Thursday, June 18, 2009

Friday, June 12, 2009

Breaking up is so hard to do...


Last night was our guild's first kill of Thorim, and over our course of attempts to finish him off, I had the opportunity to experience both the arena and the tunnel. I had a blast. That fight, for some reason, really clicks with me on the fun factor. I couldn't quite place my finger on why until I started to sit back and examine it after the fact.

I have a particular love of fights that break a raid apart and hand players or groups of players their own set of responsibilities.

Call me crazy, but these fights give me a sense of motivation above and beyond the usual and they allow me to bring a lot of focus to bear on a task that is vital, not only to my own survival, but to the success of the other part of the raid that won't be able to pick up the slack if something goes south.

Thorim is probably the most concrete example of this kind of fight to date, but we've seen less restrictive versions in the past. I think this is why, to date, the Kael'thas fight in the Eye is still one of my favorite boss encounters in the game.

Perhaps it's a subconscious love of situations where I am forced to focus on my own little sphere of the fight and negates my usual green-bar-just-dipped-press-button attention span that sometimes leaves me incredibly stressed in an attempt to throw my weight around in too many places at once. On normal fights, I have trouble sticking to assignments, even if on raid healing I tend to focus just as much on the closest tank as I do the raid.

I'd love to see more fights like Thorim. There is the added frustration of being unable to have ANY impact when another part of the raid doesn't bring home the bacon, but I think the added challenge just adds to the fun.

What do you think about segmented encounters? I'd love to know.