The Brick Wall

Apologies for the temporary absence, mainly due to the fact that I've had sod all to talk about. Not sure whether I do here either, I'll just go with the stream of consciousness for a bit and see where it takes me.

And so another reset comes and goes and again the Shade of Aran stands mocking us at the end. Valiant efforts were made and many repair bills were incurred over the last few days to try and put an end to his taunting of us. The numbers were bandied around for a while; 40%, 18%, 7%...surely he would fall this time? No, fecker was still standing there at the end of it. The other group fared no better, though with a lack of Warlocks to banish a couple of his adds they certainly had a tougher time of it.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=268897512&sid=1

It seems that we are not alone however. This is a thread started by Bloodlust Enthroned, a fellow Khadgarian raiding guild a bit further down the line than us. Seems that we are all having the same problems then, but to what can we ascribe the reason for this?

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/misc/wowinsider/wowi12/magtheridon.html

From Blizzard's very own pages comes a potential answer. Whilst they speak of Magtheridon and the 25 man content in general, this also applies to the 10 man raids we currently spend our waking life on. Blizzard have attempted to balance tactics (a la 40 man) with tightly scripted elements that force us to react in a certain way or die (Arcane Wreath or annoying Blizzard thing that covers half the room) and the element of chance (who Moroes garottes). I can see how they thought that the element of chance will make things more "exciting", meaning that people have to react fast to keep on track; it's when the random element causes a wipe through nobodies fault that can cause demoralisation. Perhaps it's this randomness that has been introduced into the raid aspect that has caused so many guilds to explode? In their rigid hardcore regime where everyone had to do exactly as they are told at all times, perhaps they were too inflexible to deal with the randomness of the new encounters and simply withered away.

So what does this have to do with us I hear you cry? Well I'd like to think that Covenant can step forward and fill the breach that these other guilds have left. Our casually hardcore (hardly casualcore?) approach means that we (hopefully) have the discipline to succeed at the scripted parts of the fights, yet adaptable enough that the element of chance is minimised (Nefarian anyone?) When we truely master ourselves in this way we will progress to the next level.

It is almost a shame that the Easter break falls upon us now, just when Aran looked like he was going to cough up the goods; bring him down and we can make a serious assault on the remaining bosses. Alas it was not meant to be and with the reset comes a week's break from concentrated raiding (though I'm sure there will be enough people around to get some done). Instead as a kind of last charge at glory, we return to the scene of previous hilarity, Gruul's Lair. Early on we visited there to get a feel for the place. The only thing we truely felt was the pointy bit of their weapons as we were routed on more than one occasion. But now there is a "nerf" in place (apparently you can now only call yourself truely 1337 if you managed to down the place pre-nerf day) and we have better gear and more practise at raiding once more (2 month layoff certainly rusts the reflexes somewhat) we get to go face the challenge once more. Who knows, perhaps we'll survive long enough to get a few of them down this time?