On Sunday evening, it finally happened. After a mere 388 pulls, Ragnaros finally met his end on Heroic for a Guild First, Realm First, and US 93rd kill for Monolith. Since joining the Horde and moving in with the folks of Monolith, this was the first boss that I’ve experienced from (almost) first pull to finality. [...]

Though his mind is not for rent, don’t put him down as arrogant. His reserve a quiet defense, riding out the day’s events. There is a plague quickly gaining momentum across blogs and comment threads that is all, but unexpected in the age of feed readers, article snippets, and “every voice counts, especially mine!” Everyone [...]

Oh how the time flies when you’re counting in raid resets. After my post closing the doors on Blood Red Moon’s raiding days, I sat for about a week contemplating what to do. Sell my characters? Just level some more alts and do a 10 man in the truest form of “casual”?  Turns out I [...]

And like a single domino, that falls while the rest stay vertical, we’re fed these empty fairy tales. Will you believe them?–Rise Against, Disparity By Design The 24th of August, 2011, the day of Blood Red Moon’s final raid as a guild. At some point or another we’ve all thought about what we would say [...]

After completing our second reset of Firelands, I figured I would come back and touch base on the blog and give some thoughts on the start of a brand new tier. Firelands To this point we’ve done all of normal mode Firelands (Ragnaros still alive however), and I have to say that I’m pretty impressed [...]

Forward Any group looking to improve in their chosen field will look for weaknesses. There are always gaps and cracks that can be fixed. This is a post about  filling those cracks and making one of the biggest changes I’ve ever made to BRM. When talking about this change, it forced me to remind myself [...]

There is simply nothing like killing a new boss. Heroic Al’Akir A controversial boss to be sure (one that I wrote about way back in the day). Al’akir is a boss that you either love (or mostly) hate. The loot isn’t the best and the encounter heavily tests your personal coordination skills. With our progress [...]

“There are two kinds of spurs in this world, my friend; ‘those who come by the door: and those who come by the window”–Tuco, The Ugly Al’akir, being end of instance boss (even if that instance is very short), is a step up in difficulty from the other fight in the instance. Usually this increase [...]

YOU PAY FOR THE WHOLE SEAT, BUT YOU ONLY NEED…THE EDGE! Two posts inside of a week? MADNESS. Quick thoughts on heroic modes after we dipped our toe into the cold, frigid water of Hard Mode progression: * The increase in difficulty is very high. Even on Halfus, the clear-cut easiest heroic boss, you can [...]

Don’t think. FEEL. It’s like a finger-pointing at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of the heavenly glory! — Bruce Lee With a day off to literally do nothing in-game, I had a little bit of time to reflect on normal mode Tier 11. We still have plenty [...]

First up is the Theralion ground phase of the Double Dragons encounter in Bastion of Twilight: TANK, MELEE, RAID, DRAGON, FABULOUS FLAMES I’ve seen a lot twitter chatter and forum posts about issues in this phase of the fight and I was having a hard time understanding why. The enrage timer for this fight is [...]

The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual. – Vince Lombardi Last month I wrote about how it is important in Cataclysm to properly handle mechanics, take advantage of crowd control, and generally, just play the game. The underestimation of damage and the tendency to treat trash as [...]

You know, as I lie here, I can’t help but notice… the reason I am out of nine millimeter rounds is that I was not properly briefed. And the reason for that is that this mission was not properly researched. If certain people had bothered to gather intelligence on the creatures before bumbling into the [...]

Speed Kills – Al Davis Before we start, that is probably the first and last time I’ll ever quote Al Davis, but it’s apt to the discussion. The hot topic swirling around twitter and the blogosphere is on leveling to 85. Do I go with no sleep? Do I go without food? What zones do [...]

“Never write about a place until you’re away from it, because that gives you perspective”-Ernest Hemingway I’ve been away from the raiding game for exactly4 resets now. I’m a hardcore player that leads a guild with raid bosses left on the table to finish. At 11/12 Heroic Icecrown and normal mode Halion, we decided to [...]

The Account-Wide Achievement falls into a completely different category than what we currently have. I agree that some achievements on an account level don’t make a whole lot of sense. On the other hand, there is a part of me that wishes my characters were more linked together than they currently are. It gives confidence to those that invite you to a raid or party that you’ve at least seen the content, but there is always the privacy factor. Many players don’t want their peers to know about their alts or other characters they might play “in secret” and that’s understandable.

I think what we’re missing are tools that allow players to customize their account. What do I mean by that? Maybe Blizzard needs to give a little more power to the players.

Rebels souls, deserters we were called. Chose a gun, and threw away the sword. Now these towns, they all know our names. Six gun sound is our claim to fame. — Bad Company You’ve already watched the TankSpot video, you’ve read the brief strat write-ups on WoWHead, and maybe even dabbled in a bit of [...]

Coming up in the middle of next month, July 13th to be exact, I’ll be making an appearance on Raidwarning.net‘s Shaman Round Table (dubbed Totem Recall). There’s some rather high profile Shaman community members on the panel, so I’m anxious to exchange thoughts/opinions with them about the upcoming expansion and current raid content. I encourage [...]

Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it. The last week has been a torrent of information. Since the initial announcement of shared resets between 10 and 25 man raiding. Initially it looked as if Blizzard may as well just decide to stop offering a 25 man option altogether. As Sunday the 13th faded into [...]

The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept. – George Carlin Like the last ride of the day, Wrath of the Lich King is going down the final hill to the station as Cataclysm is still under construction with its gates opening later this year. It’s been just [...]