Jennie Lees

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Stories By Jennie Lees

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    News By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Summertime, and the livin' is...

    Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.Ah, summer. Pimm's in the sunshine, the thwack of tennis balls against grass, iced Frappucinos and hayfever. Delights like these, and others, all conspire to turn perfectly normal raiders into monsters of poor attendance. Yet guilds soldier on despite a mixture of player attrition and general unreliability -- this column looks at some of the ways they manage.The problem at hand is that many raiding guilds, at all levels of raiding, rely on a fairly tight-knit group of players. The smaller the raiding core, the more reliant you become on everyone showing up, but the better the guild is (in theory) since your players are well accustomed to working together. Additionally, loot is better used since it generally goes to those who raid rather than those who sit out.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: I'm more hardcore than you

    Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.Firstly, dedicated followers of this column (hi, Mum) will have noticed a new addition - Michael Gray's working his magic to make Ready Check not just weekly, but twice-weekly! Is that more than enough Ready Check to keep anyone happy? I think so.Today's column is inspired by a question we've been discussing internally: is WoW a sport? Specifically, as so many of the externally validated goals in-game relate to raiding, how does raiding stand up to other, more traditional sports? We're not talking eSports, but good old fashioned team games. How do the attitudes in raiding differ from those you'd find in the sporting-as-a-hobby world?

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Hard modes and progression

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Archavon or Algalon, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we look at the hard modes in Ulduar.It is a truth universally acknowledged that a raiding guild, in possession of a good enough fortune to cover repair costs, must be in want of a challenge. Rather than make bosses difficult by default, the design of Ulduar is liberally sprinkled with the sort of challenge we only saw hints of before -- hard modes.The idea behind hard modes is to cater for every type of raider. Whether you just want to see content, have difficulty killing it as-is, or fancy spending several evenings wiping to artificial constraints, you can do so. (Note that when I say 'normal mode' from now on I mean non-hard-mode, not 10-man.)

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Casual meets hardcore

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Archavon or Algalon, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, I attempt to find common ground with a casual player who's never raided and doesn't want to.This weekend, I spent several hours talking shop with a woman who, as well as being a casual player, also has the unfortunate privilege of having given birth to me some time previously. As well as being my mum, Lynn is a gamer, and a few years ago I managed to lure her away from Guild Wars -- where she never got past level 10 -- to WoW. She now plays a level 80 enhancement shaman, as well as uncountably many alts (far more than me, and I'm an altoholic).However, she's very cautious about group play. She socialises with her guild and has run the odd 5-man dungeon, but doesn't really understand the scene beyond that. Despite playing more than enough hours to join a raiding guild, she hasn't, and with raiding now very much accessible to all, I was curious why.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Progression Recruitment and Roster Churn

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we're LF24M Yogg-Saron hard mode PST.It's interesting to watch the flow of players into and around hardcore guilds, and how it changes during farm, progress and the area in between. Why are so many of these guilds recruiting, and how does it change the meta-game?There are two reasons for a hardcore guild to recruit: to expand the roster and gain flexibility, or to replace players who are leaving the raiding squad. But what effect does it have on the guild? Let's take a look.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Is Ulduar too easy?

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we do some homework.The long-awaited new instance has been live for almost two weeks now, and a lot of the excitement over first kills is waning. Everything Blizzard has thrown at us so far is dead, and even several of the hard-mode kills, nominally on a level with Sarth-3D, are beaten.So, this leads us naturally on to the question - is Ulduar hard enough?

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Preparing for Ulduar's Bosses

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Naxxramas-10 or Naxxramas-25, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we do some homework.With Patch 3.1 and the release of Ulduar fast approaching, it's time to sit down and prepare for the upcoming content. Now, you might be the sort of raider who loves a surprise or two, and as a result you haven't looked at any of the preview coverage of Ulduar; if that sounds familiar, you probably don't want to continue reading this article.If, however, your guild is going to rush into Ulduar as soon as possible, aiming for server or even world firsts, you need to be prepared. Let's take a look at the resources you can use to maximise your chances of success against the unknown.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Ulduar and Burnout

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Naxxramas-10 or Naxxramas-25, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we look at people who are leaving raiding despite Ulduar being imminent.It's that time of year again. We're hardly as jaded by farming tier 7 content as we were back in the days of Black Temple and Hyjal, but burnout has been rearing its ugly head lately, putting raiding guilds in a difficult position. Ulduar approaching will obviously put a stop to the problem - but for how long?When all the 25-man content is cleared in a handful of hours, nobody has any reason to run 10-mans and the drop-of-a-hat PTR testing schedule means we're entirely at Blizzard's whim as to when we can poke new content, it's no wonder people are becoming bored. Arguably, it's better that we don't get more than a few limited hours a week on the PTR, in order that the content is fresh when it actually hits. However, the actual effect of this drip-feeding has seemed to dampen enthusiasm for Ulduar rather than heighten it, especially as one of the most available bosses is unfortunately Flame Leviathan.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Nearly Immortal

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week's Ready Check was inspired by reader Evan, who wrote in to tell us of some frustrating near-brushes with immortality.Among hardcore and casual guilds alike, the achievement 'The Immortal' has caused nothing but a headache, even though finally pulling it off puts you in a very elite group of raiders. We misguidedly hoped that there wouldn't be a similar achievement in Ulduar, but 'The Immortal, Part Two' puts paid to that hope. However, it's substantially changed in difficulty.Currently, you have to complete Naxxramas without a single raid member dying on any boss encounter within a single lockout. This makes for incredibly tense raids when things are going well, and incredibly frustrated raids when something goes wrong and puts paid to that week's attempt. We'll take a look at some of the things that can go wrong in Naxxrams a bit later.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Know your raiders

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we get psychological on your posterior.We're all familiar with caricatures of raiders, from the aggressive aggro-hungry warlock to the placid, gentle priest. Generalising to quite this extent is perhaps a little unfair, but it's certainly true that many raiders share common personality traits; by looking at research into personality and learning types, we can understand our raid force better and perhaps even find out a thing or two about how to manage them.Have you ever wondered what makes your raid group tick? Why people with seemingly conflicting behaviour and goals get on just fine when there are dragons to be slain? Psychology research explains it all.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Sartharion plus 3 Drakes

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we take on a dragon and his mates. Yeah.Last week we provided an outline of the Sartharion encounter, promising to deliver more detail this week on how to beat the boss with all three of his drake companions alive at the pull. This is commonly called 'hard mode' and, although it's not for the faint hearted, it's by no means impossible either. However, excellent co-ordination and DPS are required in order to keep the fight under control and things can quickly degenerate into chaos. When to attempt 3 drakesIs your guild or raid group ready to even try 3 drakes? There's no hard-and-fast rule that says 'you need to be this awesome to leave three drakes alive'. If you're thinking about trying it, we'd hope that you've already killed Sartharion, probably with one or two adds already alive. You've cleared Naxx and are decked out in gear, you have a diverse pool of people to draw from, and you can communicate with each other. That's all you need, really, although a couple of things can help, including a well geared tank and complementary DPS.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Sartharion

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we try to avoid dying in a fire. Again.In keeping with this weekend's theme, we all know there's nothing that shows your love for another pixellated avatar as sincerely as slaying a dragon for them. Throughout history, knights in shining armour have triumphed victorious in the face of fire-breathing monsters, and this week's Ready Check is no exception. (We'll deal with Sartharion's frost-breathing compatriot in an upcoming week, don't fret!)Sartharion the Onyx Guardian is a 'standalone' boss located in the Obsidian Sanctum below Wyrmrest Temple. Accompanied by a trio of lesser drakes, this encounter can be approached a number of ways, making it challenging to a wide audience. Although clearing the trash is necessary, killing the drakes before engaging Sartharion is optional; any drakes left alive before beginning the fight will join in during the encounter, adding extra challenge (and loot) to those who desire it.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Preparing for Ulduar

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we look to the future...In amongst detailed tactical explanations of the various bosses currently residing in the available level 80 raid instances, let's take a break to look at the bigger picture. Many guilds are in a situation several of you can relate to: having cleared Naxxramas, the Eye of Eternity and the Obsidian Sanctum (let's not pretend Vault of Archavon's a proper raid instance), there's nothing left to do but clear them again. And again. And again...Welcome to farm status. Whether you struggled to defeat the final denizens of these dungeons or facerolled it all in the first week, eventually raiders reach a common plateau with everything killed and these kills more or less easily repeatable. When at this point, there are several different directions you can go, and I'm sure we've all seen other people do one or more of the following: get bored and simply stop showing up; get greedy and focus entirely on loot, playing sloppily and angsting over drops; level an alt and suddenly have the world revolve around that character, trying to get it into raids because your main doesn't need loot; or hunker down and start preparing for the future.This week's column deals with the latter, but if you're seeing people exhibit less-than-savoury behaviour now you clear everything in one night a week, it can be very telling -- especially if they're a recent recruit. With the leisure of a farm period, you have time to deal with these people as your guild sees fit, although boredom is a real problem when farm periods are long (such as the gap between Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau). With nothing to interest hardcore raiders in the game any more, real life starts rearing its head, and many guilds lose important players at this time, replacing them with untried raiders who might seem great on farm content but whose skill on progress raids is an unknown. There's no real solution to this, it happens, and it's up to your guild how you deal with it.So how does a guild prepare for a raid instance nobody knows much about?

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Guide to Naxxramas (Military Quarter)

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we visit some Death Knights in their natural habitat.Are you a fan of our new death knight brethren? If so, you're in for a treat: there are plenty of them in store for you in this quarter of Naxxramas, as we continue our journey towards Kel'Thuzad's throne. Our whistlestop tour will pop in and visit Instructor Razuvious, Gothik the Harvester and finally the Four Horsemen, whose charismatic yells punctuate the wing as a whole.Remember, if you want everything to be a surprise, don't read beyond the cut!

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Guide to Naxxramas (Plague Quarter)

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we continue exploring Naxxramas by venturing into the territory of plague beasties. Continuing our journey through the halls of Naxxramas, which began last week with the Arachnid Quarter, this week's Ready Check takes a close-up view of the Plague Quarter. As with last week's guide, don't read any further if you want everything to be a surprise when you venture in. We'll be looking at Noth the Plaguebringer, Heigan the Unclean and Loatheb. But first, let's talk about trash...

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Guide to Naxxramas (Arachnid Quarter)

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we look at the first few bosses in Naxxramas.Today we'll be looking at a blast from the past, revisiting Naxxramas and providing details on the boss encounters that await those brave enough to enter the dread citadel. For those of you who haven't had a chance to look inside the all-new Naxx, here's your spoiler warning: look away now if you don't want to hear about what's in store.This week's article examines the Arachnid Quarter, and we'll be visiting the other quarters in upcoming articles. We'll look at each boss on both normal and heroic modes, pointing out the differences (beyond HP increases). Generally, if you've defeated the boss on normal mode, there are only minor changes to adapt to on heroic mode (and vice versa).

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Everything's dead, Dave

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we look at the sort of people who've already killed everything, and ask "Why?"...There's been a lot of discussion over the last week concerning hardcore raiders -- specifically those among the raiding corps who've raced to 80 as fast as possible and cleared every instance in game already. To people outside this group, it's quite easy to get a bit carried away when discussing raiders: these people don't have jobs, they ruin the game for themselves, they can't be actually enjoying a moment of it...None of the above is true, of course. This week's Ready Check looks at the current raiding game from the perspective of one who's cleared it all, and attempts to inject a little myth-busting and reality into the hyperbole.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Everything's dead, Dave, part 2

    So what's the secret behind those guilds that have already wiped the floor with Blizzard's current endgame raid content? Is the content's tuning to blame, would they have done it anyway, or do they have special insider knowledge? The sort of guilds that have already cleared everything would have at least tried to do so anyway, regardless of boss encounter knowledge and tuning.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Preparing for Wrath raiding

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we venture into new (well, sort of) territory...While many people are taking a leisurely stroll towards 80, seeing the sights and exploring all the new content, there's a sizeable contingent of players racing to get to the level cap as soon as possible so the real fun can begin. Many of these are aiming to raid immediately, but there's a lot of catching up to do before our WotLK endgame knowledge matches the depth of its TBC counterpart.So if you are planning to raid early on, and are wondering about gear, preparation and whether you should buy that mammoth or not, we're here to help.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: A look back on Burning Crusade raiding part 3

    Black Temple, by contrast, was well-designed, extremely atmospheric and even enjoyable up to a point. After these three 'easy' bosses, Black Temple started to get fairly challenging, requiring individual competence for Teron, threat management for Bloodboil and a general awareness (plus ability not to kill oneself) for RoS. Then it was off to pay a visit to the Illidari Council -- provided you got past One-Shot the Robot, of course.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: A look back on Burning Crusade raiding

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we sing a swansong to TBC raiding in all its glory.With less than a week to go before we all start frantically levelling and leaving Outland behind for good, let's not forget the ups and downs raiding during The Burning Crusade has brought us. From Attumen to Kil'jaeden, we've run the gamut of raiding, killing anything from pit lords to corrupted naaru with nary a blink.We've shed blood and tears over rare drops, wiped countless times until the small hours, decked our alts out in epics and moved servers to find a better guild. We've rerolled, watched ourselves and our raid instances get nerfed, hung out in Shattrath showing off our gear, and gotten to grips with major class changes in the last two weeks. So let's look back...

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Kil'jaeden (and friends), post-3.0.2

    Kil'jaeden, the Sunwell Plateau end boss, has had a tough time lately. Since the Echoes of Doom patch, plenty of guilds have breezed through Sunwell and many of those have managed to kill him for the first time, signing off TBC raiding with a bang. Congratulations to them!This is pretty symptomatic of raiding post-3.0.2 in general -- while nothing on the surface has changed drastically, everything's become a whole lot easier, as increased damage output, decreased mob health and relaxing of raid constraints all add up to great effect. Previously complex encounters become almost trivial and previously trivial encounters become hilarious, with a slight twist of nostalgia when remembering how hard they were first time round.

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Raid composition for 3.0.2 and beyond

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. While enjoying sparkly new raid buffs... Once the upcoming content patch hits, our raids are going to look pretty different. Or are they? Currently, balancing your raid is a delicate game that involves weighing up various gains and tradeoffs, while simultaenously placating people who are all competing for the same spots. While this micromanagement doesn't appeal to everyone, looking at a raid and acknowledging it as a feat of min-max perfection does bring a certain warm glow to one's heart. Of course, knowing the exact DPS increase from putting a feral druid in the melee group or running perl scripts to calculate a retribution paladin's RDPS contribution is considered overkill by many. Perhaps it's with a sigh of relief that we look forward to 3.0.2's new buff system, where such things will be unnecessary – though I think the logicians among us will always look back slightly wistfully at the way things are now. So, how do you optimise your raid when the patch hits?

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: Leading the fray

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Or motivate 24 other people to do so!For many guilds, raiding is in a bit of a lull at the moment, with far more focus on the future rather than the present. One of the things that can keep raiding life interesting is to try out different things; play an alt, try a weird setup, revisit old content...How about a slightly different challenge? Something that will stretch your ability to multitask, to communicate, to deal with people; it'll try your patience but provide immeasurable rewards when that patience pays off. No, I don't mean running for an election. I'm talking about raid leading.

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    PC Gaming
    PC Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: First steps into Naxxramas-10

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we fight lag and Kel'Thuzad.Being back in Naxxramas is strange. At level 60, Naxx represented the pinnacle of raiding -- hard work, shiny epics and some really interesting boss encounters. At 70, overcome with nostalgia and spare time, revisiting Naxx meant taking a casual disregard for most tactics and simply overpowering bosses with the force of purples.So what's it like stepping back into the dread citadel as a fresh level 80, over two years since my first adventures therein? Read on for spoilers...

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    Gaming
    Gaming By Jennie Lees

    Ready Check: In Limbo

    Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we look to the future...Raiding's in an interesting place at the moment. With the upcoming raid changes and dungeons we'll see in WotLK, a lot of people are looking forward and feeling less enthusiasm for the present. Some of those with bosses yet to kill in the game are becoming despondent at ever seeing the end of the tunnel, and people with everything on farm are finding excuses not to raid once they have their desired gear under their belts.So what can raiders do now to prepare for the expansion, and how can raid guilds deal with the pre-expansion blues?

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