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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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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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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Guild drama, been pretty free of it since I joined Immersion, we did have a small hiccup a few months ago when the GM and an officer (friends in the real world too) decided that as we had killed the Lich King they had finished WotLK, which is their decision and its not a bad one if your circumstances demand more out of game than you can commit with the game as a hobby.

Anyway I digress, the issue I believe started back a few weeks ago when our Shadowmourne bearer finally got his first Lich King kill and therefore his box of goodies. Fair play to him he agreed at somepoint that as the guild had helped him get it that the guild should get the goodies out of the box, the system devised was complicated and was a combination of  raid attendance, DKP and a dice roll but it gave everyone a chance of winning one of these uber rare in game items. Long story short the winner of the 1st choice was an officer who hadn't actually raided for months but was always on standby therefore earning DKP and attendance. A small debate ensued and the officer in question actually declined to choose and the items were all handed out.

The GM was upset by the attitude of the guild and said as much to us, but as a rank and file member nothing more happened. On its own this type of event would be unremarkable and whilst the person affected would have a right to feel bad would not cause major guild drama, then the officer left stating the reason as the guild no longer felt like the guild of old, a bit dramatic but I can empathise with the feeling having been there before.

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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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With the saga of ISP issues now behind me, I am back raiding with Immersion, my 25 man raiding guild. In the 5 weeks I've been out of it, the guys and gals have added 2 more hard modes as they have now defeated Blood Princes and Valithria Dreamwalker. Also, Halion was worked on lots and finally defeated and I have yet to have my first tries on this as a healer.

The other big change in the guild was a huge number of new guildies to keep us raiding through the summer, which is usually a period of inactivity, so I'm really happy that this won't be the case for us, so /salute to the officer team. My only concern, is quite selfish as the bulk of the new guys are healers meaning more rotation for the non-officer healers, which is a pain as 2 of the regulars are officers, but I do have the option of dusting down the old shadow skills as the off-set I have built up is plenty good enough, even if I'm not!!

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