a fond goodbye

I suppose if I said that I didn't like goodbyes, that'd be... well, absurd. I mean, who actually likes to say goodbye?

My time in Four Lights is over. We weren't able to put together a full 25-man raid in almost a month (though to be fair, 2 weeks of that were Christmas). While some were awfully quick to cry "Star Wars!" as the reason, to be honest, most of the converts were playing both. We showed up to raid.

Applications dried up months ago. Why join a 25-man guild that raids 3 nights a week when you can join a 10-man guild that raids less and has more bosses down? Why do 25s when a 10-man group can do faster pulls, better wipe recovery, and the same rewards?

As of last week, Four Lights is officially going to a 10-man team. That was my cue to step out. I've never enjoyed 10-mans on my paladin, for one, and I knew my quitting WoW was on the horizon. It happened back in September. This was not a quickly made decision. And it was definitely not easy.

This is my last bubblespec post, the last time I get to call myself Enlynn. I canceled my World of Warcraft account. They asked for my reasons; I told them the game had changed too much. That wasn't near enough information to really tell them how I felt and why I knew it was time for me to move on, but you've been a part of my WoW life long enough to have a good idea why.

So let me say thanks.

Thank you, guildies: Four Lights was a blast. I was a guild officer for a year, pretty much for Cataclysm. I loved the leadership. The members made FL a fun guild to raid with.

Thank you, World of Warcraft: WoW gave me a lot of good times. And while the developers are taking the game in a direction that I don't wish to go, I have to applaud them for taking risks and being willing to reinvent the way we play over and over. The perception of MMOs outside the community is changing for the better, thanks to the massive popularity and accessibility of WoW. Many of the successes in WoW paved the way for future MMOs. This is a good thing, even if it's no longer my thing.

Most importantly... Thank you, readers: Sharing my WoW journey has rewarded me in ways I couldn't have imagined when I started out this humble little blog back in 2009. Your comments inspired me to keep going, encouraged me, gave me advice, and made me laugh. You connected me to a fantastic community. I'm honored to have been a part of it. I'll miss you.


See you around,
Barb

on being terrible

Yesterday was my first night playing WoW and my first night raiding in more than two weeks. Can I say painful? Too much Star Wars, perhaps, but at the same time not-raiding makes me rusty.

1. I took off my weapon and shield to take pictures of my latest transmog (two posts down). Well, I kinda forgot to put them back on before the raid. After the first couple of bosses, one of my healers whispered me and asked if that was a glitch or if I really didn't have a weapon and shield?

2. I searched through my inventory and put on the gear that looked right. Except, I put on the gear-to-transmog instead of the transmogged gear. Two fights later, said healer whispers me, are you sure you're wearing the right gear yet?

No, I'm not sure of anything!

3. The Sorcerer speed boost in SW beats the pants off of the paladin speed boost. I kept popping Divine Protection and was disappointed at how far I didn't go.

4. With my shiny new graphics card, WoW looks much better and my FPS is even higher. Perhaps SW will get that sorted out, but right now, WoW wins in the performance-on-average-computers contest. Hands down.

5. I keep telling myself I'm going to stop talking about SW on my WoW blog but the amount of Star Wars chatter in mumble is kinda scary. On one hand, it's fun because I know what's up. On the other, we've never derailed mumble like that for any other game. Again, I don't think this is here nor there for the future of WoW. But I do think this is a bad sign for bigger guilds. And it can't be good for those who don't care about Star Wars, to hear nearly half the guild making jokes that exclude them.

6. I was pretty bad overall. It's like I forgot how to heal. I let judgments fall off and I don't think I hit a special cooldown all night long. Wait. I did use Divine Plea because I was so bad at managing my mana that I was going OOM when I really shouldn't.

7. Ultraxion continues to be the bane of my guild. Even with going to 5 healers we didn't have the DPS last night to down him. It makes me want to rage.

8. Saddith for President.

bloggy stuff for not-raiding times

Our WoW raiding break extends till next week. And good thing, too, because I broke my gaming computer trying to upgrade!

Ahem. Don't let Enlynn near the hardware. I'm hoping that my wonderful guildies can help me troubleshoot.

In case you haven't noticed my lack of enthusiasm for raiding, my lack of posting, my... er. Lack in general. I'm not quitting WoW. I would like to see Deathwing die and we've got a couple more fights to learn yet. I will see my guild through to that as long as we can make it happen.

But I have to be honest with you. I don't know what things look like for me past that. And I don't want to go quietly and just let this blog fall to dust. I love this community. It's hard to even think about saying goodbye. I remember some of the wonderful WoW bloggers who have already closed their doors. I almost cried when Larisa shut down PPI. My blogroll and RSS feed are full of WoW bloggers who haven't updated since February or March.

I've gotten so many readers who leave awesome comments. Judging by my stats, I've had quite a few lurkers who've never said a word (please don't think I'm asking you to de-lurk. I feel guilty when bloggers ask for it, fiddle around with a comment before I delete it and don't de-lurk. So you're in good company). I have enjoyed this blog. It taught me a lot about myself, about gaming community, about the game. I hope you found it useful. I hope you found it funny once in a while.

And if for some reason you can't get enough of me (and you are interested in a Star Wars blog), you can find me writing at pealsheals.wordpress.com. Still talking about healing. :)

In the meantime, I'm not disappearing just yet. Here's hoping for some good raiding in the new year!

a holiday lull

I have been avoiding this post for a while now.

For one, it's been a quiet December. With the release of the DW tier, I was at first disappointed with how "easy" the first few bosses were but after considering Blessing of King's take on normal tuning, I dare say Rohan is right. We've gotten to 5 bosses down (6 on 10). It was really nice not to be stuck on the first boss for weeks. Having only one fight to work on isn't enough to sustain us and it just plain sucks.

But the last couple of weeks, we've had trouble filling raids. Last week was expected, with holiday parties and obligations. My planned "10 batches of cookies in 30 hours" took more like 80, so our calling the raids was a relief. I ran right back to the kitchen and haven't played much at all.

I think the question in a lot of people's minds is "Will Star Wars kill WoW?" and on one hand, WoW is not dying. I don't think it is, I don't think WoW is going away.

On the other... I do think SWTOR will kill some guilds. 25s have been in a precarious position all year. You know it's bad when the premiere hardmode guilds on your server are recruiting in trade and cancelling raids. Seems to me like 10-mans are the way to go, and in MoP 25s will finally die the big death. Players who prefer the larger format will have to choose to stay or try a new game. Like Star Wars.

But... Not because SWTOR is super-great or shiny or everything that WoW isn't. None of that. Remember when I qq'd that a Crab Stole My Kill? I haven't gotten my joy back in playing WoW since then. I've still raided, but something is missing. I wonder how many others like me are feeling the same way.

The only thing I've gotten excited about is transmog. For some reason I love collecting late Classic and BC green-quality plate. Can I just say one thing? I make plate look good.

good things in threes

1. HM Lord Rhyolith is DEAD. DEAD!

2. I got Exalted with our Rhyo kill.

3. A guildie got his legendary tonight.

(I got my helm the other night so I actually look like I'm raiding in Firelands now.)

Safe to say that's a pretty great night in raiding.

that time of the year/expac/tier again...

It took several weeks of AH-camping... my mog set is mostly complete.

I need a better weapon, but otherwise I'm pretty happy.

In other news... Meh. I'm glad we got an apology but cynical-enlynn thinks it sounds forced.

My guild is stuck on Rhyolith 25H. A bad kind of stuck, in which I feel like we have hit a wall and haven't figured out how to knock it down. Well, I have a few ideas of who to knock down but that isn't very nice of me. :)

In some ways I wish 4.3 would hurry itself up. And yet I don't want it to because I am really not ready to "rush" through that tier of content just to have 5.0 thrust on us before we're ready.

(I may or may not be a little bitter about the mid-tier nerfs for Firelands).

But there are good things. For instance, our healing team.

They aren't good. They're great. We're doing lean, mean teams for farm content. 4-healing Baleroc is fun as all-get out (we have 3 shadow priests, too, which is pretty neat) and our team is flexible enough to make that happen. I love that. We've gotten into a solid enough groove in the tier that we don't talk too much about who's going to do what, we just do it.

We've been recruiting healers for a while. The last two or three apps have been paladins who can only heal. I hate to be a paladin-snob (okay, okay, I love being a paladin-snob but I realize how much of a pain it is for all you non-paladins), but to be gentle, it's hard to impress me. And we have enough healer-only healers that any newcomers to the group have got to have a DPS set.

I just find it kinda funny. This time last year we couldn't find a second paladin healer to save our lives. Now we have two regular ones plus they make up the majority of the applications? I can't win.

It is that time of the tier, again.

It is that time of the year, again, too. NaNoWriMo. My master plan to get Luxinterior to do some guest posts may or may not get you some humor during the month of November. Just don't life grip him, it never ends well.

reluctant transmog

So... Blizzard has this brilliant, brilliant strategy. Since they know they aren't offering us enough new content this expansion, they tried to offer us a huge time-sink comparable to raiding that would set both raiders and non-raiders a-tizzy with excitement.

This time-sink recycles old content and encourages nostalgia runs.
It potentially demands re-running ad nauseum old content and nostalgia runs.
It puts enough restrictions that players will have to spend more time deciding what they want, then more time going and getting what they decided on.

Oh, transmog, you genius you.

I wasn't going to participate. How dare I accept transmog instead of a whole tier of raiding? How dare Blizzard think they can promise me more bosses for Cataclysm and only deliver us 7 for T12, then nerf the hell out of that and put this new shiny not-raiding thing before me? Huh? Huh!

And yet... I've been looking around for stuff I might like to be for my transmog set. Pally tier gear doesn't do it for me (though if I could replicate my ICC set I would, but I wore cloth and mail then). So I've been shopping on the Auction House. I found a set of greens from BC I think I really like. No pictures yet, I need a belt.

It all started when we were doing Ulduar (because we only had 22 people show up for a raid, and we had to do something). Lots of purple drops. This mace dropped off of somebody. I thought, hey, that's kinda neat. The loot officer said, take it, what else are we gonna do with it.

Granted, I love having my spellpower axe, but I'm also aware that next tier I'll probably be stuck with a mace. Again.

Since then I've been camping the AH looking for neat gear. And we're not able to use this feature yet! How ridiculous is this?