“When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, “Did you sleep good?” I said “No, I made a few mistakes.” – Stephen Wright
Everyone can use a feel good moment to start the day. Let’s go with this…
When I played EverQuest I raided, hard-core, for hours on end. It was a different time and a different game.
I haven’t raided on my World of Warcraft character in a good long time. After the release of Wrath of the Lich King I seemed to raid less and less, peaking with Naxx and slowly declining from there. When I did raid, I always seemed to be in a group that wanted to start at a reasonable hour for those of the Californian persuasion. I live on the east coast, so that meant very late nights and very little sleep.
So it came as a shock to my system when last night at 11:00 our guild decided to take a band of fresh 80s and non-raiders, most ill-equipped literally and figuratively to attempt even the easiest Cataclysm boss and hit Baradin Hold. It’s a cakewalk of an instance, building on the VoA experience from Wrath of the Lich King.
Essentially you are given two hours to clear two bosses, both of which have relatively simple mechanics. Our group of neophytes cleared the first boss, but never finished the second which brought me to 1:00 AM which really isn’t that late except I had to be up early to let the renovation guys (see yesterday’s column) in and well, I couldn’t sleep at 1:00 AM. I was up until 3:00.
I tend to lean towards healing classes, though I have a hunter and a warlock collecting dust on the shelf. Being a raid healer can be a stressful proposition. One moment of lost focus and boom, the raid is wiped.
Take a moment and try to remember back to when you last leaned back on a chair and it almost fell over backwards, BUT you caught yourself. That’s how I feel most of the time. Now imagine me as your healer. You can probably deduce why we wiped once on the second boss in Baradin Hold.
So here I am, tired, reflecting on an easy raid that we were unable to finish and surprisingly I’m OK with that. Back in the days of Naxx I’d be combing the Interwebz looking for tips and tricks and voodoo dolls to make sure we didn’t fail again, but I have a lot more to worry about now than I did then. I have a daily column to write, my kids are older and I’m driving them every which way to hockey, soccer, art camp and the like. I don’t have the time that I had in the “old days” to raid.
Has raiding truly become a pastime only for the young? I would hate to believe that is true, but I may just be deluding myself.
Do you raid? How often and how do you find the time?
Send me your thoughts. We’re closing in on 9,000 readers via the mailing list for this little column. Once again, thank you for signing up and thank you for reading. I appreciate it.
I promise I’ll use Twitter more if a few of you decide to follow. It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg thing. I find it hard to send out two or three tweets a day on the industry if only 11 people are following and nobody wants to follow somebody who doesn’t deliver the goods.
Do me a favour and make my bosses think I’m important by visiting: http://www.twitter.com/boomjacktth and following me. Thanks again. I really do appreciate your support. It also shows my developer friends that you guys can mass together and make things happen, which in turns makes it easier for me to get you some swag.
The forever-free-to-try model has much to recommend it, from repopulating starting areas to enlivening early game PvP. Ten Ton Hammer's Jeffprime looks at why every MMOG developer should consider Free-to-Try, even if Free-to-Play is out of the question.
With today's new batch of screenshots, Turbine is showing off the forests and swamps of Dunland, one of three new regions to be added to the Lord of the Rings Online this fall with the Rise of Isengard expansion. See the new visuals at Ten Ton Hammer!
These massive ships can earn a pretty penny as the workhorses of EVE Online, used for everything from running missions to solo PvP. This guide explores one way to mass-manufacture the Raven, a popular Caldari battleship.
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BioWare has confirmed the preorder and collector's edition details that were leaked in the last few days and, far more importantly, spoke of early access and beta weekends for those who jump on the train early.
Perhaps the best part of MMO expansions these days are the pre-launch events. Perfect World's Forsaken World is set to unleash a whole slew of content as well as live events right before its expansion pushes the level cap to 80 and more.
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PlayerScore 4.9.00 is now available for download! This new version features the restoration of the database mode and several other feature:
To view the database, simply install PlayerScore 4.9.00 and choose “View Database” from the WoW minimap icon. Once you’re in the database you can click the headers to sort by that type, or change the page. You can also choose to view data for your current group, your guild, or everyone you’ve met!
If you use the PlayerScore updater, you can pre-download most of the scores for your server. This has the added benifit of adding tooltips to your chat window. Mouse over players to see information about them.
