A brief post this, because my intended next post is rather more work than I’d really bargained for and I keep putting it off. To apply a little pressure to myself: this intended next post will cover the comedy of [spelling, typography, grammar] errors that are the two Brady guides included in the battle chest, UK edition. It will also serve as the introduction to a series of posts looking at how some mechanics have changed, from the perspective of someone who started playing at patch 3.2 (and has therefore never experienced the old ways).
Anyway. In my last post I talked about getting my first raid achievement, for downing Sartharion in a 10 -man in a somewhat fractious, but ultimately successful manner. In a move which may or may not make sense to raiders who know what they’re about, my next raid encounter (note I’m not mentioning achievements or defeated bosses) was ICC. Which wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but hey.
Specifically, it was rep farming in ICC by trawling through the trash preceding Lord Marrowgar, resetting, and repeating. On two separate nights.
First of all, I had no idea what a “rep run” would entail and so was more than slightly terrified when the GL sent me a tell asking me if I wanted to join. Yes, I know, I’m such a noob. So there was me, frantically trying to find/read tactics for Marrowgar on a secondary screen in any downtime between pulls or during buffs/rez, only for us to never quite make it to him. And yes, there was the odd rez happening — a couple of times we managed to have several giant skellys munching on us at once, which wasn’t terribly successful and resulted in the odd “run away” moment.
Once I’d figured *that* part out, I was able to settle down a bit. But then, OMG, look at that: could that be a familiar name at the top of the, ahem, combat log parser? Could it be … me?
A quick aside: I’m not one of those people who post damage meter logs to /p (or /ra). Whenever that happens, you can almost guarantee the person doing so is saying “I’m great, you suck”, or occasionally just “you suck”. I do like to have one running when I’m dpsing though, as a means of checking whether I’ve missed something in my preparation (a buff? did I leave Crusader Aura on again?) or how well I’m coping with a movement-heavy fight.
Quick aside number 2: I also know it’s not all about the big numbers (pulling threat, CCing casters, focus targeting). If I screw up it’s because I’m feckless, not because I’m looking for a WoWcock extension.
This, perhaps naturally enough, made me think “we can take him, totally”, and so I suggested to the group that, as we seemed to have settled in nicely, perhaps we should go say hello to the BIG skelly at the back who’d been eyeing me up all evening. And to my surprise, most people said “no”. It was at this point I finally understood, at least a little, about raid lockouts and being “saved” to a particular raid instance. Which I guess I’ve probably read about in a score of different blogs and evidently always dismissed as something not relevant to version of WoW *I* was playing. Suddenly, it was relevant.
![We'll be back for you later, you big bony tease. [lord marrowgar]](http://www.mysteriousbuttons.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/backforyoulater.jpg "We'll be back for you later, you big bony tease.")
We'll be back for you later, you big bony tease.
A question: Can you be saved to multiple raid IDs for the same instance? My assumption (based on the above) is that you can’t: you’ve got one shot, buddy, so you’d better use it well. Which is a bit of a bugger, really. It means that, if I’ve got two groups of friends I want to play with, I have to do different content. And it also means that, as in the case of this rep run, if you’re having fun and fancy making a night of it you’ve a good chance to be out of luck. It seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to implement from a technical standpoint so I wonder whether it’s a data storage issue (having to retain state-of-play data per player, per raid, *per copy*) or a game design problem where being able to run the same content with multiple groups would destroy the value of the loot drops?
So anyway, I’m now left with what feels like a definite answer to the “do I want to raid” question: Yes. Yes please, thanks.
You’re absolutely correct, you only have one shot at a specific raid per week.
The reasoning behind this is not technical, but rather a means for blizzard to keep a leash on the players. Progression in a new raid wouldn’t be the same if your guild could a team and specifically kill the first boss until everyone in your raid had all the items they needed from that boss, then onwards to the next one.. Blizzard likes to keep it this way as a road bump to make sure we have to run the same raid week after week so that they get value for the money they spent developing and designing the raid.
Also note, everyone currently in the raid gets saved to the same ID. This creates a problem that if you and some friends start working on a raid and down some bosses, it’s quite possible that when you return the next weekend the whole instanced is cleared out because that goofy rogue you picked up in Dalaran went in late one night with *his* friends and cleared the rest..
Another note is that raid ID is on a per character basis, not account. In for example Trial of the crusader, there’s a potential four different indivial raids you can get saved to. Normal 10, heroic 10, normal 25, heroic 25.
Hmm. I guess that’s why raid rosters can be such a big deal too, and why people get quite so riled if a raid is canceled because of no-shows.
[...] and the mace? It’s actually a sword, dropped by Lord Marrowgar (I did say I’d be back for him). That wouldn’t have made such a alliterative title [...]
[...] any kind of raid with my then-guild. At the time, the closest I’d come to raiding was clearing pre-Marrowgar trash for rep in ICC and being told to “l2p” in a visit to see Sarth for the weekly. I ended [...]