So – what have I been up to? Not a lot really. Nobody wants to raid because Cataclysm is coming and all our purples will be obsolete by the time we’re level 80.5 according to some rumours.
What wonderful logic! It’s a good thing people don’t apply that to the whole game. Oh, there’s no point playing because it will all be out of date in 3, 4, …. 8 months. That kind of IS the whole game isn’t it – get new gear that goes out of fashion / use in a few months?
Not for me – for me it’s a MMORPG. One of the M’s stands for multi-player. It’s the reason I play. Never mind the loot, never mind the quests (yes, I’m bored of half-heartedly doing Loremaster) – I play for the social interaction.
I guess this Real-ID thing does have some benefits because at least I can still chat to people even though they are all miserable scurvy ridden dogs who have deserted me for Starcraft. And NO, even though I collect pets I refuse to pay £60 to get a collector’s edition of a game I don’t want to play just so I can get a pet that doesn’t really fit in with WOW.
Anyway. To the point of my post. We had 5 signed up for the only raid planned this week. I managed to get a few more (by badgering those playing Starcraft), but there was no way we were going to be able to do some Heroic ICC. The weekly was Jaraxxus, so I suggested we go kill him. Hey – a raid is a raid and at least I got to talk to folks on vent for half an hour and get a little fix.
After that (nobody wanted to carry on to Anub) a friend asked if I thought a rogue could solo UBRS. Ofc he could I thought, but offered my healing services and some company. Also – Killing Overlord Wyrmthalak was an achievement I’d not got round to doing. My friend is more committed to doing Loremaster and managed to share a few quests and I remembered a couple that he’d not picked up (the ones for the pet spider and pet Worg of course).
So – off we went. Wow it brought back some memories. Memories of the fear I used to have riding into Blackrock Mountain. The fear of horde raids waiting – yeah, facing 40 Nihilum members in there was not a pleasant event and probably led to my love of pretty clothes. Hormone filled young men don’t tend to kill sexy NE females who flirt and dance and giggle quite so much as they kill Human Warriors who look menacingly at them.
Basically we annihilated the place. I remembered all the places things like Shadowcraft Gloves dropped. I was reminded that to get a full ‘set’ of gear took so LONG, so many runs to so many different places and this was to get a set of BLUES. Yes, back in those days we worked bloody hard to get a full set of Blue items. Back then I knew people who had 2 or 3 Purple items, but they had mostly been picked up as random drops from farming Tyr’s Hand for hours on end.
Have you SEEN the things you have to do to upgrade a Dungeon Set 1 to Dungeon Set 2? And then only 4 of the 8 items were Purple. The quest chains had a truly epic feel to them. Getting attuned to Onyxia was a lot of work, meant lots of killing, world travel (on non-epic mounts because not many could afford the gold for a fast mount).
We had an Unadorned Seal of Ascension drop. I remember Barkie doing the quest chain on his druid. It was lots of running about and several BRS clears. We decided to have a go. It involved 2 runs of BRS for 3 gems each. Then we had to find an NPC who only turned into an NPC when you approached him. Up a ramp that you could hardly see, tucked away out of general view. It really made me wonder how on earth people found these things originally.
So – over the last 3 nights he and I have decimated the Orc population and killed the bosses over and over. Eventually we made our way across to the far reaches of Dustwallow Marsh to face Emberstrife. We had to be careful because when my friend had tried it earlier he went a bit far and killed him rather than subduing him. Nerf rogues.
This was what the quest said to to…
Travel to the Wyrmbog in Dustwallow Marsh. Find the ancient drake, Emberstrife and beat him without mercy until his will is broken.
It is at that moment which you must place the Unforged Seal of Ascension before the great beast. You must then be quick to use the Orb of Draconic Energy on his weakened form and claim dominion over his mental faculties. Control the beast and force the Flames of the Black Dragonflight upon the Unforged Seal of Ascension!
Doesn’t that sound so much more epic than filtering through Wolf droppings to find Microfilm for the Quest Lupus Pupus. We beat a dragon without mercy until we broke his will! Actually, my friend did because I was having trouble jumping up a bit of rock to reach him, but that’s another point entirely 
It took me 2 tries to “claim dominion over his mental faculties” and work out which button to spew the right fire on my placed seal, but I managed it eventually – no wonder I hate using vehicles and stuff – this kind of thing is tricky for me! Then we finished him off – poor dragon 
So now we need to go back to the hidden guy and claim our Seal of Ascension which of course we then means we will have to go kill Rend again so that we can try out the summon Vaelastraz bit 
Ah well, I’m not really sure I got to the bottom of what I started to spout about today, but tl;dr version is I remember when to have a full set of blue gear was amazing and the thrill of getting a purple was incredible. I miss having to do things to get my gear other than have gold or run heroics or the same instances every week.
New players today will miss a lot of truly epic questlines, hard work and amazing fun times getting 40 people together to get a few purples to share for a whole evening spent together. Getting one purple a month was the norm. That being said, I also love 10 man raids where I can get to know my colleagues so much more and have so many laughs.
I want my cake and I want to eat it, but most of all I think I want WOW to feel epic again and hope that I can find some of that in Cataclysm. All I’m feeling again is a sense of tredipidation because there seems to be a lot of under water stuff and I am dreadful at swimming. I can feel that I am going to have to play my whole questing experience with my fishing rod on so I don’t drown.
Anyway – it’s MONTHS off yet – come back and raid with me guys! All I’m asking for is one night a week….. pretty please?
Oh and ‘friend’ – next up as a treat for you is Dire Maul (and it’s Kalimdor, so will be good for your Loremaster) – I need to do it all for my King of Dire Maul achievement and we can do a ‘tribute run’ – more epic feel stuff that I have no idea how people worked out what to do. But just think – you always wanted to be proclaimed ‘King of the Ogres’ didn’t you
It makes me sad to see people who raid solely for the gear.
The thrill of getting a hard boss down with your friends is why I do it at least.
Also, you get a permanent water breathing buff in the underwater zones. So don’t worry about that.
Oh hurrah! All I need to work out now is how to handle direction and steering
I have similar feelings, looking at the way my guild is flaundering at the moment. I can understand people being tired of ICC after so many months, but if you look beyond the loot there are so many more places to explore and have fun with together!
I remember those days too. I even made a long long post about “The Good Old Days” – which weren’t entirely good, but getting gear was just extra special. These days you can just do heroics and have a full set of T9 in no time.
It ends up showing as well since for PUGS you end up needing crazy gear when back in Vanilla you often had a few epics, but still a lot of blues when you first started raiding. And since there were so many other people in the raid gearing up took you so much longer.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was better then.. it was just.. different. And the epic feeling of epic gear was.. well more epic.
I wonder if this will change in Cataclysm since they’re talking about giving blue gear from Heroics again and Epics in raids. I just don’t know if that will mean PUGs will allow blue geared people or if you have to only PUG on your main, or an alt that’s been lucky enough to get in on guild runs (and if your alt is getting in on guild runs, why would you PUG anyway).