So this evening we were all set up with 10 raiders to into Ulduar on the raid lock we’ve been keeping alive since 3.2 hit. It’s been working quite well for us, being a small one-night-per-week raiding guild, starting from scratch in an instance every week was taking its toll. Keeping the lock alive allowed us to see new content without feeling like we were missing out on ever reaching the end. (on the other side of this, the fact we got to the point where we could clear Naxxramas in one evening before any of this hit still makes me stupidly proud). Anyway, we logged on and prepared, and found that 3.3 hitting last week wiped out our saved raid lock. Cue lots of sighing.

As it happened, it may have been something for the best. We were able to pick ourselves up and head to the new Onyxia. I’d never seen this encounter before, I encouraged the rest of the guild to give it a try when I had to miss a raiding session a couple of weeks ago and they’d had a bit of fun and wiped a lot. Coming back this time, we were pretty quickly into our stride and we got her on the second attempt

Onyxia's Lair

Since we had so much time left, we decided to head into Trial of the Crusader. We’d attempted the first boss there once before and not had much success, but I’d now consider ourselves wiser and better geared. We wanted to give the place a try also because the second boss happened to be the subject of this week’s weekly raid quest, and five emblems of frost were very appealing, but we didn’t actually hold much hope for downing boss one. As it happened we were on a streak of luck. We managed to get Northrend Beasts on attempt 2, and Lord Jaxx first time! The second boss was mostly a healing intensive fight; I like encounters where I hold the real power

So all in all it was an awesome night, we had a first time raider with us who’s gear was … lacking, and he was managing ~3000 dps! Almost everyone present got to take away some decent purple pixels, including me (some new legs), and hopefully it’ll have rejuvenated everyone’s interest in raiding – well those who haven’t already been re-suckered in by the 3.3 badge/dungeon finder changes. A really good way to end the year’s raiding!

Should I be worried that something in a virtual world has inspired me to write such a gleeful blog entry? Hmmmm.