the world has changed

I have to admit I was pretty envious when I found out that ES had killed Deathwing on Normal without us during our vacation — even if it was “only” on 10s when ES is a 25s guild.

Or was?

I was all excited to go finally defeat Spine of Deathwing on 25s and make our first attempts at Madness of Deathwing on 25s this week. BTH was looking forward to completing those encounters on Normal difficulty — he ran LFR every chance he could get during our vacation (I haven’t set foot in it yet). When we logged into WoW and Mumble on Tuesday night, however, we joined instead a solemn, serious, saddening conversation about how the RL Boss has taken away enough of ES’s raiders that the officers are considering downsizing to 10s.

I’ve said for a long time that I don’t really care whether I’m raiding 25s or 10s, as long as I get to raid at least some of the time. BTH thinks that 25s are a lot more fun than 10s — but I think I’d rather run 10s with people I like than 25s with people I don’t like. I have enjoyed raiding 25s with ES, but a lot of that has really been because of the personalities in the guild, and not so much because of the larger raid size in and of itself. I told the officers that I’d be happy to stay in ES if it becomes a 10s guild, but that if BTH goes looking for another guild/realm, I’d probably end up going with him.

I was uncertain about switching to ES even though I wasn’t really socially happy in our previous two guilds just because I didn’t know what to expect out of a new guild. Now I’m even more socially insecure about leaving for another guild/realm because I actually enjoy being in ES. (I already miss the people who are gone for RL reasons )

BTH is starting to consider realm-switching, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.

If BTH goes to a PvE realm, though, I would definitely want to follow him. I hate — like Alizabal hates — being ganked while I’m questing or farming. Kamalia is only on a PvP realm because that’s where BTH already had friends and a high level toon when I started playing. Guild/raiding ties, my ever-growing number of alts, and now an alt guild & guild bank have been keeping me there. It would cost a lot of money to move eight characters plus a guild and guild bank to a new realm… but then, I spend money on transferring one or two characters at a time every three or four months anyway as I change my mind about how my various alts ought to be sorted.

If BTH goes to another PvP realm, I’d still transfer Kamalia & family to a PvE realm, and I’d power-level Kilauea to raid with him. As much as I like being part of the ES community, social ties aren’t enough to keep me on a PvP realm in the absence of active raiding involvement on that realm — though I might leave a newly-rolled alt in ES just to keep in touch. But raiding with a Resto Shaman that wasn’t Kamalia, and not raiding with Kamalia herself… well, it just wouldn’t be quite the same.

~*~*~

The official raid was 10s again this week, and people who’d been away for the past two or three weeks were given priority for the spots. We cleared through gunship easily on Tuesday, and last night we took on Deathwing.

Madness of Deathwing took only four or five attempts, and while it was a fun fight indeed, I must confess to some disappointment that we didn’t spend a month wiping on it the way we did with Cho’gall, Al’Akir, Nefarian2.0, and Ragnaros2.0.

Unless we manage to get enough people to continue doing 25s, Normals are finished. And yet, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about doing these fights on Heroic (especially Ultraxion). I’ll still stick around until Falowin completes his legendary daggers, but I wasn’t expecting Dragon Soul to be over nearly so quickly.

The world has changed, and now we must all find new places within it.

About these ads