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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I have been suffering a really dodgy connection from my ISP lately, my download is all of 130Kb, which is about 15% of my normal speed. But it has made me appreciate how bad your connection can be ansd how tolerant WoW actually is of this.

Sure it has meant that I am unable to raid ICC on 25 man because even with all the settings to minimum the data flow coming from the servers creates about 1000ms of lag which is just plain bad for attempting complicated fights requiring quick get out of the fire type reactions or the hard mode fights. Dalaran too is a complete nightmare, but you guys already knew that I'm sure.

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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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I have decided that the time to get actually posting regularly is now, well to be honest, I was poked and prodded and I really was slacking. Trying to get motivated to write about stuff that happened in the past and making it accurate, coherent and relevant was a lot harder than I expected.

Anyways, as things stand now, I am raiding at the top end of the chasing pack, my 25 man guild, Immersion are currently doing hardmodes in ICC 25 mode bosses  which is an OK place to be. I'm with a few friends that I have raided with since MC, Malicus (the pally formerly known as Regaal), Rixxor and Piteq its strange how some folks just can't get rid of me! 

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As a fresh level 60 I knew that the time had come to change from a shadow priest to a holy one. Life outside instances was going to be hard but as a healer I would be able to get into group really easy. The good news was that as soon as I made the change I realised how much easier healing was, bigger heals meant I needed to heal less and that meant my mana lasted most fights instead of having to drink mana potions or drink copiuos amount of Morning Glory Dew constantly. I had done my research and learned that spirit was my best friend and started to collect armour with this stat on. But gearing up as a newly level capped player back in vanilla (level 60) was a very different environment to the one freshly dinged (or should that be dung?) level 80 has now (patch 3.3.3 May 2010). 


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The day I hit level 50 was the day Shadowsong EU opened the gates of Ahn'Qiraj. Knowing a few people in the know I got the tip that it was happening at 6am server time on a Saturday morning to hopefully avoid the server crashes that followed the attempt to bang the gong.

Masses of people were there to watch and then the inevitable disconnect and when trying to log back in getting the world server is down message. This fiasco went on for an hour but eventually things stabilised and the ceremony went ahead and the gates opened.

I was still 10 levels away from being able to join the end game raiders who went their way downing the one-off world bosses and onto the 2 raid instances, The Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj a 20 man raid and the 40 man raid The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. It would be quite some time before I went there but there was still plenty of content for the non-raiders to get their teeth into to save Azeroth from the bug invasion!

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WoW is a multi-player game and in-game friendships are formed with players you randomly group with much more often than real life friends. Like other online multi-player games WoW has a guild system that are like your in-game family.

I had been in a couple of guilds the Frozen Pirates (it lasted a whole day before I left there) and Shield of the Felwen (until the GM vanished after a couple of weeks) before I finally found somewhere that felt like home in EZO, that had well over 400 members all of whom were very active. The guild was aimed at people that played the game for fun more than hard-core raiders and most people where levelling rather than doing any form of end-game content.

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I learned that solo questing as a priest was slow and painful and sometime deadly, I battled through the quests in Loch Modan and then moved onto the Wetlands, which is exactly what it is there. I started questing then met up with Kittiah on his 2nd character, a gnome warlock called Agonise, and a friend he was questing with. We teamed up with some other people and headed of to do some group quests, which except for my Deadmines experience wa sthe first time I'd tried grouping with people. I was really fun and was where I discovered I really liked healin . It was as if I had discovered the purpose of my character.
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The first day over, now the real work was to begin. Northshire Abbey was no longer to be a place called home. My adventures were sending me to Goldshire! I arrived and was sent awayagain to explore some mines, where more Kobolds were killed along with a few boars and then from behind me came the cry of "Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle!" what the....

image courtesy of Dan Scott Art

 After being ganked by a Murloc and his friends I returned to my corpse and began to attempt to master the art of killing these annoying, slimy little fish men. Around Elwynn Forest I strode questing, gathering, killing and delivering as demanded until I was set my first real challenge, Hogger.I failed solo, a few times then the call went out to Falynn to help me, in he came to rescue the day and at level 17 made mince meat of the level 13 elite gnoll.

Elwynn finished I moved next to Westfall and hunting down the pesky Defias Brotherhood and the Deadmines. My first instance run was a complete failure. We did get as far as the goblin foundry area, but got overrun and everyone slowly left the group. The one good thing that came from that was meeting Hukin (the other priest) who has remained an in-game friend for almost 5 years.

Westfall completed time to move on to Loch Modan and more Kobolds and boars died, my next move was to Wetlands and my first encounter with orcs, they liked me so much they chased after me as I moved through the mountain pass. By the end of my 2 week trial I had reached level 19 in only 2 days played! more »

It all began with a lad named Matt (or Kittiah as I found out later). He was one of my team at Norwich Union and played this stupid game killing dragons and stuff. He even managed to get Andy (or Falynn) another of my team playing the game and between them they would talk about this game called WoW. It sounded a bit geeky and like DnD and I was really not going to waste my PC on games, I had a PS for that sort of activity, especially as you had to pay £9 a month to play the game they made you buy too!

Anyways, on a business trip to Norwich in November 2005 they bullied, yes bullied me into a trial of the game. I really was not interested but wanted to shut them up as much as anything o agreed to a 14 day trial. I got home that night too tired to do anything other than the couch potato role I filled most nights and put the trial pass and CDs on a shelf. In work next day got pestered all day as to why I had not tried it and promised I would install it that night.

I got home and installed the game 5xCDs took over 1 hour. Not impressed by that anyways install completed and trial account ready to rock, I was keen now to get playing. Then "Downloading patch" message appears on screen another hour later (1/2Mb ADSL sucks for big DLs) I am finally ready I log in select the Shadowsong realm that Kittiah and Falynn play on I "have" to roll Alliance to play alongside them, which seemed a good choice because the Horde were ugly looking races.

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Before diving into the character Evlyxx, I thought it much more appropriate that the real me was revealed first.

I have been on this planet for over 40 years and during that time have been a son (hi Mum and Dad), a brother, a husband to a very patient Louise and a very proud father of Dominic.

I attended the Hewett School in Norwich and left with average qualifications after stupidly quitting 1/2 way through my A levels, and went to work for Norwich Union. In 1990, I reloacated from Norwich to Sheffield with them and eventually wormed my way into an IT job as a result of some work I did on the Millenium Bug and spent most of the next 6 years providing consultancy and support to their multi-location Call Centre dealing with telephone routing, IVR set ups as well as the general PC and user issues.

In 2007 I was made redundant and went started working as an IT contractor in roles including the European Space Agency in the Netherlands which did not last long as working away from home for 12 days out of every 14 was not for me. I then spent the a few months bouncing around short-term contracting before returning to full-time work with my current employers who are the UK's largest independant supplier of wireless networking infrastucture.

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