That did not go as planned.
The problem? No plan.
Last night, 25 person raid into the Firelands. Start to finish, fast run, complete clear.
I was happy to see a lot of Firelands achievements being earned when Ragnaros submerged for the last time. Lots of nice gear dropped, there were some fisticuffs over the two-handed mace from Rag, it was clear people were happy to be there.
What sucked about the run was, there were a lot more folks who signed up than we had room for. A LOT more.
Purely through my own screw up, I ended up with two different lists, so I lost count of how many people had asked to go. At one point the night before the run, I thought I still had three openings.
Um, no. SHIT.
Yeah. I think there ended up being something like 10 to 12 people who had emailed, posted or signed up in guild to go that we didn’t have room for.
WTB 40 person mode?
I logged in at ten minutes ’til the go hour, asked folks to whisper me if they were ready for an invite… and the response was overwhelming. At the top of the hour we were full and ready to go.
Quite rightly, people who were still waiting for an invite wondered what the heck happened.
To be honest, I didn’t expect that much enthusiasm over Firelands 25. I figured the peak of excitement would be Ulduar 25 achieves, but I guess quite a lot of us saw Firelands clears skipped over by the fast release of Deathwing.
None of that really matters now. What matters is a lot of people didn’t get to go on the run last night, and I do apologize. Wasn’t intended in any way, but I had no backup plan if there was a large turnout.
Okay, turns out I had a plan. It was just a really bad plan.
Now that the first week of normal mode is done, I’m wondering what our pace should be.
My original plan was to push forward and start right away next week with either heroic modes, or start looking at achievements. Either way, start the more advanced modes.
Now I’m wondering if we should give it one or even two more weeks of normal modes first.
Yes, progress is progressive. Moving on to harder stuff is more challenging, yay. That has it’s appeal.
If we did the normal 25 a few more weeks first, what I would hope is, some folks would be more interested in the progression runs than in doing more normals, and that would give some of the folks who couldn’t go last night a shot at a clear.
Then we could reform the group for progression on heroics and achieves with those folks really focused on that, and not just on a quick clear to have that column checked off the ‘to do’ list. “To Do: Kill the Firelord. For reals this time. Yes, I remember Molten Core, he got better.”
A few more weeks might also get the team more comfortable in working together and understanding the mechanics. Shit died real fast last night, blink and you’d miss it. Do we want a few more clears to have a foundation to build progression on?
Also, hey, normal 25 still sees Tier and weapon drops, and from what I saw last night, there was some solid demand for normal items. Would more people be happy with more chances at normal drops before we hit the color changes of heroic?
Me, I’m just enjoying the runs. If we take another week or two on normals I won’t feel like we’re ‘falling behind on progression’. I mean, it’s old content. It’s gonna still be there in a few more weeks. But maybe other people will lose interest, and fast, unless we move forward.
I don’t know, I’m just a writer on an MMO blog. I may be moody, but I don’t like giving other players the blues.
In related news, hey, the run itself was lost of fun. We crushed each boss in one attempt except Ragnaros, but they resisted just enough to give us the feeling they were more than a speed bump.
On Ragnaros, Venoym was doing the explaining, but I figured it would be fun to wipe once on a try so people would have a better understanding of what stuff would look like when doing the description. There is just so much to describe in the fight, and without a frame of reference, it’s hard to visualize. I know, I’ve been there myself.
Turned out we almost one shot it on our first try… even though, holy shit meteors. Meteors! LOTS AND LOTS OF METEORS!
Shhh…. wanna know a secret? Don’t tell anyone, but I might, just might, have intentionally run a meteor over Venoym. A few times. Okay, lots.
Until he called me on it, anyway. 🙂
The most exciting moment for me in the entire run had to be the facepull of Lord Rhyolith. “Hey guys, we’re gonna have to OH SHIT we facepulled, here we go, hit left foot, left foot, left foot, more left foot, oh shit MONSTRE GET OFF THE LEFT FOOT GET ON RIGHT FOOT EVERYONE ELSE ON LEFT FOOT WTF MONSTRE.’
And we still won. That was hilarious. Closest I’ve ever seen him come to the edge without going in the lava. I swear, he pirouetted in place right on the edge, “Monstre on right foot, everyone else on the other foot.”
I got to fly on the feathers of flame, which I was very happy to do. I’ve never been allowed to do that before. 🙂 Hey, there are these circles, the bird leaves flaming fart rings, are those, like, important?
Alex also started flying with three feathers, and whacking on the boss. I think after a while we had a bit of a posse in hot pursuit. Was that wrong? No idea, birdie still fell down went boom.
All told, it was a great night, only marred by the knowledge that friends who wanted to couldn’t go.
