Raid Night

Tuesdays are raid night.

That's become one indelible imprint that playing World of Warcraft has made on my life.  On Tuesday morning the servers go down for maintenance, and then when they come back up and I get off work in the evening there are fresh bosses to down and a surge of players ready to take their stuff.

For raiders, the week starts on Tuesday.  Monday is a day for finishing up old business, knocking out a couple of dungeons, or getting mats like flasks and feasts ready to fuel the raid machine.  We watch Monday Night Football, or take the significant other out to eat, or do a few extra chores because from 7pm to 11pm on Tuesday...

It's raid night.


Our guild, The Risen, starts Tuesdays by taking 25 people into Baradin Hold for an easy kill and possibly someone's tier piece.  After that we split into two 10-man teams to tackle the other raids.  The two groups don't try to be competitive:  the "Core" group is for introductory raiders and runs two nights out of the week, the "Progression" group meets more often and hits harder content.  Players can move between them if they have the skill (and gear, but mostly skill) to fight harder bosses and good raiding habits, like not going AFK for ten minutes at a time for a phone call or dropping out of the raid because you forgot to update your computer's drivers.

Tonight, that caused problems for the Core group.  One of our tanks dropped out, and we got started 30-45 minutes late.  Dropping bosses took a little longer, but we still managed to take down Atramedes for the first time.  If we had started on-time we might have been able to get some time on another boss, but we decided to call it early and go out on a high note.

Speaking of high notes...

This is the happiest I've ever been to see a scorpion.  Seriously.  The kitten's also mine.