Being impaled and getting motion sickness

After our raid-empty valentine's weekend we all got back in the saddle and rode off to Blackrock Foundry once more to tackle the trash and bosses again.

We all convened at the stairs to deal with the hideous trash. Knowing what was going on this time, we managed to avoid too much death. The corridor boss didn't claim any lives, the trash on the platform was contained so we didn't anger any mobs below. Even the named trash before Gruul was taken down without a hitch. I'm pretty sure we even one shot Gruul himself.

We had planned to skip Oregorger (aka: Oreygorgygerry, Gerry for short) and go straight for the Beastlord. This meant going back through the corridor boss and to the right. As we congregated at the top of the next corridor to wait for those who were sorting out gear that was won eventually everyone got there. We ran at the mobs, pulling the pack behind them as well to deal with the random rhinos wandering about the hallways.
As the last one was almost dead someone pointed out that there was another pack incoming. It was at that moment my finger decided that pressing Barrage was a good idea.
"Oh we've pulled"
"Was that a Hunter and Barrage?"
I did try desperately hard to keep quiet but a snigger escaped over ts.

Entering the Beastlords room tactics were explained. I flicked to my notes on the boss and added in the species that the mounts were so people knew what they were looking at (like some Iron Horde safari guide)
A sign was put down. "Keep Calm".

We had a crack, most of us not really knowing what to expect. Spears shot out, pack animals ran amuck. People were being pinned and nibbled on. We got him to 70% before running around like headless chickens stopped working.
Two more signs appeared, one 100 times more inspiring than the other. "Loot Ahead" and "Tears Ahead". A couple of wipes later we had a 1% wipe. Boooo.

Sorting out some organisation our final attempt saw us utilise more of the floor and get to the spears earlier. My computer decided that now would be a beautiful time to lag.
"Why am I lagging so much!" I yelled over ts but aimed at my potato I was playing on.
"There's a lot more people here" Marvv replied.
"I miss 10 man raids..."

My lag (and other people's too) meant that the spears were pinning us a mile away from where they landed. They were mean about it too. 'You disengaged? Yeah well I'm gonna pin you anyway, but you're going to be so far away from a spear no one will know what one is pinning you...'


Pretty sure the spears were laughing and to be honest, I was in hysterics. Which then caught on to everyone else. Once the Beastlord had started his final 'on foot' phase things did get serious. The pack animals were still coming and the boss was at 2%
"Come on, you got this!" Shouted Marvv. A lot of us were dead and we had about 5 people left alive. 265k... 128k... 67k... DEAD. Many cheers.

Collecting our loot we ran away again. Back to the entrance to get to the other side and towards Hans and Franz. There was a pack of mobs left untouched that we skirted around and got to the 'lift boss' of the encounter. We then appeared in a big room with a thing on the floor connected to a chain. I hadn't been paying much attention to what was going on until I heard my name.
"What?" I asked
"Nothing!" Came the reply
"Hang on, what am I going to do?" I questioned. Completely confused about what was going on.
"I bet 1000 gold"
"You're on"
"I don't know what you're going on about!?"
"And that's the beauty of it! She has no idea!" Fenrir added.

The tactics were explained by Rawls. In instance chat I asked if anyone wanted to hear a confession.
sure
I have no idea what to do in here
neither do I

This was going to go well...
Rawls and Marvv explained about glowing plates on the floor which lead to sniggering over ts. Rawls kindly explained that they had been taking bets that I was going to get killed by them first.
"WHAT!" I splurted
"Actually! I've lost too much gold on hunters! So I'm out." Fenrir decided.

We started the encounter and all seemed fine. Until the entire floor started moving and blocks of shit came out of the sides. People were running around everywhere and we were laughing so hard. Gio was getting dizzy, Rawls was starting to get motion sickness... It was like watching the entire raid team playing 'tag'
But above all! I DIDN'T DIE TO THE GLOWING PLATES FIRST!
On the gloriously chaotic run back we were trying to work out how we had managed to hit the enrage timer.
"How did we even hit enrage?"
"Did we use hero?"
"No..."
"Omg that's why then! It was only 2% with hero we can do this!"
We managed to pull the trash group we had gingerly stepped around before. People were dying everywhere. Releasing and being hit by crap again. Eventually we heard "we can't release as there's a dude firing shit about at the entrance"
"Stay dead people! Don't release so they reset!" And reset they did.

Running back to the lift boss and surviving that we gathered at the platform. After our first poking of the boss and our assault on our sense of direction we were slightly more prepared. We started gingerly crereeping forward and made a conga line on the boss between the belts. Pulling the boss mild hysteria developed as we started running around trying to avoid the hot metal plates. Once that phase was over we could breathe again, no one had died and the bosses were low health as we had remembered to use hero this time. Then the plates of doom started falling. We had worked out that they came down where ever someone was stood before. With the bosses in the middle, I found myself at the edge of the room with people all around me. My fate seemed to have been sealed. All four squares around me started glowing. The people who had previously occupied them all ran away to safe squares while I was stuck in the middle.
Bugger.
All four plates came crashing down and my flattened char was left on the floor. I was the first one to die while everyone else was at full health. More people did succumb to the might of the smashy things but we had more than enough alive to kill it. Small cheers came over ts from those not throwing up. We had conquered a boss most of us had done zero research on as we had been furiously preparing for Oreygorgygerry.

The saddest thing about that night was that we were disenchanting loot. Again.

Twitter is coming!

This was announced a coupe of weeks ago. Twitter is coming into the game.





I for one am exited about this. Being able to share screenshots instantly with people, or possibly even tweet Blizz with a comment or congratulations.
I for one like my screenshots and like sharing them, I know not everyone does have or use twitter and some that do use it may be secret wow players who don't want their followers to find out they play.

The amount of butt-hurt going on over this is incredible. The instant gratification group are annoyed that time wasn't spent making more races and classes or adding a million tabs for your collections. Yes these things would be nice eventually but if we got them all in this next patch then what? Do they then invent some random story line that doesn't quite fit in with the lore to accommodate these new races  (which lets face it, would be complained about as well) or do they then exhaust all the race options and then are stuck with having to add a new continent with some random *horror* animal race on there? (Think Pandas, you know where this is going...)

It could also just be that fact is Twitter that is the first platform being used. The 160 character limit can be pretty annoying but they have said it's a starting point. It could be that Twitter was the easiest to implement and to test before they went nuts with other social media platforms. Eventually we could see built in Twitch streaming...

Through all the rage going on about not wanting an 'outside world' availability in a 'fantasy world' I would say it's safe to assume that every single one of them has used a social media platform to read up on or check out some aspect of wow.
If they have watched a boss kill on YouTube, that's social media. If they have kept tabs on what's going on with extended maintenence on the Blizzard blog, that's social media. The list goes on.

Then there's Takralus taking the brunt of it. This Blue should be given a medal for being the head above the trench constantly on here.
Some of the whining did keep me entertained. Considering how badly some players think the development team are doing their job, why don't they do it?Maybe they should check out the jobs page instead of whining? there's plenty of opportunities available! Even some for 'secret projects' ooooh...

Here's some of the finest 'toys out of the pram' moments... Enjoy!







And heaven forbid if you actually say you like the idea of Twitter in WoW...

Schooled by a 7 year old

It's now become apparent that as a group of adults, we are unable to all count properly.

Between ninja pulls with healing spells, Army of the Dead and general miss-clicks by dps it was decided that we needed to go back to the School of Warcraft and get some refresher training on how to count when a pull timer is in use. Thanks to Jollyjanes son, Warow for providing us with this much needed education! (PS: check out his other videos!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cik7a6__vGk

 

This did work, sort of. We had more success than usual. Only two mistakes!
One of them was a pull on 9 though....

Entering the Foundry

After the servers had their tantrum and locked the vast majority of us out on the 5th of February, we hung around in ts chatting about life. Some of RT1 were in their channel in the same dilemma as us. Communicating through the ts general chat with them they decided to gatecrash and make noises and leave again. Most didn't have a clue what was going on as they couldn't see the ten people come and go, Djinna took it upon herself to mobilise the counter attack and hopped into their channel, make and animal noise and come back amid much laughter.
Our channel name then changed from 'Raid 2' to 'brb. Attempting to kill Butcher Heroic'.
"Hey! We've killed him!" Was typed out and it was quickly changed to 'mythic'.
Time got on and the realisation that we were not going to raid that night meant that many started to log out of ts. The channel names were changed back swiftly to avoid any confusion from the shenanigans. It also meant that we didn't get our last planned run through Highmaul and instead would be battling it out with the nasties in Blackrock Foundry on Sunday.

Sunday wasn't a good day either! We were missing a few raiders and had a selection on alts or off specs to fill the gaps.
I got into the Foundry to find nearly everyone dying and this huge mob breathing at me. Between dying and ressing in a near constant circle, my pet being one shot. We hesitated by the door.
"The trash is worse than the bosses"
"Were going to need some cc's"
"Yeah you can't charge into this lot like Highmaul"
A small group of adds were pulled, I had been silent on ts as I was having a rather late dinner but the sight of the huge add lumbering towards us made me swallow fast and splutter "can we back up" over ts.
"ELLA!"
"She speaks!"
"Yes back up a bit"

The last small mob went down and the large one was pulled. Then something that hasn't happened since our first attempts on Spoils occurred.
We used hero.

Blasting everything at it we pulled it up the ramp. So that when we died we could join the fight almost instantly. It got lower and lower in health. The tanks died one after another, running back in just in time to collect the mob after the other tank died. It was messy messy messy. But, it died. And dropped some leather wrists.

We moved on round to the right and after I died and finally loaded back in I was greeted by some 'things'.
"What are those swirly things?" I asked, creeping closer to them and seeing if they were targetable.
"Their ravagers. Don't stand in them"
Making a hasty retreat, I skipped around the side of them and joined the group at the entrance to a tunnel.

"This is the corridor boss" Rawls announced to several groans over ts.
"Don't stand in the swirls on the floor"



We ran through, almost. The gauntlet of big Tectus like spikes meant that we were shuffling around trying to get into the best viewing position for the run to the next clear space.
"This reminds me of that corridor in Heroic Deadmines with those swirly crap..." I said. Thinking back to how I never managed to make it through that alive. This one however, I did.

We all skidded to a halt at the bottom of the tunnel to look at a group on a small platform. They appeared to be watching a brawl.
"We need a tank to take one each" Rawls said putting markers on the big mobs. "The little ones won't be a problem"
"Well Marvv had just gone for it..." I pointed out as we watched him run at them in a true Leeroy Jenkins style.
These ones didn't prove that much bother. Dotting them and then being unable to control myself I let off a Barrage. Once they were dead I noticed I had a lot of aggro.
"I'm being targeted by the big thing downstairs" I said, panning my camera to see who wasn't very happy with me.
"Oh god. We've pulled a mini boss" Rawls declared.
I ressed my pet (stupid Raidwiper) and moved out of its sight.
"Feign death" Rawls suggested.
I did and then giggled.
"Oh good now he's on me!" Rawls sighed.
"He can't get us so we should be ok if we go out of range" I added.
"Yeah, once were out of range it will be fine"

We carried on to the right, heading for Gruul. Clearing the little trash which didn't seem to hurt that much for the tanks. As we rounded the corner some more and caught our first glimpse of Gruul we managed to pull something that we 1- didn't have any clue what on earth it was and 2- hurt like hell.

It turned out to have an actual name (which is always a bad sign) and like 90's wrestlers, had a signature move that was painful as it was impressive. Shards of rock came splashing out at us and because we had no idea what was going on, we just stood there and promptly died. This went on for three rounds before we got our heads together and decided we might actually need a plan. We ate, flasked up and for the second time, used hero. Unfortunately, again there was a pull while I was naked apart from one solitary trinket. This time I could not equip anything, so resorted to trying to kill it with murder of crows, RaidWiper biting it and with me punching it in the backside. Due to not being able to shoot anything, my dislike of melee was reignited as the stupid thing kept flashing around the corridor. From the good work of the rest of the team, we killed it without much of a hiccup!

This was now the time that we were to face Gruul.



While we were going over tactics, hero dropped off so we were technically good to go. Food was put out for those who had died and we got into our positions. We had an attempt and got him to 70% which wasn't horrific with all considering. Fenrir logged in at that moment and was making his way over...



We were just getting ready for the next pull (with Fenrir finally finding the entrance to one of the biggest buildings in Draenor) and there was a 'brb' of epic proportions, the kind you find on lists of most ridiculous reasons that people go afk...



Rawls was displeased at the laughing that had erupted over ts.
"Don't laugh! A dog had just been sick!"
We still couldn't help it, to which I had to explain the reason behind our laughter.
Worse still, Ant then explained that one of he dogs had thrown up on the sofa. Eeewwwww!

After this we went into 'raid mode' and kept the shenanigans to a limit. I had also realised why Raidwiper was being one shot by the mobs and possibly the reason that the tanks kept dying. I'd left growl on during the trash. There was ocassional constant miss-directing on Fenrir for... reasons. Which lead him to putting on a neutral silencer rather than having to macro 'cancel MD' into all of his spells. On the whole though, we behaved and educated ourselves with the boss and what we should be doing. We knew that we wouldn't be getting him down tonight as we really were missing Blunnerz and his shields but we gave him a good go and did get the boss down to 11% at one pull.

We logged off happy, next time we were on, it was going to be pretty much everyone there on their mains. And we have high hopes for the first kill!