Sunday night means Sunday sunraid - our weekly roll-up of Gruul, Mag and whatever else we might be interested in as the week draws to a close.

Our first Gruul kill was on Dec 12th, 2007. Yesterday marks our hojillionth kill and 2nd [Dragonspine Trophy]. That’s 158 days to you and me. I lost the roll on the first one but last night karma came up big as I dropped a natural 100 and crossed another “won’t replace until post-Lich King” off the list. I’m exceedingly pleased. The DST is a big bump and the clock is ticking on nub raid content as we progress through T5.

Oh, and we dropped Karathress for the first time last week. I’ll add some screens when I get home.

As promised, more news re: Professor Plums.

I covered our antics on the Sunday following the patch, but neglected to mention TK on Thursday. For those of you playing our home game yes, Void Reaver with invisible orbs does, in fact, suck ass. We diverted to Solarian who I was promised was “easy”. Yeah, so they were right. Welcome to the 1st 1st kill of the streak.

Nothing overly amazing lewt-wise, we had some shards and some equippers, same old song and dance. So fast-forward past Sunday’s Magtheridon 1st and to the Tuesday Serpentshrine raid. What? What you say? Is that our 1st Morogrim Tidewalker kill? Yeap.

A nice surprise in the cracker-jack box for our 1st - grats me. [Talon of Azshara]

The WoW 2.4 patch hit, launching the Isle of Quel’Danas content and a slew of fixes/nerfs/bugs/etc. More on that stuff later, but for now, I’ll lead off with our first Magtheridon kill. Why yes, yes he is EZ-mode trivial now, we know. We could have killed him before, we just couldn’t get the bodies in front of him. At any rate, he’s dead now - suck it.

Pic #2

From what I’ve read and/or heard, Blizzard noticed the people just plain weren’t doing Mag anymore or (as in our case) never had done him and wanted to encourage more kills. I get that, I really do. As we enter the home stretch towards Lich King the mighty bliz wants to make sure there’s not a repeat of Burning Crusade with the vast majority of their players never seeing what had been described as some of their very best work. Works for us. I got me a [Pit Lord's Satchel] with a natural 100.

More to follow…

I love it when a plan comes together. — John “Hannibal” Smith

Another weekend, another Zul’Aman run. I know, I know, when will we ever learn, right?

Things did not start well. Something like 5 wipes on Nalorakk? I was about ready to just cut and run. For whatever reason, starting stumbles made for a rock-solid finish. We rolled up to Akil’zon and dropped him in two and did the same thing to Halazzi! The guild first Halazzi kill is in the books!

Shitty loot though. I’m cursed. We’ve seen either a [Fury] or the [Bloodstained Elven Battlevest] (or both) the last 3 runs. Still no sword. :sigh:

edit: Fixed the ItemStats link above. No idea why it can’t find the thing by name when it’s a) correct and b) obviously available.

edit 2: The great image re-do of ‘08… Pic #2 of Halazzi 1st

Before the holiday break I managed to herd enough kittens together to drop Akil’zon for the first time. A few days later we managed to do it a second time. Unfortunately that’s where shit takes a bit of a turn. I had arguably the top 5 DPS in the guild and we just got mauled over the weekend.

Oh well, just further proof that the fight is about doing the right thing, no matter how hard you can hit.

PS: We’ve been on a roll vs Gruul lately - had a 1-shot this week and should continue to carry that through going forward. Grats us and whatnot.

Yeah, forgot to mention this last week, but my raid dropped Netherspite for the first time. This marked our first complete Karazhan clear, so go us or somesuch.

For a fist-kill the loot was bleh. I got lucky on our first Nightbane kill to walk away with my BP, but no such luck on mah pants! It really chaps my ass that the Spiteblade isn’t an upgrade. Damn you Blizzard! Where are the goddamned swords?!

Oh, wait. They’re in the next 2 tiers of content up. GG, assholes. If I keep pounding away at zee PvP I might get a new pair of swords sometime right before the expansion hits.

note: I don’t think I mentioned it in other wow-posts, but I’m the wtfpwn rogue in the middle with the mongoosed daggers.

So yeah, I haven’t had a job since October of last year. It’s an interesting experience, actually. A wild confluence of events turned a 3-month “break” into what may amount into nearly a full year off. I guess at that point you can call it a sabbatical or something? At any rate, I’m cranking out emails and such in full force now looking for yet another IT job I’ll hate in six months. My optimism is infectious, no?

I still hold out hope that some MMO studio will return my emails so I can con them into a producer or an associate designer gig. That’s no small task for people who have actual industry experience, let alone someone who’s spent the last decade in IT/IT management.

One morning it hit me - I’ve been spitballing a game concept on and off for the last year, why not actually WRITE IT DOWN. Artists have a portfolio and “shipped titles” are generally considered to be the analog for a producer or designers so why can’t I create one?

Given how my thought process works a simple document would be nigh useless. After a week it’d be so convoluted that you’d need a cryptex to decipher every 3rd paragraph. My solution was to use a wiki and it seems to be working pretty damned well so far. Navigation and categorization let me easily move around to edit/add details to stub entries and the built-in metrics show me where I last left off or places that are unfinished.

I’ve been at it for about two weeks now and I have around 50 entries written for the skills system. Writing it all down has also helped me see some weaknesses that the random afternoon navel gazing never revealed.

A last-minute run last night yielded our guild-first Prince Malchezaar kill. So-so loots, but a win is a win is a win. Sadly I can’t claim the win as my own but we wouldn’t be standing there without my work so my ego stands just fine.

We’re back on my raids this week so the true test of any encounter is if you can repeat. Progress, generally, has been swift. Curator is on farm and the “new” Aran fight has been cracked without issue. It bothers me that we didn’t finish it before the nerf, but such is life in a casual guild.

Oh, we did swing by the terrace afterwards and throw a few bodies at Nightbane. That’ll be a fun one to learn. I haven’t decided if I’m going to run that this week or re-focus to the middle optionals first. Illhoof has some great gear and would clear a running path to the chess board for post-raid funzies.

NCSoft and/or Cryptic Studios are certifiable geniuses. Not necessarily in the money-hat-factory sense of Blizzard, but they’re certainly putting in the effort.

About a week ago I received an email warning me of the impending “free weekend” for City of Heroes. The free weekend is exactly that - free. No muss, no fuss, just log in and play on my old CoH account with no restrictions or hooplah. For serious!

The process was literally thus:
1) Find install CDs (harder than it sounds)
2) Install & Patch (1.8gb from launch masters to issue 9, 8 hours)
3) Play. Well reset password and then play.

No codes, no activations, nada. I did waste another 2 hours making a new character on a newer server as my old one was “double yellow” and laggy as hell. That and it really did take 8 hours to patch at an abysmal 70k/s, but if I had installed a few days after I got the email vs 5 minutes after I decided to play…

That’s all fine and good, you say, but “what’s the point?” The point, dear reader, roadblocks. Or more precisely, the lack of roadblocks. This is a lesson Blizzard taught the industry with the runaway popularity of WoW. WoW isn’t a super l337 hardcore game. Learning the basic mechanics of any class and the game itself is a process easily completed in the first week of free play. This allows a new player the maximal amount of time to discover the game and not just how to play.

Cryptic “got it” with the concept of free weekends. It looks like they do these events periodically when there’s a major change to the game. The “excuse” this time was Issue 9 going live. I played CoH-beta and for the first 3 months following launch. I know exactly why I left, but this chance to jump back in with no strings attached had me seriously considering a 1-month resub. Ultimately I came to my senses and realized that none of the reasons for my departure had changed so a resub would be silly.

But still… good try. No MMO I’ve ever played has ever come close to this level of nostalgia.

The end result? I can spare the 2 1/2gb. So who knows what might happen?