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

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

My guild’s been struggling a little bit with the usual summer slowdown, combined with the general pre-expansion lethargy. We were just breaking in to 25-man content before the summer, having Gruul and Mag on farm, and having managed a couple of TK bosses, the first Hyjal boss and a couple in SSC. The Officers have done a great job keeping 10-man activity going over the summer, and even kicking off a series of attempts at the ZA timed run (we’re at 3/4 chests). We’ve got a joint raiding agreement in place with another guild, and the hope is that that will enable more 25-man content, but if I’m honest I think things are going to be a struggle until the expansion hits.

So my friend /whispered me this week to say she was leaving to join a different guild. She said she always regretted not having seen some of the level 60 raiding content pre-TBC, and she wanted to have the chance to see more level 70 content. Now of course this doesn’t signal the end of a friendship, by any means, but I expect it to mean I spend less time in game with her, as she’ll be wanting to do stuff with her new guild.

So this of course got me thinking. What are my priorities in the weeks that lead up to the expansion? Do I want to see more content? Or am I happy to just kick back and enjoy time with friends?

For me an MMO has always been about the friends rather than the content. If I’m honest I find raiding quite intimidating. I only do it when it involves spending time with people I like, when we have a good laugh and some fun. Despite being in a small guild on the US server, I did see a lot of raiding action pre-TBC, with a great bunch of people who ran Molten Core on a Saturday morning (which was afternoon for me). We worked our way through the content, had a laugh at the same time, and I didn’t make too much of a fool of myself There was content I never saw – Naxx, and content I only touched on (two visits to Blackwing Lair, and never saw past the second boss). Do I feel I missed out on something? No. I’ve never been a hardcore raider, and I don’;t have the time to be one. Will I be gutted when WotLK comes out and I haven’t seen Sunwell, or killed everything in SSC/MH? No, not at all. There’ll be new challenges, new questing, and new raids to try, with my friends.

Everyone plays the game for different reasons, and no-one is right or wrong in the way they play. But thinking about this has made me realise that my priority is the social aspect of the game, and I’m happy where I am