I forgot how overwhelming and demanding being a GM in the opening weeks of an expansion can be. In Wrath, we were stockpiling all sorts of mats as we were leveling (Green items to DE, cloth, gems, ore, herbs, and so forth).
Managed to top out at 85 in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Sadly, I lost my guild first 80 title to our raid leading warlock. I think time spent was about the same. He did it in 20 hours and it took me about 20-21 hours or so. I was fourth overall.
Now in addition to that, I need to factor in stuff like guild achievements and which one we can target as a guild that can best help us.
The list (In no particular order)
- Gain access to the feasts
- Power level our enchanters to a minimum of 500 so they can disenchant stuff in dungeons
- Power level our tailors so they can start their cloth cooldowns
- Level our engineers and blacksmiths for access to feasts and buckles
Weekend will be used to develop professions to a reasonable level as well as gearing as much as possible via dungeons and heroics.
On a side note, I’d love to have a few more tanks around to run 5 mans with. Our tanks are slowly getting there. More on this tomorrow about the the healer:tank:DPS ratio and how I’m planning on handling it. Any tanks looking for a guild to chill in?
If our players continue leveling and gearing at this pace now, I think we’ll be raid ready by monday night. Heroics are extremely brutal right now since everyone’s undergeared like crazy. I’m debating recording some heroic videos along with a narrative just to outline some basic strategies and principles.
I’ve noticed a number of 10 man and newer 25 man guilds have already folded during the opening days of the expansion. Being a GM in the opening weeks is some serious business. My attention’s not only focused on taking care of guild affairs overall, but I also need to work on my own character as well.
Oh podcast remarks, I’ve narrowed the list down. Going to record a few mock episodes at some point just to see how it goes. More on this later as well.
Also, whoever the quest designer was that decided that the first quest in Vashjir should be looting a single conch shell that can’t be looted by everyone at the time needs to be re-evaluated.
Anyway, how’s your initial experiences been so far? What’s on your guild list of short term priorities?
“Heroics are extremely brutal right now since everyone’s undergeared like crazy”
And yet a couple of guilds are already 8/12 on 4.0 raid progression.. amazing, it just shows how gargantuan the skill and dedication gap is between the top guilds and average players.
Wonder if that person who made the first quest in vasjir is in cahoots with the person who decided to make the zone so restrictive in its connectedness to the rest of the world. The flight path in and out of the zone should be right there at the beginning of questing, easily findable not something that takes you half a level of xp to find.
It’s a hell of a job my friend. I remember I had just graduated from my Master’s program when TBC hit, so I had a ton of spare time. All I did for close to three weeks at TBC’s launch was play the game.
After getting to level 70 fairly quickly, I spent all my time leveling my guildmates and setting up groups to tackle the group content, eventually leading up to 5-mans. We were in our first raid by the end of the second week. But I got my ass handed to me in those two week. The worst part, of course, is that it is a thankless job, and no one realizes how much work a GM has to put in to ensure things keep running smoothly.
I’ve pretty much just come back to wow in the last 2 months for cata. I was gone for a whole year.
I was a human, holy priest.
I hadn’t even known that holy priests were no longer good for 5 manning (not impossible as i have stuck to it since leveling, trying new dungeons at each new level).
It’s exhausting!
Mana is drained so quickly that it is hard to keep up with the rest of the group.
(and ill admit that I have forgotten to call oom a few times after a battle (inside the inside note, i oom alot on trash mobs too, they seem like mini bosses!) and when i start drinking and havnt told the tank to stop, they wipe around the corner, leaving me all on my lonesome, Now they werent too happy about that!)
I have to say, I think i preferred the quests in WotLK, they linked back to the old warcraft games, gave the lore a bit more depth. But that’s just me.
Now the instances.
ToTT: I always have trouble healing this. the bigger trash mobs are like mini bosses themselves and can easily cause a wipe.
Stonecore: probably easier than tott, but the first mobs you try to attack are horrible! they turn into big earth elementals and then mass aoe damage my group (although thats where a holy priest with good aoe heals comes in handy!) but the rest of the instance is a breeze. stay off nasty business that bosses cast on the ground and you are pretty much sorted.
VP: easiest of the lot by far except for the mass aoe done by the many shiny spheres. once again, the aoe heals of a holy priest come in handy here, but our first run was indeed quite horrible.
I havnt done the other instances yet but im sure they will all suitably make me wet my pants 🙂
One other side note. I think blizzard was a little lazy about this expansion. they were too rushed and almost every boss has just been loaded up with something aoe that they cast on the ground. this makes doing different instances repetitive because they are practically all the same, albeit with different surroundings. this is just my opinion though, so dont flame me.
Just a lil bit about my experience there.