The Land of the Hardcore Casual

I've come to accept that OnSunshine is presently my main while Strev gathers dust by the auction house (mostly by disenchanting things). She's matched Strev for questline progress and gear, with a slight advantage in the weapon-department. The first big raid from Burning Crusade, Karazhan, is being retired soon and being converted into a 5-man instance with the next patch (aka The Zul'Gurub Treatment), so for fun I took Strev on a tour through the decrepit castle for one last tour.

Ok. I admit it. It was entirely ungratifying, although every kill was earning reputation with the Violet Eye, a secret sect of the Kirin Tor mages I will never care enough to Exalt. Stomping around a level 70 raid with a 110 mage was ridiculous. Basically, it was wander around until I got annoyed with all of the things clawing at my clothing, pressing "arcane explosion" and aoeing all of the 16k health mobs with 1M+ damage. The average critter was hitting me for less than 100 damage and with over 2M health, I was a god against them. Still, what it lacked in challenge it made up for with ambiance. The music was stellar and the castle's design was well thought out. It has several wings that are mostly linear without seeming overly straight path to the next boss fight. The bosses themselves were two hit wonders and I found myself drawing out the fights with frost nova to get more lines of dialogue out of them.

I think I'll wander through ICC next at some point; it was the first raid I ever did years ago, and I owe a certain plaguemaster a little payback. Curiously, I don't really feel enthused at the thought of going back and collecting the achievements; probably just knowing it's a checklist instead of an actual challenge makes the victory hollow.

I started poking around on Anyth a little, buying her a weapon that is ridiculously overpowered for Pandaland and clearing out a few familiar quest hubs, as both OnSunshine and Strev have stalled out for progress, having gotten as far as they can without Mythic dungeons and "proper" raiding.

I've looked over the LFP tool and each entry seems to be along the lines of 3 DPS sitting around looking for a tank and "a healer that doesn't SUCK lol" or "carry me and you can use my keystone" (a prize that lets people run dungeons on insane levels of difficulty). I may give it a go for "old school" raids-- the current raids are filled with the usual stupid of "will examine your posted DPS logs before invites", "link heroic kill achieve & we will invite U 2 regular" and such.

It's a strange thing, living in the land of the Hardcore Casual.