You see, shortly after my last post, my paladin and I discovered that my constant nausea was not, in fact, Electro Gonorrhea (The Noisy Killer), as we feared, but rather the beginning of my now-11-weeks-and-counting pregnancy.  Since then, I have become employed, been nauseous on a daily basis, had weird cravings for foods I don’t normally enjoy, cried a lot at commercials, and held my pally’s hand so tightly he probably worried about bone breakage as we saw our little creation swimming around via a TV-sized ultrasound screen, its heartbeat so much faster than ours, its little world so complete for the moment, and ours completed in that moment as well.

What I haven’t done is play WoW other than my twice-weekly 10-man raids, for which I have logged on approximately 10 minutes beforehand and logged off immediately after.  There have been a lot of factors leading to my decline in playing – my morning sickness is worst in the evenings so I enjoy huddling on a couch instead of trying to suffer through talking to people and doing randoms, the constant need to do stuff (like heal) has tended to increase my icky feeling, and I’ve felt a general lack of caring for my characters, with the possible (and only slight) exception of Tazha.

The truth is that I only log on for the 10-man raids because I love the people I raid with, and I’m willing to suffer through a little nausea to hang out with them.  Plus we still haven’t killed the Lich King (although we’re knocking on his door.)  But the rest of WoW is lost to me for the moment in a wild combination of burnout, exhaustion, lack of new content, and pregnancy-related apathy towards video games…

This being the case (not to mention the impending addition to our little family), I am ending Wild Growth permanently.  I hope that as I finish out the first trimester, my interest in WoW will return somewhat, but with a full and active career and a full and active little tree growing inside of me, I know I won’t have time to devote to this blog.

I am keeping you all in my Google Reader, and I hope you won’t mind me popping in now and then on your blogs with a comment or two.  I want to say thank you to each and every one of you who read my blog, who participated in our dialogue, and who wrote your own blogs, since you have made my days brighter and more thoughtful.  The WoW community is blessed with a chorus of intelligent, inspired, funny, and caring voices, and I hope I added to that for the brief time I wrote this blog.  Just as I cherish most the connections with my friends-from-all-over in-game, I have cherished the connections I have made here as well.

So I’m off to my next great adventure.  Take care of yourselves, and thanks for reading.

Tazha and her newest little companion back in Teldrassil where her WoW adventure began.

Last Monday was just one of those nights for my beloved 10-man raid.  (Secretly, I blame Super Bowl-related exhaustion, as we had cancelled our Sunday raid for football fans.)

You know a raid is off to a bad start when we wipe on trash mobs after managing to aggro not one, not two, but all four Deathbound Wards while clearing the last room before Marrowgar.  (The best I can guess is that after the first two were accidentally released by our hunter’s pet, the helpful NPC Alliance running through the first hall tripped the other two traps.)  We ran back in, pulled ourselves together, and wiped again.  On the trash.

We made it to Lord Marrowgar and during the first Bonestorm (during which my brain always does The Simpsons sing-song of “Tell your parents: Buy me ‘Bonestorm’ or go to hell!”) our other healer and two DPS died.  I rebirthed my fellow healer, and he promptly bit the dust again.  By the time we were down to trying to 4-man the last 25%, the Raid Leader wisely called a wipe.

Now, as an aside, up until now we’ve been rocketing through ICC, with the brick-wall exception of Rotface.  Sure, we went through the normal few wipes on each boss trying to find our footing, but except for Rotface we’ve rarely hit a multi-week difficulty.  So to wipe three times before downing Marrowgar was…odd.  Not to mention our normally talkative and jovial raid was deathly silent during all of this.

But we rallied…sort of.  We killed Marrowgar on our second try and burned through Lady Deathwhisper, the Gunship battle, Saurfang, and the two guard dogs of Decimate-y goodness without incident.  Our ICC raid weekly was to kill both Festergut and Rotface with at least one raid member surviving both encounters, and since we generally down Festergut in one try, we decided to go for Rotface first.

We ran in and everything was going well until the first “angry poo-poo”.  I got the Mutated Infection and didn’t run fast enough, leaving a Little Ooze snapping in the center of the DPS.  But our off-tank (my pally) rallied and got the Little Ooze away.  Unfortunately, I let myself get flustered and made little mistakes, one after the other.  Even though we got Rotface lower than ever before, we ended up wiping.

And then we wiped some more.  And some more.  And, just when we were looking for a little variety from all the wiping, here came some more death.

As our raid time approached its end, one of our Raid Leaders called it for Rotface.  We were going to go focus on Festergut instead and use our remaining 15 minutes to down him.  To make a long story short (too late!) we wiped twice on Festergut after some Benny Hill-style Gas Spore-related wackiness and called it a (long and very frustrating) night.

After our early Marrowgar wipe, a fellow raid member sent me a link to the above picture.  “That’s us tonight,” he whispered.

And I’m afraid I have to agree.  Whether it was Super-Bowl-lag (like jet lag, only caused by drinking too much while watching the Super Bowl) or just general exhaustion, somehow we were just screwed from the first moment we set foot in that place.

When all the dust had settled, I whispered our raid leader.

“Rough night.”

“Next week will be better,” she replied.

Whattaya know – it was.  Over the last two days we downed everything up to Professor Putricide and made some serious progress on him.  We laughed and giggled and made lots of Futurama jokes at the Professor’s expense.

And this, in a nutshell, is why I love my 10-man raid.  For every tornainbow we encounter, for every “one of those nights”, there’s always a pure and simple rainbow around the corner – like any good team, we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and do better next time.

In the spirit of WoW, he made them into shapes:

WoW-Flavored Breakfast

Ah, to be young and a nerd and in love (with a pally willing to make delicious food for you).  Is there anything finer?

Disclaimer: WoW-Flavored Breakfast contains only milk, eggs, flour and other pantry goods.  No bones or other bits from “worthwhile enemies” included.

Sometimes it's more fun to just be an elf...

In this post over at Righteous Orbs, Chastity rightfully lambasts people who are blithely not trying in the current heroics and raids because their gear is so good, they don’t “need” to try.  Which is how, when last week’s raid weekly was Instructor Razuvious, most groups I went in with had half-assed-to-nearly-fail attempts because everyone was of the “whatever-it’s-Razuvious-I-could-do-this-with-one-hand-behind-my-back” mentality.  As a result, it was some of the sloppiest raiding I’d ever seen.  People ran all over, lost the bosses, and died left and right as I vainly tried to heal them through the insanity.  So, bravo, Chastity, for demanding that we do better.

That said, this post is actually about Taz and heroics.  Taz is geared to the nines and can heal most heroics pretty easily at this point.  She runs them to (a) earn frost badges and (b) help out guildies who need more badges.  And she often runs them in her regular Night Elf state, rather than tree form.  In Chastity’s post, the main example of “whatever” attitude was a Resto Druid who didn’t bother to heal in tree form and was proud of it simply because they “don’t need to.”  It made me think about why I heal in Taz form all too often in heroics (unless it’s Halls of Reflection) instead of gussied up like a tree, as nature and Blizzard intended.

It started simply enough – I ran with guildies and friends, many of whom are also rocking high-level gear and didn’t need much in the way of heals.  Often the pulls would be multiple mobs.  So, when I was sure the situation was solid enough, I would throw a Hurricane down over the whole group, doing my own little helpful AoE damage.  The problem was, if I was in tree form, the Hurricane would fail and pop me out of tree form at the same time.  Solution: start healing less in tree form.

In a way, when healing heroics in Taz form, tree form has become the savior I once posited it could be (back when Blizzard hinted that they might be changing the form from a constant) – an “oh-shit!” thing I use when things get out of hand.

And while healing outside of tree form has the obvious benefits of allowing you to DPS (aiding your group in downing trash) and see your actual toon, it also means that you need to be super-attentive. If you’re going to cut your heals by choosing to heal outside of tree form, you should be adding to the group in other ways (Faerie Fire, DPS, etc) and that means trying to do two jobs at once.  So it can add an interesting challenge to dungeons that are continually having their challenges cut in half.

This is why I don’t recommend doing this maneuver with PuGs until you feel confident in their ability to do their job.  If your tank keeps getting pounded to within a millimeter of his life, if your DPS-ers are running around trying to tank every new mob because they’re so leet, then stick to your tree form and don’t add to the group’s difficulties.  On the other hand, if the group knows its business and you know yours, finding other ways to help your group can be a big plus.  Just don’t forget that either way, you are not running the heroic alone. And, as a healer, your group depends on you to heal, first and foremost.

Please lead my raid...

Was it just me who thought this ICC run might be in a little bit of trouble?

My assessment of Blizzard's new dungeon nerf. So much red!

I admit I rolled my eyes a bit when the Oculus pot was sweetened to bring in more happy business, especially since I’ve never had a PuG group really happy to be in Oculus, extra goodie bag or no.  But I pushed down my vaguely troubled thoughts regarding the matter (was a loot incentive really going to solve the issues of people being uncomfortable with vehicle combat and the “silent speedy run” groups being unwilling to explain things properly?) and moved on.

When I read this latest development, however, I couldn’t stay silent. Per Zarhym:

With that said, we plan on making some changes to The Old Kingdom in the next minor patch. For instance, Elder Nadox will only get one Ahn’Kahar Guardian and Jadoga Shadowseeker will only use her Ascend ability once during their respective encounters. In addition, a couple of the stagnant groups of bad dudes between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar will be removed, while some of the roaming groups will have their pathing altered. These changes are not to make this instance easier, but rather to make it a slightly quicker run and more in line with some of the other Wrath dungeons.

I think you mean Anomalus. Yes, he will use his Create Rift ability less often.

What?!

So let me get this straight: People are trying to rush through heroics to get their Frost badges (or even farm Triumph badges) to get the latest and greatest gear.  They get a “long” or “difficult” instance such as Old Kingdom, Nexus, or the Oculus.  They drop group rather than deal with an ounce of difficulty or challenge.  Blizzard rewards this nonsense by nerfing the heroics forever.

There are so many things wrong with this, it’s hard to know where to begin:

1. First of all, the blue posts initially came in response to someone complaining about the random dungeon generator giving them Old Kingdom four times in a row.  The complaint was more centered around how the RNG of the dungeon-picking system works than Old Kingdom itself, although the complainer did add that they were frustrated by the fact that many groups desire to do full clears.  How does nerfing Old Kingdom solve the issue of the RNG giving players the same instance over and over?
2. For over-geared people hunting for their Frost badge fix, most 5-man heroic bosses are tank-and-spank at this point, and even long instances can be completed in a ridiculously short amount of time. (Case in point, last night my healer slipped into her offspec and tanked Nexus – a full clear including Chaos Theory for the accompanying priest – in 20 minutes.  20 minutes!)  Without a full clear, you can do Old Kingdom in an even shorter amount of time, skipping all bosses but Prince Taldaram and Herald Volazj.
3. For those people who need the dungeons to gear up, dumbing them down to make it easier is not just insulting to the players, it undermines the very reasons for these bosses. Jedoga Shadowseeker took our fledgling 80s a lot of tries to down.  Blowing cooldowns, our blue-and-green-geared group could potentially survive the first enrage, but then the cooldowns were spent!  We ran back a lot.  It required a lot of situational awareness and group effort.  There was no facerolling involved, and we all had to be at the top of our game.  We might be able to fudge one mess-up, but not two or more.  Now, you can just roll in and beat the crap out of her.  Mess up the first Ascend?  No worries.  There won’t be another.  The Jedoga encounter currently teaches important lessons that eventually translate into raid bosses like Rotface (paying attention to where you’re standing, pre-emptive healing, knowing where and when to pour on the DPS, kiting the boss as a tank), which are now going to be dissolved in the “Everybody’s a Winner!” philosophy.  Even if you don’t ever plan on raiding, these are valuable skills for all types of play.  But if you do plan on raiding, they’re essential.

Zarhym claims this isn’t to make the instance easier – but that’s exactly what it does. For overgeared players, the currently-easy bosses are still easy and not much faster (thereby negating the let’s-make-it-faster argument.)  For the undergeared or newly geared 80s, the whole challenge of dealing with the multiple Ascends/rifts is gone.  Both of these bosses are burst DPS races – pouring in DPS at the appropriate time.

On top of which, most instances in WotLK have 3-4 bosses.  Heroic Old Kingdom and Nexus have 5 bosses each.  Shouldn’t they take more time?  And why do we want to reward people for QQ’ing about their random dungeon selection?  You chose to do a random – that means that sometimes you’ll get Violet Hold, and sometimes you’ll get Old Kingdom.  Choosing to make the dungeon you get random is why you get the extra bonus of two badges.  If Blizzard wants to make it so much quicker, why not just mail everyone badges every day?

My pally had an interesting suggestion on this:

Instead of focusing on offering more carrots, why not try the stick for once? Extend the debuff to an hour and set it up so that completing the last boss in a dungeon automatically clears the debuff.  With an hour-long debuff if you drop group, more and more people will rethink walking away from these long dungeons.  It’s even possible that people who know how to do the dungeon will help those who don’t (gasp!  surely not!) in order to make the whole thing go faster.  If you finish the dungeon in 20 minutes, the debuff is wiped and you can go on to the next.  Undergeared players wouldn’t be abandoned so callously as much, and neither would Blizzard’s too-often-abandoned dungeons.  Everyone wins!

Instead, Blizzard has decided to make permanent changes to make heroics even easier than they already are so that groups can save a few minutes.  Guess what, Blizzard?  Your carrots-for-all policies aren’t that effective.  People still hate the Oculus, even though they now have a chance at shinies at the end.  And people are still going to try to avoid longer dungeons when all they want is a fast, silent run.  On top of all that, people are still going to be pissy when they get the same dungeon four times in a row!  /facepalm

All these latest instance changes are doing are hurting the undergeared or at-gear-level players who were supposed to get a big boost out of the whole LFG randoms.

End rant.

Which means WoW gave me this for Christmas:

Hooray, moar lewtz!

Which means I can now terrorize the Azeroth skies in fashionably bright purple:

The Fast and the Furious

Happy Holidays, everyone!

With friends like these, who needs PuGs? (image courtesy of Optimistically Pessimistic)

Since the new LFG tool premiered a little over a week ago, everyone’s had a take on the new etiquette of cross-server grouping.  There have been the heart-breaking stories of groups that tossed about casual cruelty towards others, the pleas for tolerance of players who might not share your super-leet DPS,  and the groups that had no idea what they were doing and, moreover, didn’t care to learn.

I’ve had some “interesting” PuG experiences of my own, including one where a DK was pulling max. 400 dps.  We didn’t kick her, nor was there any discussion of her terrible output.  We did fine through the entire instance (the Oculus).  There were no wipes and the only time she died was on the final boss when she presumably didn’t know where to go during the phase shift.  And the most I wondered to myself about the whole thing was how any level 80 in half blues/half purples could only be doing 400 dps.

But this post isn’t really about any of the PuGs I’ve been a part of, the good or the bad.  It’s about the decidedly non-PuG grouping I joined in order to test out my new favorite thing: Bear Tazha.

Way back when I had dual-specced Tazha to be a feral tank, but found that she was useless in that role.  Our raids had all the tanks they needed and more off-tanks than you could shake a stick at.  Among my friends, we already had too many people vying for the tanking role and too few vying for the healing one.  So, once Blizzard redesigned kitty form, I respecced into feral dps.  I found it terribly boring and annoying, so much so that I never used it if I could help it.  The truth is, the only dps-er class I’ve ever really enjoyed to date is my fire mage (and solo-ing my secret horde alt hunter).  I fully admit that it’s not the kitty’s fault that I didn’t like it – I didn’t really give it enough of an effort.  Besides, dps-ers were a dime a dozen, too, so it was only useful for dailies, which I tend to avoid like the plague.  With the new LFG tool, however, tanks are king and being able to be either tank or heal for a dungeon is a distinct advantage when trying to get into randoms.  Plus…Rocket-Bear!

So it was back to bear-tank-Taz I went.  Triumph badges were spent like wild outfitting her, and I jumped at the chance to tank for a group of my loving (and forgiving, I hoped) guildies.  No random PuG-er to tell me I sucked or vote to kick me.  Just people I played with all the time taking care of me.  HA!

“Remember, guys, this is only my second time tanking in the last six months, so be gentle,” I said at the outset.

“Gentle as a chainsaw,” our mage replied happily.

I should have known then that there was going to be trouble.

We were in Utgarde Pinnacle and every single one of my fellow group members was overgeared for the instance.  They rushed in and went haywire because they could.  Assisting off the tank?  For chumps with weak dps.  Waiting until the tank attacks?  Why bother – the healer can totally handle it.

Every rule that I’ve seen written for LFG etiquette was mooshed into the ground.  Bear Tazha watched in wild-eyed terror as chaos brewed around her, growling and swiping and swinging her camera this way and that to try and see where aggro was going and why it wouldn’t hang around for a cup of tea or some dessert.

There was the time the mage had a proc as I was trying to mark guys (in the hopes of establishing some order instead of the free-for-all that had been occurring up until then.)  The proc couldn’t be ignored, of course, so all of a sudden four angry Vrykul were bearing down on me…and then rolling right past me…

There was the time the rogue had a phone call none of us knew about and accidentally dragged a Vrykul out of line of sight.  I heard the healer say, “I can’t reach you!” just as I swung the camera around to see a small, pathetic-looking gnome rogue body flop dead out from behind the doorway.

There was the time our shadow priest decided to reorganize her buttons and accidentally Vampiric Embraced a mob off to the side.

There was the time the patrol showed up while three dps-ers were attacking three different targets, and I was trying to round everything up…and we wiped.

I started to feel desperate.  “Am I doing something wrong?  Help me!” I pleaded.

“No, no,” was the constant reply.  “You’re doing great.  We’re just being sloppy.”

*mental screams*

Now I think every one of my guildies who was in there with me is a wonderful person and excellent player.  I love hanging out with them.  And if it had been any random group behaving that way, I would have actually ripped my hair out instead of just thinking about ripping my hair out.  Because we know each other and are friends, I had actual fun in between the frustration of having no idea what I was doing as a tank (short of standing in front of mobs pressing buttons and yelling, “Look at me!  Hit ME!”)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t own up to my own failings in this vein.  Healing with Taz is such a laughable task in lower-level that I’m almost done with my Master of Arms achievement.  I’ve done my own share of face-rolling my way through things, especially when I’m with a group I know well.  (I tend to be more on my toes in pure random groups, just because I’m less sure of their abilities.)

But make no mistake – sometimes your friends can be just as bad as those random PuGs.  At least with your friends, however, you can grin and bear it…knowing in advance that sometimes gentle does involve chainsaws.

My novelty suit from/for Tam.

So as active participation in Tam’s Christmas-present-syphilis-like-meme of bloggy exchange, I drew:

What was your “piece of wonder” moment (or moments) – the experience that defines everything that keeps you logging into WoW, the one you remember when you ask yourself “why am I playing this again”?

Is that all, Tam?  Sure we don’t want the answer to life, the universe, and everything, too?  (I have it on good authority that it’s 42.)

I’ve been thinking about it a lot since he posited the question to me.  And it’s made me realize that we humans (in our crazy, singular way) create relationships with everything around us. The obvious ones are those we have with other living creatures (those who can feel those same connections back at us), but we also create relationships with our homes, our workplaces, our jobs, our hobbies.  We have the same ups and downs, the same ebbs and flows of interest and disinterest, love and irritation.  And WoW is not immune to this.  Just take a look around at the WoW bloggers – we write feverishly, we are quiet for months, we vow to step away from the game, we come back from absences, we move on for good.

So just as there are a million moments and indescribable points of love and rage and perfection and failure between my husband and myself, between my career and me, between my family and me, there exists a million little reasons why the connection holds between WoW and myself as well.

The truth is that I have always been a channel-changer.  My husband, who is more stolid when it comes to games, doesn’t share my impulsive desire to stop playing halfway through or, worse, just before the final boss (see: all Final Fantasy games, Kingdom Hearts, dozens of rented and purchased games, countless started-and-abandoned Civilizations, etc.)  My relationships with games are always hot, heavy and short-lived.  The idea of having a game I played pretty much nonstop for multiple years was ridiculous.  Yet in WoW I have just that – a game I play every week, if not every day, and have done so for two years now with no end in sight.

So, this being the case, I have to ask myself, why?  Where was the moment (or moments) that turned World of Warcraft from yet another computer distraction, loved and abandoned just as quickly, into something more?

And in looking for that moment, I discovered the two-pronged “why”.  The first reason is one shared by many others when it comes to WoW.  It is the people I play with, the people I write to, the human relationships that have changed or come out of my little game relationship.  I have played MMOs before, but always in competition, never with a shared goal, and that, as they say, has made all the difference.  I never went in much for team sports, but in WoW I see the appeal of a shared path among many, not just the two-against-the-world mentality that I espoused when I got married.  Not to mention the fact that these shared goals bring together people from all over who have become friends outside of the game as well.

The other reason is the thing that is always busy causing bloggers and internet commentators such hysteria – WoW never stays the same. It is always changing, developing, evolving, for good and bad.  It is never boring – even when it has moments of drudgery.  There is always another patch, another instance, another boss, another expansion, another goal to reach for, another puzzle to piece together.  It has no end, no guy-gets-the-girl, bad-guy-is-blown-to-bits finale.  The story goes on.  And so do I, eager to see the next dilemma, read the next chapter, kill the next ONE TRUE EVIL.

So even though there is no one moment of defining clarity where my brain went “Eureka!  This is the one true reason why I play!”, here are a few moments of mini-definition:

1. Stepping off the boat onto the dock at Auberdine for the first time. It may sound silly, but up until then I don’t think the “world” aspect had really hit me.  Once I got there, though, I was completely awed and excited and overwhelmed by everything in Darkshore – my first step away from the starting land my toon had come from…it was a magical experience.  And it started to give me a sense of how big Azeroth really is.
2. The “good night” drink in the Ironforge inn. When my pally and I found another couple to play with (creating our Fantastic Foursome), we would log on in the evenings, play as a big happy group for a few hours, and then hearth back to Ironforge, where we would do our auctioning, repairing, training, etc, and then meet up in the Ironforge inn, sit down at the table which seats four, and drink, talk about our day, give a round of /hugs, and log off.  We did not use Ventrilo or the ingame chat at the time, so this was when we had extended chats, learned more about each other, and let real life into the virtual world.  At one point I realized that I looked forward to our “good night” drinks each night, that these two people we had met in a fantasy were actually important to me in real life.  Now we have seen each other through medical emergencies, personal crises, and real-life accomplishments as well as all the virtual ones.  We talk regularly on the phone.  But back then we just had the Ironforge inn, a little routine that bespoke of much more.
3. My first 10-man Naxx raid. I had never healed in a raid before, and I only knew two people in the raid besides my husband.  All of a sudden I was thrown into this group of people who all knew each other well, made ribald jokes that had me cracking up, and watched all the same TV shows I did.  Plus they kicked ass and took names in the amazing, complex raid dungeon that was Naxxramas, and I was a part of it.  A useful part.  I was so high off of that first run, I never wanted to stop raiding.
4. “The Dedicated Few”. Eight of us went into Naxx “just for funsies” on a Saturday night.  Most of us were geared in Ulduar pretties, and we were bringing a baby tank (non-Ulduar-ed) with us who had never been to Naxx before.  We figured, “What the hell, we’ll see how it goes…”  Three hours, a large pizza, countless jokes, some terrified tree-as-bear action during the Gluth fight, and dozens of easy camaraderie pulls later, we had downed every single boss in that place, including the Four Horsemen and KT.  It was one of the first times I felt fully confident healing a raid – I knew I could do it and my reflexes were razor-sharp and agreed with me.  And our baby tank?  Even having never seen or read up on most of Naxx, he got The Safety Dance on the first go.
5. Learning to fly. There were three of us who got flying for the first time together (this was before my baby druid made it to 70).  We mounted our gryphons together and flew over Outland in jaw-dropped amazement.  I’d always thought Nagrand was beautiful, but from the air?  It was amazing.  We swooped and soared and marveled for a while before my pally decided to test whether one could mount while falling.  We flew up to the highest mountaintop we could find and watched as he flew out a little ways from us, made his gryphon disappear and plummeted like a stone to his death.  It was hilarious.
6. The resto druid haste nerf in the latest patch. I had to respec Taz and pay more attention to how I healed with her.  Autopilot didn’t cut it.  It can be frustrating as hell and thank goodness for that.  WoW always challenges me to find new ways of doing what I did in-game before.

WoW will probably not be in my life forever.  (So few things are for any of us, after all.)  But it’s made an impression.  It’s brought me together with people whom I otherwise never would have met.  It’s inspired laughter, frustration, accomplishment, writing, and love.  And it gives me moments every time I play.

P.S.  Merry Christmas, Tam.

P.P.S.  How could I have forgotten?  My pally reminded me of one of my earliest defining moments for WoW this evening:

1. Learning to pay it forward. My pally and I were in Darkshore, questing away, when we came across “The Absent-Minded Prospector” quest chain.  We tried protecting that little guy over and over again to no avail until a Night Elf druid tons of levels above us showed up, partied with us, and carried us through the escort.  Afterwards we thanked him, and he said, “Don’t worry about it.  Just make sure to help lowbies when you see them.  After all, they could be me.”  We were both thunderstruck.  This fellow player gained nothing from helping us, wasn’t rude or infantile, and wanted us to help others.  Maybe WoW was going to be a different kind of gaming experience after all.  Turns out it was…and it continues to be.

Five people + lots of dead-for-real undead + one lovers' quarrel = HELLUVA FUN TIME

I once read that blogging is a form of conversation between the blogger and their readers.  If that’s the case, I’ve been lagging on my end in a major way.  For months, all you’ve gotten from me is a distracted, “Uh huh, uh huh.  Yeah, I gotta go.”  And “What patch again?”  Real life intruded it’s ugly tentacled head as I’d known from the beginning it was going to with moving and house-selling and new-job-for-pally and oh-crap-no-new-job-for-me-yet and vacations and general exhaustion.  In the midst of all this when I’ve logged on to Warcraft at all it’s been to raid or to poke around with secret alts so that I can’t possibly be roped into conversation/instances/dailies with people I know.  As a result I’ve actually attempted to PvP which has been interesting and even entertaining occasionally (newsflash Alliance: Horde doesn’t actually have it all together like we always thought – and they complain about the Alliance being favored, too!)  I’ve read all the usual blogs and a few new ones (Hello, Miss Medicina!  Wonderful work you’re doing!), but I’ve been the silent stalker, rarely putting a toe forward to actually comment.  In the world of patch 3.3 discussions and Icecrown speculations, I’ve felt like the kid who started watching Lost in Season 3 – completely adrift and confused.  And I’ll admit that I wasn’t helping myself out by doing my usual research into what was actually going on.  (Yes, I do research, even if that research doesn’t make it onto the page.  Doubters.)

So there we have it.  That was me, logging on last night post-patch to join up with my Fantastic Foursome and a guildmate to have a go at the newly added 5-man content. We brought our Damn-We’re-So-Hot mains that have been to 25-man ToC and Ulduar and back (not to mention downed Freya this weekend with all 3 of her treefriends still up and being annoyingly helpful to her.)  We set the level to Heroic and even managed to zone-in – a significant improvement on Patch Day instance attempts.  I cranked up a bunch of ’70s rock and buffed my party, and we went forward.

And. It. Was. Awesome.

We rocketed through The Forge of Souls, wiping once on the incredibly irritating-voiced Devourer due to my clever use of getting-stupidly-caught-by-massing-souls-and-getting-killed to avoid healing the encounter.  (And how crazy is the graveyard location?  Half of our group got lost trying to find their way back to the instance in ghost form.)  We shot through the Pit of Saron where we learned that Jaina may be willing to save our little group, but she’s mostly cool with letting a lot of other people die so she can get her hands on her former lover to save him, destroy him, or just tell him how well she’s been doing so she “wins” the breakup.

And then we reached the Halls of Reflection.  None of us had read up on anything or had any idea what to expect.  We were skipping merrily along and then Jaina did a runner on us, doors closed, and formerly happy spirits went berserk all over the room.  Plus they were casters.  My pally was close to hyperventilation trying to round them all up as our helpful DPS kept hitting everything.  My tree limbs were working overtime trying to keep everyone alive and unpoisoned and uncursed and dear-god-what-the-hell-is-happening-there-are-more-of-them?!  We made it through the first boss encounter and then wiped as the next onslaught of angry spirit waves hit.  We came back in, rebuffed, got healed up, and wiped again.  And then some more.  We finally got wise, my pally figured out what to pull in where, I stopped giggling at my Corehound pup‘s antics, our DPS waited a breath before attacking, and boom, it was on to the next.  We raced with Jaina to the exit, had a stupid we’re-so-tired-we’re-just-mashing-buttons wipe, came back, finished the thing with health and mana to spare, and were saved at the final hour from Arthas’ “Oh yeah, Jaina?  Well, I’m fine without you, too.  In fact, I’m dating again!  Her name is…Icy…Icy, um, Ghoul-leg!” wrath by a fun little deus ex machina.

And in the middle of it all, something amazing happened.  I remembered why I loved WoW.  I found the challenge and the laughter and the fun again.  Because the truth is, while I have a great time raiding, my true love for my everyday play is challenging 5-mans.  With Tazha.  Just a little group, pitted against the world, dodging icicles and toxic splats and angry undead in order to save the day, or at least give a big collective raspberry to the bad guy.

I’m sorry I let the conversation lag.  I can’t promise it won’t ever happen again…the holidays are coming, and they bring family and friends and less time for talking and playing.  But know that I’ve been there, listening with half a ear the whole time, giggling at your jokes, worrying about your sorrows, thinking of responses I haven’t had a chance to say.  Thanks for staying on the line.