KDS Gaming

So… Recently we have both undertaken the daunting task of getting a decently fun title. While working around everything, and managing to farm rep for endless hours, it’s pretty interesting. To be honest, I didn’t even know some of the pirates or quests required for the title didn’t affect Bloodsail Rep. I’ve also learned of a few new areas, like the dock in Dun Morogh!

All told I think the title will take about 4-6 months to complete, which isn’t too bad. It’s a bit grindy, but allows for a little variety, there are so many factions needed that you can swap them every couple of hours worth of grinding and make it feel new. I only wish I were smarter and hadn’t faction swapped away from my rogue before I picked up those 1400 heavy junk boxes, now I have to level ANOTHER rogue! (or pay again to swap and transfer him )

I do have to say, I believe this to be the most grind induced title available in the game. It’s only true rivals are original HWL (or GM but less so GM as Alliance PvP was very heavy back when PvP ranks were introduced) and Battlemaster, but even Battlemaster can be done quickly if you have a PvP farm team. I can’t think of 14-39 people I can get to farm me 1400 junk boxes, or 84 librams, or 200 Large Brilliant Shards! (Ok maybe the shards, but I doubt any rogues want to donate the 1400 junk boxes!)

I’m not too concerned about the DMF rep, as it’s fairly easy, farm some of the first turn in (have almost all the Thorium Widgets done), farm a few decks, make a few on a scribe, profit. Only one that really gets me in Shen’dralar, on our server there are 0 librams up, ever, for any price, so that means I have to personally farm DM for 84 librams + 1 class book, that doesn’t sound too fun to be honest. But it will all be worth it in the end, and along the way I might just hit “The Exalted” as well, we shall see, since I am still fitting in dailies and other rep farming as well.

So after swapping factions I quickly realized that my current server had very little to offer guild wise that would even remotely fit a raiding schedule I could fit into.  After B started looking into guilds on other servers he came across a small guild on our original server.  Long story short we are both back on our original server, although we would have been Horde raiders back in the days of Vanilla WoW… which is when we resided on this server.

It is crazy to think it’s been years since I’ve met some of the people that are still playing on my old server.  It’s crazy to think I’ve been playing the same game for multiple years, too.  But it’s been a good change so far.  I’m happy to be back.  Something about this server that is just… different from other servers I’ve played on.  And I missed it.

Now I just need my old PK guildmates to come to my server and be Alliance and the world would be in perfect harmony.  Or something like that. 

I’ve been every sort of raider you can imagine.  In Vanilla WoW when I was just a baby Undead Lock in the good ‘ol World of Warcraft I leveled up and instantly became hooked on raiding with a small guild full of fun people who, for the most part, were not terrible players.  I stepped into Molten Core fresh to 60 and I was in love.

At the time I was only 18 in real life, and finishing my 2 year degree in college.  I had no real ambition to jump into a career, nor did I care to really continue on with college.  Irresponsible?  Possibly.  But that was me after spending my 11th and 12th grades of high school in college instead.  I had a jump start on life and I really didn’t care to take advantage of it.  Go figure.

Sometime after grinding through Molten Bore week after week with that first guild I found myself craving more in the raiding world.  I found my way into a hardcore raiding guild.  I was in awe at the amount of dedication and drive it took to succeed in this guild.   It wasn’t just about raiding, it was about all of the farming for raids.  The killing of bosses in smaller instances, such as ZG, in order to save an item that when turned in, gave the zone a buff… ultimately in order to stack multiple badass buffs on your raid. Only to quickly port back to an instance so that you could work on that last boss for 2 hours in hopes that every last buff would be enough to boost your raid just enough to get that server first Nefarian kill.

I was one of the hardest  of hardcore raiders once upon a time.

In BC I ran a guild with my fellow author to this blog.  That was the best experience I have ever had with WoW and raiding.  All of the people we came in contact with along the way who enjoyed the guild have told us more than once, the same thing.  I loved it.  It was a very dedicated job though.  And I say job because it was exactly like having a job.  We managed to be a faction first kill guild for a little while, even though we basically took in people who had never raided before and taught them how to raid.  I loved it though.  It was fun to show people that they could be a hardcore (I say that in easy-mode BC hardcore terms) raiders and enjoy the content just like any of the assholes who managed to find their way into grinding raiding guilds.

We were pretty dedicated and serious when we ran the guild.  Sometime after starting that though it became a chore dealing with server drama and a lot of the guild members found themselves conflicted.  Many had grown inflated egos after tasting real raiding and sought out other ‘hardcore’ raiding guilds, and after awhile it just became a drag to force things to work.  I didn’t want to drag my few loyal friends and raiders along, making them wait until I could hopefully fill in spots for raids every night, so I called it quits.  My reign as the token female guild and raid leader on the server was over and I gracefully stepped down and let everyone go.  I was good though, I basically took everything from the guild bank, including gold, and gave it out to guildmates as they asked for it or needed it.  There was nothing selfish about the move to step down, it just simply was time to move on.

It was a sad day.  But I was happy to have a break from leading for awhile… and the other guild leader had already begun his journey into our next adventure, Alliance raiding. (Prior to this, we were both always Horde raiders.)

So I took a break and disappeared from the Horde on my server.  I went from playing an Undead Lock to leveling a Gnome Lock.  It was a welcomed change.  And over the course of leading a guild on this server we had befriended MANY Alliance players.  It was only natural that I made a change for the better and rerolled. (Oh the things we did before faction swaps!).  Eventually it became clear that the guild all of my friends was in could use another lock.  I offered to level my Gnome in hopes that my experience as a raider would outshine my lack of gear as I wasn’t even 80 yet at the time.  They accepted me and I took on the challange to level as fast as possible.

So yea, long story short - I leveled up and got back into hardcore raiding, from the Ally side of things.  This lasted for awhile, but things grew tiring when the guild began to turn into a lot of bitching and moaning about this and that.  We were dedicated and successful and it was enjoyable, but eventually it was time to take a break.  And that we did.

I finally got on with a real life.  I got a job and started getting consistant hours.  I had to stop raiding all of the time in order to grow up and be an adult.   I never have found my way back into hardcore raiding since.  Not that it’s that hard anymore, things have changed so much since the Vanilla days that it’s easier than shit to raid all of the time and still keep up even if you have zero time to grind or otherwise outside of raiding.

I’ve been casual, I’ve been hardcore.  I’ve seen all the old and most of the new.  I’ve loved it and hated it, followed and lead.  Now the question is, what will I do next?

After faction swapping my healer I’m wondering how healing is from the other side.  I’m finding very difficult to come across a casual-semi-serious raiding guild that would fit my RL schedule.  It’s annoying and I am wondering if maybe we could try our hand at running a guild again, now that it’s so much easier to keep up with raiding.  At least then we could raid on our own times.

It’s rough though, being an adult and accepting that if I want any amount of time outside of WoW and work, that I can’t just sit and play WoW all of the time in hopes of raiding again.  Hehe.

Being grown up isn’t half as fun as growing up.

I miss raiding.  We shall see what happens!

So earlier we decided to two man some older content, level 60 stuff, it’s a decent way to have some fun and make some gold to be honest.  Bosses take maybe 5 minutes and yield around 20-30g if you two man most of them; gold amounts have dropped since we quit playing awhile back sadly.  Both of us have run everything in the game, in their original forms, at the time they were released so it gives us a break from “new” content and something to look back at and how the game used to be.

Tonight the fun ended at Ossirian.  We both have killed him many times on our Vanilla / BC raiding toons, but it’s a rather funny fight to do with just two people, or I’m sure one if you can manage it on say a Druid or Paladin…  Regardless, for anyone that knows how the fight originally played out, you know that it was a lot of running, a lot of kiting, a lot of tornado avoiding and a lot of decursing.  We didn’t kill a singl guardian in Ossirians room and just ran right to him and killed him where he stands, with his 300% damage bonus, he hit my tank for about 3k each time, not that hard considering the 35k health pool in my outdated gear.  Even D was able to “tank” him when I was stunned, which is oddly enough spell reflect-able go figure.

As far as doing this for any real purpose, there isn’t one other than some minor achievement points and some gold, the books from AQ20 vendor for 10g each, and some nostalgic gear that’s fun to sit around in sometimes.  Relating to achievements, I’ve begun working on finishing multiple ones on my warrior that I had started by got lazy about doing, like Ambassador and others similar, so now I’m 6 mounts from 50, have over 50 pets, have Ambassador, and will have Crusader soon!

Catching back up like this is a time drag, would be much easier if we stuck to the old toons, but to catch them back up in gear would be even more of a time sink.  Oh dilemmas.