Technically it was a 1-shot, but I think at least half the raid had see the boss fight before either on the PTR or in a 10-person group. The long vehicle fight preceding the boss fight is pretty fun and I suspect will be a nice warm up to raiding each Tuesday after Ulduar resets. It also gives time for people to learn the vehicles so they are ready for the boss battle.
We took down all four towers, of course. Maybe we should consider leaving one up next week just to see what happens.
After, we went to try Ignis, which we found to be hard. I think everybody is finding it hard, I didn't see any guilds on the server that got him. We didn't either, although it felt like we were making progress and maybe getting close. It's an awfully hard fight to heal through, though, and I think that will be the remaining challenge. Bloc came up with a nice approach to positioning and Ragon and I worked out a decent approach to the adds (I think).
When the trash respawned we went and took a look at the Deconstructor boss (sometimes called XT). It appears that boss is quite a bit easier and so is Razorscale, the third boss you can choose from after Leviathan.
Monday we'll go back again and maybe get one of these down (or even 2 if we're on a roll). Over the next couple of nights, hopefully we'll get some 10s going to give people some practice and experience on those bosses to prep for Monday.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
10 < 25
I logged on early again last night, found I was still in the raid from Tuesday and zoned right in to Ulduar with no trouble. Talked to the NPCs, aggroed some mobs and ran out. So I was feeling pretty optimistic about our raiding chances as I went afk for a few minutes to take out my contacts and settle the rest of the regular evening stuff.
When I got back in, there were 3 of us in Ulduar (me, Kyoka and Sherider) but apparently everything was broken again and nobody else could get in. After yet another frustrating hour of standing around, we gave up on running 25 at 12:30 once more.
A bunch of people logged off to sleep and I was going to, but didn't right away. And then about 30m later, suddenly I hear some excited voices on vent -- "hey, I'm in. It's working." So we decided to pull together a 10 and at least see the mechanics of the first boss vehicle battle.
So we start randomly jumping in vehicles and driving around blowing stuff up, gradually working out the abilities, mechanics and goals as we went. There are a whole bunch of towers that spawn guys that need to be destroyed and 4 key towers that are marked with glowing spheres. Mandie told us that not killing those makes the fight harder in a Sarth + drakes style. We'll have to check that out someday.
I got my vehicle blown up by being a little too aggressive and spent most of this phase of the fight riding as a sidekick in Wiseman's motorcycle with no buttons to press. Which was annoying at first, but let me concentrate on figuring out the mechanics and positioning for that fight. It took awhile, but we actually ground our way through the whole gauntlet on the first real try. And then we found the boss, pulled and died.
We took another couple of cracks at it while working out the roles for the 3 vehicle types and when/how to catapult people onto the Flame Leviathan. We decided to catapult Sirtank and Hawksy right away (one dps and one healer to keep him alive). But we missed with Hawksy and ST was only able to kill 2 of the 4 things to kill up there. That problem persisted through a couple of attempts even as we got better at dpsing the boss.
We actually never figured out the catapult thing properly but somehow managed to scramble to a nearly-all-dead win on about the 4th try. We got a bonus for failing though when we all procced an achievement for winning the fight without dealing with the catapult/turrets properly, heh.
We pushed on a little bit after even though it was late. We wiped some on the trash to Ignis -- I think 2 tanks would have been better than 1 (just me) and we will need some practice on avoiding the flame cyclones. Then we pulled another boss (Incapacitator?) that had no trash and was pretty amusing -- it's a gigantic toddler robot boss. Again, >1 tank would probably be helpful for summons management, but it was nice to pull and see it.
With a little luck, we'll have a full 25 able to zone in tonight and do it again in real, Heroic mode. That should be even more fun.
When I got back in, there were 3 of us in Ulduar (me, Kyoka and Sherider) but apparently everything was broken again and nobody else could get in. After yet another frustrating hour of standing around, we gave up on running 25 at 12:30 once more.
A bunch of people logged off to sleep and I was going to, but didn't right away. And then about 30m later, suddenly I hear some excited voices on vent -- "hey, I'm in. It's working." So we decided to pull together a 10 and at least see the mechanics of the first boss vehicle battle.
So we start randomly jumping in vehicles and driving around blowing stuff up, gradually working out the abilities, mechanics and goals as we went. There are a whole bunch of towers that spawn guys that need to be destroyed and 4 key towers that are marked with glowing spheres. Mandie told us that not killing those makes the fight harder in a Sarth + drakes style. We'll have to check that out someday.
I got my vehicle blown up by being a little too aggressive and spent most of this phase of the fight riding as a sidekick in Wiseman's motorcycle with no buttons to press. Which was annoying at first, but let me concentrate on figuring out the mechanics and positioning for that fight. It took awhile, but we actually ground our way through the whole gauntlet on the first real try. And then we found the boss, pulled and died.
We took another couple of cracks at it while working out the roles for the 3 vehicle types and when/how to catapult people onto the Flame Leviathan. We decided to catapult Sirtank and Hawksy right away (one dps and one healer to keep him alive). But we missed with Hawksy and ST was only able to kill 2 of the 4 things to kill up there. That problem persisted through a couple of attempts even as we got better at dpsing the boss.
We actually never figured out the catapult thing properly but somehow managed to scramble to a nearly-all-dead win on about the 4th try. We got a bonus for failing though when we all procced an achievement for winning the fight without dealing with the catapult/turrets properly, heh.
We pushed on a little bit after even though it was late. We wiped some on the trash to Ignis -- I think 2 tanks would have been better than 1 (just me) and we will need some practice on avoiding the flame cyclones. Then we pulled another boss (Incapacitator?) that had no trash and was pretty amusing -- it's a gigantic toddler robot boss. Again, >1 tank would probably be helpful for summons management, but it was nice to pull and see it.
With a little luck, we'll have a full 25 able to zone in tonight and do it again in real, Heroic mode. That should be even more fun.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Server capacity
3.1 released last night. I made special effort to clear my schedule, logged on early, paid for dual-spec, respecced, set up both specs. I even set up Major Glyphs for my holy spec although I couldn't figure out which Minor Glyphs I should have (Lay on Hand and ?). I cleaned up my inventory, checked consumeables, repaired, got symbols and headed off to Icecrown.
And sat there. Periodically trying to zone in to Ulduar and getting kicked out with the "instance not available" message. After about an hour or so, we gave up and decided to try to raid it tonight instead. I poked around on the forums as we waited and found a blue post indicating that their instance servers simply couldn't keep up with the demands to create new instances.
I wondered about why that was. Maybe the relative ease of Naxx meant that a much higher proportion of warcraft players were ready to set foot in Ulduar the moment it released? Or maybe the extra extended maintenance time meant even more groups were trying to get started at the same time. Normally, you probably see a distributed range of raid start times, but obviously a lot of people were trying to get in just as we were, which is later than most.
Hopefully it'll be sorted out for tonight.
In a somewhat curious contrast, I realized this morning that I never finished up submitting my taxes. I did them online via turbotax a few days ago, but wanted to check a few last things with my wife before sending them in. I was worried that their servers would be overwhelmed on tax day and I had this clever idea of doing it post-raid last night -- who'd be doing taxes at 2am? Well, fewer of us anyway. But disappointed with the raid not going, I forgot and so I was a little nervous this morning at 9am when I logged on to their site. But it worked fine. Not even any real lag or anything. I guess their servers held up just fine.
There might be 11million warcraft players, but there are probably more people than that who file their taxes on April 15th. Something for Blizzard to think about. ;)
And sat there. Periodically trying to zone in to Ulduar and getting kicked out with the "instance not available" message. After about an hour or so, we gave up and decided to try to raid it tonight instead. I poked around on the forums as we waited and found a blue post indicating that their instance servers simply couldn't keep up with the demands to create new instances.
I wondered about why that was. Maybe the relative ease of Naxx meant that a much higher proportion of warcraft players were ready to set foot in Ulduar the moment it released? Or maybe the extra extended maintenance time meant even more groups were trying to get started at the same time. Normally, you probably see a distributed range of raid start times, but obviously a lot of people were trying to get in just as we were, which is later than most.
Hopefully it'll be sorted out for tonight.
In a somewhat curious contrast, I realized this morning that I never finished up submitting my taxes. I did them online via turbotax a few days ago, but wanted to check a few last things with my wife before sending them in. I was worried that their servers would be overwhelmed on tax day and I had this clever idea of doing it post-raid last night -- who'd be doing taxes at 2am? Well, fewer of us anyway. But disappointed with the raid not going, I forgot and so I was a little nervous this morning at 9am when I logged on to their site. But it worked fine. Not even any real lag or anything. I guess their servers held up just fine.
There might be 11million warcraft players, but there are probably more people than that who file their taxes on April 15th. Something for Blizzard to think about. ;)
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