckoned with.
Sadly, they drew some ill attention from the get-go, bashing the local guilds and their (lack-of) progression as well as making some rather large boasts, such as the fact that they were going to kill the Lich King their first week. When Satellite beat them to the punch, I think the world exploded (and I know the forum exploded; we weren't able to access it for awhile due to server issues on Blizzard's part). I received a hand-full of whispers congratulating us on obtaining the Lich King kill before Solution. Ouch. Then tonight I think we inadvertently stole Solution's thunder of their own Lich King kill when we downed Algalon. Maybe 'hate' is too strong a word, but I'm pretty sure they don't like us much right now. They've mentioned in their kill thread that the 'race for hardmodes is on', but I'm afraid that they're only going to be racing themselves.
Satellite is what I like to call a 'softcore' guild. We raid three nights a week, three hours each night, and are very flexible about AFKs, real life, etc. For all intents and purposes, we could be considered a 'social raiding guild'. What sets us apart, however, is a more 'hardcore' mindset. Our members are constantly re-gemming, re-speccing, working on rotations, researching and developing new strategies. We're raiders with lives. And thus I label us 'softcore'.
Now, we're excited about hardmodes, don't get me wrong. But I certainly see us working on a hard mode boss for awhile, trying some strategies, and then switching to normal mode if we start getting frustrated so that we can move on. Hardcore guilds, which Solution claims to be (I have no first-hand knowledge as I have never been a member, so 'claiming' it is not a bad thing, I only know what I hear them say), will likely focus most, if not all, of their time on getting as many of those bosses down as possible. Neither method is right or wrong, but I am quite certain that they will quickly pass us by when it comes to hard mode progression.
This, honestly, I think is a good thing. During my time here, Satellite has been a fairly quiet guild. We goof off and are noisy at each other, but we tend to stay out of /2 and off of the forums and have kept to ourselves. Now we've suddenly been thrust into the limelight and, to be honest, it makes me a little uncomfortable. However, the amount of support that we've received from the realm has been amazing; it's really given me the warm-fuzzies seeing folks stick up for us in /2 and on the forums. I see Nessingwary as a community. Maybe a dysfunctional one, but a community nonetheless.
Grats to all of Satellite for progression that I think surprised even us, to all of Solution for their Lich King kill, and to Nessingwary for being a great little realm.
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In other news, I've added a few things to my plate in-game.
The first is gaining gold. Raiding can be pretty expensive and I never really had the mind to do daily quests for gold. Finally sick and tired of having only a couple hundred gold to my name, I decided to do something about it.
I've turned my 'Halp!' post on a WoW economy forum into something of a blog of my activities for awhile; it's time to put it here where it belongs. Expect to see more posts regarding what I'm doing, what is working and what isn't, and the general state of Nesingwary's economy. And no, I'm not telling you my bank-toons names. :)
The second thing I've been working on is multi-boxing. So far I've been struggling with true multi-boxing and have just been using Laurewen to boost lowbies on the other accounts to 60 with the Recruit-a-Friend XP bonus. However, once I've gotten my army of level 60s, I'll be trying my hand at true multi-boxing to see how well I can get it to work. Expect future blog posts regarding what I'm doing and how things are going.
Cheers!
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