Lo-Quality WoW

Back when Burning Crusade came out, I went out and bought the regular edition. It was only a few days later that a friend called to say “hey I can get the collector’s edition, did you want one?” Of course I did. But back then, Blizzard didn’t allow you to “upgrade” your account again if you had already converted to BC.

Naturally, there were people like me who had gotten the collector’s edition after upgrading and were disappointed not to get the Netherwhelp pet. Eventually, Blizzard did relent and allowed you to upgrade from regular to collector’s edition. Problem was, I didn’t find out about it until I had upgraded my account to Wrath of the Lich King and you couldn’t “upgrade” an account to a BC after it had become and WLK account.

So once again, I didn’t have my pet. However, recently I was checking and found out that there was a new part of the account manager that said “upgrade or add keys to your account.” I quick check showed that I could enter my old BC collector’s edition code. So, now, around two and a half years later, I finally got my Netherwhelp! Even got the Collector’s Edition: Netherwhelp achievement. Now if only I could get my hands on that mini-diablo at a reasonable price…

I do somewhat take back what I said about the jousting fights being slightly easier. Or at least not for my hunter. While facing the Champions in the Champion’s Ring, I kept getting unhorsed. Repeatedly. So it took me almost twice as long to finally defeat 4 of them than it normally takes me. Very annoying.

I did finish up my dailies, which was good because it was only shortly afterwards that I got an invite to one of the Agency’s Ulduar 10 runs. I wasn’t sure they were even going to run them with Trial of the Crusader being available. Not that I was arguing.

So first up, as usual was Flame Leviathan. Except somehow, someone pulled aggro on…something as I was entering the instance. There was a bunch of “Run back out!” Nothing like running into an instance only to turn around and run back out. Eventually it reset and we went back in. This time I ended up driving the siege tank rather than being the gunner. At least I knew in general what we were doing, so it wasn’t bad. I think my gunner was new to FL though. I don’t think he used the anti-aircraft guns and he would sometimes pop the shield when we were just facing the regular mobs. No problem, we all learn eventually and we didn’t die.

Then came FL himself. And naturally, he chased me first. Fortunately, I remembered to save enough steam to speed away. Then he switched to the other siege tank. I turned to chase and thought I was okay until the other tank driver yelled “Hey, other siege tank, interrupt the flame vents!” Whoops. I knew I forgot something. I guess it didn’t help that initially I was having trouble seeing when the flame vent was going. Eventually I did get a rhythm down for it and FL went down.

Razorscale was next. This one was a little interesting since we had to reorganize slightly for it. Then we did our first try and wiped. I’m not sure exactly what happened, I know a few people died and we quickly fell apart after that. Somehow I was far enough away from the center of the area that they chased me for a second, decided I wasn’t worth it, then reset. Hmm, we switched some people around. Again, we wiped, this time I think it was because when we finally grounded Razorscale, we had too many adds still up for the off-tank to deal with and once he went down, the add ran through the raid. This time, I did die but it’ still annoying.

Third times the charm right? Exactly. This time we managed to kill the adds just as Razorscale got grounded. After that, it was dodging fireballs and hitting the dragon. Of course, there was one brief moment where I looked up to see that somehow I had drifted in front of the dragon and was partly hit by it’s breath attack. Not enough to kill me, although it came close. We looted and someone mentioned “Is the drop rate on those hunter bracers 100% or something?” Sure enough, one of the drops was the Bracers of the Smothering Inferno. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure it dropped the other times as well.

The XT-002 was next. However, we started getting word from the other Ulduar 10 group that they were running into issues with it. Apparently, they were seeing more adds than they were used to and they were having trouble preventing the scrapbots from repairing the XT-002. Hmm, and people were getting tired and needed to leave shortly, so we decided we would try it once and if it didn’t work, we’d go the next night and do it. So they assigned myself and the mage to deal with the adds.

And naturally, out of the gate, I got the light bomb. No problem, I was in the back and nobody was near me, so I blew up. Then we go to the point the adds first arrive. They weren’t kidding, I didn’t remember there being so many adds when we did the Ulduar 25. Fortunately, the mage was able to slow the first group enough that when we hit the bomb-bot, it blew up and caused a chain reaction with the bomb-bots behind it, which also exploded and took out all the scrapbots. Perfect, since we also netted the Nerf Scrapbots (10 player) achievement. However, it also meant we had to run to the otherside to grab the ones coming from the other corner.

I screwed up here and didn’t place my frost trap correctly. So we ended up taking out the bomb-bots individually. Fortunately it worked and we went on. The second time the adds popped, something happened to the mage and he died. We still got rid of the bomb-bots but just barely. And I think a scrapbot or two made it through. However, that left mainly me for the third time the adds came out. Somehow I managed to take out most of them, and some of the others were able to clean up what I missed. Man that was stressful. But once we got past that, we easily took him down.

Well, that was it for the night. We’re going to try and go back in tonight. So the first thing will probably be Kologarn, which I found to be easier on 10-man anyway. Then Assembly of Iron, Auriaya and/or Ignis in some sort of order. If we’re really lucky, we’ll make it all the way to Hodir, although I’m a little doubtful. I just want a cool melee to drop. I guess I’ll just hope to see what happens tonight.