The Backstory Shorts is 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 and something I started up in 2010 and then neglected. Way to go!! 

Now I'm reviving this feature and along with this 3 installment I thought I'd share the previous 2 posts to give a refresher! The first was titled Introducing.... which covers my top 3 mobs I enjoy killing because of the hatred I have built up for them over the years and the second was about me completing the grind for my Winterspring Frostsaber, done the old way without the fancy schmancy easy mode daily quest! Damn you Blizzard!

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Deadwood 1st raid Boss Kill July 4th 2007 and Shynight started a tradition...

While I still consider Vanilla the Golden Era of raiding, it was with Deadwood that I had the most fun and success. As mentioned in my most recent "The Backstory" post prior to forming Deadwood my previous guild, Teddybears of Doom had just killed High King Maulgar and had made good progress through Karazhan. The group of players we had were some very good players but as a raid group we lacked balance. We managed to recruit a few friends into the guild and we managed, with the power of alts, to get 2 tanks and 3 healers and 5 DPS together to go and start back at the beginning. Attumen the Huntsman was our first target...

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One of the refreshing things about Cataclysm is the return to life of the capital cities. I remember the days of "unknown entity" in Ironforge in Vanilla and the lag that was also in Shattrath. But with Wrath we were assured that the no fly zone would help prevent the lag in Dalaran.

Sadly even Dalaran was way too small to play host to all the citizens of Azeroth without causing major lag for most people at all times of the day and particularly around late afternoon/early evening rush hour. So bad was the issue that Blizzard had to change its plans for the Argent Tournament to be hosted in the Crystalsong Forest and relocated it to northern Icecrown (did you wonder why the pre-Qs were in Crystalsong?)
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If you have been reading my blog for a while or been dedicated enough to go back in time you may remember or stumble across a post I made back in May 2010 about how I got started in raiding and I never finished the story so over the next few weeks I will make one of my posts one of my backstory.

After killing Onyxia (level 60) I was most definitely hooked but I knew my gear was not upto the challenge, with the exception of my recent haul (Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire & Halo of Transcendence), so I spent the next few days running Scholomance, Straholme, Blackrock Spire (Upper and Lower) hoping for any upgrades to my shabby green gear and hopefully some of the Vestments of the Devout. I did 2 instances a night and I remember bugging groups to do the Father Flame event in the hope that the Devout Mantle would drop, a few groups sighed and said no a few brave one relented reluctantly but them shoulders never dropped. I did get a few upgrades though so all was not wasted.
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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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More thoughts on the changes brought to us in 401, sorry I can't be bothered with all the dots any more, lazy? I prefer to call it efficient.

A general rule in raiding has been "move out of the fire", the "fire" has ranged from the aforementioned fire to poison, void zones and acid. It has come in many shapes, many colours and many encounters from as far back as Zul'Gurub right the way through to Icecrown Citadel. Sure there have been a few examples where the "fire" has been good to stand in, the poison from the Sons of Hakkar in Zul'Gurub, the Blue Goop (as my old guild described the Bog Giants aftermath in Serpentshrine Cavern) and the protective bubbles in Malygos
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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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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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Still suffering from Internet issues (good game TalkTalk) I have been unable to raid now for over 4 weeks. My gold making project is going well enough but nothing that really was worth mentioning here. So I decided to go exploring and discovering a few interesting places people rarely visit in-game because they don't know it exists, has no real purpose or is not really meant to serve as anything more than eye-candy on flight paths.

The list is not really long but over the next few weeks I'll be making a post on each of them. Today the location is  Stormwind. Yeah I know what you're thinking EVERYBODY goes to Stormwind, big place, capital city of the humans. Well I shall reveal a tiny part of Stormwind that took me 5 years to find and I thought I'd share with you as it hidden in plain sight!
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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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