You _can_ go back again... But not for long

In 1999, I made a trip to Detroit to see Tiger Stadium before it was gone. I've never been a Tigers fan, nor have I ever really liked the pictures of the stadium but it had been around since 1912 and was a big part of baseball history. So I dragged two friends through Canada (the fastest way to get to Detroit from Vermont) and in 42 hours, we drove to Detroit, had some car trouble in Toronto rush hour traffic, stopped by Niagara Falls, caught a ball game from the right field porch and returned home.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not equating a World of Warcraft instance that, admittedly, few people ever saw, but the feelings I have about Naxxramas are similar. I only went there maybe 8 times pre-BC and we only ever downed 2 bosses but I have vivid memories of it. I remember grinding Argent Dawn rep for hours... There are a handful of mobs in the Eastern Plaguelands that give rep even at honored. I killed them by the hundreds. I bought my arcane crystals as soon as I learned that we were going to go to Naxxramas because I knew that 40-50 people trying to buy them at once would really drive up the price. When we finally got 40 people attuned, we went in and we wiped on Anub'Rekhan for hours. Three of them on a Sunday afternoon. We never got him past 55%.

But we kept plugging and plugging. We got the locust swarm transition down. We downed the adds faster. We learned the range of the spikes (it turns out that a fire mage can just stand there and not worry about the spikes... Max range is one yard outside their range). When someone died, we dropped everything to down the little scarabs. And then one week, we downed him. It probably took us 8 hours over 4 nights for our first kill. Then we moved on to the Instructor.

He was easier... We downed him in about our 9th attempt. He was easy mode. But I do remember a lot of talk beforehand about getting the priests to the spell hit cap so their mind control wouldn't be resisted. I remember running back and forth around that bannister to get out of line of sight of his shout. That's when things got complicated.

We never downed another boss in Naxxramas. We tried the other two bosses in the Spider wing but we couldn't keep the tank up through the stun on Maexxna and the adds always gave us trouble on Grand Widow Faerlina. So Naxx nights became two sets of trash clears to do the same two bosses over and over followed by repeated wipes on trash and two bosses that had our number and punctuated with a hefty repair bill - and this was before daily quests. If you were in epics, you had to spend a lot of time farming just to raid... And with 3 official and two unofficial raid nights a week, that didn't leave much time. We actually had one person get kicked out of the raid because he couldn't pay the repair bot.

So... On Naxx nights, people stopped showing up. Sure they were on for Blackwing Lair. We had that place on farm. We cleared it in 3 hours every week. They showed up for AQ40 because you were guaranteed a shot at a drop from at least 5 bosses... Then 6. Then 7. People even showed up for Molten Core. Sure it was a lot of alts and people were usually pretty drunk and there were only 33 of us, but we still killed Ragnaros every week. At one point, we had two full MC raids going a week... But Naxx? That died for Crucify.

And that made me sad. The four boss fights I'd seen were the most interesting, most challenging I'd seen save for Twin Emperors and C'thun. I'd always wanted to go back.

But now they're tearing it down....

Well... Not literally... They're repurposing it as the first level 80 raid in Wrath of the Lich King. They're making a 10 man version and a 25 man version and removing the 40 man, level 60 instance. I hear it has the same dimensions but it feels empty with just 10 people there. A lot of the mechanics are similar but it's lost it's epic feel.

That's why I was so pleased when I heard that a horde guild on my server was running Naxxramas every Saturday night... Of course, I wasn't attuned. Hell, none of my characters were even honored. So I took a Friday night and started doing the quests. I got my Barov Peasant Caller. I got my Argent Dawn trinket. I got the key to the city. I got to honored. Then I started running Strat Undead. I found that with some careful stealthing, minimal clearing and a LOT of really good gear, I could solo 45 minute Baron runs. With fragment turn-ins and with me getting all the scourgestones, I got to revered with Argent Dawn by 11 pm that night.... WAY faster than I thought I would. I bought a nexus crystal on the AH and bummed an arcane crystal (I already had one) from a friend I've done some favors for and waited. When the time came, the raid didn't happen. Another guild had poached a few raid members and they didn't have the numbers... That ended up being a really good night because I got my Champion of the Naaru title so it all worked out. That was two weeks ago.

On Friday, WoWinsider.com posted a rundown of the beta version of Naxx-10 and I started thinking about the old 40 man instance again. I went to the realm forums and the same people were hosting another Naxx run. On Saturday, It took me a few whispers but I got an invite. I was still resto from Arenas on Friday night so I went as a healer. We ended up with about 28 people, 4 of whom were at or around level 60.

I'll admit, it's a little less challenging with 24 level 70's but the some of the fights are still very interesting. We were a little light on DPS but we still overpowered the spider wing. We stomped Patchwerk and Grobbulus. We wiped a couple of times on Gluth but we finally figured it out. We didn't have the DPS for Thaddius but it was interesting to see where the mechanic for the first boss in Heroic Mech came from. We downed Razuvius pretty easily - with a player tanking him instead of MC'd adds. But we didn't have enough melee and tanks/healers for Gothik because people had left or gone to bed so we just cleared some trash in the plague wing to complete the first quest and we called it a night at about 1 am.

All told, we killed the two bosses who stopped Crucify cold and three I'd never seen before and I got to see two encouters I'd never seen before. The fights were so much fun. Very different from your typical tank and spank. I'm glad I went and I think I'll be going again... I may even try to recruit a friend.