Sorry, but this is going to be an absolutely boring post about tonights gaming session in World of Warcraft. ;-) I know I’ve been exceptionally lax lately in posting anything of value or merit, but I’m on a rather good high tonight after the game and its not often that playing on the usual server leaves me feeling like something good was achieved. :-)

Of late, I have gotten rather frustrated with the normal server that Nick and I play on. In fact, the atmosphere on the server has become a pretty loathsome one. It is not uncommon for people on the Alliance side to denegrate any and everyone they can. Nor is it uncommon for Alliance players to sit back and help their horde friends attack other Alliance players. As much as it is a PvP server, people should be helping their own faction, regardless of whether they’re friends with the person attacking their faction-mates.

The insulting and the bickering and the pretty pathetic atmosphere has led me to start a new toon on another server. This other server happens to be one several of my cousins play on, so picking another server wasn’t a difficult thing to do. In fact, this other server has really shown itself to be well above the server on which I’d normally play. The people are much more friendly and the guild my cousins are in welcomed me to their ranks, even though I’m only a lowbie level 12 at the moment. ;-)

However, that doesn’t stop me from playing on the original server, but my playing on that server is pretty much at a point where I’ll only do so if I have a reason to. I’m up to end game runs there, so theres not a lot of issue for me there. Is basically all just instances or PvP now. Get any epic gear I can while I wait for the gates to open so I can get my Genesis Raiment. ;-)

Tonight, after what seems like an age of it being in my quest log, we finally did a full run of the Sunken Temple (ST). I say an age because my log was full of ST quests and I hadn’t finished (or even started) any of them. Rather frustrating to say the least.

Anyway, we were pretty pressed for time. At 5am PST in the US, maintenence was due to start on all the servers. We started Sunken Temple at about 3am PST. Not exactly a whole lot of time for most people.

We had a Paladin, a Warrior (Ludes in Brisbane), Nick’s Hunter, a Priest and myself. Having the priest there really made my night because it meant that I was able to play my Druid the way it should be played. As a hybrid toon. I spent most of the run in cat form dealing decent damage while we cleared the trolls. Then, when we moved on to the dragons, I shifted to bear form for the most part and was off-tank for the warrior while the Paladin did what ever it is Paladins do. ;-) Apparently thats also off-tank, but I’d need to get Nick to clarify that because personally I have no idea how a Paly works. Never played one you see. ;-)

In the space of those two hours, we completely cleared the entire instance. There wasn’t a single mob we hadn’t killed. We killed ALL the trolls, ALL the other mobs, ALL the dragons and completed EVERY available quest you could possibly do in ST. We absolutely blizt the instance. And not one person died even once. The priest was brilliant and really knew their stuff. Ludes tank had a chance to try his new sword out and it was so good he dealt more damage with it than Nick’s Hunter. And the Hunter is a serious DPS class. Thats a damn impressive sword. ;-)

The paladin really worked out well. Clearing fears and diseases with the priest as quickly as possible. Also dealing a fair chunk of damage in the process. Not as much as the hunter or the tank, but still right up there.

In the process, I managed to get some serious joy by being able to play my hybrid role the way I have really wanted to play for a long time. Tonight was the first time since I went feral spec where I’ve seen how truly excellent it works in a 5 man group like that.

I have to admit, after our Strat UD run over the weekend, I was reconsidering whether Feral was a good idea. I’d basically been reduced to dishing out heals during that run and was not really enjoying it. As a feral spec Druid, Kin is damn useless at healing. His heals use significant mana and generate significant threat. Being as low level as he was for the instance (about 5 levels lower than many of the mobs there) it was pretty easy for him to get the agro, and pretty difficult to lose it.

But after tonight, I’m much happier. Of the 5 man, the tank did about 33% damage, the hunter about 28%, can’t remember the stat for the Paladin, but I know that Kin managed to still get around 20% (or just under) even though he was swapping forms and playing multiple roles at different times.

When we did the last dragon, in bear form, the tank was getting his health down pretty significantly. Kin was able to steal agro off the tank for long enough to let the priest heal the tank up properly. In cat form, Kin was able to dish out significant damage and help speed up the death we brought to the various mobs. When we were getting flooded with mobs, Kin was able to bear form and take a good chunk of the agro while the Paladin and Warrior dealt with the rest. For the most part, Kin just targetted whatever target Nick’s Hunter was aiming at, or tried to take agro off the Priest when it was needed.

So over the space of about 2 hours, we completely emptied the entire instance. Something I’ve not done in a single run in a long time. Everyone is always busy and always has something come up, or we wipe and people leave because of it.

Tonight, not one single person died. Every possible quest was completed and more importantly, we did it all with just over 10 minutes to spare before the Maintenence started on the server. “Maint” lasts from 5am PST (2am NZDT) till 11am PST (8am NZDT) so not finishing would’ve really been frustrating. ;-) But we did it. Our group tonight was one of the best 5 man groups I’ve been in since going back to the game. If not the best. We just seemed to gell and it all worked absolutely excellently.

At the end of it, I didn’t have time to repair or swap off my feral gear back to the usual caster gear, but thats not really much of an issue. The feral gear has slightly less armor total than the normal “caster” gear, but much more +agi, +str and +sta stats. This is most definitely a good thing in feral forms. :-)

Oh, and Kin hit another level tonight too. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to train up. So that’ll have to happen tomorrow.

All in all, the excellent group, the fact we completely cleared the instance, and especially the fact we did it in less than 2 hours and before the Maint hit has left me feeling like our server isn’t all bad. :-)

Still, I’ve started this other toon now, and I will be playing it a fair bit. Mostly because I like the idea of getting to a level where I can eventually go and play the game with family as well as friends. :-)

And now that Sunken Temple is off my quest list, I can start to get rid of BRD and LBRS. :-) I’ve already got the quest starter for UBRS after my last LBRS run, but I’m thinking that’ll be waiting a while to happen. I want to complete Silithus so I can get my Genesis Raiment sooner ;-)

I still miss the old days and the old group. We all started playing the game about the same time and we all knew exactly each other played. This gave us an edge and was very much like a familiar team. Pity that team is dead and buried and of it, only 3 of us still play together. The other 2 still play on the server, but they’ve got their own questing/raiding/instance groups now.

I think it might be time Nick and I started considering whether to join (or maybe affil) with other guilds given its going to get harder to build end game instance groups/raids from here. A motley crew is one thing, but its nice to know how each other plays and build a functioning team over a period of time.

We’ll see I guess.