Cataclysmic Bucket List and OpenRaid

It’s been about five months since my last post on this blog. There’s several good reasons for that. First off, I started my first full-time job last year and this ended up taking more time and needing more energy than I had ever imagined. Secondly, Cataclysm just hasn’t been as exciting to play or to write about as Wrath of the Lich King. And thirdly, there’s just been too many other awesome games that simply had to be played. I mean, come on, you played Skyrim too, didn’t you?  or maybe; Assassin’s Creed: Revelations? Trine 2? Battlefield 3? Portal 2? Super Mario 3D Land?
Ok, maybe that last one wasn’t the most awesome game ever, but it was still pretty fun.

Another reason is one that I rediscovered today while getting back to the blog and updating it. I have so many posts and guides that all could be full of outdated information so I feel the need to go through everything and doublecheck the validity of each claim, links, etc.
Today I spent more hours than a full work day on just trying to make sure old guides aren’t irrelevant, and I haven’t even gotten through half of them yet. This whole update process is not fun and is a big deterrent for me when it comes to updating the blog.

When it comes to guides for Mists of Pandaria, I might try to be a bit more restrictive with how many guides I write and maintain to minimize this… I mean, Warcraft Hunters Union and ElitistJerks does a good job of telling you what to do and not to do already, so why repeat it? Instead I can write more random nonsensical stuff that doesn’t have to be fact checked twice, thrice and again.

The Cataclysmic Bucket list

I didn’t come back here just to start ranting about everything and displaying how lazy I am. I mean, I almost did. But then I came up with some other stuff to write as well!

Back in 2010 I wrote a bucket list for things I wanted done before Cataclysm would come out. Luckily for me, I managed to get almost everything on my list done (see the link for the details).
Now it’s that time again, we’re at the last tier of an expansion and the only thing we are waiting for now is the new systems patch to bring all the class and mechanical changes to the game and then after that, the actual release of the expansion; Mists of Pandaria.
So, because of that, I wrote a new bucket list.

Get…

• That annoying Fox Kit pet from Tol Barad Peninsula that never ever drops
• All the Darkmoon Faire pets and mounts
• All the Archaeology pets and mounts
• Thori’dal, The Stars Fury (the legendary bow)
• Halion 25-man heroic
• Glory of the Cataclysm Raider
• Ragnaros heroic
• Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider

I found this rare bastard today after a few hundred Tol'vir solves

And I have to tell you, so far it’s going real good. I managed to get the fox pet after a few thousand foxes had been slaughtered on the peninsula, almost all the archaeology rewards that I’ve been after have been found – just one pet missing – and my Darkmoon Faire grind is almost done.

The legendary bow still eludes me even though I’ve been there every week for what now seems like forever, and each time I drag along with me some poor victims from the guild who have to suffer through with me. I really do appreciate their help, without them I would be dead in the water regarding this achievement. Sunwellian grinding guildies: You rock!

All the raiding achievements on the list (except for the last one) I have managed to finish off already thanks to OpenRaid. Halion 25-man heroic was the most recent one, it lasted maybe 20 minutes and was one-shot. So, so easy. But impossible to do on my realm since there’s rarely even 25 people available in trade chat, let alone 25 people interested in doing an old raid.

For Glory of the Cataclysm Raider I had most achievements I needed already through guild efforts but lately the guild hasn’t cared too much about doing tier 11 content so I searched other venues for completing my achievement and again, that venue was OpenRaid. Over the course of several nights I managed to get all the heroic bosses needed to finish the meta achievement, no night ended up in no achievement. Every raid was successful.  And same for Rangaros heroic, I just joined one raid and that was it: Firelord Gavendo!

Gushing over OpenRaid

Needless to say, I really like OpenRaid now. My personal experience has so far been 100% successful raids, full of people who behaved maturely and were excited to do the achievements we were doing. Of course, not every group will be successful, but if you do your best you can be sure that the chances are pretty damn good.

This site is fantastic for crossrealm pugging. It has scheduling and a chatroom for more impromptu pugs. It has a feedback system similar to eBay, after each raid you get to up/down-vote each person who was in the raid and leave a comment on them. This prevents people from behaving like assholes, ninjaing items, afking all the way through a raid, etc. If you’re an ass, everyone will know about it.

You can pug all raids (except for Dragon Soul), dungeons and battlegrounds through this system. Are there any raid achievements or dungeon achievements from the past that you are looking to complete? Are there battleground achievements that seem impossible to do without a group full of achievement-hungry people? Well, what are you waiting for? There is now a website just for you and everyone like you and it’s called OpenRaid.

Cheers,
Gav