REDHEDZ RULZ!

Sorry about the leet. When I see that stuff I always think the person is being silly. Even if they aren't. Which has probably gotten me in trouble a few times, but if you talk that way, you really can't expect much. :) So I always use it silly...

I want to say thank you to Michael Gray over at WoWInsider for linking one my posts! Not my best or even coherent post, but it's still very neat to see Neveron's face on a major WoW site and .... wait a second... Nev?!?

Guys always post the blonde first. Sheesh! :D

Seriously, thank you Michael. The response was amazing, and some very good counters and supporters to what the original post was about. I really like that about blogging. Those last two posts were literally just a brain dump. They were pulled together from various thoughts I'd spewed out in draft. The responses to Michael's post really help refine my thinking on the matter of easy/hard, casual/hardcore. And I think that's a lot of what blogging of this sort is about.

There are plenty of downsides to being in a small family guild. The good outweighs the bad, of course. One of the difficult things is finding something to do when you're not in the mood to do something. When there's lots of people on, it's no problem to just tag along and have some companionship while playing. When there's no one on, or those that are on are doing something else, it's more problematic.

Since my work/life schedule gives me Sunday and Monday off, Saturday night is a good night for me to play. I can stay on a little later and sleep in a bit in the morning. Unfortunately, some people seem to have lives (the nerve!) and actually do things on Saturday night. So last night there's only three guildies on and two of them are puggin' Nexus on thier DK alts.

So I can PuG something m'self, but I'm not feeling in a very sociable mood. Never am after work. At least not where I want to interact with new people. I can run dailies, but when I got tired of that, I dropped down in Icecrown and started smacking elite giants around. Great, but not really into it. So I head out to Scholozar cause I never finished those quests, and it's a paradise for herbalists. But it didn't appeal. I also sat in guild chat and talked the two Nexus runners through a few fights they were having trouble with. Then it occured to me how much fun it use to be to solo dungeons. But none of the Outland stuff is appealing, and old world stuff wouldn't be any challenge at all. Pulling everything at once and killing it is amausing, but only once or twice.

I remembered I said there weren't any really great moments, for me, in BC. But that's not really true and probably a little too flippant. Because there are some great moments, and one of them is Caverns of Time! Escape from Durnholde is an awesome instance. Me and Thrall, tearing through Hillsbrad? Yah, that's sounds good.

So I grab guildie #3, Tilano, a leveling Prot Palladin. At 67 he wasn't going to be much help, but some nice Pally gear drops in there. In Dark Clan we don't have a standing policy against it, but there's a general feeling that Dungeons should be run at level. At bare minimum once, just for the experience and the learning opportunity. So we try not to do "run throughs." But we do occasionally, and in some cases it's quite fun.

CoT: Durn isn't terribly difficult post-nerf. But it's interesting and it is still a fun running fight. At one point I missed a runner and Thrall ran right into the Wave 3 of the initial mobs. He ate it before I could get everything under control. Otherwise, it was a stand and fight affair, but without healing or cc (Til did throw a heal my way every now and then, but a 67 Prot Pally throwing a heal on an 80 Prot Warrior is kinda like peeing on a forest fire), ya do have to pay attention and burn cool downs and self heals in the right order.

I was slightly disappointed with the boss nerfs. I literally was able to stand and tank 'n spank every boss with no danger of dying. The mob waves were more interesting, trying to down and interrupt two or three Wardens at a time, for example. Then the rifle guys give you that Hunter stun and everything aggros on Thrall (or your poor unfortunate Pally guild mate... oops.) As a bonus, I stopped running Outland instances to focus on PvP long before the Achievement system was in place, so doing these over kinda fills in the Achievement list.

I'm gonna try Black Morass next. Not sure I could solo that one, but it'll be fun to try. I know several guildies that don't have the achievement for that one yet, so might be a fun "Saturday Night Drunkcraft," event. Yes... we have Saturday Night Drunkcraft. Most of us don't actually get drunk (most), but it is a great time to get on the headsets and run something silly just for fun. There's usually a lot of laughing, wiping, cursing, off color commentary, and omg brb beer. It's kinda like Mystery Science Theater WoW Edition. Makes a nice break from playing too seriously.

If ya think WoW is too easy, or you get bored with it, there's plenty of ways to make it more interesting. Just because ya CAN do something a certain way, doesn't mean you have to do it that way. Run Heroic Nexus with three mages. Let a Prot Pally heal an instance. Run naked through Deadmines. Basically, make your own Hard Mode. It's a lot more entertaining than Polishing Hodir's Spear, again.

I can't wait to drop that freaky perv in Ulduar. There's motiviation for ya.

-Fri

PS Okay, running VC naked isn't exactly "Hard Mode" but...