Now with 10% fewer hairballs!

Tiger’s Top Topics for Today! (alliteration, ain’t it great?)

• Northrend’s Need for Guard Rails
• Of Experience and the Possession Thereof
• The Quest That Made it All Worthwhile

As luck would have it, emergency knocked on my door last night quite literally, halting a Nexus run I was taking part in, and cancelling any and all playtime for last night. Bad for me, good for the blog as I’ve nothing to talk about beyond the ‘extra’ topics I had yesterday!

So, while the servers are down and you’re all going stir-crazy I invite you to “Stay a while, and listen”.

Northrend’s Need for Guard Rails – Long-time readers of my blog will remember my penchant for falling off of high places and getting my great big Tauren butt stuck.

My first issue I reported on my first day out post, I managed to launch myself off the elevator in the Howling Fjord.

Since then I’ve fallen to my death in The Nexus, fallen OUT of Dalaran, fallen off the top of what must be the highest tower IN Dalaran (those balconies aren’t big enough), and I’m frankly amazed that I haven’t yet fallen off the top of Wyrmrest Keep or whatever that place is in Dragonblight. Oh, and mountains, lots and lots of mountains and cliffs. I’ve fallen to my death off of those too.

Now, I’m very specific when I say I’ve fallen out of Dalaran. I didn’t fall off, I fell out. I was in the sewers, exploring around, when I saw an area named “Exit Pipe”. Now, I was done with the sewers for now, ready to go back to questing. My thought was that this exit pipe would lead out to the surface.

I should mention too that I’ve been playing with minimum graphics to do my part to conquer lag. My view distance is EXTREMELY low so oftentimes areas will appear as a big grey mass, even rooms that I’m passing into.

So when I saw nothing but a grey mass of nothing at the end of the exit pipe I thought nothing of it and kept running. And then I was falling! Let me tell you, it’s a LONG way down from Dalaran. I even had enough time during my plummet to note that the surrounding mobs were lvl OMG.

Yes, that’s lvl OMG. I ran back to my body and then high-tailed it as fast as my trusty Raptor would take me back to the Dragonblight.

Of Experience and the Possession Thereof – I’m not talking about that little bar toward the bottom of your screen here. What I’m talking about is actual experience. Experience gained from being in a variety of situations and what was learned from each situation.

I find I’m in a unique situation with my relationship to <Unemployed> and to <Exiles>. I raid with <Unemployed> and have made many good friends there. <Exiles>, however, is run by my husband and contains most (if not all) of my friends that I made during my brief time in <Spear of Khaine>. So, I have friends in both places, but they are equally very different guilds.

I’ve never been on a raid with <Exiles> (and I don’t count the wtfbbq mag/gruul pug raids as being exiles property), but they do invite me to tank for them in the new 5-man instances. So I’ve been instancing with both <Unemployed> and with <Exiles>.

Both guilds have similar goals. They want to keep in ‘fighting trim’, so to speak so that they are ready for end-game raiding. The guilds, however, differ greatly in experience. <Unemployed> was raiding long before I ever wandered back to WoW while <Exiles> is composed of members who are a lot more ‘green’ to the raiding atmosphere.

This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just different.

During my time raiding with <Unemployed> I learned habits and strategies that were familiar to most of the other members. We were all raiding in the same environment, used to the same kind of leadership, and generally used to one another.

When I run with <Exiles> I notice that some of the things I take for granted are not readily obvious to some of the less experienced members. A good friend of ours, Beag, has been playing since release. We met him in the original Exiles over two years ago and he’s raided up to Black Temple before we coaxed him over to Hydraxis with us.

I find it easier to give him direction because there’s some things he knows from his raiding experience. At the same time there’s still some things I need to point out because we came from different environments.

This whole contrast between these two different guilds is something I find fascinating. My husband rules with an iron fist, he’s very honest and, while allowing for honest mistakes, doesn’t tolerate blatant idiots. He leads with a much heavier hand than I find comfortable, but I’ve found it produces members who are eager for direction and who honestly are trying their hardest to get everything right.

So when I run with <Exiles> members, they may not have the experience to allow me not to mark anything and chain-pull most of an instance, but they listen to my direction and make honest efforts to do what is required.

Ha! Would you look at me? Talking about how well a group listens to me and of leadership. I’d say that I’ve gained a fair amount of experience too from the time I started this Blog. I remember writing about how leading scared the poo out of me. It’s amazing to look how far we’ve come!

The Quest That Made it All Worthwhile – I didn’t enjoy this quest as much as I could have, but that’s mostly because I had to hear about it from everyone and I was in a foul mood that evening anyway.

But, there’s an achievement for it, and most (if not all) the requirements are in the Dragonblight. The Achievement is callde “Veteran of the Wrathgate”. I’m not going to go into detail about the quest and the results thereof, that’s for you to discover.

I will, however, mention that it’s perilously easy to miss, especially if you’ve come to rely on questing addons, like questhelper.

In order to get this quest going make sure you complete all the quests in Agmar’s Hammer to the West and Venomspite to the East. The tricky part comes when you have a quest to meet with Saurfang the Younger. Questhelper will tell you to go to Nagrand in Outland and if you’re just following arrows on your minimap it’s easy to skip right over this part.

Saurfang the younger is up to the north-east in the Kor’Kron Vanguard. If you’ve done the Agmar’s Hammer and Venomspite quests prepare yourself for a wonderful time. Read the quest text, and savor what is to come.

My guild leaders described that single quest as making all they’ve paid for and all the time they’ve put into this game all worthwhile.

I will leave you with that.