There Will Be Posts

The Mists beta inspired me to write again, yet I've done very little of it since then. I've also not been in the beta since then. Part of me wants to save it for the actual experience, and so my hope is that when that time comes, you'll start to see this blog come to life again.

Our guild finished up the legendary quest line in Dragon Soul for one of our rogues. We decided then to take a break from raiding to play other games and hopefully avoid burnout before the next expansion is released. A few of us have joined up to fight the spawn of the burning hells in Diablo III, while others are just taking time away from gaming altogether. The hard part now is going to get everyone back together, so we don't forget about playing WoW. We're such a small guild that unless it's a raid night, you're unlikely to see more than a few people online other than yourself at any given time.

As our last hurrah before the break, we did make a run through Karazhan on some level 70 characters. The fights and mechanics were still fairly easy with just class and balance changes, but it was fun to see that place again. I'll never get tired of the opera event or the scenery of Kara. It's still the best raid in the game, in my opinion.

What is everyone else doing as the Cataclysm ends and the Mists are set to appear?

It's about time.

We have finally killed The Lich King.

The Strength of Wrynn buff was at 30%. I'm pretty sure that's as good as it gets. After weeks and weeks of struggling just to get 10 people together on the same night that knew the entire fight from beginning to end, we finally got our act together and converged on the Frozen throne.

First attempt: Lost some people to an errant Frost Orb on the first transition phase. A careless mistake, but we recovered quickly to try again.

Second attempt: Bad defile placement on the second phase, so we called the wipe and started again.

Third attempt: Everything went smoothly into the second phase. We nearly lost Lal to a Val'kyr but managed to kill it at the very edge. We're running in and out of defiles, and the Val'kyr are dying a little quicker than we're used to thanks to that buff, and a focused intensity of our DPS. As we're heading into the next transition phase, I'm mostly hopeful that we just get some time in the last phase as we've barely spent any time there.

Transition happens, and spirits are dying fast. We head back into the Lich King and someone gets whisked away to Frostmourne, I'm not sure who. Raging spirits are dead, but the Vile spirits are just appearing, so I swap targets. They don't die nearly as fast as they need to and I realize then that it must have been our other ranged DPS in the Frostmourne room. The spirits come down and start exploding on people. I hear Lal yelling from across the room at the damage people are taking. But after the spirits are gone, we're still alive.

At this point we've got a weird rhythm. People are scattered due to defiles and spirits, but I'm still trying to call out when to close in and when to spread out. Somehow the healers are keeping us alive through explosions. Then I see Giraud go down. I call out for a battle rez and we're back to full strength again. More spirits, more running, more explosions. There goes a healer! Thank goodness he's a Shaman. He's back up and we're still fighting. At this point I realize we're not just practicing. We're nearly there.

My hands start to shake when I see Kill Shot come up because that only happens on mobs below 20%. We only have to get him to 10. His health is dropping fast and we still have 10 people alive. At this point I start thinking people are surely going to start dying, and planning what do do if that happens, because we could still potentially pull it off. But in the end I didn't have to worry about that because we all died at the same time. And that was the most amazing thing that could have happened that night.

The scene played out, and in the end, we stood triumphant. After months of working on just this fight and nothing else, it was such a relief to finally have beaten it.

I'm proud of everyone for making it through, and putting up with all the pain and heartache that got us there. We've essentially beaten the game now. For some of us that have been invested in Warcraft since the RTS games, this was the ultimate final boss. And now, we're the heroes of the story.

Sindragosa Down. One Boss To Go.

Sweet Fancy Malfurion! We finally killed her!

We went in on an off night since we didn't get to go last Friday and decided to clean up Putricide, who was the only other boss up over the last few weeks of extensions. It took us a couple of tries, but we got him. Our DPS was pretty high so the fight wasn't all that bad once we got everyone coordinated. With Putricide down, we headed to Sindragosa, hoping to get in a few attempts before we ended for the night.

A few people joked about one shotting Sindragosa, and we were pretty pumped after killing Putricide. I mean, it's probably been three weeks since we killed anything other than trash in Icecrown. In hindsight, maybe those people weren't joking because we did in fact one shot Sindragosa to the surprise and amazement of everyone involved. We had one person who had never seen the fight before, but somehow all of the stars in the sky aligned and everyone was in the right spot at the right time during the last phase which had been killing us before. Someone mentioned that we had done 40 attempts on Sindragosa up to this point. About time.

With time to spare, we visited with Arthas before starting the fight. We hadn't studied up at all, so it was just for fun. We actually lasted a good while before wiping to mechanics that we were unaware of dealing with a plague or something.

Needless to say we were ecstatic. I think it gave us a much needed push to finish this place. We're invigorated and ready to take on the Lich King. No more trash, no more weekly runs through ICC. It's just us, and him. And Lich is going down.

Sindragosa and Raid Extending

*dusts off the blog*

Now, where were we?

Right, so two months later we've defeated Putricide and saved Valithria Dreamwalker. Having decided that our gear is sufficient, we made the decision to start extending the raid until such a time as Arthas is dead. Or at least, more dead than he already is. So for the last two weeks we've been banging our heads against Sindragosa. We've made a lot of good progress. We've got the first phase down great, but getting her dead in that final phase has proven a problem. We don't have the DPS to burn her down, but our coordination hasn't quite been there to survive the tombs and icy grips. We're going back in on Friday, and I'm confident we're going to get her this time. All told, we've probably spent 6-8 hour son the fight and that's about right for how long it's taken us to get other bosses down like Putricide.

I will be so excited when we finally get to the Lich King, and when we finally down him. We've been in Icecrown for far too long now, and I'm eager to finish it so the pressure is off. The plan is to defeat the Lich King once and then spend some time on heroic fights like Marrowgar and Gunship while we continue to do the upper spire on normal modes. A bit more challenge and more gear for people involved.

Outside of raiding, I've been taking a small break from WoW and playing some other games on my recently acquired Xbox 360. That and work stress have kept me from blogging, but things have settled down a bit now, and I hope to get some more writing done. That's always the hope though. For those of you that are interested in reading about other games, I'm keeping a blog at Gamespot about my non WoW gaming. That makes four blogs total that I'm somewhat keeping. I better be careful I don't let this get our of hand.

Icecrown Raid Updates

Earlier in this year we restructured our raid teams to get more people involved in Icecrown. We had been running one team because it was simple enough to fill that team each week, and it wasn't a strain on the weekly schedule. And also because we only had one raid leader, me. But that left us with a number of able raiders who didn't get to raid as often as they liked because we could only take 10 at a time. We discussed doing a scheduled rotation, but I was against that plan. I worried that it would just compound the problem we were having, namely that people weren't getting to raid as often as they wanted to. Rotations wouldn't fix that, they would just distribute the "not raiding" equally across the members.

We had enough members, and so we eventually ended up with two separate and individual teams. Our rules were simple. To avoid one team being cannibalized by the other in the event of no shows or scheduling, neither team could take a main raider for the other's use. Alts were up for grabs as long as people were willing. We did our best to allocate people to each team based on class, role, and approximate skill levels, and I think we did a pretty good job of it. We still didn't have a permanent raid leader for the other team, but we were going to use sub leaders until someone stepped up.

So that's the context for the rest of this post. I lead one of the teams weekly on Tuesday and Friday nights now. We've been very lucky in that we haven't had any major scheduling problems with people to the extent we couldn't raid one of the weeks. Granted, this has only been going on for a month, so our time will come. Hopefully with enough advance notice, we can reschedule or sub people in to make it still happen. The other team raids Thursday/Sunday, and they've struggled a bit on getting people together on one or two nights due to scheduling problems. Just the other night, Lal and I were able to help with our alts to fill some holes though, so the system seems to be operating as expected, and doing well.

The heart of this, though, is our progress. Last week, my team got our first kills on Blood Prince Council and shortly thereafter, Blood-Queen Lana'thel which had us very excited. We'd spent the previous 3-4 weeks wiping to Rotface and his oozes. A victory over the Crimson Halls really encouraged our abilities as raiders and as a team. We're going back into Icecrown tonight with the Lower Spire and Festergut down, so we'll start with the Blood Princes and attempt to finish them and their Queen off with fewer wipes than last week.

Rotface has me stumped. We originally had our paladin tank kiting oozes and our bear tank on Rotface. Even when we got better at avoiding slime sprays and kiting the small oozes to the big ooze, we were still dying at around the magical 4 minute mark when the oozes became too much to handle. Rotface never got much lower than 25%. The next time, we changed it up, and I kited oozes while maintaining some DPS on Rotface and the paladin tank went DPS. We had a lot better success with this strategy, but we still couldn't get him down. I think our best attempt had him with less than 5% health. The causes of these wipes were mostly getting a second big ooze in the middle due to people not dragging them out in time. Avoiding slime sprays also seemed to be a bit tricky. Our DPS was a lot better though, and with just a little more we thought we could get him. We spent a whole night on Rotface, and 24 wipes later, we were defeated.

I'm expecting to beat the Crimson Hall again tonight. After which we will return to Rotface to claim our victory. I think with a few more tries, the hunter kiting strategy will work, but it takes everyone being on the ball about moving out with their little slimes and side stepping out of those slime sprays. The other hang up usually happens when the big ooze explodes, and the transition out of the center of the room and back is usually very rough. We tried to two heal the encounter to help get the DPS up, but then people were dying to much to little oozes and puddles, so we went back to three healers. I don't really know which is better, but what's important is that we find a way that works.

After that it's Putricide time. We haven't fought him yet, but I'm hopeful, so very hopeful, that he's not going to be as hard as Rotface. Compared to all of the other encounters, Rotface is an exponential increase in difficulty for our raid. I don't know if it's the same way for most other people, but Rotface seems to play to our weaknesses much like Yogg-Saron did in Ulduar. But Rotface isn't the final boss, so the difficulty level was a bit unexpected. Putricide has some fun mechanics as well, but much like we were able to get the Blood Council and the Blood-Queen, think a few hours on Putricide will spell his doom. But don't quote me on that.

We briefly tried the Dreamwalker fight in Icecrown where the Healers take center stage in healing Valithria. We were overwhelmed with adds and wiped twice before calling it for the night. We got a taste of it though, and we'll soon be working on the nuances. For now, I'm deciphering the best plan of attack to make the most of our raid nights. It's a fairly simple task to clear the lower spire and Festergut in about two hours on Tuesday. But depending on how we do tonight in the Crimson Halls, I may start trying to clear the lower spire and then through Blood-Queen all on Tuesday night to make way for doing the harder wings on Friday.

All three of my 80s are Icecrown geared now. Elionene the most, obviously, but Khristin is doing very well on gear. I just need an off hand and a nice trinket for her. Salthier is borderline, and I've discovered that there are very slim pickings when it comes to bear tanking upgrades that you can obtain outside of raiding. All of Lal's 80s are Icecrown ready too, which makes us prime candidates for filling in spots on teams when needed, and we like it that way.

We're going back in with the second team on Sunday. I love healing it on Khristin, my Shaman, and I've been tinkering with her glyphs and spec to be a little more productive. I expect us to do very well, hopefully getting Blood Princes down, though I'm not sure if that's what they'll be working at. In that role, I'm not the leader, so it takes a bit of effort from me to hold back and just follow orders. Something I definitely need to work on.

Between the two teams in Icecrown, a group of people doing hard mode Ulduar fights, and some random raids here and there, Veritas has been cementing itself as one of the best 10 person-strict guilds on our server. I'm proud of that, and I'm looking forward to continuing our progression and maintaining that status.

Getting Ready for Icecrown

Patch 3.3 is on the PTR. I'm really looking forward to it all once it hits the live servers. I don't have time to play around on the test realm, but I do keep up with the reports coming from the various data mining sites and people that actually do spend time on there. It's exciting!

Veritas is at a place right now where we're farming normal Coliseum runs for emblems and gear, and still trying to take people through Ulduar as well. I led a team of newer people through last Friday and we got all the way to Thorim and knocked him down. Tonight we're going back for Iron Council, and the rest of the keepers. We may even get to Vezax if we have the time, but I'm not sure if we'll get hung up on Mimiron or not. We'll see!

Eventually we're going to tackle some more hard mode Ulduar and heroic coliseum, but it's tough to fit that into the schedule alongside normal runs of both raids. It's my job to organize everyone, and it's getting a lot harder with more people getting up to raid ready status, but somehow I'm managing, and I think most people are satisfied so far.

So with current content pretty well in hand, we should be ready to step into Icecrown on the first weekend of it's release! I'm especially looking forward to the three new dungeons with the epic quest line. I've stayed more or less spoiler free, but I have seen a few things that look like they'll be very cool. I'm ready to see the culmination of our efforts and quests in Northrend, let alone everything from way back in Warcraft III.

I read a blog called Lorecrafted, and the blogger over there has some really cool ideas about what we could be seeing as we face off against the Lich King himself. I'm in agreement that the Burning Legion, specifically Mal'ganis, has to play a role in it somehow. There's been a lot of hints in the quests in Icecrown that he's not gone for good, and it makes sense that we would need some sort of outside help to take down the Lich King.

Even though I'm excited about everything to come, I'm still hoping for a month or more of time to get more people in the guild geared and ready for Icecrown. There's a good possibility we could have two teams ready for Icecrown soon after it's release. I'll have to see how quickly we can get our second team into regular Ulduar.

Character Updates

I really enjoy the lore of the game, thus all of the lessons posts of late, but I think it's time to get into more of a general writing mood and discuss what's going on with the characters!

Elionene
Elio is still leading raids in the Coliseum and Ulduar. We started working on Ulduar hard modes a couple weeks ago. Couldn't get Flame Leviathan with four towers up, so we back tracked and took him down with two. For some reason we just couldn't pull it together, but it might have been an off night. We then took out XT on hard mode and got the Heartbreaker achievement! By then we didn't have much time left so we took out Ignis for a specific drop for Lal, the off hand item, and it didn't drop. Sigh.

We took a break last weekend while a lot of the officers and a few members gathered in Maryland for the Renaissance Maryland Festival and the second annual guild meet up. We didn't go last year, but we had a blast this year. You can see pictures and the like at my personal blog.

Once back, one of our two guild leaders (the wife of a husband-wife team) decided she needed to take a break and stepped down from officer hood. It's kind of sad because she's poured more into this guild than anyone else by far, and I know it's hard for her since the guild means so much to her. But I also hope that the break has the desired effect of lessening her stress and letting the game be a game again instead of a second job. With her stepping down, the remaining GM has asked the rest of the officers to step up, so we'll have our work cut out for us.

One of the first things I'm doing is revamping our raid schedule, and trying to fit things in that more people can do. Take last night for example. We attempted an Onyxia-25 run. It didn't go so well, and we weren't able to get her down. Aside from the constant disconnection issues (is anyone else experiencing disconnects during the second phase?) we were light on DPS and couldn't get through the adds. But I learned some valuable lessons about the limits of our guild in raiding, and what I'll be planning for future raids.

Salthier
Sal is patiently hanging out in Dalaran, diligently transmuting epic gems for Lal each day. I've been trying to get him a few gear upgrades by running the odd heroic now and then, but the truth is I don't play him all that much. That will change this week as our guild starts up (again) it's second team in Ulduar which Salthier will be leading. And yes, I realize it's all "me" leading these raids, but these are the respective characters I'm doing it with, thus the distinction.

I'm keeping him as a main spec tank because that's what he is to me, even though I think I prefer healing more than tanking. I like tanking, but I don't feel as confident in it, so I tend to gravitate towards things I'm more proficient in. Not that I'm an excellent healer. In fact, the DPS thing is the only thing I'm really confident in, and then only with the hunter so far. Could be that's just what I'm used to.

The one thing that Sal has done is finished What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been. I did this pretty early on in the Brewfest holiday, though I had to work up the tokens to get the outfit to dance in Dalaran. For my year of achievements, I got the Violet Proto-Drake! But Salthier doesn't fly on mounts because he has the still awesome swift flight form. But the kicker is that this mount is 310% speed. Faster than most swift flying mounts, and it in turn has made my flight form speed faster. So win win.

Khristin
The poor shaman has seen almost no play since 3.2 and the new set of daily heroics that reward emblems. I barely have time to run Elio through them, much less my third 80. I killed Coren Direbrew with her a few times to get the nifty level 80 trinkets, but other than that, she sits, and she waits.

Of my various other alts out there, Frelon and Bogdan saw some brief playtime. Maybe more will happen with them in the future.

Lal is running strong as our main raid healer. She's also been focusing on her druid alt that she's leveling, somewhere in the 40s now I think. She's leveling feral and I think she likes it. She also got the world event achievement and the proto drake. Before me too, because she had the outfit from last year! But, I came to the rescue on her alts by racing rams for her so she could get enough tokens on Driya and Yelyena to buy the brew of the year membership. My best run was 40 tokens. I averaged 36 or so.

So that's where we're at! Current goals include starting Heroic Coliseum, and obtaining a key to go fight Algalon. Getting Salthier some decent gear from Ulduar and getting our second raid team up to Coliseum levels. I also have to figure out something more inclusive than a 10 person raid that we can run after meetings on Wednesdays... or not, because I can't stay up so late anymore with the current job. We'll see!

Yogg-Saron. Finally Defeated.

We did it! We finally killed that over weight sack of brains. Using a raid lock out from over four weeks ago, we went inside Ulduar and after nearly an hour and a half, brought the big bad brain down. I'm so proud of everyone in my guild. We all had to pull together to get him down and we did it! Much screaming and rejoicing was had. Then we went and cleared out Iron Council, Razorscale, and Ignis just for kicks. So much fun to have it finally put behind us.

Now we're going to take it easy and do some Ulduar hard modes. It will probably be some time before we come back for Yogg again. And I'm okay with that. Before Ulduar, we completed a Trial of the Crusader run normal and netted the Upper Back Pain and 360 Pain Spike achievements in the process. As far as I know, we may be the first on our server to get that back pain one, but that's only going on what Guild Ox says.

Kind of on a gaming high right now.

Trial of the Crusader Completed!

Due to the weekend being a holiday weekend and wanting a shot at being one of the first guilds on the server to complete the Trial of the Crusader, we did our raid Tuesday night in the Coliseum. The Faction Champions gave us a bit of a headache as they most always do, but we had it after 4 tries. We one shotted the Twin Val'kyr, again, even though I still don't feel like I understand the fight. And then we tackled Anub'arak!

I only knew the basic strategy as no real information other than what was from the PTR was available. We tried to keep him on the permafrost so he wouldn't burrow, but we never seemed to be able to completely keep him from doing so. It may be that you can't keep him from burrowing and that the permafrost is more for avoiding the spikes in the second phase and slowing down adds.

Whatever the case, after 4 or 5 trial and error shots, we got him! We went on to attempt the heroic Northrend Beast fight and had a good laugh when the Jormungar entered the arena BEFORE we had killed Gormok.

We ended the night by taking down Koralon, the newest boss in the Vault of Archavon. Two shot, and a lot of fun for some Emblems and Tier 9 gear!

Lessons in Lore - Thorim and Razorscale

Anyone who has quested in the Storm Peaks should be familiar with the story of Thorim, his wife, Loken, the Sons of Hodir, and Veranus. You, the player, actually have a hand in getting Thorim from where he is at the Temple of Storms, into Ulduar under the control of Loken and Yogg-Saron. Need a refresher? Allow me to paraphrase. Beware that if you have not done the quest chain, the following is a spoiler.

The quest chain starts from a Goblin in K3 about the large blue women (aka the Hyldnir) who took the Goblin men prisoner. You go off to save them and in the process get involved with the Vry'kul ladies and their war with the Sons of Hodir. Disguised as a big blue woman yourself, you proceed to take part in their games to see who will be the champion and rule by Thorim's side.

After jumping around on the backs of dragons flying around the Temple of Storms, you prove yourself and end up in front of Thorim himself. Oddly enough he seems a bit coo coo. At first he thinks your his wife, Sif, but then recognizes you for the in disguise that you are. Through a short conversation you find out what has happened.

Thorim was originally one of the chief watchers over Ulduar, the Terrace of the Makers, and the races of frost. Loken, Thorim's brother, killed Sif, Thorim's wife, and blamed it on Amgrim, the king of the Frost Giants. Thorim, in his rage, through his hammer at Arngrim, killing him, but before Arngim died, he was able to put a rune on the hammer, preventing anyone, including Thorim, from using it. Thorim then retreated to the Temple of Storms in a stupor of despair.

Taking your arrival as a sign, Thorim wakes from his stupor and begins to plot against the real villain, Loken. First you mend the relationship with the Sons of Hodir and Thorim by working for them some. In return you manage to get Thorim his armor and hammer back from the spirit of Arngrim. Once things are all patched up with them, you then set out to get Thorim his epic mount back. This is Veranus, the brood mother of the local proto-drakes who Thorim had released into the wild before he went into his stupor.

Armor, check, hammer, check, proto-drake mount, check. Okay! Off you and Thorim go to Loken's throne at the Temple of Wisdom. Thorim and Loken exchange some trash talk and a little fisticuffs, but Loken cheats and a strange tentacle gasps Thorim and Veranus. Thorim and his drake are taken off to Ulduar. Loken laughs at you and reveals that he was the blue woman inside the mine who got you started on this whole quest chain to begin with. In thanks, he doesn't kill you.

Loken has Ignis fuse some metal plates onto Veranus, creating Razorscale. Razorscale flies around Razorscale's Aerie in Ulduar, causing problems for some of the Explorer's League members who are there. A sad end to a noble beast.

Thorim resides in the Halls of Lightning where he is still plagued by visions of Sif, his long dead wife, presumably thanks to Yogg-Saron.

A lot of the mythology of Thor lines up with Thorim. They both had wives named Sif, were betrayed by their brothers and had named hammers. Apparently Thor was defeated by a Jormungar as well, and we see one of these when we enter the arena where Thorim is standing in the Halls of Lightning.

Lessons in Lore - Auriaya

Auriaya


Auriaya is the Ulduar Archavist. Although, I'm not entirely sure what she is archiving. I haven't seen any books or anything, though the Titans tended to store things on discs anyway. She is called the Crazy Cat Lady because of her two cat adds that patrol the central area of the Antechamber in Ulduar with her, as well as the third cat that spawns during the boss fight.

She is a Titan construct, so it would stand to reason that she was created for the singular purpose of being the Archavist and keeping tabs on the information stored in Ulduar. Her patrol just happens to be around where Yogg-Saron is imprisoned, so it wouldn't surprise me if she was one of the first beings to succumb to Yogg's corruption. When offing a raid member, she will exclaim, "The secret dies with you!" My best guess is that the secret is Yogg-Saron breaking free of his prison.

Auriaya is similar in both name and model to Ironaya who you may remember seeing in Uldaman. Their names are both metals. Aureo is Latin for gold, and Iron is...well, it's Iron. Ironaya also guarded a chamber of sorts with treasures, further supporting these construct's roles as guardians and lore keepers. They are further connected through [Ironaya's Discarded Mantle] which drops from Auriaya. Hunter loot, naturally. I suppose at one time, Ironaya resided in Ulduar, and was later placed in Uldaman before the Titan's left Azeroth.

There are two other bosses that share the same model, the Maiden of Virtue in Karazhan, and the Maiden of Grief in Halls of Stone. The Maiden of Grief appears to be just another Titan construct in a Titan instance, though the Halls of Stone is yet another stronghold of Titan lore as evidenced by the quest line involving Brann Bronzebeard that takes place there, further associating these types of constructs with Archives. The Maiden of Virtue on the other hand makes less sense in terms of game lore. We don't know why she is in Kara, or if she was there before Medivh had left. The one interesting point of note, is that upon defeat, the Maiden of Virtue says, "Death comes. Will your conscience be clear?" which some people have now taken to be foreshadowing of the coming of the death god, Yogg-Saron.

And the cats? Well, if you were a lonely old archivist stuck in a prison guarding a brooding brain with a million maws, you'd probably want something soft and cuddly to keep you company too.

A Closer Look At Ulduar

ULDUAR

Ulduar is a Titan base. The Titans need their own post, but for now just think of them as the creators. They essentially seeded the world with life and built a lot of things where they did their work and whatever else it is that world creators do.

Other bases of the Titans can be found on Azeroth with Uldaman and Uldum. Uldaman is a fully fleshed out instance in the Badlands. It is probably a Titan vault where they stored artifacts such as the Discs of Norgannon. Apparently it is also where the Titans stored their failed living creations, Troggs, which were released on Azeroth when Uldaman was excavated. Uldum has not been put into the game yet in any explorable form, but the entrance is located in Tanaris, and there is a quest line that informs us it is a research facility for the Titans.

So Uldaman is a vault, and Uldum is a Titan lab, what does that make Ulduar? First of all, Ulduar is huge. Much much bigger than the other places. In game terms it encompasses Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning, and the raid, Ulduar. Because of this, many consider Ulduar to be a Titan CITY. A place where the Titans lived while on Azeroth. Quests in the game seem to confirm this. However, the official Blizzard release on Ulduar puts it pretty plainly.

Ulduar is a prison.

Yep, the central purpose of Ulduar, at least the raid section, is to house Yogg-Saron, the Old God of Death. I'll talk more about who Yogg-Saron is and why he's imprisoned here later. The short story is that the Titans couldn't kill him, because that would have lasting effects on Azeroth, so they imprisoned him instead, and placed watchers, or keepers over him to make sure things stayed that way. This is where Freya, Mimiron, Thorim, and Hodir come into it. They are stationed by the Titans to keep Yogg-Saron where he is. But something has gone wrong.

And what went wrong, is Loken. You may have heard of this guy if you've done anything in the Storm Peaks zone. Essentially, the Titans placed him in charge of everything that was going on in Ulduar when they left. Somehow, Yogg-Saron found a way from within his prison to corrupt Loken. Loken then went on to bring all of the other keepers within Yogg-Saron's control, and set the stage for us as adventurers to go in and clean things up. Now Loken is the end boss of the Halls of Lightning. When you kill him, he announces that the end of the world is heralded by his death, and he's right.

This plays into the hard mode of Ulduar. With Loken's Death, Algalon the Observer is sent to Ulduar to determine if all is well. If it is, no harm done, if it isn't, bye bye Azeroth. But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So what do we know? We know Ulduar was a prison build for Yogg-Saron. We know that the keepers and other bosses in Ulduar were originally there to watch over the old god's prison and maintain it so that the world would never have to deal with him. We know they failed and that Yogg-Saron has become unchained and is seeking to do what he does best. Kill everything. Now it's our job to go in there, free the keepers from the corruption and put an end to Yogg-Saron's wanton destruction of Azeroth. But even after that's all done, we still have to convince Algalon that this world is worth saving. That yeah, Loken screwed up, buy hey, we're here now and it's all okay.

I'll expound more on each of the bosses in a later post and flesh out a lot of the things that are going on in Ulduar. Like why are there so many Iron Dwarves? Does Kologarn have feet? (Hint: Yes) And why is there a crazy cat lady walking around an open pit with a female Vry-kul hovering in the middle? And then I'll talk about the really crazy stuff.

Lessons in Lore - The Construct Quarter

So we've seen the bosses of the Military Quarter. Let's take a look one of the other quarters. The one with all the bosses you just want to grab a hold of and hug and squeeze....until all the pus and bodily fluids come flying out. Yes, that's right, the Abomination Quarter. Also known as the Construct quarter because all of the bosses are basically constructions.

Contruct Quarter

Patchwerk

Commander Eligor Dawnbringer wrote:

"Behold, Patchwerk. When word of his existence first reached the ears of the Brotherhood, none believed the tales of an abomination with such immense speed and strength. Fewer still believed it when he fell the first time..."

I'm not sure if I understand our friend Eligor in this quote. Maybe a reference to Patchwerk taking out some good guys as he fell? Regadless, Patchwerk simply boils down to a highly gifted abomination. Abominations are created from piles of plague ridden corpses, stitched together and given animation by a necromancer of some sort. Patchwerk is Kel'thuzad's Avatar of War, which although it sounds really cool, appears to be an Everquest reference in which there was a monster called "The Avatar of War" that had similar abilities. His quotes lead us to believe that Patchwerk, while the toughest of the tough when it comes to abominations, is fairly simple minded, exclaiming that he just wants to play.

He can also be found in the Death Knight starting area, and actually has some humorous quotes as well about being on loan from Naxxramas.

Grobbulus

Commander Eligor Dawnbringer wrote:

"Grobbulus, the first of what was to be an army of flesh giants. It carried the plague slime of Naxxramas within its body, injecting the living ooze into the bodies of its foe. The recipient of this foul injection would usually flee to his allies, bringing them down with him."

This guy is ugly. And gross. He's got a freaking tube coming out of his FACE!? He's basically a plague spreading machine made of flesh. He contains the plague within him and has a giant needle arm so he can just inject whoever he likes with it. Eligor's quotes also lend themselves to how the fights with these monsters work. During the fight, Grobby will inject people with poison that they have to run "away" from the group to get rid of, otherwise, everybody dies. Pretty clever.

Gluth

Commander Eligor Dawnbringer wrote:

"Gluth, the foul plague-dog of Naxxramas, was said to have an appetite so voracious that even the living were not enough to satisfy his hunger. Feugen was said to feed him an army of zombies daily, recycling the remains of undead too weak to use in combat."

Isn't he cute? Sort of, in a weird, pieced together way. Like all of the bosses in the Construct wing, Gluth is also a pile of corpses stitched together and reanimated, but this time in the form of a giant zombie-eating dog. Not so cute anymore, is he? And guess what? If you happen to be a sorry undead who can't keep himself in the real fight for the Lich King out on the front lines, you get fed to the dog. I guess that's incentive to stay in tip top fighting shape.

Thaddius

Commander Eligor Dawnbringer wrote:

"Thaddius, built from the flesh of women and children, it is said that their souls are fused together - eternally bound within that foul prison of flesh."

I'm surprised Eligor doesn't have more to say about Thaddius. Again, he's a construct like all the other bosses in the wing, but he's a special construct, made with specifically the flesh of women and children. Perhaps the idea is that the souls of women and children create a bigger menace than regular old men flesh? Or maybe they conduct a current better since Thaddius is electrically charged. He's like a giant battery actually, and killing off his two henchmen, Feugen and Stalagg, turns him on and makes him mad.

For all of these guys, there's really no history. They were made out of corpses and flesh from various things and placed in Naxxramas to guard the citadel of Kel'thuzad. They are the elite of the Lich King's army.

Next week we'll take a look at the Plague wing. Put on your dancing shoes.

Veritas and the Nexus War

Just a little bit ago we successfully completed 10 person Malygos! I'm really excited about this being the raid leader for the group, and really proud of everyone that contributed, both in this fight and in the fights leading up to it. We all snapped a shot with Alexstraza after the battle on our red drakes. Of course, you can't see who is who, but we beat him all the same. It was a hectic fight and I wasn't sure we'd get it this time. Malygos actually enraged at the very end but we had enough stacks of damage on him to take him down to zero.



For our trouble he dropped the Baricade of Eternity which went to our main tank, and the Gown of the Spell-Weaver which our Warlock won the roll on. Grats to everyone!

Lessons in Lore - The Four Horsemen

I've been doing a few forums posts in my guild forums on the backgrounds of the bosses we fight. It's a lot of fun to know why you're killing some of the things you're killing in game, besides the phat purples. Our guild leader asked me to do some research on the four horsemen, and so I posted this today on our forums, and I'm cross posting it here.

The Four Horsemen

Quote:
"The most powerful death knights within Naxxramas are the four horsemen. They represent the pinnacle of Kel'Thuzad's guard. The first, Thane Korth'azz, holds the power of flame. The next, Lady Blaumeux, calls forth the power of shadows, drawing the souls of the living into the voracious embrace. Sir Zeliek, a paladin in life, so strong in his faith, that even in undeath, the power of the light still heeds his call, smiting his foes in battle. The final death knight, Lord Mograine, was the finest warrior that the death knights had ever seen. However, after the events of Azeroth, he vanished without a trace. Kel'Thuzad has appointed Baron Rivendare in his place."
—Commander Eligor Dawnbringer


If you go to Wintergarde Keep, there's a guy walking around in one of the buildings talking about the bosses in Naxxramas. That's Commander Eligor Dawnbringer, and that's what he has to say about the four horsemen. He was previously at Light's Hope Chapel, mediating between the Argent Dawn and Scarlet Crusade, but enough about Eligor. You wanted to know about the four horsemen.

Well, for those that may not know, there are actually five horsemen. One of the original Horsemen, from pre-Wrath Naxxramas, was replaced with Baron Rivendare when Naxxramas moved to Northrend. That horsemen was Alexandros Mograine. There's a lot of lore around Mograine, and surprisingly, there's fair amount about Rivendare as well. There's less so about the other horsemen, but we can make some assumptions based on what we know about them. Here they are, one at at time.

Alexandros Mograine


There's a lot of lore behind Mograine, and his story is even current in the game through his son Darion. I wrote a blog post about him some time ago, you can read that here if you like. Here is the short version. Mograine was a Paladin of the Silver Hand, one of Uther's men, and an outstanding guy. On the battle field in front of Blackrock mountain he finds an orb of dark power, and takes if from an orc warlock. Then he and several followers of the light use their holy power on the orb, turning it from black to a glowing white. Then he makes a sword out of it and calls it the Ashbringer. Turns out this sword does a good job of killing scourge. Mograine actually founds the Scarlet Crusade, but unbeknownst to him, the Burning Legion possesses one of the commanders of the Scarlet Crusade and plots against Mograine so that they can turn the Crusade to their own purposes. They do this by possessing one of Mograine's two sons, Renault. In front of Stratholme, after a horrific battle in which Mograine slays thousands of scourge with the Ashbringer, Renault appears and murders his own father. Renault is then made a High Commander in the Scarlet Crusade and is the High Commander Mograine within the Scarlet Monastery.

Mograine, now dead, is raised as Death Knight and placed in the service of Kel'thuzad as one of the four horsemen in Naxxramas. This next part is a little screwy due to game mechanics. When Mograine was a horsemen in old Naxxramas, he would sometimes drop the Corrupted Ashbringer. If a player then equipped it and went to the Scarlet Monastery, the NPCs would recognize the sword and bow to you. And when you got to Highlord Mograine, Renault, Alexandros Mograine's spirit would rise from the sword and slay his son for murdering him. Pretty cool, huh? Well, lore-wise, the person who did this was Darion Mograine, Alexandros' second son, who went to Naxxramas to find out what happend to his father, killed him, took the sword, and then went to find his brother and tell him what happened, only to have his dead dad's spirit rise up and kill his brother in front of Darion's eyes. Trippy.

This last part is a bit of a spoiler, but it helps explain where Darion is currently. After the events in Naxxramas and the Scarlet Monastery, Darion returns to Light's Hope Chapel where the Argent Dawn is preparing for war against an innumerable amount of Scourge. The war is nearly lost until Darion realized that in order for his father's spirit to truly rest, Darion must make a sacrifice of love. In the middle of the fight Darion kills himself with the Corrupted Ashbringer. His sacrifice causes a holy light to obliterate the entire scourge army, but at a huge loss. Kel'thuzad then raises Darion as a Death Knight. Anyone who has played through the Death Knight area will know who Darion is, as he plays a huge role there. And he can be seen later in Icecrown as the leader of the Knights of the Ebon Blade.

Baron Rivendare


We all know Baron Rivendare as the last boss in the dead side of Stratholme. While there's really not a lot else known about him, it's actually a bit more than we know of the other horsemen. Rivendare was a wealthy land owner and a friend of Kel'thuzad before Kel'thuzad was lured by the then Lich King, Ner'zhul. When Kel'thuzad came back and created the Cult of the Damned, Rivendare gladly joined his friend and helped to spread the plague that consumed Lordaeron. For his loyalty and eagerness to destroy the Argent Dawn, Rivendare was made a Death Knight and placed in charge of the Scourge forces in Stratholme. From above, we know that Darion put his father's soul to rest (at the cost of his own), and thus when Naxxramas moved to Northrend, he had to be replaced, and Rivendare is that replacement.

Sir Zeleik


Now we get to horsemen that have a little less background. Zeleik was a paladin, and thus most likely of the Order of the Silver Hand before he was killed and subsequently risen as a Death Knight. What's unique and interesting about him is that while his body is now ruled by the Lich King, his mind is not. Thus when you hear the horsemen shouting in Naxxramas, they will all make threats and say taunting phrases, but Zeleik tries to warn you away. This could be seen as a mark of his power and devotion to the light when he was alive, that he can retain his sanity in death.

Thane Korthazz


He's a dwarf. And quite possibly has the most entertaining taunt when he calls your raid "slack-jawed daffodils." Other than that, we don't know much. Again, he was probably a paladin. In the Ashbringer Comics, he is called one of Uther's Men, so he was also once a member of the Silver Hand. The scourge seem to have a knack for turning the best paladins into our worst enemies.

Lady Blaumeux


And of the Lady Death Knight, we know practically nothing. She uses shadow magic, and is wholly submissive to the Lich King's will. She was probably a former Paladin or Priest in life, and probably also with the Silver Hand as that seems to be a trend among the other horsemen, but beyond that, I haven't found any other information.

So there you have it. Several of the pictures come from the Ashbringer comic put out by Wildstorm Comics, a division of DC. I cannot recommend the series enough, it's great. All of the pictures were taken from Wowwiki.com That's about as much as I could turn up on them all. Thanks for reading and have a good morning.

Time Flies When You're Downing Bosses.

It's already Friday? I haven't posted since Tuesday!? O.O

I wanted to have a nice juicy lore post for you today, but I haven't had time to research anything. I might make special weekend post for this. I know there's stuff I want to look into and share with all of you.

As far as guild stuff, this week has been busy! Tuesday night we joined with Brothers of the Fallen who needed some help filling out a raid. They had about 18 people, and asked us to supply some extras. We took on Gruul, and won! A couple of the people pining after the Champion of the Naaru title were able to grab that. Since it hadn't taken us that long to get Gruul down, we went and killed Magtheridon again for good measure. The guild we were with is a bunch of Tier 5, Tier 6 people, so they made it look easy. Unfortunately, this meant that Lal and Elionene were no longer available to get the title because we wouldn't be able to kill Magtheridon again before the patch hits on Tuesday, but I don't think either of us really cared that much.

It's of interest to note that none of the three bosses we killed, High King Maulgar, Gruul, or Magtheridon, dropped any T4 tokens for hunters. Each one of them dropped two "of the defender" and one "of the champion" tokens. It was actually kind of eerie. I think Lal snagged a T4 token for priest pants. She's totally decked out now.

After the raids we did a quick run of regular Botanica with a friend who just got to 70 on a pally tank alt. It was actually pretty fun. Easy and quick. After that we went to heroic Slave Pens to turn in the quest from killing Gruul and Nightbane. Sheesh! That was a full night.

Wednesday night's guild meeting was replaced with a meet and greet tavern role play event where instead of strictly going over guild business in character, we just talked and drank, and casually brought up events coming up in the future. Then Lal and Salthier got to go to Magisters' terrace with the same guy who had a pally tank alt. It was a bit stressful. Lal and I had never been there before, but overall I think I liked the instance layout, and the bosses were a lot of fun.

Last night we finally did our Heroic Shadow Labyrinth run. Ugh. What sadistic developer created this place? We did pretty well up until Blackhand's room. Every pull seemed to cause a wipe in there. I think I finally figured ou the pull order and we were able to do the 6 mob pulls without wiping. When we got to the third boss, Vorpil, who had given us a headache and stopped our progress the last time in Heroic Slab, we surprisingly killed him after only one teleport. I was happily surprised. And we all /cheered.

Murmur was a bit of pain. But we ended up going with the stay put strategy. We all ate the sonic booms and just kept up a lot of heals on everyone. On our third attempt, the tank went down at about 12% on Murmur, but we managed to get him the rest of the way down anyway. There was much rejoicing, and the tank got away with a pretty cool polearm and shield off of Murmur.

The officers in Veritas have been heavily discussing the future of raiding and role playing as we get to the expansion and make our way into Northrend. Some of it has been a little confrontational, but think we all feel like we want raiding to be more fun than taxing, and role play to remain a central part of our guild. It should be something that everything else revolves around. So we're working on role play and lore incentives for the guild to explore Northrend. We're sort of waiting for the in game world event to start it off, but each day gets me more and more excited. A lot of people are getting a little bored now, or tired, or both. Hopefully the expansion and even the patch next week will breath some new life into people.

Veritas Conquers Netherspite

Last night we went to kill Netherspite. And we did! It took us three tries, and on the third one everything just clicked and he was dead in a matter of moments.


It was our guild's first kill, and we had a lot of fun doing it. I was respsonsible for leading it, and I had a lot of fun. We nearly had it on our first try too, but he got healed part way through, and then we had some DPS die, and we ended up dying when he was at 5% and enraged. I got smoosed with a 100,000 point smack from a void zone. Oof!

Our second try was a little off. He kept aggroing random people after his banish phase, so we lost people early on. I decided to just call it after that, so we could quicly release and try again.

Third time's a charm. Everyone was in the right spot at the right time, and Netherspite's health dropped fast. I think he was dead after only two banish phases. As I told my guild, it's really a technical fight, and when you get everything done, it works really well, and he dies quickly. He dropped a nice caster off-hand and a mail healing chest piece. We were all excited. A much better ending than the Gruul run last night.

And as far as Gruul goes, we're trying again tonight. Hopefully he'll cooperate and die, but if he doesn't, we're taking another shot on Thursday. Whew, that's a lot of raiding for our little RP guild. It's not the norm. People just really want that Champion of the Naaru title. I think because of all of this, we're having a little more fun with our guild meeting tomorrow night. The meetings can be fun, but they tend to go long. It's all done in character as we talk about things that we did over the week, and events coming up. Tomorrow we're going to make the meeting really short, and then just hang out and role play in a tavern in Ironforge to let off some stress with all of the recent raiding.

And then soon we'll all be leveling. I keep mentioning that, and maybe it's because I'm excited to go exploring again, and doing quests and preparing for the level 80 scene.

Gruul is a Big Meanie, and Other Thoughts on Raiding

With the 3.0 patch on the very near horizon, a few people in the guild have been after the Champion of the Naaru title which culminates in killing Gruul, Nightbane, and Magtheridon. Veritas as killed Nightbane, and with a coalition of other guilds, Magtheridon. Last night we tackled Gruul's lair.

The first thing that happened was that 8-10 people we expected from a guild didn't show, so we spent some time talking with other guilds and finally getting our 25 people together. We go in, we clear the trash, and we sit down to talk about High King. Sheesh, this guy is complicated. 5 mobs, five different types of tanking. We had a good guy directing us though, and we killed the group on our third try. Loot is passed out, people are happy, let's keep going.

Kill some more Ogres, and suddenly we're standing in a big room with a large Gronn staring at us with his one little beady eye. We discuss the strategy and we all run in and position ourselves. I figured out where to stand so that I don't get thrown around too much when he does his ground slam, so the shatter doesn't hurt me too badly. But the tanks are having some aggro issues and then a group of people go down during a shatter and the chain reaction starts. Raid wipe.

So now people have seen the fight and we go back in and try it again. We do a lot better, get him down to 40% or so before the raid dies again. By this time, people are a little tired, cranky and I think we spent some time filling some spots. Which of course meant that the trash respawned and we had to clear it again. That's fine, we want our titles!

Gruul again, and this time we have some new tanks who seem to be better on the aggro. It's going really well until the ground slam throws everyone together and people die. We are still plugging away, but our DPS isn't high enough to plow through the growths. I succumb to a cave in that I don't move out of quickly enough. More people leave the raid, we try to fill spots, but then the trash comes back again. Yeah, we've been there awhile. It pretty much ends the night, and while everyone had pretty high spirits throughout the whole thing, we are really disappointed we couldn't get him down.

25 person raiding is not my thing I don't think. And as mentioned before, I don't even want to think about what 40 person raiding was like. It's really satisfying when you do get it right and the boss goes down, like we did with Magtheridon last week, but the frustration and difficulty of making it happen makes me wonder if the benefits don't outweigh the costs.

In Northrend, all of the raids will be have 10 person versions. I'm excited about this, but also a little daunted. I'm a raid leader now in the guild, so I'm planning to push to 80 and be one of the first to gear up for Naxraamas. As a guild, we really want to progress, and we really want to see all of the content that's out there. So the question for me then, is how do I make this happen?

We've been pretty casual about raiding. Tonight we're going to complete our first full Karazhan clear when we kill Netherspite. I want to try and maintain that easy going attitude where raiding is done for fun AND for progression, and we don't have to sacrifice one for the other. But if we want to be able to progress through these 10 person dungeons, we'll have to make some changes about how we raid. And that's where I'm a little scared. I don't want to turn us into a hard core raiding guild. That's not Veritas. But we do want to do these raids.

It starts with the leader, of which I am one, so I'm going to do my best to lead by example. Step 1 is that I'm going to do my research on gear minimums for these raids, and make sure that people are at those minimums before we go into the first raid. It just makes sense, and it will mean less frustration in the long run. If people know that they have to be geared, and we don't make any exceptions, then there will be less confrontation in the long run. No one can claim that gear is what prevented us from killing a boss, for example, and then point out the ungeared person. It's just a matter of learning the fight and practicing.

Step 2 is a consistent team. This is where most of the problem lies. I imagine we'll get to level 80 and eventually 10 people will be geared to go into Naxxramas, the first level 80 raid, and we'll start going. But as more people get to top level and geared, when do they get to go? If you have a lot of people switching in and out of the team each week, it just means that it's going to take you longer to complete that raid, by virtue of gear being distributed more widely, and having to teach more people about the fights. So one of two things has to happen:

a) Have a loot system that rewards the more consistent people first, so that overall progression is kept as high as possible. Cons) The less consistent people aren't going to get first chance at loot, and that can cause some drama.

b) People that get to 80 and geared after we have a full team have to wait until we start a second team before they can start raiding. Cons) People waiting can get impatient, and feel left out.

From what I've seen, Veritas is going to lean towards the second option before we start establishing loot DKP. And that's fine. Ideally, after we get one group, the people who want to form a second group will help each other get to that point. This is probably what I'll stress. It's sort of how we did Karazhan, but it will need to be more structured for it to work, and for us to not be doing Naxxramas for six months before we clear it.

Step 3. You can't make everyone happy. And trying to make everyone happy will eventually make some people unhappy. Most likely the raid leader trying to make everyone happy. But at the same time, there has to be a general feeling of well being amongst your members that we are raiding, we are progressing, and we're all in this together, whatever stage we're at. Otherwise they'll just get disgruntled and leave. And we've had a fair number of people leave recently for reasons I don't fully understand, but that are related to how we raid. That alone tells me something has to change.

Thankfully I'll have 10 levels to think about it and plan for it before we finally take our first steps into the home of Kel'thuzad.

WoW Web Stats

Wow Web Stats has been around for some time now. I'm actually surprised when I mention it to people in my guild or send them a link to a report page, and they are curious how I did it and what addon is needed. Since it seems like it's not as well known as I thought it was, I figured it was a good topic for game mechanics.

Basically WWS is a free service that will take a combat log and parse it, extrapolate the data and spit it back to you in an easy to read format. It does not require an addon, although a combatlog addon can make it easier. More on that in a minute. You will need to sign up for a free account on their site and be able to run the Wow Web Stats client via a Java application. They give easy to understand directions on the web site.

So how does it work? WoW records everything that happens during fights in a combat log. You can have this log recorded to a text file by simply typing /combatlog at any time during the game. This text file will appear in your World of Warcraft file in a subfolder called Logs as wowcombatlog.txt. So when you enter Karazhan (or any instance) just type /combatlog and go about your raid. If you wipe and exit the instance, you will have to type it again when you enter. At the end of the raid, type /combatlog again to turn it off, log out, and go to the Logs folder in your WoW directory. Copy the txt file to the desktop and then go to the WWS website, start their client and upload the txt file. You should see something like this...

That's kind of small, so I don't know if you can read it, but I've used the anonymous report so the names are all different anyway. This chart is for damage done through our Kara raid that went to Aran. By checking the different options you can see damage received, heals, and a host of other statistics. You can see individual results, group results, and also what killed who and when, how long it took to finish, or kill a boss, and a lot of other things. It's a great tool for raid leaders who want to analyze the raid and see what areas they can improve, or it's a lot of fun for people like me who like to play with numbers.

That's WoW Web Stats in a nut shell. You can get an addon such as clsaver which will automatically turn the log on and off when you enter and exit the instance. This is nice, as I often would forget to type /combatlog when I need to. You just have to tell clsaver to log an instance once, and it will remember to do that instance for every future time you run it. Do this by typing /clsaver toggle your first time in the instance.

A couple of things to note. The combat log can be a little finicky at times, probably due to my incompetence. After you upload the log to to WoW Web stats, you should delete the file in your logs folder. If you do not, then the next time you are in an instance, the new log will be added to the end of the old one. This will make the file unreadable for WWS. So the best way to do it is as follows:

Step 1) Run the instance and use /combatlog or an addon to do it automatically.
Step 2) Logout
Step 3) Copy the txt file to the desktop and delete the file in your logs folder.
Step 4) Upload the file from the desktop
Step 5) Check out your awesome DPS or heals or whatever.
Step 6) Log back in and repeat steps 1 through 6 after next instance run.

You can copy the URL of your report and send it to other people to view. You can also make the names anonymous if you want to show people, but don't want to broadcast who in your guild was who, for privacy concerns. You can also set up permissions so that other people can upload reports to your account, such as a guild leader or something.

Thanks for reading, and have a good morning!