Well, you can get drunk off the beer that the vendors sell - I typically buy a stack of the 3rd highest brew and chug until I’m drunk.
But to get the commemorative Brewfest stein, you have to do either one or two of the ram riding quests successfully. The goblin standing next to that quest giver (the one that talks about the mounts and stuff through various selectable options) will then have a quest where you ask him for the stein and IIRC he gives you a ticket to turn in.
Speaking of guilds and leveling, I had a funny/annoying encounter while I had Keliraeda at the UC bank. A level 58 tauren DK came up behind me and asked me to sign his guild charter. Mind you, I’m standing there in my BDL guild tabard and have <Burning Dog Legion> floating over my head. So I replied, “Can’t, I’m already in a guild.”
He said, “u can leave it u know”.
I said, “Erm …”
He said, “Come on, we’ll help u level!”
All righty then, this DK who, at level 58 has just finished his DK starting quests, is promising that his guild — which obviously doesn’t even exist yet — will help me level.
I just shook my head and went on my way.
Oh, BTW - thanks again to whoever plays Blusmoke for the gear enchants last night!
Did you talk to the gobbos handing out the reins? There’s a lot of information they provide in conversation. I didn’t talk to them, and it took me a little while to understand how to use it, too.
Raid composition is pretty important. “bring the player, not the gear” is true, “bring the player, not the class” is not.
People discuss ideal raid compositions all the time and most people can agree on who fills the first 15 or so slots in a 25 man for optimal raid performance. This doesn’t mean you can fill the reamining ten with whatever you want, some of those slots need to be filled with healers and tanks but you can basically fill them with any type of healer or tank.
10 man raids are more forgiving on exact class distribution so other than healer/tank/dps ratio you can do a lot more.
That sounds like very inequitable loot distribution. You are basically telling folks that you only want one warlock at the raid (I guess you don’t really need more than one, although it is helpful) but if they ntried to pull that crap with paladins, you would soon find yourself choosing between “blessing of kings” and “blessing of might”
Depressing, isn’t it? We’ve had several of our members (including longtime ones) desert us for the top guild (a couple of them then left or got kicked out of there and moved to another guild). We had some faction transfers join us but then get impatient because we’ve got enough for a solid 10 man team but not quite enough for two 10 man teams, so we can’t fit everybody in. So we get somebody new, and we lose somebody else. It’s definitely starting to wear on us.
I think the whole EZ mode raiding model of Wrath has been the cause. Back in BC days, you had to belong to a good raiding guild if you wanted to see content. The casual guilds just couldn’t do it. So we had about five good raiding guilds Hordeside, and none of them had trouble getting members. But then Wrath came out and everybody with a pulse and half a lick of sense could clear Naxx in two months…which gave a bunch more people a taste for raiding but not necessarily the skills to do it well. So now we’ve got probably twenty raiding guilds Hordeside on our server who can make enough progress to keep their members happy, but there are still only a few who can do hard modes, etc. Most people don’t care about this, so they just drift along in their casual guilds and maybe kill up to Auriaya or Thorim normal-mode in Ulduar every week, then do it again the next week.
Not that I think there’s anything wrong with this–if it makes people happy, great. But it sure makes it hard for the more hardcore raid guilds to recruit and keep quality applicants with the skills and mentality needed to endure multiple wipes in the pursuit of the hard stuff.
I think this is the horde version of the quest, the equivalent alliance npc also explain how the rams work so I would expect the goblin to do that too.
Also, don’t forget to talk to npc who gave you the first ram quest, he should have a gossip option where he gives you a new ram and tells you to fetch more kegs, only this time you will get 2 Brewfest Tokens for every keg you fetch and it will extend the ram timer by 30 seconds so you can get quite a few tokens that way, my personal record is 28. You can do this once a day.
I have been involved in about a dozen guild mergers and mergers of equals never works. The two scenarios i have seen work are:
Medium size high end guild absorbs medium sized second tier guild and carries the new members for a bit.
Medium size high end guild absorbs small high end guild after a period of “joint raiding” to see if everyone likes each other.
Even then you see a lot of guilds imploding.
Most guilds absorb guildies one at a time for a reason.
As far as raiding in BDL - I know that Rottingbird (80 Mage) has pondered looking for another guild, not sure about the other 80’s. I’ve thought about it too, but I feel like I have an emotional investment in the guild now! I’d love to see us get to a point when we can start doing 10-mans again though. Until then I’m just trying to run as many heroics as I can to gear up with the emblems, and get into raid pugs when I can (which isn’t very often).
I basically don’t have the evening hours to set stuff up ahead of time. One night a week for the alt instance run is about what I can reasonably ask. So Muz is about as well-geared as someone who runs a few heroics but mostly solos could be, but that’s about it.
Cookies all around! 
Most raiding guilds will run at least 3-5 nights a week, for 3-5 hours on each of those nights. Two nights a week is a **very **short time to spend raiding.
Sounds like your drama was a lot like our pre-breakup drama. Here’s my advice to you: buckle down and focus on the content you can run. When people see your progression, they’ll want to join. When you can, form a second 10-man team, but don’t split up your core team to do it. That second team should then be experienced and geared around the time that you pick up enough extra people to be able to field a full 25-man.
And yeah, beware of the gear-and-go people. Make sure your loot system is designed to keep the gear in the guild–prioritize dedicated, long-term members if you can.
Most raiding guilds require a certain percent of attendance for their top people, usually 75-85%. Lower ranks (who don’t have guaranteed slots) will usually have lower required attendance. Note that “attendance” doesn’t necessarily mean “being in the raid”–it’s about signing up and being available to come in if you’re needed. This may mean parking your butt at the dungeon portal and going off to play an alt that they know how to contact you on (e.g., someone knows the name so they can whisper you, or you sit in a Vent channel so they can find you there).
This is what we call A Poorly Run Guild (technical term).
I’ve run with Feral DPS before who were never bears, trees, or owlbeasts. It’s about finding the niche that you want to play. If the guild won’t take you raiding unless you fill a role you don’t want to play… find another guild.
Immediately prior to the breakup, the GM started discussing with the officers the possibility of a merger with another 10-man guild with similar progression. Except it wasn’t really a “merger,” since we would just be coming in the same as any other applicant. I told the GM hell no, unless he could negotiate for us to start out at a raider rank, since we’d be bringing a hell of a lot to the other guild (i.e., a number of geared, experienced people so that we could all start running 25s again). If I was going to start over from scratch, I would pick a guild that was more progressed, since I could pretty much write my ticket to any guild on the server (says more about the general quality of the talent pool on Borean Tundra than my particular skills, gear, and experience, FWIW).
:smack: I fail at reading comprehension today. Somehow I skimmed straight past your **explicit **“note to self” part. That’s what I get for not going back and quoting it 'cause the board was bugging out.
Click on it! It makes the most adorable noises ever, short of a baby Murloc. Side note: Wolpertinger pets can only be seen by (a) your party/raid members and/or (b) drunk players. So they’re one of the few pets that a stealthed character can have out and not betray their position.
One of the NPCs gives you a quest that gives you a token/certificate type thing to turn in. Check your bags.
Everything gives rep, just not good rep. So, assholes kill everything instead of just the truly worthwhile ones. And no, the FM doesn’t get you anything, but as long as you’re on a killing spree that’s sure to inconvenience everyone else, why not just kill everything? :rolleyes:
These hardcore serious business raiders don’t know how to make a separate chat tab that excludes gchat? You dodged a bullet there, I’d say.
The biggest problem with EZ mode raiding is that it has made server population splits (horde/alliance) much more important because VOA is probably responsible for a third of your upgrades after every patch and WG is an Alliance zergfest on my server. The desire for more easy upgrades leads me to believe that my server will become even more Alliance heavy after faction switches become available. I know a guild that is planning on switching factions just to have consistent access to VOA.
With that said, I like the fact that WOW is making raiding more accessible to casual players. I actually like the fact taht with TOC and the conquest emlblems, they are making it easier to get raid geared. I actually like the fact that they are trying to make specific raid compositions less important. What I wish they would do it fix the raiding mechanic so that people stop getting zerged in WG or BGs.
I wish they would make algalon a little easier too. we’ve been bashing our head against that wall for what seems like months.
I’ll have to look again when I do the quest with a different toon. I’m sure I read what the goblin said when he handed me the reins (I always read quest text completely), and my reading comprehension is pretty high, but I still missed it somehow. Were the specific instructions in one of his “gossip” boxes (the ones you get by clicking on the text with the little dialog bubble, rather than the “!”)? OTOH, it was getting late (like midnight), and I’d been up since 7:45 AM and had been playing WoW since before noon, so my brain was probably pretty foggy by that point.
No, not the npc who gave to the quest, the npc who’s standing next to him, Driz Tumblequick <Ram Racing Apprentice>. I am of course making the assumption that the horde version works the same way as the alliance one, which may have been foolish of me. After looking at both versions of the ram racing quest I notice that the line “If you need instructions how to handle the ram, talk to my apprentice, Pol Amberstill.” is absent in the horde version :dubious:
Well, we haven’t made it to Algalon yet (still working on hard mode Freya and Mimiron to get the keys), but does anybody else think that the third boss in ToCrusader (Faction Champions) is just too @#$%& hard?? Every week for us it’s the same thing (10 man version):
I don’t think we’re alone in this, either. Blizz needs to nerf that fight, and nerf it NOW. Everybody I’ve talked to hates it–even folks who like PvP. It’s just an abomination of a fight.
Yeah, the full extent of the ram-handling instructions for the Horde version is:
"So here’s the deal: I’ll lend you some racing reins and the use of a ram. You need to prove to me that you can handle using these rams.
Keep the ram at a trot, canter and gallop for 8 seconds each."
:dubious:
ETA: Based on those sparse instruction, I was expecting to be presented with a vehicle interface with “Trot”, “Canter” and “Gallop” buttons.
Nerf it, or send those guys after Arthas. I mean c’mon, why are these insanely powerful fighters dicking around with a tournament when they clearly could be taking Arthas down
(I’ve never done this stuff myself - I’m just going off your description)
I’m attached to BDL as well, since I started playing WoW last year. I want to one of the 10-mans although, I do have many other things that get in the way, like work, wife and kids and my son’s baseball and my other son’s autism. After everything is done for the day, I usually get on around 10pm (usually every other day) and only find a couple other guildies who are now working on their alts. So, I’m kinda stuck in Heroics and not able to get to the next step. My middle son is usually on earlier with his DK (Sinjara), and then I come on afterwards when he hits the sack on school nights. Too bad we can’t be on at the same time together, just don’t have a second computer nor separate accounts to do it, although I’ve pondered once or twice about doing it, but I really can’t justify spending the money at this point in time to do it.
But I really would like to make for my son or I (interchangeably) be part of a ten man group. I really don’t like PUGs, so I might do BGs instead to get your basic epic items that will hopefully rate better for 10man raiding.
I’m of two minds on this.
What strategy are you using in general for the Champs? We tried killing healers first the first two weeks we fought it and could never get more than one down before half our raid was dead. Then someone had the bright idea of killing the DPS first (Enhance Shaman always being priority #1) and this made it waaaay easier as long as you can CC and offensive dispell any heals. Just kill the DPS in the order of their deadliness/utility (for us this week it was Shaman > SPriest > DK > Hunter). Of course class make-up matters a lot - a Warlock is huge for dealing with the tree, for example.
It actually gets pretty funny once you get two of the DPS down because there is almost no way to wipe at that point (they just don’t have enough burst damage). And then when it’s just the healers left they have exactly zero offensive spells so you can literally just stand around if you want… and then kill them at your leisure.
Talk to the other gobbo standing there. He tells you more about it.
The Faction Champions suck because they’re not PvP and they’re not PvE. It’s the epitome of what I don’t like about the Argent Tourney area: an encounter that has nothing to do with the skillset you’ve spent 80 levels and gods know how many raids perfecting, and your PvP set up won’t help either. Can’t drain em, DR makes CC rotations painfull, no aggro, and whole lotta time face down on the floor.
Since they’ve decided to force PvEers into some weird perversion of PvP, I’m looking forward to the surprise raid boss at the end of the new Arena season.
I can’t wait for my buff to like 2.4 million HP in time for Icecrown, that’s for damn sure.
I don’t think this is completely accurate - and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince our raid of it. This is a PvE fight with multiple adds that all drop aggro every 6 seconds and will group target. And have DR on CC. That’s it.
You assign a kill order and CC rotations and burn 'em down. Any slows are nice (frost trap, frost nova). Mortal strike and offensive dispels are essential. Taunts work (briefly, and only on normal mode). Disc Priests are life savers. Trees are actually kinda weak, and Boomkins have excellent CC. We swap our SPriest into Disc and our Tree into Boomkin and off we go.
But in the end it’s PvE. It’s a new kind of PvE, and for that I kinda like it. Lord knows the same ol’ can get annoying too, and beyond the Twins the ToC bosses don’t really have a lot of new stuff going for them.
My only real complaint is how random it can be. One time they all target our lock right off and zerg him down. If that happens it’s a wipe (no CC on the Resto Druid). The next time they completely ignore him and try to burn down our DK tank (lol). We win.