Yeah, I don’t have any fancy pics to share, or details of loot, or fancy fighting techniques.
I just wanted to share that, yes, we, the guild that never successfully completed a single timed event together, the guild that never downed any boss but Nalorakk the Bear together, went into Zul’Aman on Saturday…
And successfully completed a full 100% clear.
And we even did the first two timed events successfully, and we HAD the Dragonhawk’s butt with plenty of time to spare, but as it was our first time together on the bosses from then on out, we were unsure of how it would break down, and the fire globes and hawk spawns got us coming and going.
We ALMOST had it on the first try… it was heartbreaking, down to 3% health left, but it just didn’t happen on that first shot in the time allowed.
But it is still amazing. We worked well together, we had a couple really great tanks, we had two GREAT healers (that’s right, we did it with only two healers until Zul’jin, and then since he is a single tank fight, Graimerin volunteered to go get on his Paladin healie stuffs as a third healer for our last, successful shot).
We had a lot of people stay flexible and be willing to try new things, and everyone contributed ideas and stayed positive, and every time we took a whipping, we came back and bright a cleaner, stronger effort.
It’s amazing how much of a difference attitude makes, in having a fun raid. It really is.
So long as the people in a raid remain positive in the face of wipes while learning the battles, and are more interested in seeing new content and experiencing new challenges than they are in how long it’s taking or how much gold the repair bill will end up being, then you can just feel the positive energy in taking things on.
Each stumble and mistep becomes an opportunity to reexamine what happened, and brainstorm ideas to improve.
Having been on more than a few pugs in the past, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that when a raid starts hitting obstacles, and repair bills and delays from running back start piling up, if the team doesn’t have confidence in each other to learn and get through the hard parts, you can almost literally feel the heart go out of the run, and it becomes a miserable, grueling grind.
Attitude. Attitude is the key.
May I always be fortunate to play with people that are there for the fun, and for seeing new things, and the love of taking a boss down a peg or two, and are willing to ignore things like being on learning wipe number 3 if that’s what it takes to figure out what the heck we are doing.
You guys were wonderful!
Congratulations! Zul’Aman is a fun, fast-paced instance with really enjoyable boss fights. I usually have more fun in there than I do in any 25-man run.
I had a similar experience last week. My guild organized a PuG to down Al’ar for the Medallion of Karabor chain and then “go play around” with Kael’thas to see if we could down him. We two-shotted Al’ar, one-shotted Kael, and then one-shotted the first four bosses of Hyjal. We had a couple of wipes on Archimonde (not the sort of fight one should try learning while half-asleep :P ) and then called it for the night. We’re going back in tonight to try and down him, and then we’ll “go play around” in Black Temple.
We’ll see how far that goes :P
Patch 3.0.2 has enabled people to see and conquer content they’d never have been able to experience before, and that is incredibly exciting.
Grats BBB!
Long time reader, first time poster. Alliance side Feral.
My casual Kara guild finally decided to step it up and see some content before Wrath this weekend, so we hit up ZA as well. With two of our members having even set foot in the instance before, we downed all the animal bosses first try and even made the first two timers. Unfortunately, by the time we hit Hex Lord, half of our DPS had been drinking too much to CC reliably, but it was a blast! In other news, raids may have been nerfed…
Fun raids are… well.. fun!
My guild has been up and down over the last couple of years. Mostly casual players, never raided together, though we’ve done many 5-mans.
We decided to team up with another guild to ‘do stuff’.
We can field a healer (me, Holy priest) and a tank, and one or two decent DPS. The other guild filled out with a healer and off tank and some more dps and we went and did karazahn.
Now the bosses have been nerfed, it”s a lot easier – I did run it before the nerfs, so I know from where I speak.
It was almost like a pug – well, it was a pug, to all intents – many players never been. Most players in dungeon blues, some PVP and badge epics.
We took Attumen (and the horse he rode in on) without any hassle, Moroes didn’t even get to vanish more than once.
Maiden defeated us, though. We just need to get a strategy for the decursing and hots.
Tonight, we’ll try Maiden again, Curator and Illhoof. It would be nice to get Prince before the reset, but I think it’s unlikely.
On the other hand, after the reset, I might even win the roll for Attumen’s gloves..
The MAIN point is , that is was great fun. I was in a raiding guild for a while and it was way too serious. This was fun and so what if we didn’t clear it in 30 minutes, or that we had trouble with Maiden? No drama, no one complained about repair costs.
I’m glad Blizzard nerfed the bosses..it gives casuals the chance to see this stuff and might turn them on to running the next expansion raids.
3.0.2 was as Neil has said, a great way to let casual players in casual guilds experience the real meat of the game before we progress into Wrath. I can’t decide however, as a once hardcore player, if this massive content nerf/skill patch was to stimulate the excitement of casual players, or to facilitate people rolling alts and getting them geared appropriately to handle Northrend.
The attunements got lifted, then the BT/Hyjal nerf, then the M’uru nerf and finally the….Burning Crusade nerf. It was really a struggle to watch coming from a player who dedicated himself 8-10 hours a day 4-5 days a week to progress with 25-30 people who shared the same kind of attitude that the OP expressed towards raiding. Yes I’m a geek, yes it was very much like a job, but the reward for the work was the experience to see that content, and THAT’s what the PVE game is about. PVP gets their facemelting armors and fancy titles and mounts, but the real bread and butter of PVE content is exploring characters and storylines, and that’s something I feel should be worked for and not just handed to people.
Call me elitist but for the people who raid day in and day out (I understand some people can’t commit to that) It really makes their characters story that much better, and their adventures more epic to have earned those battles (people pugging Illidan…REALLY?).