Due to some friends taking a break from the game, coupled with me being so tired over the last few weeks and unable to stay awake past 9pm, my lovely regular Heroic group has melted away, leaving me with little else to do in the evenings but level my Mage (she’s now 64).

My Guild has now moved into Trial of the Crusader, so now I’m staying awake better in the evenings again I thought it was time to go back and see if it really was me or just Ulduar that put me off raiding.

I’ve only done a couple of raids so far, with mixed success. We had a very successful clear of 10-man ToTCr last week, which netted me this lovely little achievement:

Then last night we tried a 25-man ToTCr. The first two bosses went down easily, but then we came up against the Horde Champions group. And we wiped and wiped and wiped. I never like ending a raid night on a wipe, it feels like a failure, even though we had killed two bosses already, and I’d even got a lovely new pair of boots . It wasn’t even a productive kind of wiping, where you learn the encounter gradually and make progress on each attempt, it was a completely chaotic, loss of control kind of a wipe.

Why Blizzard, why? Why put “mock PvP” events into PvE content? It’s just frustrating. Grrrrrr.

So, mixed success on the raiding front. But at the end of the day, it was fun to spend time with friends. So I think I’ll keep trying to raid when I can and see how it goes

I have a friend who’s in the early stages of writing his own MMORPG. I don’t know if it’ll ever come to anything, but there’s one thing I’ve been quite forceful in telling him, as he works on his design.

There must be dragons.

For me, there is something magical about battling those huge, mythical creatures. In Everquest one of the first raids I ever went on was one to kill Lady Vox. The feeling when our Guild bested her for the first time was wonderful. Raiding was very different in those days. We had to co-ordinate buffing by bringing several higher-level characters along. Once each group was buffed, they’d log out, and connect to the chat server, then when everyone was buffed the call would go out in chat to relog, and we’d be on a strict timer to kill the dragon. And if you were above level 52 you would get ported out of her lair as soon as she was engaged, and yes, we did kill the foolish Wizard who had levelled to 53 back down to level 52 so he could join in!

In World of Warcraft the first dragon I encountered was Onyxia. Again, this was one of the first raid encounters I ever experienced in WoW, and it really convinced me that WoW was going to be a long-term game for me. First of all, the quest to gain access to her lair was long and complex, and thoroughly enjoyable. Then the actual encounter – the mechanics, the different stages, the joy of working with a large group of friends to learn the encounter and finally to beat it was something I really enjoyed.

So when Blizzard updated the Onyxia encounter, and the Officers of my Guild set a date for an encounter, I dusted off my raiding head, and signed up. We got enough raiders signed up to attempt the 25-man version of the encounter, which, whilst not as large as the 40-man original, still felt large And it took us a few tries to learn the encounter, especially as most of my guildies had not seen the original version, but by the end of the evening we had a dead dragon on our hands

And I’m happy to report that the Onyxia encounter is still my favourite encounter in WoW. It’s been updated for level 80s, with some added complexity, but the fundamental mechanics remain the same. And standing in the huge cavern, watching Onyxia take a Deep Breath and fly from one side to the other, breathing fire, made me feel small and vulnerable. And it was magical.

Yes… There must be dragons

It just kind of happened. I’d been enjoying the raiding, and had started taking a bit more responsibility in terms of running the healing assignments.  My guild were regularly clearing Naxx10, and could pretty much clear Naxx25. With the 3.1 patch we headed in to Ulduar10, and started making good progress.

And then it just stopped being fun. And I can’t work out if it’s me, or if it’s Ulduar. But at the moment I don’t feel any motivation to raid at all.

I’ve been enjoying the Argent Tournament, and have managed to gain my “Crusader” title. And I’ve been running a lot of Heroics with a group of friends, which is a blast. Scarily I’m now predominantly a Moonkin, and starting to feel like I’m making a useful dps contribution. In fact, I thought I might be needed to heal the group on one occaision recently, and felt quite disappointed. What a turnaround!

I’m also dabbling around with a small troop of alts, but haven’t really set my heart on any perticular one to take to 80. I’ve got a Rogue, Mage and Warlock all sitting at 44 (thank you, Recruit-a-Friend), a 61 DK, and a very low level Priest and Shaman. The Big Red Kitty baby hunter guide videos on ProjectLore inspired me to start a Hunter, and she’s really fun.

I’m certainly still finding plenty of things to keep me busy. And I’m not missing the raiding at all. At the moment. I don’t know if it’s me, or if it’s Ulduar. And it’s not bad. It’s just different

Last night, Officers arranged a trip into Black Temple. An opportunity to suss out the old content before people start getting their teeth into all the lovely new content that’s coming with Wrath. It was planned a couple of weeks in advance, the strats for the first boss were researched and posted on our forums, people got excited.

We got a great turnout – 23 guildies I think, plus a couple from our raiding alliance guild. And we trounced the place! The first boss went down without a problem. The second boss went down without a problem. We had one wipe on the Shade of Whatsit, but regrouped and took him down second time. And we rounded off the night taking down Teron Gorefiend.

It was fun, and it was new. I love the nerfs. I love that I can see this content. Thank you Blizzard

But the server stability has been awful!

On Saturday night my guild assembled a full 25-man raid, all ready to kick some booty in Mount Hyjal. And we couldn’t zone in. “Transfer Aborted: Instance not found”. So we dispatched scouts all over Azeroth, to see if we could get in to any instance. No luck. Eventually someone zoned into BRS, and 10 of us headed off to get our “Leeeeeerrooooyy” title.

Sunday I put the baby down for her nap, and decided to reward myself with a little WoW time. Got a group together for the Headless Horseman, and headed over to SM. Zoned in and….. nothing….. I was stuck in limbo. 30 minutes of that, and then the server came down. And remained down all night

Last night the server was back, but instances were still unreliable. I didn’t try for the HH, but a guild group did, and although they got there eventually, there was 30 minutes of characters getting stuck trying to zone in beforehand.

Hope everything goes well for our SSC raid tonight. Crossing my branches!

As the raid faced Solarion, our Internet connection died. Well and truly.

We are so dependent on our Internet that we actually have two phone lines, each with an ADSL connection. We switched the router over to the second line, the performance was just as bad. We therefore deduced it was a problem with our ISP.

It took about an hour for things to return, by which time we were sure the raid would have replaced us or pressed on without us, so my husband took the time to play some XBox, and I caught up with some of my TV viewing.

Things seem OK today, so I hope everything holds out for our raid this evening. The guild is again trying to muster a 25-man force.