Just as I was about to log off, sleepyheaded and full up of WoW for the day, I was pinged by Brudie. We exchanged niceities and before I could say I was about to log, he invited me to a guild raid. Now, I really didn't want to do this. I was tired. It was already 11 p.m., but I hadn't ever done this, and I really wanted to see what it was like to run with a big party in a raid. I agreed to go along.
There were four of us: Brudie/Datta (his alter ego), Dimi, Felison, and myself. Felison was only a lvl 17, but he was a warrior, if I recall correctly. Datta was a lvl 51 druid, and Dimi was a mage, I think. I forget his level, somewhere in the 30s. They said they were going to do the Deadmines run.
Deadmines is a popular call out in the general chat channel. I am always seeing LFG for Deadmines or something similar. I thought I had been there before, with James/Balamor. Yeah, I thought, this will be a half hour run. No biggie. I logged in to Ventrilo on the Windows laptop, donned the headset, then swiveled around to face the Mac G4 laptop on which WoW was displayed on the second, 17" monitor. I looked like a rock band keyboard player with a couple of sets of keyboards, three to be exact. I use a bluetooth one. I had my brand new birthday present: a super gamer mouse! I was ready to rock, but a little nervous...perhaps like a soldier going in-country for the first time. I wanted to make it back, and I didn't want to let my buddies down by making a mistake under fire. I was hyper-focused. I could hear the Ride of the Valkyries playing in my head. God I love the smell of napalm in the morning!
As we entered the mines, Datta gave advice. Let Dimi draw. Use your wand to gain points. Watch your health. I'll be focusing on keeping Dimi healthy. We stood for a second as a group. And then it began with Dimi creeping forward, finding a guy and pulling him out.
THe first section was fairly easily. Dimi drew and we all pounded. Sometimes creatures went aggro, and we had more of them pounding on us than we on them, but we managed. My DOTs let me hurt a lot of baddies at once, without requiring my continued attention on them. This left me free to pick out a guy to pound on with my wand. It doesn't do as much damage as my firebolt, but it is very fast at delivering hits: 38, 40, 32, 46, 31, 29, 40...boom, boom, boom. And thus it is actually fairly effective. The firebolt throws hits between 80 and a 100 each time, but takes three seconds to cast. Dude, you can die in three seconds.
The first section done, bodies scattered about, we stopped to take stock. Off in the distance a little thwacking noise meant someone was finishing off a last dude. But now it was Miller time. Felison mined the ore. We rolled for various looted objects. Datta explained need over greed, which, as represented in the game, I had understood exactly opposite of what it meant. Need meant you needed the object, and it was made clear to me that you only click need if it were something you could employ NOW, e.g., better armor. Greed meant you were passing on it. If everyone passed on it, sometimes you got it anyway, and you could sell it or disenchant it or whatever. The divvying done, everyone sat down and had something to eat or drink, to revive health or mana. Some folks buffed themselves. I recast my imp. Then it was time to move on. We stood. We collectively gathered ourselves. We moved forward.
We repeated this scenario three or four times. Each time, right before we entered the new section, Datta/Brudie would freak me out by saying, okay, now this is a tricky part. Let Dimi pull. Get ready. Okay, Hall, move up. ...Yeah, sure, you move up, bro!
And each section did become harder and harder. Sometimes the diffiuclty was in numbers of folks hurling themselves at us. Other times the difficulty was in the skill level of the NPCs we faced. Toward the end it was both, and a big boss. I got to watch Dimi use his sheep spell, with which he can turn a foe into a non-attacking sheep for a while whlst we destroy the others. Pretty funny to see. Another funny bit: Dimi has a pet rabbit he carried with him throughout the entire raid. So here we were slashing and casting and pounding, and this sweet little bunny was hopping alongside with us all the way. Very bizarre, but comforting.
At the last door Dimi said, Okay, this gets a little nasty. If you are about to die, jump into the water. And remember the birds attack too. And the big boss will reappear with a different weapon. And... and... and... I had a Richard Pryor moment in my head, shit, shut the f#$% up, mutha&*@#$%, don't be telling me that shit! We did well though. We reached the big ship, all the minions went aggro and we had a 45 second battle reminiscent of a Braveheart battle field scene. We knocked them down though, and Datta said all we had left was the big boss and his two henchmen.
We whacked the big boss, and no one died...until AFTER the very last blow was struck. I don't know what happened to Dimi and me, perhaps it was spell damage that we didn't notice was draining us. But the point is we made it through to the end. We got some amazing loot. No one screwed up, or at least no one said anyone screwed up. It was a lot of fun, too. Part of the fun was the tourism vibe I felt as Datta remarked on things in the dungeon...where guys were hidden, how cool the pirate ship looked, what sort of NPCs were attacking us, and so on. He was also very encouraging throughout, with call outs of nice wand work. great shot. Hall, did you bring that dude down with the firebolt!
At the end we sorted through the treasures, made some parting remarks, and ... I noticed it was 2 a.m.
Play Late, indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment