What Do You Mean I'm Going to Firelands Tonight?

So you finally got some raiding action, huh Grunz? I would've figured you'd have at least another week or two of gearing up.

Yeah, so did I. Your paladin friend and I have been running heroics for the last week or so, but I figured we wouldn't be seeing the inside of Firelands just yet. Imagine my surprise when I get home Wednesday and instead of heading off to do my dailies, I'm getting dragged inside of a raid I've never seen before to offtank. Apparently their normal offtank was sick that night.


Surprise raid, huh? Guessing you weren't quite up to speed on all of the boss mechanics beforehand, huh?

Up to speed? I knew absolutely nothing about that place going in other than "Ragnaros lives here" and "fire is hot". Those were the extent of my knowledge of Firelands.


Gotta love trial by fire.

Couldn't make it a whole post without a terrible pun, could you?


Nope. Back to the raid though. How'd it go, what with you being completely unprepared?

Surprisingly well actually. We one-shot everything up to Ragnaros and I picked up a few new pieces of gear. I did drop once on Shannox and once on Baleroc, but nothing we couldn't recover from. We weren't quite able to take down Ragnaros though, but we got him to about 10 million or so. Fun fight by the way - little hectic, but the fun fight's usually are.


You mean like Sindragosa?

Not funny. That's annoying, not hectic. There's a difference.


True enough. Sounds like the raid went pretty well considering you went in blind. Did they just have you read up on each fight before the pull?

My training was your friend, the main tank, gave me about 30-60 seconds of explanation right before the pull. It got a little more detailed for Ragnaros, but honestly that's the only one that really requires some preparation. The others are pretty easy to offtank from what I could tell.


Good to hear that the first raid went well for you.

Yeah, it was a good first raid after all that downtime. Group seemed like a nice bunch, so we should get along while you've got me on this assignment. Any idea how long this'll be?


Honestly? I couldn't say. We've still got no date for the Tyria trip and that other scouting mission I was looking at isn't for another couple months. Good news for you though is that with the recent news, you should have work for the foreseeable future. Might even have a new recruit to share the workload over there once I can find a suitable one.

Well, it's better than sitting around the office waiting for work with the rest of the team or packing for the move.

Grunzford, Carrier of Lowbies to 85

So how's Alliance life treating you, Grunz?

First of all, you and the other guys are all jerks.


Duly noted. Seriously though, what've they had you doing over there? I know he specifically requested a tank, but that's the only detail I was given.

No tanking so far, but that would be due to my gear being somewhat, oh what's the word? Ah yes, garbage.


Yeah, we didn't get the chance to set you up with much Horde-side work other than some normal dungeons. So they've been running you through stuff then?

Not yet, but that's due to the main project I've been working on. I have fixed some holes with auction house piece. I'm also doing these Molten Front dailies I was told about that are supposed to eventually let me pick up some decent epic pieces, but from what I can tell I've still got a long ways to go before I start seeing any purple from those. Those Hyjal people want a whole lot of those Marks of the World Tree before they think my gold's good enough.


Fair enough. So what's this main project you've been working on that's important enough to postpone Operation Make Gear Suck Less?

Well your Alliance buddy apparently also recruited a rookie about the same time as he brought me over. Since it didn't make a whole lot of sense to run me through 5-mans just to have to repeat everything once he hit 85, we decided to wait until he caught up.


Makes sense to me, though I don't really understand how that's a project.

Who do you think carried him to 85?


Ah, gotcha.

On the plus side, made a decent chunk of change once he got to the higher-end zones and I could do the same quests. I wasn't able to do all of the quests with him since the neutral factions seemed to recognize me even though I'm a Worgen now, but I still made a few thousand out of it. Enough to pay for those heirlooms you asked me to buy. Have you already told Mordigg you're making him work over there later as a jewelcrafter?


Where's the fun in that?

We Assign Tank Jobs In A Very Diplomatic Manner

Okay guys, we've got a job request from an old friend of ours.  Apparently he's started running some raids with the Alliance and he wants to hire a tank. I know everyone's excited about Tyria and leaving Azeroth behind, but since we don't have a concrete move date, I can't really tell him no. That means that someone gets to take a trip and do some Alliance work until we're ready to go.

So who wants to volunt- Not it!

Not it!

Not it!

Not... damnit!