Last Stand of the Zandalari : A Restospective

As the sun begins to set on Tier 15, most people are getting excited about what's to come with 5.4.  A new raid, tweaks to our toolkit, and new game features have people all a-flutter - and for excellent reason!  It's  hard to not be excited to see changes that will positively impact our game play and give us new challenges to overcome.

Here's a fond farewell to the current progression tier and a Restospective look back at what we have conquered.  There are three categories that I'm putting fights into: Love It, Hate It, or Meh.  Without further ado, here's my Restospective on Last Stand of the Zandalari (Throne of Thunder Part 1).

Small Server Blues

Imagine the crackle and click of a record player as it plays a classic Blues vinyl. Pull up a rocking chair and a dewy glass of iced tea with an old friend and look around 'town' (your server). Does it look like it used to? Do you look around and see the shadows of people you used to enjoy playing with? Is it the lively party town it used to be or has it become, like mine, a ghost town?

Names of people I used to play with, see in trade chat, undercut on the auction house or just see dancing on the fountain in Stormwind just aren't there any more. Georgebailey, a trade troll of the highest order, doesn't even spam his "If the Lich King's mount is Invincible, why can I still see it?" any more. Vannawhite's seemingly endless supply of vanity pets has dried up and quietly faded away. Awesome raiders like Floe and Culi have their pictures on the back of the pearl milk cartons. Heck, even Promade has stopped raiding Stormwind and making our RP server life generally miserable by camping the AH or the flight masters.

I have to wonder. Is this a case of memories being better than the times actually were, or is my server really going the way of the dodo?

Turning a Bane into a Boon

LFR.

Love it or hate it, you know it. For some, it's a loot piñata, where the worst part of it is the luck you have queuing with a group which may be filled with trolls, incompetents, elitists, or all of the above.  For others, it's the lone source of raiding and the only way they'll ever see end game content. Some also use it as an avenue for gearing an alt, perfecting rotations and trying out new roles. 

For me, I can't stand it. I'm not saying LFR is a bad thing, I just don't want to spend my somewhat limited gaming time in there. I may have even stated once or twice that it's the bane of my existence.  In my opinion, the content is less challenging than some heroic dungeons or scenarios. The jump between LFR and 10M normal is huge. Mechanics can be ignored in LFR, outgoing damage tickles, and OOMing is never an issue (so long as the others are pulling at least some of their weight). But, when I step back and think about it, there's far more you can get out of it than meets the eye. 

So how can you turn this bane into a boon?  Simple. Change your viewpoint and look at it with new eyes.

Rolling With the Punches

"In the face of great adversity, great heroism can shine through."  -Me

While burning through content, there's always the possibility that things can go sideways.  A thunderstorm knocks out the electric, the dog chews through your network cable, kids get sick - we've all been there.  If it hasn't happened to us personally, it has happened to our team. My team has the infamous Jasper Wipe of 2012, when at 3% on what would have been our first kill of Deathwing, our dog Jasper knocked the power cord out of our wireless router. You can imagine the uproar that ensued with the main tank and a healer disconnected there - and of course the ensuing wipe.