It was inevitable, WoW is just too good of a game to stay away. Alas I reactivated my subscription, but not without irony. That is, when I tried to reactivate my account, their account server had been taken down for some kind of malfunction. >.<! 90 minutes later it finally came back up, at about the same time their login server also came back up. Seems Blizzard still hasn’t ironed that kink out of their magnificent armor, but a friend of mine *coughparancough* put this “downtime” into perspective. What server downtime WoW may experience is somewhat balanced out by the extreme amount of downtime in FFXI looking for a party, farming, crafting, etc etc.
Crumbling this cookie was a lil’bit tougher than we thought …
Upon my return my guild finally decided it was time to head over to Gnomeregan and complete Rig Wars for those lovely pair of +18 agility pants. Trogdor, Shaemis, and I figured it would be a walk in the park and it was … up until we got up to Mekgineer Thermaplugg. One would think that a level 34 elite for 2 level 40s and a level 35 would be a push-over; he wasn’t.
Well at least not with the onslaught of bombs that we had no idea we’d be facing. At first we thought they’d be manageable, but 20 seconds into the fight and many “NEED MORE KABOOM”s my rogue and Trogdor’s hunter found the floor of Gnomeregan to be rather cold and uncomfortable. Battered but not defeated we decided to try one more time, this time with a bigger focus on trying to control the bombs.
Our second attempt went much the same as the first if only because our first attempt left a good number of bombs surrounding Mekgineer which fell Trog’s pet. Out of our 2nd loss we realized that there were buttons on the sides of the bomb releases that would hopefully help control the number of bombs we would contend with. It had gotten late so we decided that we would try again a day later.
The gameplan for our third attempt seemed to be fairly sound. We’d each try to cover 2 buttons each and hit them to close doors as they opened. Meanwhile what bombs did make it out would be taken care of by Trog. Trog also would initiate things with his pet with Shaemis’ pet and I to follow shortly behind.
Controlled chaos would be the best description of how things went. It was a bit harder to stay on top of the buttons (especially since I’m pure melee and would be on the frontline). A few bombs squeaked their way over to me and eventually I ended up trying to kite Mekgineer while Trog tried to keep me out of harm’s way. Shaemis continued to pelt Mekgineer and once he was down to a sliver of life I stopped running and spammed my SS to bring that last bit down.
No more kaboom …
Thermaplugg was definitely a fun experience. For once I got a taste of what could be compared to a BCNM in FFXI. It was a taste that I want more of. Fortunately Blizzard made the end-game accessible for the more casual player, so I know I’ll actually be able to experience this content. It may not be as big of an accomplishment as any of the end-game content in FFXI, but XI has been around for a much longer period of time. Given Warcraft’s mythos, I’m sure there will be plenty of challenges ahead in WoW. Not to mention that battlegrounds and hero classes haven’t been added yet; yes, I think there’s still plenty awaiting us.
One last thing, even though a little late, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
