A week ago today 4.2 launched and the Firelands raid was thrust upon us. I was happy that we managed to kill Cho'Gall pre-nerf but a little sad that we failed to get Nefarian and Al'Akir down and having seen the Tier 11 content post nerf I'm a little bit more miffed than I was this time last week. Anyhow, I am sure you, my loyal readers don't want to know that, you want the low-down on the Firelands!

Day one saw almost the entire server head there and start farming rep like men (and women) possessed, I fell into this trap in Icecrown Citadel and regretted it because all it did was make me bored of the trash upto Marrowgar even quicker than the rest of the place and despite being a complete rep whore I'm not prepared to suffer that again. The reports in /2 of exotic epics and masses of rep kept flooding in but I resisted the temptation. I did have a quick 30 minutes on my lock as some guildies were missing a DPS but I kept resisting the temptation on Evlyxx.
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The Backstory Shorts will be a series of short posts about things I have experienced in Warcraft that don't warrant a full post but are too numerous to make a compilation post on.

My first subject is one that was inspired by a post from the WoW Insider, Revenge is a Dish Best Served at Level Cap. That is the mobs I love to kill out of pure, unadulterated hatred because of numerous failures to survive unexpected encounters with them in the past

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After more than 5 years of having this in my quest log, I am very happy to have finally completed the Sceptre of the Shifting Sands questline. It all started with a loot drop from Broodlord Lashlayer in Blackwing Lair back in early 2006 and progressed very slowly as I gained rep to hit neutral rep , you start at hated, with the Brood of Nozdormu, which this took me until until late 2008 to achieve, as trying to do the rep grind by completing Hand of the Righteous was just plain dull and the easy way of killing stuff in the Ahn'Qiraj raid instances was difficult as during Vanilla my guilds were struggling to make progress and during TBC nobody wanted to raid them for no reward.

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Wrath of the Lich King and raiding ICC had become a bit of a chore for me lately, I found myself logging in for raids and do the occasional thing here and there, but my time in game has dropped dramatically because of this boredom/frustration and the guild drama a few weeks ago made things tougher.

The time that I spent in game outside of raiding was spent with some old guild mate and I have realised that the mad paced progression game is no longer the style of play for me. With Cataclysm incoming in the next few weeks I have decided that now is the best time to say goodbye to Immersion and join my friends in Saturday Knight Fever, a guild who is focused on the more social aspects of WoW rather than solely on raiding. Cataclysm will be fun and I know that Immersion will be there biting on the heals of the truly hardcore guilds and I know that I'll be jealous of their progress and thinking what if, but I just cannot commit to the time cost of that progression over my fun in game, sadly it does not add up anymore.

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Aargh! Is all I can say. Still not sure if the feeling I have is joy or annoyance. But sometimes lady luck can be a cruel mistress.

On Evlyxx, I have farmed Stratholme for a chance of getting the Baron's Mount lots, since achievements have been around I know the actual figure is a rather lowly 18 , I know people that got lucky on their first run, 1 guy I even had to tell him how to activate the Baron as he'd cleared the trash to the Slaughter House but couldn't get in to access Baron Rivendare. /sigh

I also know one poor fellow who has farmed Strat for the mount like his life depended on it, At 70 it was on his paladin and since Wrath of the Lich King it has been on his deathknight. The mount is rare, read the comments on wowhead and you hear stories from both extremes.

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In vanilla/classic WoW raiders were hard core players and the game was like a ladder you had to climb step-by-step to get to the top. Getting to 60 was a really epic journey and that took time and people learned their class and how to play the game generally. Once at 60 you farmed the 60 dungeons including Upper Blackrock Spire a 15 (and later 10) man raid zone that had no reset (ie it was like a normal 5 man dungeon) for blue gear that was capable of getting you into Molten Core and not getting your ass handed to you on a plate. There were armor sets for each class too. Once you started raiding there was a clearly defined progress path that really could not be fast tracked. 

The loot was relatively closely itemised so while upgrades for all were available in the latest and greatest there was also upgrades for people in the next tier down. This meant that there was variety in what you were doing each raid and if you had a new recruit who needed gear you were running content that would get them their raid gear.

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