Ah, the smell of a recap post in the morning. How delightful. More refreshing to the soul than coffee, more filling than an Apple Fritter… and yet low in calories!

Last night, of course, was reset time for Karazhan, the night when all Kara running guilds make haste for the pass to get a jump on the progression of the week.

I’ve been looking forward to this night all weekend. My Engineering is at 375, and we have Attumen on high speed farm. Will tonight be the night the Stabilized Eternium Scope recipe drops? Who knows? It COULD be. Hope springs eternal.

The forming time for Group 2 is 6:30 PM, and the go time is supposed to be 7 sharp. It’s a work night, and a school night, and there are going to be folks that gotta leave after only two hours. I, in fact, am usually one of them, but I’m getting used to cheating sleep. 5:30 finds me repaired, bags full of consumables, sitting at the Karazhan Summons Stone. I iz ready. Time to go make some dinner and give my son a bath.

I log back in and grab my Kara invite… and see that we have plenty of folks already getting online for Kara. Excellent! Group 1 is forming at the same time we are, and things are going well. I watch as our group numbers climb to five… and then stop. I check my raid window… nope, I have both clusters checked and active… there really are only 5 members.

I whisper some of the other guys that are online, that have been running Group 2 in the past… “Are you able to make Kara tonight?”

The answer surprises me… “I’m on standby for Group 1 for later battles in the weeks’ progression.”

Afer waiting pateintly in hope, we eventually had to call our Kara run off due to ‘lack of interest’, as it was put. We ended up with 7 members in Kara Group 2 ready and rarin’ to go…. and 10 active Group 1 members going in, with 3 members online but placed on standby to run Group 1 later in the week during flexible needs battles.

Talking about this in Teamspeak briefly with the people who have been working their asses off trying to get Group 2 going, we touch briefly on why we had to not run Group 2 at all when enough attuned folks were online, especially when there are enough other Kara attuned guildies that could have filled out some of those ‘flexible needs’ battle positions, when they were actually needed later in the week.

It turns out that most of the staffing decisions came as a surprise to the Group 2 leaders, and the bitterness in Teamspeak made me drop that topic pretty quick and move on to helping Cassie finish up some group quests in Loch Modan.

Let’s be honest. It’s just a Kara run, and in a month’s time, I won’t even remember what happened.

But I will remember that I was damned eager to go and play my part, do my best, and hope that OUR group saw success…. and I was left sitting on my thumb wasting two hours for nothing. For daily raiders, it’s no big deal. For a casual player that has to make a serious commitment of time to be sure I do my part and don’t let anyone down… just, whatever, dude. Let’s go to Loch Modan.

Some time later, just as I’m about to log off for the night, I get a whisper from a guildie asking for tanking help. It turns out that two guildies are in Black Morass, and both are trying to finish the last part of their attunement. Their pug tank sucks, it is said, and verily couldst the Windshadow come and layeth down the smack? The Group 2 Leader then whispers me and asks me if I could go help, since having two more members attuned would make filling out our group a lot easier. Sleep, or guild help? Oh, what the hell, let’s go.

Now, this isn’t just my rolling out to help. The Group 2 leader was going to log out too, but when the Black Morass team, part guildies and part pug, loses a Mage as well as their crappy tank, the Group 2 leader respecs from Holy Priest to Shadow and comes along to provide the DPS. It’s not a solo effort here, this is a team activity, and it’s very nice to work with people that do that sort of thing to help each other out. Just gives you a warm fuzzy feeling deep inside. Or maybe that’s lack of caffeine, I’m not sure.

So we end up with a Fury/Arms Warrior and a Holy Paladin going for attunement in our guild, and a Shadow Priest and myself along to help… and a pug Warlock along that also needs his attunement. The Warlock is going to be DPSing the Adds mostly with lots of fill in from the Shadow Priest. Anyway, that’s our plan.

Well, I won’t lie to you in an effort to make it sound exciting. We steamrolled them. It was so easy, it was embarassing. There was one moment, and only one moment, where things got a little exciting, when the second boss fixated on the Arms/Fury Warrior instead of me, and instead of running TO me so I could peel the boss back off him, he ran around like a headless chicken, with me chasing him in circles, constantly out of Lacerate or Mangle or Taunt range, and my rage dropping like a stone. I finally got my Feral Charge cooldown up and slammed back into the bastard, and no one actually died, but it was a close thing for the Warrior there for a second. The shield never dipped below 96%, and that was only cause we took a break for mana before the end boss and let the adds bang on it for a bit.

You know it’s going well when you are getting pissed, because it’s consistently taking so damn long for the next portal to form after you’ve closed the last one. Come on already, dragons, get yer scaley asses in gear!

So the event is over. Did the Hourglass of the Unraveller drop? Hell no. Much like the legendary Iron Band of the Unbreakable, if Windshadow is on the run, it WILL NOT DROP. In fact, I wonder if I can get a 5 man group together for the express purpose of trying to fight just to Drake, down him, and then reset and try again until it DOES drop. Hmmm….

Sorry, anyway. The last boss did drop the Handgrips of Assassination, and even though we have better in both cat and bear, what the heck, we were the only leather wearer along, and maybe I can gather the whole set for the looks of the thing much like the Defias set in the 20s, just to drive Rogues nuts. It would be great to have the full set, and put really REALLY stupid enchants on it JUST to piss people in Ironforge off. Sad, the things I think of for amusement.

So, congrats all around, loot is distributed, visions of me in full Assassination gear with +Spirit enchants and level 20 armor kits are dancing in my head, and the Warrior and the Warlock both announce they completed attunement, thank you very much… and the Holy Paladin drops the bombshell.

“Guys, wait! The key fragment didn’t drop!”

Wait, what?

He says again, “Guys, which one is supposed to drop the Key Fragment? I didn’t loot it!

My first thought, frankly, is that he forgot to talk to the quest giver inside the instance to get the actual attunement quest. Hey, we can run it again! Woot! Hourglass, maybe?

Nope. You’d think so, but nope. You’d think that after having to run Durnholdt just to unlock Black Morass for the attunement, that he actually was at the last stage of the attunement process, but nope.

“What is the name of the quest you’re on?” I ask.

“The Second and Third Fragments … my old guild said that I did that here.”…..

A moment of silence, and then the Group 2 Leader says, “………….. Okay, see, first you’re gonna have to do a run in the Arcatraz, and then you’re gonna…”

Sometimes… all you can say is, “Screenshot acquired”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 10:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.