Direction?

When I started this blog, I wanted to write about the trials and tribulations of raiding when you didn't want to.  (I have so many stories from Wrath that it's insane.  I'll post one at the bottom of this entry.)  I love WoW.  I love the world, I love the lore, I love the furbolgs and the murlocs.  I love that when I was at Dragon*Con a few years ago, when someone's murloc cell phone ring went off, my friends and I all looked around like "WTF, they're here?!!?!"

What I didn't love was the huge effort the raidleader and officers had to do to get 10 or 25 people together, in one place, to raid.  Especially when 10-15 of them didn't give a shit if they were there or not, nor would they put forth their best effort.  When our guild started, we have 8 people who could/would raid each week.  We did Naxx up til Thaddius with 8 people and only then did we get more.  We did end up getting KT down the week or day or something before Ulduar came out.  Though, I can't remember if it was 10 or 25 man now.

However, we never really reached the critical mass so we could stop fretting about 'Will we have enough people to raid this week?'  It was draining and annoying.  When we started our guild, we have 4 officers, myself, my best friend's husband, a paladin that used to be a holy priest in BC and another one of our close friends who leveled up a DK and tanked with him.  However, we got big, the paladin left to go do RL things (he was getting married and changing jobs) and my DK friend left to go to school.  We picked up 2 more officers and I strong armed my husband into being an officer too.  One of our new officers was a DK and he ended up leaving for RL as well.

However, at that point, we picked up a smaller guild that my personal group of friends had played with back when they started.  (I played with them too, but I didn't like them too much so I avoided them.)  We made one of them an officer so they would have 'representation' and moved forward.

During all this, we raided 10 and 25 man Ulduar.  We scraped together our 25 people and had people quit because "this is just too hard, let's go back to Naxx".  We got much further on 10 man then we did in 25 and we killed Yogg on 10 man on November 10th, 2009.  Which was about a month before we got 25 man ToC.  (I don't remember getting 10 man ToC and I don't see it in my achievements, so yeah.)

When ICC came out, I ended up raiding it 3 times a week.  Once on Karegina in 10 man, once in 25 man and once on my shaman in 10 man.  It was insane.  We had such a hard time with 25 man.  People were getting burned out, *I* was getting burned out.  I ended up taking a couple week break from the game and let one of the 'new' shaman healers take my place.  This put more frustration and crap on my husband, who didn't handle it well and ended up punching a wall and breaking his hand.  I came back to raid the next day.  (This was completely out of character for my husband and I tell him that if he didn't punch like a girl, he'd have been fine.)

One of our last 25 man raids was this (and here is the story I was telling you about):

We had cleared all the wings except for Frost Wing, the only bosses we had left were Sindragosa and Arthas.  Over half of us had been successful in the 10 man raid and MOST of us knew what we were doing.  However, we were short a person or two.  So, we look in guild and lo, there is a warlock sitting around who always says how much he wants to raid.  We ask him if he wants to come and he eagerly agrees.  He says he knows the fight and just to be sure, my husband goes over it for him.

The pull happens, the first ground phase goes smoothly, and then the air phase happens.  The five people are chosen and 4 of them run to their places at the base of the stairs.  The fifth, which happens to be our warlock guildie, turns and runs right into the main group.  Everyone panics, vent explodes and then the ice blocks hit.  And all along the back, where the ice wall is, a ice representation of the Andes appears.  The warlock had managed to ice block about 15 of our raiders.  My husband literally face palmed, I sighed, over officer chat our GM goes "WTF is that?  I thought he said he knew the fight?!?!", over our private channel my best friend says "Umm, that wasn't supposed to happen" and over vent you hear "Sorry mate, I didn't realize I had the ice block."

This would be more impressive if I had screen shots, and I might ask the husband if he has them when he gets home tonight.

At that moment, I felt frustration and an overwhelming urge to shout "But I don't even want to BE here" at my guildies.  I was exhausted mentally and physically.  I was only going to raids to help out my friends and other people were making my efforts impossible.

I am pretty sure that was our last 25 man raid.  We switched to 2 10 man raids.  And as people got less and less inclined to show up, we scaled down to 1.  And then, when people stopped showing up for THAT (since we were working on our ICC 10 man drakes), we found a pug run by the best guild on our server, and finished up the last 2 or 3 achievements to get them.   It looks like my last in guild achievement was on August 3rd, 2010 and then I got the last two achievements (heroic Sindy and Been Waiting a Long Time for This) on September 29th 2010.  I went on that run one more time to try and help other people but then Blizz changed the lock outs so I stopped.

When Cata hit, I was eager to level and run the new heroics.  We had a great time and I was excited to get into the new raids.  However, after 2 or 3 runs, I was once again exhausted.  I drug myself to raid every night and fell asleep right when we stopped.  Some nights it was all my husband could do to get me to the bedroom.  However, around this time, my husband noticed that while I slept, I stopped breathing.  So I made an appointment with a sleep doctor and had a sleep study.  Turns out I have mild sleep apnea and need a machine to help me sleep.  I got one and ever since I've been eager to raid.  I don't get tired at 8:30pm and feel like I'm going to pass out.

Anyway, since then, I've not had as much of the frustration as I had been having before.  And as a result, the focus of my blog went from being a place I could tell the more humorous of the stories, to a place I could just talk about my love of WoW instead.  I had wanted to be a resource for baby trees but instead, I'm more of an altaholic.

Speaking of, I got my rogue to 85 this morning before work.  I then went on the AH and bought her the brewfest tankard of terror, the troll instance BOE agility ring, the BOE epic boots, the BOE epic hands, a blue quality hat that has a meta on it and I got her the valor bracers as well (since Kare doesn't need any valor items anymore).  I spent about 2000 gold on all that.  Plus I have the blue Guardians of Hyjal gear too, a neck piece and a chest piece.  I also grabbed a blue quality cloak out of the gbank which I'll probably just replace with the Thrall quest line one.  Hmm.  I do have a nice trinket (for now) the Heart of The Vile BOE that drops in Twilight Highlands.  It dropped while I was questing there!  I also have the blue ring from Therazane too.  We have Riplimbs Collar in the gbank and I'm going to see if I can buy that for her too.  I'll have to see.  The husband told our new quartermaster to sell all that.  I'll see how much they want for it!

This turned out longer then I was expecting.  The way my mind works or doesn't work amazes me!