(World of Warcraft) Malpheus: Razorfen Kraul down

This weekend I purchased a new widescreen monitor - not because I needed to (the old 15" crt was working fine) but because I felt that I should. Why not have a bit of extra space around the sides? I'm still tinkering with the settings and layout but so far it has made gaming easier (no more frantic swishing the mouse from side to side in an effort to have peripheral vision when flagged for pvp!). Of course the old monitor is ready to function as a second screen but after a bit of play I decided I don't really need to... although keeping an eye on Farmville on the old monitor while raiding on the big monitor is amusing...

Speaking of raids (well, low level instance runs) our gang cleared Razorfen Kraul this morning with no wipes. After Wailing Caverns it was nice to have a run that was a bit shorter and much less of a maze! Readers will note that I claimed Shafowfang Keep would be our next run but looking over our characters we decided to skip ahead to something that would be a bit more challenging - sadly RFK was easymode for us too. I did get a chance to Dispel some debuffs (after a much needed reminder that "the priest can get rid of those" :P) and a little healing although the majority of my time was spent spamming shadow dots and drinking water.

To my dismay I'm coming 4th on the damage meter (only the dedicated resto druid who spends the majority of his time healing and getting the odd Moonfire off is ranked lower than me) although I did get the much coveted Shadow Weaving talent after the run so perhaps that will help? Maybe it's too early to worry about it - the group is flying through encounters as it is. I suspect the Shadow Priest will slowly creep up our dps rank with levels and talents - although to be fair I'm competing with a hunter and rogue!

Malpheus at 27 hanging around Splintertree Post
(Click on image for a larger version)

I gave some awful advice during the run based on faded memory rather than one of the many run-throughs I should have read. The worst was to suggest that we clear the lower run first - only to get to the goblin escort quest and realise the dungeon was designed with the intention that players would do this bit last! Not that it mattered as the goblin needed to head back to our intersection anyway... only because it's near the entrance/exit :O

My other blunder was to confuse the fence which keeps Roogug (objective of a Warrior quest) separate from the rest of the run with the field that holds Agathelos the Raging (aka The Bigpig) back - insisting that it was worth the effort of trying to get through, which it wasn't as Roogug doesn't drop anything. Ooops.

((Oh, and a gopher I set lose for giggles just before a pull may have triggered another group of mobs to add to the fun, but it seemed to be agreed that this made the current fight 'almost a challenge' so no harm done. However it was a newbie mistake to be sure and one that I shouldn't have made given my experience with WoW.))

Next weekend is Gnomeragen at level 28. I haven't run Gnomer from the Horde side (well, not properly anyway) so it will be interesting to see how much I remember. The rest stop will be no good for Hordies, they don't give coffee and biscuits to the likes of us!

BTW during the week we managed to organise ourselves into a guild "Ye Olde Skoole". The name honours our real life ages and our dedication to running old content. I suspect linguists may raise an eyebrow at our use of Ye but we're thumbing our nose at the error as much as we are celebrating it.