Soo, just like the last few months of BC, PVP for the masses went into a theme of just grinding BG’s for the fun of it, you did however have skirmish matches to play however. But the general consensus was that you just tooled around until the expansion hit. In my particular guild I still had plenty to do. We were still raiding 5 nights a week and so on. So at least 7-Midnight of my day was still filled. I was then at that point moreso raiding because it was a family so to speak, I wasn’t so much raiding for the difficulty or loot. After all we had been farming Illidan for months by then. Not to mention my main, a protection Paladin had many changes, but either they were ones that I wouldn’t see until WOTLK hit, or they were things I didn’t have to use much thought over, like no longer having to lean on spell power for threat. I had played the PTR before it went live and had already talked to my GM and other officers about the necessity for a real tanking weapon, showing them the reasonings etc, so I had snagged a lvl70 rep sword called “honor’s call,” and luckily a tanking axe dropped the next time we went into BT.
So that left me finished with gear for the most part, not that many guilds made it into sunwell and it may have been an interesting thing for us to do, I’m not sure why we never went in there as a guild raid, but it would have been very nice to at least get some bosses down, however that’s WELL into the past.
What it did offer me however is the chance to go on alt runs that we started doing, going into SSC/TK/Hyjal and then finally BT on my rogue, back when combat was the go to spec for PVE, although a friend/guildmate and me had always wanted to go Mutilate for PVE, sacrificing some small DPS in favor of real fun, and the necessity of skill to play it :P I did luck out on getting the dagger from Illidan that paired well with my Mutilator or s4 Dagger. I had a real competent set of gear from arenas, a decent trinket, and away we went to clowning people at the Isle of Quel’danas.
We would get on around 8-9am, a handful of rogues, a resto druid and an MS Warrior was the usual crowd. Doing our daily quests as we went around killing anyone or any group we came across. This led to epic battles with Broadzilla, who I’d later raid with when I went horde, funny how things work out that way. Point was, we made a fun situation from what could have just been drag assing until the expansion dropped.
The expac release is always something special I suppose..
The expac release was something in it’s own. I didn’t reserve, as I had gotten BC fairly easy at Meijers (think like walmart), that didn’t offer a reservation of the expansion. It was just come in and get it, first come first serve. The funny part was passing by the gamespots, Best buys, and so on to see a huge crowd outside, meanwhile inside Meijers there wasn’t more than 30 people or so in line waiting to buy their copy.
I’m always surprised by the huge differences in demographics. Young people, white,black,asian,hispanic,etc. Teens, 20 somethings, 40 somethings. Men, women and so on. I’d think “this soccer mom lookin lady can’t really be playing this..” But just a few seconds later she was asking what everyone played, when someone mentioned an alliance character she scoffed and proudly stated she played an orc. I can’t remember the class but she was quite proud that she was horde lol. Everyone had started to banter about what they played, the guild and their gear. I was asked what I played, “t6 Human Protection Paladin, I’m one of the main tanks in our guild, no pidgeon hole’d aoe tanking for me, I tank bosses.” I was asked what my characters name is, “Aaesop.” I had been in the paper earlier that week, for an article being written about the expansion and the release night. Included was a picture of me and my then girlfriend, with a short snippet of how I was spending the night of release. I was instantly recognized by many. You’d think this sort of attention would be alluring but no, it wasn’t. “I read about you man!” yeahhh guy, so you know I’m trying to get home with my brew and get some work in, leave me alone :\
So what about now? What am I doing? I’m still raiding once a week on saturday with my druid, I took my paladin a few weeks ago for the first time into ICC, my rogue has obviously been all over ICC for quite some time. So I’m even further along this time around, having been in every raid this expansion has offered. Played more arena games than I ever did in BC, went from an elite guild, to a elitist thinking albeit bad guild, to a guild wanting to raid hardcore but had the wrong ideas, to back into the elite fray when Dreador came back, although as a rogue this time around. Transferred to Lightning’s Blade, went into an even more hardcore guild, partner came with us, and we definitely played some amazing games. So I think I’ve seen the very top and bottom of what not only this expansion could offer, but as of this expansion I’ve seen every aspect of the guild social or progression order.
If anything from a pve perspective, I love being a part of or seeing progression first hand. Even the small guilds that are making boss killings months later after big guilds, I still love it. Having said that I think the biggest difference between those guilds and top notch guilds falls completely onto the management. How management acts, how they’re perceived and the rules they make. Along with enforcement. A clear goal also has to be listed. People have tried the ‘casual but we wanna be at the top” angle before, with little results, and its for a reason. You can’t make server progression kills when you don’t push your guild to go the extra inches it requires to be at the top.
So what am I doing now? I suppose I’m easy mode right now. hitting a bg when I feel like it, leveling alts slowly, the once a week raid on saturday mornings, other than that I’ve dumped most of my gaming time into a “free to play” mmo called “Vindictus.”
If you’re wanting to do anything to prepare for the expansion a good solid list of things to do are:
1)Farm for money. Having a nice stash when you hit level cap is very nice when you’re going to dump time and money into making craftables and so on.
2)Flasks and potions: This will make your life much easier speeding through quests.
3) If you’re on a PVP server, for the love of God, farm your PVP gear. You can buy wrathful stuff right now without the rating. PVP servers are cutthroat, you may go an hour into the expac free of fighting but through most of the leveling experience you WILL get into many situations where someone jumps you. It’ll behoove you to have that PVP gear to show them whats what.
4) Cloth, for obvious bandaging reasons.
That’s about it :)
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