Aside from going MIA I've launched a mobile app, been busy trying to push our company forward, and dressed up like a chipmunk, and partied.

This is what happens after playing too much wow:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexleverington/sets/72157626131468023/ (not every pic is me of course)

It seems avoiding LARP is impossible.

Anyways, I'll probably start raiding again after we finish w7/droid/bb apps.

Hope to see everyone at guild meetup.

Dear Diary:
 
 May 30th: My husband and I just moved to Texas from up North. Now this is a state that knows how to live!! Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings. What a place! Watched the sunset from a park lying on a blanket. It was beautiful. I've finally found my home.. I love it here.
 
 June 10th: It’s really heating up. Got to 100 today! Not a problem. Live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this. I'm turning into a sun worshiper.
 
 June 14th: Had the backyard landscaped with southern plants today. Lots of cactus and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing the lawn for us! Another scorcher today, but I love it here.
 
 June 30th: The temperature hasn't been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least it's kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat and humidity is taking longer than I expected.
 
 July 10th: Fell asleep by the pool. (Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body.) Missed 3 days of work. What a dumb thing to do. I learned my lesson though. Got to respect the ole' sun in a climate like this.
 
 July 15th: I missed Morgan (our cat) sneaking into the car when I left this morning. By the time I got to the hot car for lunch, Morgan had died and was swollen up to the size of a shopping bag and stank up the $2,000 leather upholstery. I told the kids that she ran away. The car now smells like Kibbles and shits. I learned my lesson though. No more pets in this heat.
 
 July 20th: The wind sucks. It feels like a giant blow dryer!! And it's hot as hell. The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the A/C repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts!
 
 July 21st: Been sleeping outside by the pool for 3 nights now. $1,500 in house payments and we can't even go inside. Why did I ever come here?
 
 July 22nd: It's 105 degrees. Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today... It cost $500 and gets the temperature down to 85, but this humidity makes the house feel like it's about 95. Dumb repairman peed in my pool. I hate this stupid state!
 
 July 23rd: If another wiseass cracks "Hot enough for you today?" I'm going to strangle him. By the time I get to work the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like baked cat!!
 
 July 24th: Tried to run some errands after work. Wore shorts and sat on the black leather seats in the car. I lost two layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs. Now my car smells like burnt hair, fried ass, and baked cat.
 
 July 25th: The weather report might as well be a recording: Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. It's been too hot to do anything for two months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week. How can it WARM UP when it’s already 1000 freakin’ degrees? Doesn't it ever rain in this desert?? Water rationing will be next, so I might as well watch $1700 worth of cactus just dry up and blow into the pool! Even the cactus can't live in this heat!
 
 July 26th: Welcome to HELL!!! Temperature got to 105 today. Forgot to crack the window and blew the windshield out of the car. The installer came to fix it and said, "Hot enough for you today?" 
 
 My husband had to spend the $1500 house payment to bail me out of jail.
 

Dang South! WHAT KIND OF A SICK DEMENTED PERSON WOULD WANT TO LIVE HERE!?!??!!

So the thought struck me today that I'm really glad Blizzard added Hard modes and has further done so in both 10 and 25 mans which reflect the same content. In fact, I think this created more of a success than Blizzard anticipated considering the recent issue of instances being unable to launch. I have my ideas on how they're addressing this and why only certain instances experience this problem - what's pertinent is that I suspect instances aren't launched because too many folks are raiding. Regardless, as I've pugged and gkp'd, it seems the only time one can't put together a 25man raid for Naxx, OS, or Ulduar is when everyone is already raiding or locked.

To start, let's first look at the fact that we have almost 4 10m Ulduar raids and almost 3 25m Ulduar raids along with other interleaving raids. A similar occurence happened with ZA because it reset more often than the typical weekly schedule - more opportunities to raid - more raids. It didn't take long for this to get big because one of the greatest aspects is ZA had gear with which equivalent skill could quickly get someone geared up for end game raiding. Not enough pallys or shamans? - Run someone through ZA->ZA->Hyjal->BT + some badges and they're good to go with current progression. Not to mention ZA had some pvp gear in it which often made it easier to get a group. Worked for me. The sucky part was that hard mode ZA required a SOLID and SKILLED group. No crap gear, no DCs, no lag, no noobs - this made hard mode ZAs very UNFUN.

Now with 10/25 mans, some hard mode achievements for both, and a few PVP<PVE gear nerfs, everyone is raiding (whether it's just VoA). PVE folks can get some pimp gear from just 10mans and VoA without having to wait on the formation of a (arguably more difficult) 25 man raid. Not only does this make 10 mans awesome for folks just getting back into the game but it's also great preparation for the same 25 man content. Said raider is ready for the content and only has to learn the added 25man challenges rather than new content (assuming they complete the 10mans). With hard modes, the same concept applies. As a side note, another place where content has improved, *slightly*, is the balancing of class utilities so one class isn't required over another (imo, Shamans are still OP healers - I'd transmute Carno to a Shaman if I could; otherwise, blizz knows where they can stick their tremor totems).

I feel this has considerably improvd the WoW experience. Most players not only have a reason to raid but the entire raid experience is setup as a progression rather than just one start-to-finish 40 man instance. This is good news because, long term, I think it improves the health of a raiding guild.

First, there are more active raids and raiders in Downfall than I can remember, which considering content and lockouts, is probably accurate. Last week I think there were > 60 people each evening which is something I only recall seeing once (at the height of BC progression when everyone was racing through Hyjal/BT but just before Archimonde and BT was breaking people).

At this time it seems that some raids are looking for folks but I almost feel as though this is a cyclical balancing act which, this time, will have a much more aggressive uptake than the usual WoW experience (yes, I'm in left field here). Today, a raider doesn't *have* to raid 3-5 nights a week to see content and get gear whereas preBC and preWoTLK doing so was the only real raiding option; this is bad news for progression raids because every raider doesn't have to be a "progression" raider and good news for the casual raider because he doesn't have to commit to progression. However, with all of the additional opportunities Blizzard has added in - better gear, more achievements, mounts, etc. - we will hopefully see more progression raiders come out of the woods who were deterred by having to raid next to folks who weren't as focused but didn't have a choice.

I'm really glad Blizzard has made WoW so variable and I ponder if it's already given the hardcore folks more opportunities than they had before.