Lunar Achievements Aid

Just a quick post, as the Lunar Festival is upon us and if you find yourself feeling lost trying to track all those Elders, look no further than Wowwiki for the big picture. Been a great help to me!

Thanks to Big Bear Butt for the pointer, and good coinhunting. :)

WotLK, modern day's Bread and Circus?

Starting off, I'd like to talk about something that isnt Warrior specific at all, but something that has gotten a lot of attention with the Lich King expansion.

One of the biggest cries of critisism regarding WOTLK has been how easy it is to beat when taking on what we have so far been offered in terms of endgame raiding. Page up and page down on official forums are filled with topics stating how much this expansion sucks because of The Disney Approach , making everything available for the masses to enjoy. But is it really worse than before or an improvement from the TBC and vanilla days?

On one side, we have the serious raidguilds with a select few achievements to pursue ,for example Obsidian Sanctum with three drakes, when those are done or more likely long before it, boredom sets in and we get the forum topics and blog rants mentioned, and who can blame them for it ? The very reason they exist seem pulled away under their feet.

Dont get me wrong, the achievement mentioned and some others in Naxx 25 are indeed way hard to pull off. But in the end, all they have done at the end of the day is the same instance that a majority of casual raiding guilds manage as well, just in the most stupidly complicated way you can imagine. In a genious but very transparent way Blizzard created means to turn one boss, lets use Obsidian Sanctum again as example, into four different ones. I for one can understand well how they feel a bit cheated.

Now then, not to play the devil's advocate but to keep it objective, lets have a look on the other side of the raiding scene, that of the casuals as we like to call it.

On the flip side of things we have what is probably the majority of WoW players, the casuals who like to raid, but for different reasons can not be cutting edge in raiding progress. Reasons may be RL commitments reducing play time, lacking the amount of dedication needed for it, bring in what is primarily a social guild without a good raid alliance or a combination of it all.

Up until the release of WotLK they have effectively but cut off from a part of the game, the deep raid instances that needed mad skills (blackwing lair, naxxramas, aq40 in the vanilla days), or long and difficult attunement chains (Hyjal, BT before the open for all patches). A large portion of these players, myself included, never as much as killed a trash mob in Naxxramas before it was made the entry level raidinstance in the latest expansion.

They have missed out on a large chunk of cool scripted and game lore related events, isnt it great that they too can enjoy that part of the game too now without it being a requirement to have many hours free each day to hunt reputations, key chains, attunement quests ? They wont be downing OS three drakes on this side of 2009, but they will get to see everything on offer lets say, even if they just join a LFG channel pug for it.

So.. Who is right? Are things better now or worse than before ?

In closing, I will say that while I definately am not cutting the edge on the raiding scene (heck, I havent even finished Naxx25 or done Malygos 10 yet), I am very much in the camp complaining about the dumbing down of PVE. I loved the times when Idling in Orgrimmar I could see players proudly flashing their tier 2-3 armors, Sulfuras and Thunderfuries , the creme de la creme of the server, dreaming that one day I would too be there (and indeed I am the very lucky owner of a vanilla Sulfuras hammer :) ) It kills me to see the guys I used to admire so wear the exact same gear even though they are still much more hardcore on the raiding than me, I miss having those goals to reach for and the oh so sweet satisfaction when you finally reach it!

So dear reader, I am very curious to hear, which base do you belong in and why ?

About the author

First of all, welcome to my humble blog spot! For anyone happening to stumble by here's a quick introduction.

I am a WoW player, known as Vads, orc warrior residing on EU-Defias Brotherhood since it launched one year after the game launched. Prior to that I had a human mage on Ragnaros which wasnt quite my cuppa (far as pvp servers go it was allright, mind), so I made a human rogue on Argent Dawn by the name of Arja. Never been that content with the base game so when I discovered Roleplaying servers it was a very natural switch. Found myself a rather zany doomsday cult RP guild, and got stuck right with it, right until we had the introduction or RP-PVP servers, at which point me and the bulk of said cultist guild found it a natural move. Since my arrival on RP-PVP Defias Brotherhood I have never looked back!

While I have always personally been very achievement oriented I thrive best in a casual enviroment, therefore I was thrilled when I eventually joined The Orphans Grim , a RP slash PVE oriented guild catered for senior citizens (Read: 25+, in the online realm that counts as senior I reckon). Thats not to say we weren't raid oriented, mind. While not cutting edge we cleared our way to Sunwell before Wrath hit the shelves. And yes, I know pve got nerfed before then, but at least we were IN Black Temple before it. :)

Post Wrath I still play my warrior as my main character, tanking as I have since Arms spec was rave for MC and BWL tanking, so while I didnt have the pleasure unfortunately of tanking AQ40 at 60, and the deepest recluses of Sunwell at 70 I still dare say I have some experience doing what I find the most enjoyable experience of WoW is, namely tanking big bad baddies. I am also very much for world pvp and well, pvp in general, which will be reflected on in future posts.

On the guild management side I also have some expertise. Lead first a pvp guild on Ragnaros, then taking on officership in a roleplay guild, until I took on shared guild leadership in a council of a RP/PVE guild where while I am still a member, I recently stepped down as I realized current work and RL, as well as regular raiding obligations were keeping me far too busy. Dropped the leadership role and is currently quite ok working my ass off, raiding some in the evenings and leaving it at that.

As I am writing this we are still working on on 25 man content of WotLK, raiding 25man 3 evenings per week and mostly being silly the rest of the time.

And that about sums your author here up until now!

Its in the way you look

Working on the layout and feel of the blog still. Getting rather jealous of those real spiffy looking blogs I've been reading for a while, while I am still trying to get a colour theme going that wont cause a migrain to read. Also need to see if I cant get some basic art going here, want to keep a simple look without well, page looking totally plain. We'll see!

Quite busy at work so not had much time to get down to actual blogging, until it calms down a tiny smidge I'll be happy if I can just do some minor stuff here every so often.

If anyone happens to stumble by, I'd be glad if you drop a line about the layout, whether its likeable or no. :)

The Rage Bar

Greets and welcome to my little web blog. Topics ranted about here will largely be generally related to the digital crack that is World of Warcraft, but also thoughts about my favourite class, the Warrior. Musings about PvP, PvE, PvDeveloper, possibly some very light theorycrafting. No need to reinvent the wheel when we have ElitistJerks already.



As I'm sure can be seen easily, this is a very just-now established blog with not much substance (yet!). As I get settled in here and used to blogging, there will be more!