The Backstory: WoW in 2010

With 2010 drawing to an end I thought I'd take a look back at the year's highs and lows. From changing guilds, to killing the Lich King suffering ISP issues and more guild drama 2010 has bee a strange year. I have had great times and bad times, happy days and sad days but I've never regretted anything I have done and have become better as a person out of game as well as in game because of it.
The year started and Evlyxx was in a guild called Quercus, a real nice bunch of folks with a great raiding team when I joined them back in October 2009. When ICC came things all changed, the real GM returned from a period of absence and her attitude was rather disgusting, she was a rude obnoxious woman who had an ego much larger than her ability, to make matters worse she was the healing lead and was ably assisted by her husband a rather nice bloke until her return. Anyway after 4 weeks of this I decided I really wanted no part of the guild and left along with many other members including the MT and a few officers. We all went different ways.

It was because of this that the blog was started up as I wanted somewhere to vent my frustrations without resorting to guild forums. So the blog was born, although as it turned out I decided to try my luck with Immersion because of the friends there, was accepted and the blog just got forgotten about.

The early time in Immersion was great, it was fun to be back raiding with friends from old and the guys and girls at Immersion were  much more laid back about their raiding than Quercus had been, well Kolixo was an exception to this and I must confess the crazy guy did intimidate me initially, but I soon realised that his bark was loud but he was really a nice guy underneath who just said outloud what I thought to myself. The Immersion folks were actually much more successful with their relaxed approach and I started 10 man raiding with wipes on the Lich King despite never getting further than the front 6 prior to joining Immersion. It really felt good to be in Immersion.

Cataclysm still had no release date but hopes for a summer release were high around the community. We were still working on the Lich King and were hoping to see him dead before Cataclysm came but were definitely ready for some new content.

Away from my main I had continued to raid ICC10 with the folks from All about Beer on Valdaran, my mage and we had got 8 bosses down by the end of the first quarter.

Immersion continued to work on the Lich King without success although the 10 man team I was in did get a Lich King kill but I was not in the team that night. Which turned out very bad as the team was now focused on heroic modes and that meant no more Lich King tries /boo.

It was in April that I switched my 10 man All about Beer raiding toon from Valdaran to Strigimaga my warlock because I was bored with the simple rotation of the mage and was really enjoying the complexity of the warlock. Fortunately, the All about Beer guys didn't object and I soon got the li'l 'lock upto the same DPS point as the mage and we progressed deeper into ICC, peaking on Sindragose in May.

Mid May also saw me revive my interest in the blog, just after Immersion killed Lich King for the first time on 25 man. Honestly can't remember if this was the cause for the revived interest or not but it most probably was that combined with increased boredom at work, where most posts were initially composed.

Immersion made great progress in ICC on HC mode by June we were 8/10 hard mode but problems were appearing with attendance and also a change in GM and MT certainly didn't help.

June also saw my mammoth ISP issues which prevented me from 25 man raiding and made me refocus my WoW play style and my blogging habits (reading more and posting more also). Because of my inability to 25 man raid (100kbps connections don't like 25 man combat apparently (although 10 man is OK) I decided to focus more on making gold.

I have always "farmed the AH" and flipped low value items for low profits and sold anything I loot above grey items on the AH. I have never worried about gold but had to save up for my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth and my Mekgineer's Chopper and have dual specs and epic flight on all my max level characters as well as gifting the gold to my son and some friends for the same purchases, but I now set my goal to be gold capped (214,748 gold 36 silver and 47 copper)  before the end of the year

Mekgineer's Chopper

July saw the launch of Starcraft and RealID. Starcraft was a small distraction from WoW but nothing more but RealID was great meaning I could chat to friends cross realm and cross faction and even better cross game!

I was still suffering from ISP issues and therefore was having to watch as Immersion ripped through ICC heroic and the fact that All about Beer had taken a summer break from raiding just made my time in WoW suck a little bit more. But watching the World Cup and farming the AH at the same time kept me occupied enough to make it bearable at least.

August saw my pitiful ISP issues end, well I fudged it by getting a 2nd line installed and that worked better than my original one had even when not broken! I had a 4x speed increase from 512 kbps to 2mbps. Cataclysm beta was live and I wanted in! I even mentioned in a post

The beta is in full flow, sounds real nice, seems my beta key is lost in the post, Blizzard gief beta key now plx!

Bizarrely a few days later I got an invite. Coincidnce? Do Blizz read my blog? If so why? Anyways, I cared not, I downloaded the client and went in it was truly awesome but I did decide to only look around and test content that was beneath me, saving the real Cataclysm content for live and my army of toons. I found many bugs and loads to blog about.

Immersion saw the Drama Llama in September and that eventually ripped the heart from the guild. It apparently opened a Cataclysmic chasm between the 2 parts of the guild (power gamers and the normals like myself) that had been expertly been held together by the old and new GM. The power gamers went their way and created a 10 man guild, Funk Messiah, the rest stayed and tried to rebuild Immersion, I was given officer status in the new Immersion, and we even managed a 10 man Lich King kill, but after some inner turmoil I finally decided that I needed a change.

RealID had highlighted something to me that really should have been obvious, 90% of my RealID friends were all in the same guild, Saturday Knight Fever. There was nothing else to do except offer the Immersion guys my apologies and join Saturday Knight Fever. I have made the change from "hard core" raider to "casual" raider, it really has been the best thing ever. I am enjoying the challenge of raiding with these guys and having an absolute riot. The SKF 10 man team managed to kill the Lich King and that is proof that my raiding career will not end just yet, these guys may be "casual" but they're a match for Shadowsong's respected raiding guilds guilds and we're better than many more. During this last 1/4 of 2010 I have increased my blog posting, this is a credit to the SKF guys and gals,as I believe my enjoyment from the game is giving me more inspiration.

November saw All about Beer resume ICC raiding and we blitzed through all the way to Lich King. There was only one goal, to kill him and after 3 weeks of extending raid lockouts, we finally managed to kill the pie king as the guild had bizzarely christened him. The date December 6th, the day before Cataclysm. I'm sure that made it a server last for killing Lich King for the first time before Cataclysm, heck it may have even been a world last! It was done with full buffs, new OP talents but in pure 10 man gear. It felt good and we all rejoiced.

December 7th came and Cataclysm launched, it was awesome, heroics are damned hard (as they should be) questing is buggy still but absolutely engrossing. 3 zones are the best zones ever created Mount Hyjal, Uldum and Twilight Highlands. Deepholm is good but I'm not a fan of 3d zones as I find locating things a frustration particularly herband ore nodes as well as quest NPCs now they are marked and having to cross half a zone to find a cave entrance is a chore. Vashj'ir is a really pretty zone and graphically the best one but questing underwater and the 3D nature of the zone really outweigh the look.

SKF visited Blackwing Descent on December 14th, I iknew it was ambitious but I wanted to check out the place to see how difficult it was, we killed a trash mob after a few wipes and then it's partner decided to enrage and wipe us again. The trash is tough and our gear, barely heroic ready, was clearly not ready. This cheered me up, looks like we may have a fun and challenge filled 2011. 

Oh and the gold cap target? I failed, but that is largely down to my spending in order to achieve max professions on my crafters and mainly buying mats to do so. I have 525 skill on an enchanter, an alchemist and a tailor. My blacksmith is at  515 a scribe at 520 and a jewelcrafter at 510. Only leatehrworking and engineering are lagging behind and that has been down to time as I had to level my tailor and blacksmith to 84 to open up recipes and I'm hoping to max all professions in the first half of January. I have a new goal for gold capping (Blizz raised the limit to 1,000,000 gold) of May 14th 2011 which just happens to be my birthday