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I haven’t written much on WoW lately, because there hasn’t been a lot to say. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on. Just a lack of attention and humorous anecdotes.

The big news, that got discussed elsewhere was the guild trading servers.

It could have gone better. This disrupted things somewhat, and in addition to other pressures and interests in my life, means I spent a fair amount of time with barely any WoW at all.

But recently, the guild has started getting its act together, and there’s been a string of instance runs all aimed at getting various lower level characters through some quests, and to work out some group dynamics. Smudge described the beginning of that sequence.

The day after we had a Scarlet Monastery run for a couple of mid-levels (Shrimpette & Farmishi), and some higher levels that had gone zooming past the proper area for SM in the weeks that it took to get the run going. And there’s been an improbable number of SM runs during all this.

And two weeks ago Team Band-Aid got together for a spur-of-the moment Stockades run that went fairly well. We got a wipe when we got feared into another room during a boss fight, but hey….

Last week we did a Sunken Temple run. We scheduled four up-and coming characters who are going to get some group practice in this fun instance, with Blanc tanking for them. One of them couldn’t make it, so Dunain filled in. ^_^ So two of us were over-level veterans, and Brunev’s player had been there before. So Thermidor and Noxlux were the ‘newbies’. Overall, we had the firepower to make it a very smooth run, and the main danger for much of it was getting hopelessly lost. But the point is to get the new people some practice in a group, in the higher-pressure environment of an instance. They did very well, better, I think, than the original team had done in its first several instances. We did have one wipe when I got too close to a group that we neglected to clear out before a boss fight. Eranikus was still not any sort of easy, but we got him on the first try, which is a large step up. ^_^

And yesterday we sent a Horde group into Wailing Caverns as Fickle Moos first instance run on the new server. This was mostly Horde alts (Uhgreah for Micca/Blanc; Thutt for Euphel/Dejek; Grondaq for Blondiewood/Tsula), and Malzina – my main Hordie, who I spend too little time on, considering she’s in high level range for WC, and is as old as the 40+ level characters on Moos. Anyway, this was my first time in Wailing Caverns, so all I knew were a few things from looking over Smudge’s shoulder and going “you’re still in there?”

Anyway, I find I like a lot of the low-level ‘introductory’ instances, and the Caverns are no exception. It’s very nice, and very big. Pack a lunch. We had some concerns about going in with no healing or tank (hunter, mage, and two warlocks!), so we went with the idea that the warlocks would use their voidwalkers, and we’d have three critters to share in general tanking duties (including RosePetal, Uhgreah’s pet). It actually worked out fairly well for us. We had two wipes, that I don’t think could have been avoided (well the situation could have been, but not the wipe once we had the situation). We lept down into one tunnel and got a small horde of monsters comming after the voidwalkers when they went the long way (Uhgreah, more used to stupid pet tricks, had her’s on ‘stay’); and we got a critter calling out to its friends, that managed to get a bunch from another level of the cave complex. In both cases we gave a good account of ourselves, but couldn’t make it work.

This was also my first real party instance run with Malzina, and I’m continuing to find I really like mages, though I need to practice some more on my movement control. I let myself get beaten up more than I should. ^_^

So… after a delay for real-life events… we finally made it to Blackrock Depths. It’s huge, huge instance, and is central to many later events and quests. I’ve been hearing of it since I started playing WoW a year ago, and well… it is so very odd to be going into that place that was so full of awe and dread 50 levels ago.

Thanks to the nice GameSpy Level 60 Guide, we were all loaded up with BRD quests… and looking forward to freeing up some of those nine slots in the allowed list of 20. It was the usual list of suspects: Blanc (60), Blondiewood (60), Dejek (59), me/Dunain (59), and Gottesfaust (55).

Things went pretty well. We started down the line of cells in the Detention Block, checking for prisoners as we went. Thankfully, the doors can be picked, so we started getting quests done without the key….

One fight went a bit bad with some adds, and then I managed the classic Hunter mistake. I selected a distant target that happened to be in a direct line with my intended target and told Lance ‘Get ‘im!’ As usual, I was slow trying to correct the problem, and we got another group. One wipe….

Almost.

Gottesfaust recently went Holy and picked up a talent that causes the entire party to get healed when he dies. With that shot in the arm, we lasted long enough for Blanc and I to be able to finish off the fight, and wait for the other three to get back.

Very nice, but let’s try not to use that too often, shall we?

A second near-wipe happened further in when Dejek got surprised by some hounds while scouting the next room. I feigned and made my way back to the entrance while everyone else ran back.

So, Hunter 1; Rogue 1. Bleh.

And then the server decided to take a hand in things as we were all summarily booted out to the select character screen. Upon going back in, we were all given message along the lines of ‘not your instance, will be ejected in 30 seconds’, even the group leader. And yeah, we were all in separate instances.

So… we did the two quest turn-ins we had and went back in. We almost immediately got a Crumpled up Note that restarted a quest chain that had dead-ended. We went in and took care of that, and proceeded on. Found, confronted and killed Incendius. Drooled over the Dark Anvil. Pity the Dark Forge is much further back in the instance. (Three of us had the materials on-hand to get Dark Iron Smelting, just in case.) Heading across the chamber, we confronted Fineous Darkvire and got Ironfel. We headed up the ramp and back to Franklorn’s statue and completed that quest, so we all have the Shadowforge Key.

After that, the server decided to dump us again. We called an hour-and-a-half break for people to fix and eat dinner. During that, Blanc and I mucked around some in Searing Gorge, figuring out what we needed to do to get our Thorium Brotherhood rep moving (What the Flux seems to be what stalled us). I also picked up three Dark Iron nodes, so my stockpile of ore is growing, and is probably going to get out of hand soon at this rate.

After dinner, we went back in, and started trying to get Coffer Relic Keys (need 12, the party had only managed 7 to this point). We got to the outer part of the bar and paid a little more attention to it this time. Blanc noted a scroll marked “Blacksmithing Plans”. We defeated the group in front of it, I trotted over and was just clicking on it….

Boot to character selection screen.

ARRRRGH!

Sigh, after that we decided to go do something outside of an instance. The chosen venue was farming Blue Dragonscale in Winterspring. Blanc and I have done a little of that, but this time we went into a big, big cave that has a goodly number of Dragonkin. And in the back, was a Dragon, Manaclaw. Nice little fight, not bad.

Behind him is another dragon, Scryer.

Nope, nuh-uh, not even close after four tries and a terrific respawn rate on Manaclaw. (Kill him, spend a couple minutes clearing and getting ready, get killed by Scryer, run back, Manaclaw is already back.) He came back during our last try at Scryer.

Final judgment: We need better equipment.

Which was part of the reason for going there. Dunain is now sporting a pair of Blue Dragonscale Shoulders. (And wishing he could turn them off, they’re not ugly -that comes later- but they look kind of silly on him.)

Final tally: Hunter 1, Rogue 1, Server 3, Scryer 4.

Dejek hit 60 during the first run into BRD. Dunain saw his bar move pretty far, but it is currently 1 and 1/3 segments away from that magical land where it’ll never move again.

Until the expansion. -_^

We spent a lot of time in BRD, and did what seems like a lot of stuff. But a glance over some of the guides show we’ve barely gotten anywhere, and haven’t hit the hard stuff yet. A look at the quest log supports this… 0.0 Geeze….