Why I’m still running Zul’Gurub this late in WoW Classic

I’m still having fun playing WoW Classic and enjoying some of my favorite raids before the new expansion comes out. Zul’Gurub was my introduction to raiding in wow all of those years ago. It was my first time figuring out how to play a healer and I will always remember those hours wiping on the Raptor boss trying to execute those mechanics.

Zul’Gurub is still worth running in every phase of wow classic

Zul’Gurub is one of those raids that people always want to run because this is where you get the best leg and helm enchants for most classes. If only the warlock enchant had +spell hit like the mage one does I would be ready to raid with the big boys. Here are the different enchants that each class gets from winning one of the 2 Primal Hakkari Idols that drop in each ZG.

CLASSENCHANTEFFECTQUESTIDOLDOLL
 Druid Animist’s Caress+10 Stamina, +10 Intellect, +24 Healing Animist’s Caress Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll
 Hunter Falcon’s Call+24 Ranged Attack Power, +10 Stamina, +1% Hit Falcon’s Call Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll
 Mage Presence of Sight+18 Spell Power, +1% Hit Presence of Sight Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll
 Paladin Syncretist’s Sigil+10 Stamina, +7 Defense, +24 Healing Syncretist’s Sigil Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll
 Priest Prophetic Aura+10 Stamina, +4 MP5, +24 Healing Prophetic Aura Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll
 Rogue Death’s Embrace+28 Attack Power, +1% Dodge Death’s Embrace Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll
 Shaman Vodouisant’s Vigilant Embrace+15 Intellect, +13 Spell Power Vodouisant’s Vigilant Embrace Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll
 Warlock Hoodoo Hex+10 Stamina, +18 Spell Power Hoodoo Hex Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll
 Warrior Presence of Might+10 Stamina, +7 Defense, +15 Shield Block Value Presence of Might Primal Hakkari Idol Punctured Voodoo Doll

ZG is also a great starting raid for new characters, and since I always seem to be leveling new characters this is a great place for me to spend my time. I have a new warlock that can still use several items that are huge upgrades. Besides the enchant and the gear upgrades I found another reason to run Zul’Gurub on my warlock.

How ZG benefits you in leveling up past 60

I rolled a new blood elf right when the original Burning Crusade was initially released, so preparing a character to dive right into Outlands is something new for me. I’m trying to see what I can do today that will give me an advantage in leveling once we are able to advance past 60. A few things that I am planning to do is collect some quests items that can be turned in for experience. The Primal Hakkari wrists, chest and shoulder pieces are frequently deleted in the ZG runs that I’ve been in. Since there is very little competition for these items I was able to pick these up on my warlock. These pieces of gear are not currently upgrades for me, so I will be waiting to turn these in until the start of Burning Crusade for a nice bonus of 6,600 xp each or 19,800 xp total. This will be one more bar of experience that I don’t need to fill once the Dark Portal opens.

WoW Classic is winding down while we wait for the Burning Crusade

I’ve noticed a big shift on my server since the announcement of WoW Classic: Burning Crusade last week. Prices on everything have been falling. There are not as many high level dungeon runs being done and several raiding guilds have called it quits. I’ve see a lot of players returning and leveling up characters that they plan to bring into the next phase of the game. We are all hungry for more information and for a beta announcement. I have my fingers crossed that this will be the first beta that I actually get to participate in for World of Warcraft (even though I opt in for every single one). I’m only a little salty…

In the mean time I’m doing what a lot of others are doing and leveling new characters and preparing my current level 60s for the next expansion which mean collecting items to turn in for xp and leveling up profession while the materials are cheap.

Gold Making Basics in WOW Classic | TSM | Alchemy and how I made 20,000g in the past 30 days

For the past year I’ve been obsessed with playing World of Warcraft Classic. I spend so much time reading about, researching and playing the game. I’ve been venturing out into some video editing which is new for me. It was more of an experiment in a new media but the response I got to my video was mostly positive so I thought I’d share here 🙂

In my video I talk a little bit about WoW Classic crafting basics including:

  1. Why Thunderbluff is so great for crafting and using the AH
  2. What to make in game that sells
  3. How to easily calculate the profitability of things
  4. The importance of saving your money

I also go over my mini TSM checklist

  • Open AH and type “/tsm scan” to update prices
  • Select profitable items to make
  • Search raw materials for that crafted item
  • Add crafting batch to the Queue
  • Gathering tab for any missing materials
  • Craft!
  • Continue to browse AH for things to make
  • List auctions

What’s next for Diary of a Guild Leader?

Ironically, all of the time required to fulfill my guild leader duties left me with little free time to create guides and tell stories about my experience in the game. Since I no longer am leading a guild (a story I’ll tell one of these days once I cool off) I have a lot more desire to make the type of content that I can be proud to share. I always think it’s silly when content creators apologize for taking breaks from creating like they’re some regularly scheduled tv show. Know that this is a passion project for me and I refuse to create or maintain a schedule of creating stuff if I don’t feel that I can make something original, exciting to me or useful to all of you. That being said I have been bitten by the inspiration bug and have a lot of things in the works so keep an eye out for me in the future 🙂

If you enjoyed my video, please subscribe to my youtube channel and look for more to come.

Shadow Lands: My first week impressions

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since it first came out in 2004 and have eagerly jumped into to every expansion that has come out. Some have held my attention more than others and I generally judge the overall expansion by how long I play it.

The previous expansion, Battle for Azeroth, captivated me for a whopping 4 months before I moved on. The deal breaker for me was how much grinding was necessary for me to enjoy the parts of the game that I liked playing. I love group content but the game wanted you to do all of this repeatable quests in the world that got super boring. This also made it really hard to play any of my other characters at a high level because of how hard it was to catch up (and you really couldn’t for a long time).

My hope in playing Shadow Lands was to be able to play my multiple characters without giving myself 40 hours worth of work to do per week. The first week is over and I clocked about 25 hours at level 60, which only was the past 4 days. I took a new approach to the game (for me) and didn’t do any research on what I should and shouldn’t be doing. I simply went in blind and played the game.

For this expansion I decided to dust off my priest who has been mostly untouched since 2015. Leveling was mainly a solo venture until I reached about 58 and happened to be in the same place in the story as some of my friends. I found that it was much quicker to do the quests as a group, especially the ‘kill ten boars’ type of quests. The party syncing feature in the game still confuses me and I understand what it should be doing in theory but every time I used it I’ve found myself wondering what the point is.

The new zones are stunning visually and find ways to encourage you to seek out high places and enjoy some beautifully crafted scenic views. I love the different flavors and color schemes of each zone and find some of the color pallets a bit nostalgic and similar to those found in The Burning Crusade.

The world quests have more substance and story to them. Instead of a simple go here and do X and then move on to the next quest, most of the world quests have multiple parts that force you to pay attention rather than zoning out to old episodes of The Office while you’re grinding your dailies. One of my favorite world quests is “Summon Your Sins” which has you collect fragments and use alchemy to combine the fragments into an on use item that summons a creature. I love these type of flavor items that are in the game, I enjoy using these items that give you a buff and make you a bit more powerful.

The world seems more dangerous and I like it. In the past few expansions of World of Warcraft I felt super powerful and almost would never die. I could pull giant packs of mobs and just mow everything down like I was grinding through a dungeon crawler like Diablo or Path of Exile. The first couple time I tried to use that same tactic in Shadow Lands I died a horrible death. In fact I died many times on my road to level 60 and felt the sting of punishment in that runback much like it is in WoW Classic. I liked that there were consequences to accidentally pulling extra enemies.

As we head into the second week of Shadow Lands I have pretty big dilemma. I’ve been playing a lot of WoW Classic for the past year and the final raid is coming out a week after Shadow Lands release. I hate the timing of this. So now I have too many games that I really WANT to play but not enough hours to do so. Lets not even talk about Cyberpunk 2077 which comes out the following week! It figures that all of these things would come out at the same time!

For now, I’m committed to raiding in WoW Classic to get through Naxx and hopefully set myself up to move into a future TBC Classic. This is assuming they go in that direction. I’m hoping for an announcement in February or sooner 🙂

Nightmare Dragons World Boss Strat: Lethon

Lethon is one of the 4 Dragons of Nightmare available in WoW Classic in phase 4 which went live on April 15th 2020.

As with other world bosses in WoW Classic, this boss will spawn at a random time between 2 to 4 days since it was last killed. World bosses spawn out in the world, so they can only be killed and looted once per spawn. The loot will go to the first person or raid that hits the boss. You can tell if you have the tag, and will get the loot, if the boss’s health bar is red. If the health bar is grey it will not be your loot.

Where is Lethon Located in WoW Classic

There are four portals out in the world where Lethon can randomly spawn. All of the Dragons of Nightmare will spawn at the same time and one at each portal, although the window that they will spawn is over at 48 hour period of time. The spawn locations are Duskwood in the Twilight Grove, Hinterlands in Seradane, Feralas in the Dream Bough and Ashenvale in the Bough Shadow.

How to Fight Lethon in WoW Classic

Lethon is a raid boss which will need between 15 and 40 players to defeat, depending on the skill and gear of those participating. Similar to Onyxia and other dragons, you will position the tank away from the rest of the raid. The healers and damage dealing players will be grouped on one side of the boss avoiding the tail and the head. 

Fighting Lethon as a Tank

  • 2-3 Tanks are needed or 1 Tank with +200 Nature resistance.
  • Tank the boss facing away from the raid.  All players that are not currently tanking should stand on one side of the boss to avoid the Noxious Breath and the Tail Sweep.
  • Tanks will switch at 3 stacks of Noxious Breath. If using a NR geared tank, the debuff should be resisted and not tank swap is necessary.
  • Be sure to front load high threat abilities early in your tank swap.  As you get additional stacks of the Noxious Breath debuff, you ability to generate threat will suffer.
  • You will want to keep track of the number of times Shadow Bolt Whirl has been cast and after 4 casts you will want to run through the boss to flip him around so the bolts do not hit your raid.
  • DON’T DIE! If you die you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
  • BONUS: You can attempt to use the Dragon’s tail to knock those that are asleep out of the Dream Fog.

Fighting Lethon as Damage

  • Avoid the front and back of the Dragon and stand in the safer position to the boss’s side.
  • Avoid Dream Fog which looks like clouds of gas moving slowly around the area. 
  • When Lethon’s health reaches 75%, 50% and 25% everyone in the raid will be effected by Draw Spirit. As the bosses health approaches each of these thresholds you will want to make sure that you are as far away as possible. Once the stun wears off, use your quick and instant abilities to kill as many shades as possible.
  • DON’T DIE! If you die you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.

Fighting Lethon as a Healer

  • When Lethon’s health reaches 75%, 50% and 25% everyone in the raid will be effected by Draw Spirit. As the bosses health approaches each of these thresholds you will want to make sure that you are as far away as possible. Once the stun wears off, use your quick and instant abilities to help kill the shades.  
  • Avoid the front and back of the Dragon and stand in the safer position to the boss’s side.
  • Avoid Dream Fog which looks like clouds of gas moving slowly around the area. 
  • If you run out of mana you can run out of range of the boss and drink to full.
  • DON’T DIE! If you die you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.

List of Lethon Abilities in WoW Classic

Noxious Breath – Frontal cone breath that applies a stacking debuff to those that are hit. Ideally, only your tanks should be getting hit by this. For each stack of the debuff, the cooldowns on all abilities are increased by 10 seconds..

Dream Fog – Two clouds will be up at a time and will move around the boss for the duration of the fight. You will have 10 seconds from the time the cloud spawns to get out of it, after that it will put anyone caught in the cloud to sleep.  

Tail Sweep – Inflicts 600 to 1000 damage on enemies in a 30 radius cone behind the dragon, knocking them back. Avoiding the tail is even more important on these 

Mark of Nature – Players kill by nightmare dragons gain a 15-minute debuff which essentially takes the player out of the fight for the duration of this debuff due to Aura of Nature

Aura of Nature – If a player with Mark of Nature comes within 100 yards of the boss, this will cause the player to enter into an undispellable sleep for 2 minutes.

Shadow Bolt Whirl – This is a set of shadow bolts that will only be cast on one side of him at a time. He will cast this spell 4 times and then switch to the casting from the other side of his body.

Draw Spirit – Each player within 100 yards of Lethon will be stunned for 5 seconds and a Spirit Shade will spawn from their location and start walking towards Lethon. If a Spirit Shade reaches Lethon it will heal him for 1% of his life. The shades can not be hit with AOE abilities but only have around 500 health. They also walk at a fast pace toward the boss once they are spawned.

Want to know more about Lethon’s story? Head over to the WoWWiki to learn the lore

Nightmare Dragons World Boss Strat: Emeriss

Emeriss is one of the 4 Dragons of Nightmare available in WoW Classic in phase 4 which went live on April 15th 2020.  

As with other world bosses in WoW Classic, this boss will spawn at a random time between 2 to 4 days since it was last killed. World bosses spawn out in the world, so they can only be killed and looted once per spawn. The loot will go to the first person or raid that hits the boss. You can tell if you have the tag, and will get the loot, if the boss’s health bar is red. If the health bar is grey it will not be your loot.

Where is Emeriss Located in WoW Classic

There are four portals out in the world where Emeriss can randomly spawn. All of the Dragons of Nightmare will spawn at the same time and one at each portal, although the window that they will spawn is over at 48 hour period of time.

Duskwood in the Twilight Grove, Hinterlands in Seradane, Feralas in the Dream Bough and Ashenvale in the Bough Shadow

How to Fight Emeriss in WoW Classic

Emeriss is a raid boss which will need between 25 and 40 players to defeat, depending on the skill and gear of those participating. Similar to Onyxia and other dragons, you will position the tank away from the rest of the raid. The healers and damage dealing players will be on either side of the boss avoiding the tail and the head.

This fight is extremely susceptible to griefing from both the opposite faction and your own. For each death that occurs on this fight a mushroom will spawn causing damage to be dealt to those around the mushroom. I’ve seen players try to disrupt a groups fight by diving head first into the melee group or on the tanks.

Fighting Emeriss as a Tank

  • 2-3 Tanks are needed or 1 Tank with +200 Nature resistance.
  • Tank the boss facing away from the raid.  All players that are not currently tanking should stand on either side of the boss to avoid the Noxious Breath and the Tail Sweep.
  • Tanks will switch at 3 stacks of Noxious Breath. If using a NR geared tank, the debuff should be resisted and not tank swap is necessary.
  • Be sure to front load high threat abilities early in your tank swap.  As you get additional stacks of the Noxious Breath debuff, your ability to generate threat will suffer. Each rank of your abilities will be on a different extended cooldown so once you get high stacks you can go through all the different ranks of your abilities.
  • Be mindful of where the Dream Fog is at all times and also if there are a large number of Putrid Mushrooms in the area. If avoiding the Putrid Mushrooms is becoming unmanageable for your raid you should move to a more clear area.
  • DON’T DIE! If you die, not only do you spawn as a mushroom and cause issues for your raid, but you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
  • BONUS: You can attempt to use the Dragon’s tail to knock those that are asleep out of the Dream Fog.

Fighting Emeriss as Damage

  • Avoid the front and back of the Dragon and stand in the safer position to the boss’s side.
  • Avoid Dream Fog which looks like clouds of gas moving slowly around the area. 
  • When Emeriss’s health reaches 75%, 50% and 25% he puts the non dispellable damage over time (DOT), Corruption of the Earth on everyone in 100 yards. Save your health potions, shadow protection potions, immunity cooldowns and bandages.  If you are able to heal, just a little bit it could save you on this fight.
  • Watch out for Putrid Mushrooms near you, they do damage to nearby players.
  • DON’T DIE! If you die, not only do you spawn as a mushroom and cause issues for your raid, but you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.

Fighting Emeriss as a Healer

  • Assign healers to each group in your raid for Corruption of the Earth which goes out  when Emeriss’s health reaches 75%, 50% and 25%.  Make sure your healers are assigned in such a way where each person in the raid receives at least one heal within 10 seconds.
  • Paladins and Priests – dispel/purge Volatile Infection from players as they get it
  • Avoid the front and back of the Dragon and stand in the safer position to the boss’s side.
  • Avoid Dream Fog which looks like clouds of gas moving slowly around the area. 
  • Watch out for Putrid Mushrooms near you, they do damage to nearby players
  • DON’T DIE! If you die, not only do you spawn as a mushroom and cause issues for your raid, but you get a debuff that prevents you from making further lasting contributions to the fight.
  • If you run out of mana you can run out of range of the boss and drink to full. Just be aware of each of the 25% health thresholds as you will want to be able to help.

List of Emeriss Abilities in WoW Classic

Noxious Breath – Frontal cone breath that applies a stacking debuff to those that are hit. Ideally, only your tanks should be getting hit by this. For each stack of the debuff, the cooldowns on all abilities are increased by 10 seconds..

Dream Fog – Two clouds will be up at a time and will move around the boss for the duration of the fight. You will have 10 seconds from the time the cloud spawns to get out of it, after that it will put anyone caught in the cloud to sleep.  

Tail Sweep – Inflicts 600 to 1000 damage on enemies in a 30 radius cone behind the dragon, knocking them back. Avoiding the tail is even more important on these 

Mark of Nature – Players kill by nightmare dragons gain a 15-minute debuff which essentially takes the player out of the fight for the duration of this debuff due to Aura of Nature

Aura of Nature – If a player with Mark of Nature comes within 100 yards of the boss, this will cause the player to enter into an undispellable sleep for 2 minutes.

Volatile Infection – A dispellable disease that is cast on a random player within 100 yards of the boss.  This lasts for 2 minutes and causes 875 to 1125 nature damage to the player and nearby allies every 5 seconds. 

Corruption of the Earth – Affects all players within 100 yards. 10 second Shadow DoT that deals 20% of the player’s max health every 2 seconds. It cannot be dispelled and has a 100 yard range.

Putrid Mushroom – When a player dies, a Putrid Mushroom spawns at their corpse. This deals 600 Nature damage per second to any surrounding player.

Want to know more about Emeriss’s story? Head over to the WoWWiki to learn the lore

Project TBC (part 2): WoW Level Locking at 70 to play TBC

Project TBC is a community driven challenge in World of Warcraft where participants will level up to 70 and then lock their XP.  You can read more about Project TBC in one of  my recent posts here. 

What Have I Been Doing in Game?

I got my Paladin to level 70 and locked my XP and then began to work on this character’s “modified endgame”. In our group, we choose to not adhere to the typical hardcore restrictions that usually goes along with these types of projects. The goal was not to try to recreate an authentic experience. We just wanted to run around and do the raids!

The main self-imposed restrictions were that we were to level authentically, not using high level alts to assist with leveling, and we were restricted to the classes that were available during TBC time.  We had a couple people who didn’t really listen and rolled up with monks in our first raid, but I don’t think anyone was mad about it. 

Getting Geared up

Since we are not the first group of people to do this type of level locking challenge, there were a lot of good resources out on the web where people had already done the theorycrafting to determine what you should be doing.  Keep in mind the current version of World of Warcraft may still look like your typical Burning Crusade experience, but the character design and gearing is completely different. 

It was determined that heroic blue gear was superior to some of the earlier raid epics. I was able to find a very thorough list of best in slot gear if our goal is to over power our characters and smash some dragons.

Level 70 BIS Gear List – https://xpoff.com/threads/level-70-pve-bis-gear-compendium.72217/

How to twink at level 70 – https://xpoff.com/threads/70-pve-guide.71696/

Farming for Ourselves

One of the more challenging parts of playing in old content is how little of the older trade materials are available.  If you want the raw materials to craft anything you will likely need to farm them yourself. I spent several hours on Sunday farming enough herbs to make a 100 haste potions and I don’t even know how long I should expect those to last.

Even if there is the odd item that you can use on the auction house, it is typically way overpriced due to low supply and sporadic need.

At least professions are structured in a way that I am able to pick up herbalism and mining and immediately start collecting what I need. I can just as easily drop one of these professions once I have a good stockpile of items and pick up enchanting to turn all my unneeded gear into enchanting materials for gear enhancements.

Getting Raid Ready

The first hurdle is getting enough people interested in playing through this content.  Next you need to do the legwork to have an acceptable level of gear and other preparations done.  My very first raid with my Paladin was done just hours after I had hit level 70. I barely knew what I was doing and ended up having some performance issues due to not researching my class prior to our raid.

Goals For This Week

  • Continue to farm the remaining blue items I need from dungeons
  • Gem and enchant my gear
  • Get a proper transmog – my outfit is scary

Project TBC: WoW Level Locking at 70 to play SSC/TK/BT/SW

A few nights a guildmate of mine announced that he was starting a new adventure and invited everyone in our guild to come along. We were going to take advantage of this small lull in content to do something out of the ordinary. 

A few of us met while playing on a WoW private server based on the Burning Crusade expansions.  So it seemed only fitting with all of the buzz around Blizzard’s possible plans for a Classic TBC, that we would go revisit some of that old content.

What is Project TBC

My guild all rolled ALLIANCE on SISTER OF ELUNE RP realm. We will level to 70 and lock our xp and we’ll be doing heroics and TBC raids. 

What are the Rules?

Any race including allied races, no DKs and no Monks. We are only allowed to use enchants/profession perks/gems/gear of TBC era. We are allowed to use Heirlooms/xp pots to level fast. We are not using mains to boost gear at 70 since this defeats the purpose of the project but we might change this rule in case we need a lot more gear to clear the 25 mans.

How do I lock my level once I reach level 70?

To keep your character from leveling higher, follow these steps:

For the Horde faction:

  1. Go to the Hall of the Brave, Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar.
  2. Look for and talk to Slahtz.
  3. For 10g he will put a hold on all experience points earned.
  4. You can enable your experience again by seeing Slahtz and paying another 10g.

For the Alliance faction:

  1. Go to the War Room, Stormwind Keep in Stormwind City.
  2. Look for and talk to Alliance Behsten.
  3. For 10g he will put a hold on all experience points earned.
  4. You can enable your experience again by seeing Behsten and paying another 10g .

Are there people that actually play like this?

There are a whole lot of people that choose to level lock at certain expansions.  Here is a list of some character profiles that are locked at 70. Here is a huge list of characters locked at level 70.  There are a lot of communities that hold level specific events for this type of play.

Current Goals

I’ve decided to play a Paladin and I am currently level 48 and hope to be 70 later today. We have about 15 people at level 70 in my guild and 35 total.  My guild was scheduled to do Kara and Gruul last night. To all that are participating: Happy leveling!

A Month of Writing EVERY Day

The Birth of Diary of a Guild Leader

Two and a half years ago I started this blog in conjunction with a writing challenge called Blaugust. This wasn’t my first blog and definitely won’t be my last. I enjoy engaging with a number of hobbies beyond just gaming and love writing about them.

I did well in that very first challenge, wracking up a total post count of 24 for the month. This writing streak continued through the end of the year at a rate of roughly one post per week. Eventually I was down to about 1 or 2 posts per month which was me writing only when I REALLY wanted too.

Reinvigorated to Write and Taking a New Path

At the start of 2020 I started a new blog around my neurotic organizing habits and wrote like crazy for 2 months. When March came, work and life got crazy and I all but stopped writing.

We spent almost 4 years saving aggressively for down-payment on our next home. The beginning of March we closed on our new house and moved. Two weeks later my employer announced some pretty steep pay cuts at the same time I took on a new freelance writing job. Everything seemed to be pushing me in this new direction and I decided to walk away from the full time job in order to pursue my passion projects.

Blapril Happened Just at the Right Time

Although I really wanted to participate in Blaugust in 2019, I simply did not have the time. Writing 30 posts in a month is a huge commitment. I saw that the Blaugust community was doing an impromptu April version of the challenge.

This seemed like Blapril was meant for me and came at the right moment.

So far, I managed to get a few posts out. I did need to wrap up some work related items before I was able to completely pack up that phase of my life.

What is Blapril/Blaugust

Blaugust is a blogging event that challenges us to write and post every day during the month. We have an active community on discord where we share our experiences, ask for help from the more experienced writers and commiserate when pumping out content gets tough.

You can read more about Blaugust over at Tales of the Aggronaut.

Here is a list of Blapril 2020 participants

Full disclosure, I totally stole this list from Syp, thanks for putting this together!

I know I’m a little late to the party, but I want to wish everyone good luck and happy blogging!

MMOs: Making Friends, Losing Friends

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell the story, but it came to me as I was getting this morning. I have made a lot of friends over the years playing MMOs.  I even met my husband during a Serpent Shrine Cavern raid and that seems like a lifetime ago.  

Today I’m going to tell you the story of a long time friend that I made in game, who would eventually turn on me. 

Fast Friends and how we came to be guild-mates

We were about halfway through the Burning Crusade expansion in World of Warcraft and my guild had just dealt with a little bit of drama and that falling apart due to our leadership being poached away. WoW was a huge part of my life at the time, the way that my guild was decimated made me so angry. I wasn’t ready to stop raiding the high level content, so it was time to find a new guild.

I had a friend who was in the best guild on my server and although we never played together we had chatted quite a bit. So when my friend left for a new server I noticed his absence and reached out. He had decided that he wanted to play a different specialization that his guild did not approve of so he had left to join one of the top guilds in the US.

We kept in touch for a long time and when my guild had collapsed into a fiery heap of ash, he was one of the first people I told.

“Join my guild” he said to me, “we are losing our holy priests soon.”  At the time, joining one of the best guilds in the world was a little bit intimidating. My friend had confidence in my abilities, but looking back maybe what he wanted more, was a friendly face in his guild.  

A New Server and a Fresh Start

It was a big step switching servers, I would be leaving my friends behind, and starting fresh. My first week playing with the new guild was a bit shakey, but I somehow lived up to expectations.  I was able to perform and more importantly, I was able to show up consistently on our 30 hour week schedule. Yes, we raided a lot. 

Things in game we’re going great, which is what I needed at the time because in my real life they weren’t going so hot.  I made a lot of good friends in that guild but ended up losing my friend who had pulled me in.

How Our Friendship Went from Flourishing to Failure

I remember the events clearly that led up to our falling out he had wanted to show me how a priest could solo run through Auchenai Crypts.  I’ve never tried to solo dungeons before and skipping packs while using mind soothe as a priest was something that was new to me so naturally, I sucked at it and killed us both. We were both hanging out on a voice chat and after I had to run back maybe the third time he left the voice channel without saying a word and left the dungeon and put me on ignore in game. This is the World of Warcraft equivalent to being ditched.

Over the next couple of weeks, it became clear that this wasn’t just a momentary fight. Not only did he mute me on voice chat, ignore me and game but he also started bad mouthing me to the other players in our guild.  

When that wasn’t enough, he started using a macro on all of his abilities in order to remove my heals from his character. At first I didn’t understand what was going on until I talked it through with some of the other players in my guild.  He had been asking around if there was a way to remove renews from his character.

Our Fight Went from Personal to Guild Drama

At this point more people knew about are falling out and our guild leader started giving my friend, or at this point my ex-friend hard time for being so petty.  It wasn’t long until my ex-friend left the guild, chasing after bigger and better glory. Or maybe it was just to get away from all the drama that our failed friendship was causing.

In Game Friends ARE Real Friends

This falling out had left me devastated and it was hard to admit or even talk about. At the time having online friends was considered taboo or weird because every parent taught their kid was going to be the victim of a sexual predator. Most people couldn’t understand but a bunch of 20-year-olds could get together and kill dragons and make real friendships.

In MMOs I’ve made real, deep, lasting friendships that are really important to me.  Losing that friend hurt a lot, but at the same time, I came to realize that it wasn’t always my fault if things didn’t work out.  It takes two people to make a friendship work.

WoW Classic Loot Seeds, Thunderfury Farming and wearing that Tinfoil Hat

It’s just another night clearing Molten Bore for the zillionth time. While a lot of fresh toons are getting some much needed upgrades, those of us MC veterans are barely staying awake. Another week without that [Binding] we need? Yea, that’s what it looks like.

Tinfoil Hat

Last night as we were clearing through Molten Core for the 20-something time. Most of use have started to dabble in good luck rituals. We want to influence the game and what kind of loot we will get.

As of right now we have 3 separate 40-man teams clearing raids and have yet to build our first Thunderfury. So, like any well meaning, superstitious, loot hungry gamers, we keep trying different things until we find some sort of action that gives us the items we need. In gaming this is commonly refereed to as wearing a “tin foil hat.”

We have been extremely unlucky with certain items but seem to get a lot of the same ones every week. Why is this?

Raiding and Loot Seeds

It is a commonly held belief that all of the loot drops for a raid or dungeon are generated as soon as the first person in your group zones in. This is referred to “loot seeding.”

The first time I heard about loot seeds was back in Black Temple times when we were hoping for the legendary weapons the Warglaives of Azzinoth. My guild even went as far as creating a new guild with a similar name to a guild on our server that had seen a lot of warglaive drops.

For the past couple of months we have been paying attention to who “seeds” our raids. I will say that we have occasionally seen loot that we haven’t seen in a while but as of today, still no Thunderfury in our guild.

So what do we do now?

The loot we want is not dropping so we set off to do the only logical thing that we could think of, and that was to experiment. Each of us began to develop complex rituals that would surely be repeated each time we saw that much sought after item drop.

  1. Wearing my same “raider underwear” – done
  2. Completed my rituals in game – done
  3. Told a terrible Dad joke over discord – done

We say our prayers to the RNG loot gods and off we go!

Does it work?

It is WAY to soon to tell. Unlike cheering on your favorite sports team to a W or L, getting that loot to drop is elusive. That 1 in 10 chance to get the [thing] you need can seem out of reach when you haven’t seen it once in the 20 times that you’ve cleared the raid.

Of course, that is all besides the point and we will keep dreaming and hoping for that little orange binding to drop and look forward to our happy day of legendary weapon creation.