I did my first proper raid to AQ40 yesterday. I had entered AQ40 once before, in an impromptu raid with my old guild, on the day the gates of Ahn'qiraij openened on our server. But then we were totally unprepared, pulled the first sphinx-like trash mob without knowing what it did, and the sphinx promptly wiped the whole raid by exploding.
This time, months later and with a new guild, the expedition was better prepared. We had lots of people draining mana from the sphinx to keep it from exploding. The packs of 4 anubis guys were harder, because these have random abilities, and you never know what to expect. But what kind of killed us was the fact that the trash mobs respawn so fast. Being on the first guild raid to there, things naturally went a bit slow, due to tactics having to be explained and so on. So by the time we were at the fourth group of trash mobs, the last before the first boss, we had a respawn of the first sphinx, which unfortunately is a patrol and spawned right in our combat. In the confusion we didn't get enough mana drain fast enough on the sphinx, and *boom* went the raid. We ended up having to do everything again, then kill the first sphinx respawn another time, before we could finally tackle the prophet.
I only participated in the first try on the big pink bug prophet, the first boss in AQ40, and that try failed. It was kind of fun, I got mind-controlled, and was running around as a giant form of myself, blasting the raid with holy novas. It is a rather complicated fight, with mind-controls, illusionary dopplegangers, and other nasty effects. I wasn't really surprised that we couldn't manage it on the first try, and didn't want to stay trying all night, when I have to get up early next morning.
I'm a bit in two minds about raiding these harder places, BWL and AQ40. On the one side it is interesting to go to new places, fight new mobs, and maybe even have a chance to get some new loot. On the other side these places are hard, we wipe a lot, and that makes people cranky. It puts a stress on the guild, which reveals that we aren't one big happy family. I was kind of in the middle, having read up on the strategy for the prophet. But in the raid there were some people who had studied the encounter extensively, watching blurry videos on YouTube (I can never make out anything in those), and collecting all sorts of strategy advice from different forums and sites. And others were much less prepared, and there wasn't a whole lot of time to explain all the details of the boss fight in raid chat, due to the fast trash mob respawns. So of course the well prepared hardcore players accused the less well prepared casual players of being responsible for the wipe. Which to a certain extent is certainly true, but only to be expected. It isn't that easy to explain a complicated boss encounter in words, and in the end a guild just needs to practice the encounter a couple of time, discuss openly what went wrong and how to improve it, and try again until it works. This open discussion doesn't seem to be possible at the moment, there is too much anger and laying blame.
So I really don't know if I should show up to these raids any more. I'm a bit sick of the fighting. It is deja vu all over again, to quote Yogi Berra. The truth is that BWL and AQ40 need not just 40 players, they need 40 players with a certain amount of gear, experience, and dedication. And so I'm getting flashbacks of all the fights my old guild had when the most hardcore people there wanted to start Molten Core, and the guild as a whole just wasn't ready for it. If you aren't among the most hardcore of the guild, you are being blamed whatever you do. If you wisely decide to stay away you are blamed for not helping, and if you bow to the pressure and come to the raid, but fail to meet hardcore expectations, you are blamed for causing the wipes. Guilds are rarely homogeneous, with all players being exactly at the same "level", and the most hardcore are always those with the biggest ambitions. If the guild as a whole can't fulfill the ambitions of the few, frustration and fights make guild life so hard.
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