Raid-y or not

I don't raid much. That should be fairly obvious by now; keeping all these alts going through their daily instance runs takes time, and doing daily quests with my main takes time, and gathering mats takes time, and...well, there's only so much time to be had. That, and when I've tried to raid, it's usually involved a lot of rules and regulations as well as more drama than a typical 3-act play. So, I don't raid much. Still, there are some times when raiding can be very, very satisfying.

A friend called out to me one night that the raid needed another person; would I like to come along? This was a PUG raid..."pick up group" for those unfamiliar...and so I figured it would be relatively ineffective. Boy, was I wrong. Despite being a PUG, it was populated by some very good players from some of the elite raiding guilds on the server, there mostly just to have fun.

Now, the thing about raids you can't find anywhere else in the game...besides the great lewtz...is the achievement thing. No, I'm not talking about Achievements, though you get those little things pop up sometimes too. I'm talking about that ultimate gratification you feel after working on something together with a group for a while, once you finally "get it."

Granted, this PUG didn't have much of that at first. I've never seen a group of folks just rip through the first several bosses in Ice Crown Citadel, the meanest raid instance in the game currently. I'm used to my own guild consortium that has a solid raiding core, yet usually the raids I am involved in are the alts and the late night folks who get as little raiding practice as I do. I've seen several of them where we wipe against the first boss in ICC several times and then call it a great night. That's not in itself a bad thing, of course...they made it so you do get something out of ICC even if you never down a single boss...but it's just so different from this group.

But the first night, we blazed through several bosses, only to hit a wall against the Blood Queen. For those who haven't seen her, she's an undead magic-user who does lots of evil things, including one where party members have to run toward each other or kill the raid, and another where party members have to bite other party members...or kill the raid. It's a nasty, nasty fight with absolutely no room for error. After a few hours of raiding, it's naturally hard to have no error, so...wipe. Then wipe. Then wipe. Then wipe.

That's the part of raiding that's no fun. It gets annoying to continually wipe against the same fight, and people inevitably get irritated, first at the encounter and then at each other. People start doing stupid things, like running into more bad guys by themselves before the raid has a chance to apply all the buffs and get ready. When that happens they die, and often others in the raid who are nearby die as well. Add to the frustration the fact that at our gear level each death costs between 7 and 12 gold to repair your gear from, so it gets really expensive after several of them.

All that, combined, meant I was awfully happy that first night to see that we'd wiped for long enough that the trash...random bad guys along the way to the boss...had come back. When that happens, usually the raid decides it's not worth going again, and this one did. Called it...went to sleep. Ahhh.

But...we went back. Last night, we went back after the Blood Queen, and after a few tries, deaded her. Now THAT was satisfying! Got another couple of bosses down pretty quickly...technically, one of those was gotten "up" since it's a reverse fight. You have to heal the boss to full health...what a concept! Blizz just keeps making them interestinger and interestinger.

Another cool thing about raiding, especially with an outstanding group like this, is seeing stuff you haven't seen before. There's a room on the way to the final area where spiders come down at you. Lots of spiders. And we tried...turns out that if you're careful and only go after a few, the rest go away and you have to start over. The Old Standard Way doesn't work. You have to be like the kids in Scooby Doo and run straight into the middle of the room pretending you have no idea what's coming. Then the huge wave of spiders come, and you kill them, then a wave of undead come, and you kill them, then another huge wave of spiders come, and you kill them. Whew. Then...and only then...the door on the other side opens and you get to run out to where Sindragosa awaits.

Yes, I said Sindragosa. THE Sindragosa, leading actress in the cinematic trailer for the expansion. She's famous. And, um, mean.

So, anyway, we raided. Accomplished a lot. Got some good lewtz...my mage now has a sparkly new wand that's much better than what she was using. Four hours later, we all signed off.

Joining my lovely lady in bed, on the way to sleep for the night, I tried to sum up the experience. "Love, do you remember when Wrath of the Lich King came out, and I showed you the cinematic?"
"Yes."
"Remember the big blue bone dragon that came out in the video?"
"Yes."
"Well, we fought her tonight."
"Oh, cool! Did you win?"

Nope. The big blue bone dragon killed us off and wiped the floor with our insides, several times. But at least we fought her.

And so...back to alting tonight. But I admit, raiding can really be fun sometimes.