This post comes at BBB’s behest, because I’ve been raiding with the guy lately on Sundays, and he said I was a slacker. Clearly, he is correct (as bears so often are), but my lack of posting isn’t out of disinterest, but paralysis.

Let me explain.

I have a nasty habit of taking on more projects than I can reasonably handle. Then, when the time comes to sit down and work on one, it becomes a question of focus. Which one should I work on? Where are my notes for it? Am I going to have to do a lot of memory-searching, or is something down on a document? Usually, by the time I figure out what I’m going to work on, the window I had to work on it is gone, and we’re back at square one the next day.

It’s a personal flaw that I recognize in myself, and I *am* working on it. I think I’m just going to need to keep a whiteboard with progress meters in my room.

To this end, I’m cutting out the D&D chronicle from the blog. I can’t stay ahead of it, and I’m so far behind I will never catch up. I can’t continue to try to post it, but I will say that you can typically follow our D&D adventures on twitter, courtesy of @PixelExecution, @FabulorWizard, @KevaraBloodbane, @Half_Lazan, and @Key_the_Thief.

In the WoW world, well…  I’ve been busy. I’ve been made recruitment officer for our guild on Rexxar, Stands in Bad (and we are recruiting!), so a lot of my time outside the game is spent thinking up ways to get our guild out there and known. Ironically, my blog is the last place I thought of in order to get the word out, but hindsight is 20/20. We’re still short a few caster cloth- and leather-wearing DPS to finish the second team, but we’ll have to make do in the meantime.

We start raiding this week. Wednesday will be the guild’s first foray into 10m normal Mogu’shan Vaults, and I think we’re prepared. As prepared as we can be, I suppose. A majority of us have run LFR, and we understand the mechanics that are missing, so I think we can make a fair go of it.

Lelissa has been 90 for quite a while, and I’ve been working hard to have a second 90 to fill a spot in a second raid to make sure everyone who wants to raid can. So, after a week of solid work (and assistance from a girlfriend who enjoys powering everyone’s alts through dungeons), I got Qiuzhi, my Pandaren Mistweaver/Windwalker, to level 90 this past Sunday morning. She was not the first alt I was expecting to get to 90, and I suspect that Malyss is very disappointed in me right now.

I’m sure she’ll deal. She hasn’t been in a spotlight position since Wrath anyway.

I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of healing for pickup tanks right now, since she’s decked out in crafted PVP healing gear. I don’t have mana issues so long as people pay attention and do what they’re supposed to, but after her first two heroics on Sunday, I’m starting to wonder how many people haven’t absorbed the fact that we’re on a new expansion, and the healers in dungeons aren’t gloriously overgeared for them.

Siege of Niuzao Temple is the best dungeon for showing you who your potential raiders are. The third boss, with the shield and the bombs is Grade-A trial material for who will cut it in your first week, I guarantee it. My experience with it was abysmal, until I finally lost it.

I won’t go into the specifics of describing the fight, as anyone who still reads my blog already knows them I’m sure, but when people are throwing bombs at the tank holding the adds, not getting out of the way of bombs that are about to blow up, and just generally not paying attention, your mana goes right out the window. Rocks fall, everybody dies.

Then it happened a second time, after a brief explanation of what not to do.

It must be my old age, but I’m actually very impressed with myself that I didn’t just put the whole bunch of idiots (except the tank, he’s my friend) on ignore and leave the dungeon. I ended up telling my buddy to wait a moment, and I proceeded to fill the chat with something more direct. I didn’t even swear once, which is something of a milestone for me. It was fairly simple.

“Do not stand next to bombs unless you’re going to throw them. If you cannot get to a bomb within 2-3 seconds, then leave it alone and GET AWAY. If a bomb has fallen near you, and you don’t know how long it has been there, then GET AWAY. I don’t care if you have to stop DPS for five seconds, I don’t care if your mother is on the phone. I am not overgeared for this content, and I CANNOT HEAL STUPID. The less damage you take, the more likely we are to get through this encounter. Now buck up and let’s do this right.”

The next attempt went without a hitch. I barely even had to heal, except for the tempest AoE and some sudden, unexplainable tank damage. I even got to throw some bombs.

This expansion is going to be serious culture shock for people who cannot adapt. Now, more than ever, in heroics and in raids, personal accountability is at the forefront. This is a good thing for people like me, those people who play to get better, for those who expect the most out of themselves in the arena they choose to play in, heroic or normal raiding. For a player with more of a sense of entitlement toward the endgame, this expansion will either forge them into something better, or it will break them. I don’t think there can be a middle ground.

There’s more to say, but my friend already has the trademark on the Bearwall. I’ll just have to save it for the next post.