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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Well for me Wrath of the Lich King is finally conquered I have succesfully defeated Arthas, the Lich King  on 10 and 25 man modes, no heroic version but I really never anticipated that happening. Its been a long journey, I started attempts on Lich King 10 way back in February when I joined Immersion, missed the run where the 10 man group killed him and that meant progression moved directly onto the hard/heroic modes and that meant no more attempts on Arthas

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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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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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I am loving the RealID system. It allows me to to stay in touch with the people I have become friends with online regardless of where they are in WoW. However, the reign of it being the best thing in WoW since the Dungeon Finder  is about to come to a very abrupt end after a very short time.

With the announcement (source) yesterday, that in future forum posts on Blizzard sites will display our full name rather than that of our on screen alter ego, Blizzard seem to have taken the golden egg, covered it in grease and thrown it to Robert Green.

I personally don't want everyone I may encounter to be able to Google me and see what my thoughts on a video game are, sure some people I couldn't careless about them knowing but the guy that in 10 years will want to hire me as a big shot in his multi-million pound enterprise certainly doesn't need access to such ramblings. Therefore, I am now forced into a corner about posting on the forums either I keep quiet and preserve my anonymity or I have my say and risk the whole world finding out my views. Sadly, I'll be choosing the keep quiet option, at least on the Blizzard forums.

Anyways my piece has been said, feel free to post comments below as I'd like to know if I'm being over sensitive or not. more »

Well 25 man content at least. It has now been 3 weeks without a decent enough Internet connection to be able to raid 25 man content, my search for a new ISP has ended, but the pain and suffering caused to me so far has been immense and I hope to have it all sorted, in another week as finally TalkTalk have  accepted that it is not my PC or router at fault and are sending BT Openreach to investigate a possible line fault.

So during this time I have not gained any fresh kills, although Immersion have now killed the Blood Princes HC, good job guys only 5 more to go then Arthas HC! Its been really painful for me as for the best part of  4 years I have had almost 99% attendance for raid nights, infact I have probably missed as many this past 3 weeks as I have (holidays excepted) ever. Hmm maybe I need to get out more. But my raiding needs have been fed from doing the 10 man content with All about Beer and we have made some progress there as we are now 11/12 with only the Lich King left to kill before we embark on 10 man HC.
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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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