(Thron is known in other parts of the Internet as Natural20. You can
find him on Livejournal here – http://natural20.livejournal.com/ or on
Twitter here – http://twitter.com/natural20 He tends to talk a lot
about Irish politics as well as gaming and conventions, you have been
warned.)
It's a long way from Zul Gurub ...
A short introduction, I’m Thron, a Resto-Druid and raidleader of Cobra, the raiding community that Spinks mentions here.
I’ve been raiding with Cobra since the community started up in Zul’Gurub and I’ve been a leader since Karazhan. As Spinks mentioned we’ve recently killed the Lich King and I wanted to share some thoughts on leading the Cobra community through eighteen months of raiding in Wrath, from the first boss in Naxx to our final victory atop the Frozen Throne.
Cobra was set up with the express intention of getting members of three guilds (Ashen Rose Conspiracy, Oathforged and The Red Branch) into content they would never see if they didn’t band together. In Wrath we wanted to progress more than we had in TBC, but also try, as hard as possible, to bring as many people with us on our journey. The goal was, of course, to have Arthas lying at our feet, but we knew it was going to be a very long road.
Spot the tree
We benefited hugely from the company of some raiders from outside the three guilds who were looking for a more casual group than they’d been with in TBC, or those whose groups disbanded at some point during Wrath. Integration has been hard on occasion, making sure that we held true to our guiding aims, while trying to make sure people didn’t get bored. As all raidleaders will know, this is far from an easy task. It’s also something I’ll come back to later.
The raid pool has always hovered around fifty toons, but the composition and balance has varied greatly. There were times we thought we’d never want for healers and other times we’ve wondered if the hunters had a secret breeding programme going which would eventually overwhelm the group! To be fair, druids have always made up the biggest single class, but that has always seemed right and proper to me.
This has meant we’ve struggled at times and mostly we’ve been saved by folk who were willing to play more than one spec, but we’ve held fast to our rule of only allowing one toon per player, it’s kept things much more straightforward.
So, we started out in Naxx in January 2009, speeding our way through the bosses as most groups did, running up against our first roadblocks with the Four Horsemen and feeling very accomplished when Kel’Thuzad gave up his first Journey’s End, although that’s all we ever seemed to get from him. But clearly Naxx, easy as it was, showed us we could do it, at the appropriate gear level. According to the realm forums we were in or around the seventh Horde-side raid to clear the instance, a position we were to occupy most of the way through the expansion, with a few notable exceptions. This gave the raid group a lot of confidence, knowing that we wouldn’t be at the forefront of progression, but we’d be keeping up, managing to get through the content on an average of six hours raiding a week.
The Cobra synchronised red drake flying team never won any marks for style ...
And onwards we went. While we never managed Sartharion + 3, we killed Flame Leviathan the day Ulduar went live and pushed on until Yogg-Saron was defeated. Trial of the Champions had already opened at that point, so we did outgear the god of death in the end, but we were happy to take the kill. TotC was almost the death of Cobra. Like many raid groups the instance bored us very quickly, but the heroic versions were just too difficult for us and wiping repeatedly without any sense of progress gets very boring, very quickly. This lack of progress (and mindless repetition), combined with a number of situations where one mistake could wipe the raid didn’t please anyone.
Cobra has improved in leaps and bounds since we started, but that kind of situation has never suited us and the awful instance design and bad tuning didn’t help.
We were incredibly lucky that Ice Crown opened when it did. The raid is almost as much fun as Ulduar and the increasing buff seemed to be designed for a group like Cobra. It was far from all plain sailing, but up we climbed, sticking with our six hours a week schedule and even getting a Horde-side first kill along the way (Princes). And then finally, with patience and the 30% buff, we managed to kill Arthas. What an amazing night that was. I cracked open the very expensive whiskey and got to sit back and bask.
And reflect, with articles like this, on the journey. We started off in Wrath with four raidleaders and we’ve ended with three. Between us we have encouraged, explained, dragged and occasionally bullied Cobra through the expansion. We have been amazed by just how good the group is and how individual brilliance has saved a wipe, while at the same time wondering if sometimes players just ignore everything we say before a pull.
We’ve dealt with emo, both explicable and inexplicable, and despite Spinks’ request I’m not going to reveal which group generated the most! We’ve managed to compromise between the hardcore raiders who want to push on to hardmodes and the more casual players who sometimes forget just why standing in fire is a bad thing. I’m not entirely sure how we’ve managed this, mind, probably because the people in question trust us, at least that’s the assumption I’ve got to make. We’ve nearly kicked people from raids and we’ve nearly had people quit mid fight. Toons have come and gone, some will be missed, others less so.
Over eighteen months there have been nights when I just didn’t want to log in. I didn’t want to have to guide the twenty-five brave souls on the list for that raid through the content and there have been times when the ten minute break couldn’t come fast enough. But these times have been far outweighed by the moments of brilliance and fun. And this is what sets Cobra aside. This is why I think we’re one of only four Horde-side (25 man) raiding groups on Argent Dawn (EU) to kill Arthas.
We’ve been through things that would kill other groups dead and there have been moments when I’ve thought I was going to get zero sign-ups for the next raid, but the actual sense of community and friendship has carried us through.
We come from all over the world
Our raiders come from as far north as Finland and as far south as South Africa. We have raiders from Donegal (in the extreme northwest of Ireland) and others from far more easterly climes in Europe, it’s a varied bunch. But it’s a bunch that have grown to know each other, to take humour from the strangest things, to laugh when the only other option is to cry and, ultimately, to support Phoenixaras, Elelereth and I while we, in turn, try to support them. I don’t know of any other raid group who would react to repeated wipes by riding mammoths around Deathbringer Rise and then jumping off, one by one, while voice chat is filled with gales of laughter. Cobra is a true community and it has, when we look back, managed to fulfill the mission and it’s made me proud. It’s probably also shaved about ten years off my life, but thems the breaks.
We’re looking at Cataclysm now, staring down the barrel of a complete change in how raiding works in WoW, and I don’t know what Cobra will look like once everything changes. My hope is that we’ll keep on raiding, but we really won’t know until decisions have to be made.
Either way Wrath raiding will always be a special, wonderful, frustrating, maddening and ultimately rewarding experience and I’d probably do it all again, even knowing what I know now. That said, I do a few things differently, increase the number of raidleaders from day one and refuse a few applicants who turned out to be more hassle than they were worth, but these are the things you learn and nobody ever said learning was painless.
For now we’ll get the rest of the raidgroup Kingslayer, then relax for a little while and see if there’s a bunch of raiders who still want to be given orders by a loud Irishman (me) and a soft spoken Englishman (Elelereth), while a rogue picks their pockets (Phoenixaras). I hope there will be, there are still stories left to create.
*** (Blame Spinks for the lack of good kill shots and general lack of any screenshots of Ulduar (!) )
Welcome to Spinksville! 