Oh my UI with super huge buttons, badly positioned unit frames and 8fps!!

Anyone following this blog from day 1 will know that the reason for me starting to blog was to write about my progress in WoW and while that has sort of happened I've never really caught up with my pre-blogging story. The last installment was 10 months ago and got to the end of Ulduar in terms of game progression as I just joined the guild Encore. Anyway, the story so far can be read in the following posts The Backstory: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12 and Part 13.

Encore were a very different type of guild to what I had become accustomed to in Deadwood. While they were a raiding guild they were much more relaxed in their approach to raiding, in hindsight this wasn't actually a bad thing but at the time it frustrated me greatly and I think I also had not really come to terms with being part of the rank and file of the guild after so long as an officer.

That said the majority of the folks there were good people and they were raiding 25 man which was one of the 2 reasons I left Deadwood, the other being the need to have people in /g to chat with and hopefully run dungeons with (remembering that this is pre-dungeon finder). However, their progress was slow as they had only just gotten to Freya, and I was used to clearing Ulduar. Their casual style and their unwillingness to move into the Trial of the Crusader because, "the 3rd boss is a PVP fight and we're not a PVP guild" according to their GM.

So after only 3 weeks, I decided that Encore was not the guild for me and posted an application to join Quercus, one of the other 2 guilds on my original shortlist and on October 15th 2009 I got the mail to advise that I had been successful in my application to join them and a new adventure began...

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It really is strange, I made this blog because I wanted to tell the story of my progress in WoW and I am not even close to telling the story upto the point I started the blog some 27 months ago. Anyway, the story so far can be read in the following posts The Backstory: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, and Part 12, which ended with me in a guild called Deadwood at the end of Burning Crusdae. 

Today I'm going to give you the next installment.Wrath launched and with it came a new found passion for the game, the guys of Deadwood were hoping for big things and we had retained most of the guild during the end of expansion lull and had even strengthened the roster with some cross realm recruits, from Nagrand iirc. 

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No, not my total days played, but rather the number of days it took me to clear all raid content in WotLK. Sure I had defeated all bosses before over all of my characters but the Halion kill was on an alt and Evlyxx still needed that kill for me to consider him, and the rest of the WotLK raid content beaten. Sure I still have to kill a few bosses on hard mode (10 and 25) and of course there is the small matter of a 10 man Artard kill, but overall if Cataclysm was launched tomorrow I would have no regrets like I did at the end of vanilla and the Burning Crusade where I was a step away from entering the last raid tier each time.

My self induced progression stress is all now gone, its now fun all the way to Cataclysm, and thats not to say it hasn't been fun to get here! The surprise for me was not the fact that I had finally gotten to the end of the raid content in an expansion, that was my goal this time around all along, but rather the fact that I have got so close not on one alt but 4, Strigimaga my lock is closest with just a Lich King kill eluding the lil gnome, closely followed by the Mikmaq, my shaman, who mises only Lich King and Halion and then comes the mage (Valdaran) and the evil Evlyxx who both need Sindragosa, Lich King and Halion. I'm not going to repeat content from my previous posts about the State of Raiding  but the content wasn't as hard or maybe I just got better and/or surrounded myself with better players.

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To avoid upsetting anyone all my beta information is going to be hidden from the main page, So if you want to have content spoiled you will need to click the "read more" link further down the page. The only clue will be from the title of the post but these will, I promise, always be vague enough to not give anything away.

My purpose of playing the beta is to try to break the game, I'm not doing any actual content that I am likely to run Evlyxx, or any of my alts through a kajillion times after the launch. I am here for exploration, looking at the older Azeroth content and to see where I need to go to be able to power level professions.

If you have any requests for places you'd like me to go or NPCs to visit drop me a line at evlyxx at evlyxx dot com or leave me a comment below.
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This weekend my 10 man raid guild decided that the summer was too good to miss and with Cataclysm just around the corner a break was needed for us all to charge our batteries and be fresh for the next wave of challenged.

I must admit I wasn't ready for this myself and the announcement came out of nowhere, but as enough of the group had asked for the break to our raid leader he did exactly as I would have so /salute to Posie for doing that. At the end of the day most of the guys and gals of All about Beer are not hard core progression raider types, their attitude to raiding is very casual and focused on having fun although their drive is first class and that is what made raiding with them worthwhile.

It all started in June 2009 when I got dragged kicking and screaming on an alt into Naxx, I was focusing on my mage as the primary alt at the time and I took my bad DPS into Naxx with a group that was completely unknown to me except for Posie (on his priest), Aphra (who I knew as a mage, Xabinkinniel) and Stabbster (an alt of a guidie, Wollo). The rest where in fresh faced raiders ready to learn their craft in Naxx. It turned out that there were 3 married couples in the team and we had a riot. OK progress was made half the team as we downed Kel'Thuzad and went on to slay Sartharion (with all drakes dead). A top night was had but, I had low expectations about things lasting long. How wrong I was to be!

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