To all the raiders I’ve “loved”

Uldir opens on Tuesday and with it new raids and new encounters. I’m preparing my character and my guild for “Don’t stand there when the boss does that.” “Okay, this group goes here and that group goes there and don’t cross the streams.” And the ever popular, “Well, that was a spectacular wipe.”

With each new raid, it brings up memories of past raids. My guild’s very first raid was Onyxia, and it took us 3 months to get her down. So, when she was updated, we dashed over to her lair and tried mightily to beat her. Yeah, about that. Have I got a story for you.

We had this one raider, a Death Knight. I loved him dearly, but he was a bit slow on the uptake. He was new to this concept of MMO’s so we helped him get his computer and game set up, stressing what was necessary to make play enjoyable. He didn’t seem to “get” keyboard and mouse placement, which seems, on the face of it, to be as easy as “how do you use your computer when you, you know, use it?”

We were struggling, not necessarily with corralling the whelps but with those dragonkin adds and their Blast Nova. Our melee just couldn’t get the idea of “run away.” We took our break after dying, again. Two-thirds of the raid went afk. Suddenly, this DK stands up and dashes into the Lair. Onyxia rears up, talks about how she usually leaves her lair to feed, and cleaves him in two. Then, she came for the rest of us. I took off running, stopping to look back, once I’d made the turn. Merciful heavens, she’s still coming! I didn’t make it out. Imagine the surprise of guild members coming back with a refresh on their beverage, to find the entire raid dead.

Of course, this DK was the last to return. He was too far in to safely rez and I was not happy with what I’d seen. I made him run back. Turns out, in spite of us warning him to make sure his mouse placement was not where he could knock it off his desk, he did not heed warnings. He knocked his mouse off the desk and promptly kicked it, causing the mouse to land upside down, thereby activating the run key. We had a laugh, rezzed, and regrouped. He was mortified and greatly embarrassed, and it was kind of the end of his raiding experience. He quit the game two months later, having never cleared Onyxia. I felt, and still feel somewhat, badly. I would have taken him in there, once we had it sufficiently mastered, but it makes for a great story in guild history.

So, dear readers, with Uldir opening, tell me all about that one guild member who would give you his last stack of fish to make feasts but can’t quite get “Don’t stand in the purple stuff.”