A little pre-wrath downtime

The servers are down so I've got a few minutes to kill. There's a lot of excitement in the guild about the release of Wrath of the Lich King. We're planning which continent we're going to start with and already starting to look ahead at replacing gear.

For my part, I've been thinking about the last expansion. When Burning Crusade came out, I was still in Crucify and the first signs of the impending breakup were in the air. We'd recently gone through a shakeup in our raiding style. We cut down on our number raiders instead of making a second Blackwing Lair run. It was decided that we'd be more successful with a smaller number of more serious raiders. It was the right decision but it caused a little strife and some people left. We hadn't raided in a few weeks because people were busy PvPing (they'd just switched to the new honor for gear system) and just taking time off before the expansion. Our guild leader, a young man I knew as Crazyirish, had gotten a new job so he was unavailable. He was very well liked. He could be a little drunk during our first forays into Naxxramas and we'd be setting up pulls on new trash mobs, someone would ask "what does that mob do?" and Crazy would announce "Let's find out..." launch a frostbolt at it and iceblock. But people loved him so it was OK. When he stopped coming around, people stopped coming out and we couldn't really browbeat people into raiding.

Hiahotah was still a level 38 druid that I never, ever played... Like... Never. So when it came time to go to the midnight release, I didn't have the current local guild to go there with... So I went alone. I got there pretty early so I was near the start of the line. There was a group of college students who obviously played together right behind me. She talked at length about her mage. From the sounds of things, she hadn't done anywhere _near_ the things that I'd done but she loved that mage just the same. But I didn't talk to anyone because I was the oldest person there who wasn't obviously buying it for their kids by about 5 years. I was a little embarassed to be in my mid-30's and waiting in line for a video game.

So... Here I am... Almost two years later. I've pretty much switched factions (although I've been playing my Alliance characters almost exclusively since the release date was announced). I now have 6 max level characters instead of just two. I have a fairly godly tank and a group of people to run the new instances with. I play with a group of local people... People I know in real life.

And yet... Because of real lives and the Gamestop where most people ordered their copies of the expansion, I'll be attending the midnight release alone again. I think this time, I'll try to make more of it. Maybe I'll go through the line and ask people which server they play on. Maybe I'll run into someone I've given a complex over the years. Or maybe I'll just run into someone else who plays a druid and we can just talk about theorycrafting... Like, maybe, the funniest thing you can do to a huntard (there's never a time when it isn't funny to sleep a huntard's pet).

As for what I do after I get the game installed... I just don't know. I don't want to get too far ahead of everyone else because some people I play with regularly won't be getting the game until the weekend. I still haven't decided which one of my characters I'll level first. I could roll a death knight but... So will everyone and their uncle. People will be spawn camping again. I'm not looking forward to those first two nights because there just won't be any mobs to fight. Of course... This year, I've got a group to do instances with... And new bosses with new abilities.

"What does this boss do?"

"Let's find out..."