New beginnings

If anyone has been reading my posts so far, you’ll know that the story so far was that I was about to move servers to join a new guild….

My experience of raiding in wotlk up to then was only 10 mans, with the exception of 2 runs in Naxx to make up the numbers in an old guild (and even then not all bosses), and I was now in a guild that had everything on farm except the absolute hardest encounter in the game at that time
If I remember correctly my transfer completed on a Monday, and my first raid with new guild was the day after….
First raids when on trial at a new guild are always interesting, you’re never quite sure what the style will be like, will the connection to a new vent server be ok ? will I be able to understand the raid leader ? and what’s more, this was no ordinary, easy gentle lead in to a new guild…..this was a “wipe night” on Sartharion with all 3 drakes up !!!


Talk about in at the deep end….I don’t mind admitting I was nervous, very nervous….I wanted to perform well of course, I wanted to register decent dps values, and mostly, I didn’t want to be the one that always died to the void zones


The leadership of the guild clearly saw something in my application they liked, because they put a lot of faith in me that night, I didn’t even get so much as asked if I knew the tactics for Sarth3D, it was just assumed I’d know….luckily I did know, at least from reading about it, so other than getting answers to specific questions I had such as at what time the raid leader wanted me to take portals, when do you want me to start using AoE to take the adds down etc, I wasn’t given any instructions at all…..

Well…if I remember correctly, on the very first attempt I died pretty early (though I wasnt the first) in a flame wave, which I attribute entirely to my graphics settings, which for the 10 mans I’d been accustomed to, I had on maximum……and as anyone that has done it I am sure will agree, 25 man Sarth3D has a lot going on in it graphically…..my computer just didn’t handle it very well at all…


That didn’t help my nervousness one bit ! I felt like such a noob….

Anyway, one tweak of graphic settings to something more suitable and one restart later, I was back for the next attempt, which fortunately, went much better (for me at least, at this stage, I honestly didn’t care how the fight went as a whole, I just wanted my own performance to be good enough to not fail a trial period at the first hurdle….

Thankfully, with a proper frame rate, I was able to avoid silly deaths (mostly, I’m still human and did make some errors of course)
And much better than that, after only maybe 10 attempts, the big dragon fell….thats right, my very first raid in my new guild was the guild first kill of Sarth 3D…..not only that, but I was alive at the end, and my dps stats were decent…I wasn’t the highest, but I certainly pulled my weight….I was happy enough that I hadn’t just been boosted

It was a very very weird feeling……pretty much my first proper 25 man raid in wotlk, and I’d beaten the hardest encounter the game had to offer…..how’s about that for my first raid with a new guild !!!!!