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From 25 to 10, a Lodur Story
I feel like it's been a pretty big debate since the inception of the concept, whether 25-man or 10-man raiding is the end all be all. Which is "real" raiding? Which is more difficult? Which offers you the most rewards? These questions have almost been a plague on raiding discussion since the option first became available. To be honest, I've never much cared for the debate. I'm the type of person that is a live and let live when it comes to personal preferences in video games. For me, I've always just been a raider. It has been a huge part of my enjoyment with the game, second only to the story and lore of Warcraft. I've also always been a large group raider from Classic World of Warcraft right up to Mists, but I did always run with a 10-man group right up until the point where 10 and 25 started to share a lockout, just so I could keep raiding and so I knew how to handle both situations. Recently, due to personal scheduling reasons, I've had to make some changes to my World of Warcraft playtime that has resulted in not only me re-joining the Horde, but also having shifted from 25-man raiding to full time 10-man healing on Lodur. This post is just my opinions and observations based on my own change from 25-man raiding to 10-man raiding. Your mileage may vary.
15 Minutes of Fame: More than mere Leftovers Part II
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame at wowinsider dot com.Last week, 15 Minutes of Fame brought you Part I of our exclusive chat with the Leftovers raiding community. The Leftovers are neither a guild nor an alliance. Instead, they're an open-ended uber-community of players on Silver Hand -- both guilded and unguilded -- raiding everything from Old World content and Karazhan all the way up through 7/9 BT. Check out their phat stats: The Leftovers run some 70 to 80 raids per week. Ninety percent of players who sign up get into raids. Over the past 3 weeks, 661 players (on 1,094 characters) have attended a Leftovers raid. More than 1,700 players have attended or signed up with Leftovers raids since the Burning Crusade launched. The Leftovers marked their three-year anniversary in May of this year with eight Magtheridon/Gruul runs, including seven kills, plus four Molten Core fun runs. This week, we're back with Part II of our interview with the Leftovers. We chat about the advantages and disadvantages of "open" vs. "closed" raiding groups and the custom tools that make such an immense raiding community practically run itself.
15 Minutes of Fame: More than mere Leftovers
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.Think you've got a hawt PuG raiding group on your server? You ain't seen nothin' until you've seen what's going on with the Leftovers of US Silver Hand-A -- and they're not a guild but rather a collection of pickup raiders! Check out these phat stats: The Leftovers run some 70 to 80 raids per week. Ninety percent of players who sign up get into raids. Over the past 3 weeks, 661 players (on 1,094 characters) have attended a Leftovers raid. More than 1,700 players have attended or signed up with Leftovers raids since the Burning Crusade launched. The Leftovers marked their three-year anniversary in May of this year with eight Magtheridon/Gruul runs, including seven kills, plus four Molten Core fun runs. With numbers like these, the Leftovers raiding community is anything but leftover players. They have raiding groups of all shapes and sizes hitting content both high and low, hard and soft, casually and on a tight progression curve. We visited with a hive-mind group of their leaders to find out why the Leftovers' pickup raid system has become such a resounding success. Read on for Part I of our exclusive interview with the Leftovers.
WoW Rookie: Raid 101
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know. It's been brought to my attention that there are rookies of all levels. Recent columns have covered very basic topics such as instance play, group etiquette, and account security. Once you get to level 70, you'll have several options including solo play, PvP, and instance raiding. Raiding is a major part of the game, but can be somewhat overwhelming at first. Raid instances vary from ten, twenty, twenty-five, and forty players. These instances are similar to five-person dungeons but require considerably more coordination. Ever player must work in concert to bring down challenging bosses, and they are typically rewarded with excellent gear for their efforts.
Progressing through Zul'Aman
Zul'Aman was released with the rest of patch 2.3 two weeks ago today. Due to its place in the progression chain, many guilds were able to burn through it on the first day it was released. Downing Zul'jin is nothing when you're raiding in Hyjal and Black Temple, apparently. Of course, the intended audience for this dungeon seems to be those raiding groups that hadn't seen much action past Karazhan.My own guild has had some success in ZA. While most of us have at least one or two pieces of tier 5 quality loot, we're not up to Vashj or Kael yet, so ZA still holds some challenges for us. We are still dedicated to pushing through the twenty-five player raids, so we haven't spent a lot of time in ZA, but we've been able to take down three bosses without much difficulty. It's a nice change of pace to face encounters where there is a learning curve, but still a lot of room for error. We haven't had much luck at all with the timed aspect of the dungeon, often with silly mistakes costing us those precious few minutes we needed to rescue the prisoner.
