Winding down. Gearing up.

Well, World Bank Part II is going to have to wait for a bit. As is stands right now a number of graduate-level issues have come up and they are impeding my ability to do a real analysis of the situation. Of course, that's not to say that I've no time for anything else.

On the contrary, time is exactly what I have right now. At least, in terms of what I do with World of Warcraft. I consider myself a raider as opposed to a PvP'er or a quester. Sure, I do a fair bit of both, come ask me sometime, I'll flash up my Seeker title and then PvP tank you to death in a duel. But you know, those aren't my real draws. Like I said, I come here to raid, to see the new content and push through it.

Sadly though, I do believe ToC is reaching the end of its raid cycle. Granted, that's not to say there isn't still much to do there, but I don't think we'll ever get all of the Faction Champions dead within one minute of each other. Regardless of what the achievement says, resilience will not fix it. Believe me, we've tried. As a guild we're always hoping for that flawless instance with nobody dying, but...you know...I just don't see it happening anytime soon. We've got a few issues with people randomly dying for no reason in ToC. Now I'm not pointing fingers, I'm not blameless myself. Go ahead and come to an Ulduar 10 man with us some time. I think I spend more time on the floor there than just about anyone else, and it's usually for no good reason. Yogg's Faceless Horrors love me. I swear, I can't help it. It's gotten to the point on One Light in the Darkness where I take Divine Storm and Consecrate off of my bar and pray I don't get gibbed. But I digress, we've got some random deaths here and there, but they don't break the raid. We recover without a hitch and move on, but they still occur.

We've done all of the big content by now in terms of 10 man raiding, which is just about all we do: Algalon, Tribute to Insanity, One Light in the Darkness, Firefighter (never again will I get duped into doing this achievement without plenty of cash to back it up). Our ToC runs, both regular and heroic combine for oh...one night of raiding at best. Probably somewhere in the realm of three hours when we throw in a trip to Onyxia for her free badges and cash.

This has created something of a problem for us. Well, not really a problem, but moreso a malaise within our ranks. We are a raiding guild. That's what we consider ourselves to be, but we aren't raiding. We originally planned to raid three nights a week, three hours per night, but it's hard to keep up those standards when we blow through all of the instances in one of those nights. Sure, we still find things to keep us entertained, or at least keep us from falling off of our rockers completely. We've started to sell the 10 man Ulduar protodrake achievement, and it at least gives us something to do. We used to speed farm Naxxramas, but you know...the love is gone. It's almost too much work to get out there anymore. A number of us PvP just to blow off some steam, and another subset of us do a fair number of arenas...for better, for worse. Hell, one of our main tanks has started going through all of the Icecrown quests because he spent all of his time leveling in dungeons. Way to go, JP. Yes, Mal'Ganis is still alive, but he decided to take a break for a bit.

Regardless, we're really just filling time. We've tried to work on the Earth, Wind, and Fire achievement, but it's really hard to coordinate when the Horde on our server have about a one in ten chance of actually controlling Wintergrasp at any one time. It's insanely difficult to schedule a raid only to have the instance be closed for two hours. It's just not bloody convenient. Either way, we still log on every Tuesday and blow through our content for cash and badges, and maybe even that elusive piece of gear from the heroic mode. I think our moonkin has been looking for a belt for the past...thirteen weeks or so? Will it ever drop? I'm betting on the day that Icecrown Citadel opens, you know, just out of spite.

As a raiding guild we thrive on content. Without new content we stagnate and just get cranky. And for us, that's a really bad thing, seeing as that a number of us are already cranky enough. Well, maybe cranky isn't the word...try ateachother'sthroatsbecauseyouclearlydon'tknowhowtostickononetargetifyourlifedependedonitbecauseyouareasaboteurandyouaresabotagingourarenateamrating.

Yeah, I think that'll do nicely.

We'll get through it though, simply because the hint of Icecrown Citadel is right around the corner, or at least all of the PTR goodness is pointing that way. I've watched a few of the streams and I'm pretty excited about it. At least it'll give me something to do besides standing in the northern bank in Dalaran for hours at a time while I play Dragon Age: Origins on my other monitor.

Oh, and before I forget!

Crush of the Week: Our friggin' arena team. You know, we were doing pretty decently for our non-competitive comp, but then we just tanked it into the ground for a few matches and we all got a bit disappointed in ourselves, and each other. We'll give it another shot next week and see what we come up with. If that doesn't meet your personal standards, well, try this one on for size. While it's not WoW-related, it pretty much sums up how I feel about WoW from time to time.