This appendix originally appeared in my dissertation. They are reproduced here to be an online appendix for:

Chen, M. (forthcoming). The messiness of actor-network theory in an online gaming ethnography: The inside story of Leet Noobs. In M. Knobel & C. Lankshear (Eds.), Researching new literacies: Design, theory, and data in sociocultural investigation. New York: Peter Lang.

APPENDIX: FUNCTIONAL PATTERN ANALYSIS – SYNOPSES

Ragnaros Fight Attempts, April 28, 2006

[It’s pretty clear to me that these synopses are sort of in-between personal field notes and write-ups for a broader audience; it’s more flowery descriptive than quick notes on activity, but it’s still written in a way that assumes the reader is familiar with the activity. In other words, it’s well-suited for its purpose, that of helping me see notable moments and identify emergent patterns across attempts.]

Attempt 1

Preplanning

At 7:57 pm, the raiders start talking about the last boss fight in Molten Core, after having just defeated Ragnaros’s underling, Majordomo (Domo) Executus, while they gather at the entrance to Ragnaros’s chamber. They had dispatched all of the monsters and bosses before Domo earlier in the week, so had plenty of time reserved this night to work on Ragnaros himself.

It takes the raiders about 20 minutes to talk about and prepare for this evening’s first attempt at Ragnaros. During this time, the raid group talks about the strategies and tactics to use while fighting. The raid leader, Maxwell, is summarizing how the fight works using the voice chat. He details where different players with different roles will be standing during the different phases of the encounter, the actions that will need to be taken during those phases, etc. Special emphasis is put into framing the work for tonight as practice for phase 2 of the encounter where the Sons of Flame emerge and need to be handled and killed efficiently: “These are serious attempts, so no slacking, but the prime focus is getting the Sons thing worked out.”

During this summary, a couple of clarifying questions or issues comes up. First, one of the warriors asks what happens when both Warren and Wendy get knocked back. He asks this in the warrior-specific text chat channel. The raid leader replies in the general raid text channel that if it happens then Willy will tank, but it shouldn’t happen because Wendy should not be in melee range until Warren gets knocked back. Second, the raid leader tells priests to toss out dots if they can spare the Mana. A man jumps on the voice chat and asks, “dots on Rags?” to which the leader confirms, “Yeah. All dps helps. I mean if it’s a mana issue, don’t, but, if you’ve got it, go for it.”

Meanwhile, various members of the group buff each other, drink potions, and generally configure / prepare themselves for the fight. Of particular interest is the range checks the shaman in the rogue group, Scott, is performing with his totems. He needs to know where he should be placing his totems so that the rogues can get their benefits in the upcoming fight. To do this, the rogues have to move to where they will be during the various phases in the fight and Scott has to drop totems at various ranges for each of these locations to remember for later which places to use during the actual encounter.

Also during this time, the rogues talk amongst themselves about their gear and how lacking they are in fire resist items, which are extremely important for this encounter, as his main AoE damage is fire based. Only two of the five rogues have adequate fire resist ratings.

All of these actions and talk are happening in multiple layers of modal experience. Talk is done via voice chat and text chat. The text chat is further divided into various channels for specialized sub-groups in the raiding party. Different physical gestures and interactions are happening on-screen, which indicate to us expert players that various people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. The game produces gestural and audio feedback when characters activate certain abilities. The game also sometimes automatically generates a text chat in the form of an emote for certain abilities such as when warlocks create healthstones.

In the background, the sound of rushing lava and howling winds fill the space. The space, in this case, is a massive, dark chamber made of red rock, illuminated solely by the fiery pools of lava on the chamber floor. A spiral of rock presents us with safe navigation zones to stand and run around on without getting burned. In the center of the spiral stands Majordomo Executus who had fled here after his defeat earlier. He’s waiting for one of us to trigger the fight event by talking to him. When that happens, he’ll summon his lord, Ragnaros, who will then emerge from the massive pool of lava that the spiral surrounds.

Fight

We start the fight at 8:23 pm, by having the primary main tank, Warren, talk to Domo, triggering the event. Our raid leader signaled the MT to start, and then after Ragnaros emerges and talks to Domo for a bit of flavor text, the fight begins and the raid leader calls for ranged and casters to attack. The melee then all run and jump over a river of lava to the correct spot on the arm of the spiral near the center behind Ragnaros.

Wei, a warrior, starts attacking before the first Knockback, which is dangerous, and the raid leader notices and explicitly says, “Wei, wait until the first knockback.” Wallace, another warrior, stands slightly off to the side by himself, which maybe doesn’t matter but it is unclear why he isn’t bunched up with the rest of us melee DPS. It is possible that his sense of personal space within the game is nuanced since he tends to role-play and stay in character, even during raids. The warriors are using swords-n-boards (three of them, at least, have the same gold, round, scorpion design shield). Interestingly, though Wendy should not be affected by Knockback since she should be out of melee range, on the first Knockback event, she says, “This is Wendy. I got knockback… Coming back.”

A lot of information floods my senses once the fight starts. Both visual and audio indicators come at me. Furthermore, these are both diagetic (such as the animation of all of us swinging our weapons or the grunt of my character as he attacks) and non-diagetic (such as various panels and buttons on my screen representing the game’s UI or the various alert sounds coming from our installed add-ons).

Some of this info: The Bong sound from our CT Raid add-on that happens in sync with the words “AE Knockback” appearing in the center of my screen. The raid leader’s “Melee attack!” command issued in several text channels, also facilitated by CT Raid. SCT (another add-on) sending a constant stream of text up as I gain energy, take damage, activate abilities, etc. My custom timer bars popping up (from yet another add-on) letting me know how long dots and other effects last. KLHTM, the threat meter add-on, keeping track of all our threat levels. Custom UI enhancements (yep; add-on) showing me the Health and Mana of the whole raid, showing me my Health and energy gain and CP build-up, Ragnaros’s Health and all of our buffs / debuffs. Specific windows showing MTs (CT Raid) and their targets. The screen flashes with lava bursts and waves every once in a while. The snick snick whoosh of Sinister Strike and a miss. The sound effects of other abilities including those of the raiders around me. When I mistimed something, my character, Thoguht, saying “not enough energy.” The dingier sound of incoming Knockback and the melee DPS backing up as a group to our corner of the spiral peninsula. After the next Bong, rushing back in with the group.

A semi-regular sequence of indicators and my reactions to them emerges from the chaos bracketed by the Bongs of Knockback. The first time we fought Ragnaros, this pattern was noisy, but this night it is getting refined and less noisy. A month from this night, the pattern starts to stabilize, and I start to feel a rhythm to the fight. SS, SnD, SS, SS, SS, Feint, SS, SnD, ad infinitum. Sometimes an Eviscerate thrown in there if SnD hasn’t expired. This goes on until the ding. Move back. Bong. Move forward. SS, SnD, SS, SS, SS, Feint… Rinse and repeat. In forums, other players have used another way of visualizing the actions rogues take, referencing the keyboard buttons needed for the actions: 2422262242262223 repeated.

But in this particular iteration of the fight, we don’t yet know the pattern, haven’t yet found our groove or gotten into the flow.

When the melee back up, a couple of us stand too far back and stand in the lava. Wei, at one point, gets knocked back and dies in the lava. Then others get knocked back. In other words, it seems pretty clear from these Knockbacks and from Wendy’s Knockback at the beginning of the fight that we aren’t all completely sure of Ragnaros’s hit region. Furthermore, the verbosity of Wendy’s utterance and also Wei saying, “back it up,” multiple times, shows that we were still relatively new to the fight, since later they use more abbreviated utterances to indicate the same info or issue the same commands. In some future cases, verbal cues aren’t even needed anymore.

Before phase 2 begins, the raid leader / CT Raid yells for us to get to our collapse point. The melee DPS run clockwise around Ragnaros to get to this point. Then Ragnaros summons his Sons of Flame and submerges. Right beforehand submerging, however, Ragnaros launches a fireball and many of us get knocked out of our collapse point. Bad luck. Rand and I are able to grab a Son pretty quickly after getting back into position. We then proceed to evasion tank it, trading aggro between us. Most of the rest of the Sons go nuts, though, mostly because a couple of Fears happened. This makes it impossible for the melee to grab aggro.

After 3 minutes, Ragnaros reemerges, and, soon after, we all are dead. About half of the Sons are still alive. The fight ends at 8:29 pm. The catastrophic mistake on this first try is the Fears.

Debrief

The biggest thing the raiders talk about is that we shouldn’t Fear the Sons of Flame. A lot of emphasis is put into maintaining good control over where the Sons are and who they are attacking.

The rogues talk amongst themselves about getting aggro during the fight. Apparently, Rory died very early on because he was attacked directly by Ragnaros. Rand and Roger talk about the fight being about sustained DPS rather than burst DPS.

Attempt 2

Preplanning

The debriefing time from the previous attempt and the preplanning time for the next attempt is blurred with a lot of crossover talk spanning the whole 10 minutes between actual fighting moments.

Based off of what the rogues are talking about with Rory dying from aggro problems, the shaman wonders if he should be placing a threat reduction totem down for us instead of one of his other totems. Roger and I debate over aggro vs. DPS with Roger not getting what I mean by energy management. I mean that one could forego Feint in favor of another Sinister Strike if threat isn’t an issue. Roger is worried about bursting; doesn’t want anyone using Eviscerate, Cold Blood, or Backstab. Roger comes off a little condescending to me. For example, he dismisses Rory’s wondering about the shaman’s threat reduction totem with: “meh, manage your aggro Rory” (and earlier, in attempt 1: “rogues only need 180-200 fr for this fight max, if you have more then that, roll a warrior.”)

Fight

At 8:40 pm, the raid leader tells the MT to start the fight. “Warren? Go ahead.” This actually signals to the rest of us that the fight has started, also. Thoguht and Roger are still debating about aggro and DPS at this point. Right after the fight begins, the raid leader tells the ranged and casters to go nuts [with DPS]. Warren informs all of us that his add-on named Carnival did not sync the fight correctly so he won’t have a good idea of when Ragnaros will submerge. 

Meanwhile, the melee have jumped across the lava into place and are waiting for the go ahead. The first Knockback occurs. Some melee start attacking right at the Bong sound. I was still typing to Roger when the Bong happened so didn’t rush in at the same time. Warren and Wendy coordinating their rotation, using full sentences like, “K, Wendy, I’m coming in,” where in later iterations Warren starts shortening it to just, “I’m in,” and Wendy replying with “K. All yours.” rather than just, “Got it,” like in later rounds.

Since Carnival is not showing when Ragnaros will submerge, Maxwell asks for Mandy to announce times. It’s unclear how Mandy is keeping track of the time. Some possibilities include the use of a different add-on, the use of a working Carnival, or using an in-room, non-game stopwatch. This practice is not spontaneous, though. Over the last several weeks, Mandy had established herself (or himself if you figure that the person behind the character is a man) as an accurate time-keeper in previous nights of raiding, so it is an easy first-choice fallback for Maxwell to take. Interestingly, Maxwell uses the voice chat to ask Mandy to call out times while Mandy replies using the text chat.

At one point when Warren gets Knockback, someone else and him talk at the same time in Vent, so he reiterates to make sure he was heard, “knockback knockback knockback.”

On the collapse call, I follow another rogue and we run counter-clockwise, where normally we run clockwise around Ragnaros. This turns out to be a mistake since it takes us longer than normal and we get Knockback, sent flying through the air. I drank a healing potion as I landed, thankfully, on the outer ring and then ran to the collapse point from there. I reached the collapse point just as Maxwell announces, “K, Sons,” as the Sons charge. I run to one, it gets frozen. Stepping back, looking around for any loose ones, I try to decide which new one to attack. Maxwell yells for the casters to get out of the collapse point.

Eventually, I get aggro from two Sons; when the first happened, I popped Evasion, but when second one came in and I saw that my Health was getting dangerously low, I hit Vanish to clear my threat level and escape certain death. Unfortunately, this just means that the two Sons rush off to whoever is next on their threat table, which may be a caster. I spend some time running back and forth between the caster pit and the melee pit, hitting Sons when I can. The running around seems pretty ineffectual. More of my time should be spent actually hitting things.

Ragnaros reemerges while we still have about 4 Sons up. We’re all still attacking Sons while the MTs engage Ragnaros. Warren dies. Wendy steps up. The Sons run amok since they were on Warren. I grab one and die. As our raid is decimated, the final 2 Sons wreak havoc while Ragnaros fireballs people. Maxwell starts to debrief the fight while 2 or 3 of us are still fighting. Finally, the raid wipes with 1 Son still up. Ragnaros is at 58%. The time is 8:46 pm.

Debrief

During this debrief, two main topics emerge. First, a discussion about warlocks Banishing the Sons. Maxwell says that he didn’t notice any Banishes but others claim that it happened. It’s likely not all of the warlocks Banished, though, so that is something that could be improved in later iterations. Second, it seems like we were able to control the Sons relatively well, even without optimal Banish crowd control, but we did not focus fire well or otherwise our DPS was not high enough. Not enough dots.

The rogues continue their talk about aggro management and try to figure out how it works. Rand says, “I got aggro on that one. Not sure how, was using the same technique as last time.” I chime in with, “so, I have threatmeter on…  noticed I wasnt very high up and did a cold blood evis just fine” and use this as evidence for the debate I was having with Roger before this attempt. My position is that we could do more DPS if we did not have to worry about threat generation, and, in fact, I was nowhere near the top of the threat list. Roger maintains that we cannot use our high DPS abilities since they will make us generate too much threat and draw aggro. This debate gets dragged on a bit, but I think we are starting to collectively realize that threat isn’t the problem. This idea gets solidified more in the 4th attempt when Roger also gets aggro from out of nowhere.

Immediately after I state that Cold Blood-Eviscerate is okay to do, Roger states, “Rory, i saw you evis on that last fight. dont do that,” indicating that he glaringly dismissed my argument. Rory replies, “Actually I didnt. all my finishers look the same.” The tension among the rogues is building.

Attempt 3

Preplanning

Wei reiterates for the raid that we had good control of Sons on the 2nd attempt, and good DPS on the 1st attempt. We need to combine control with DPS.

Fight

This fight goes about the same as the previous two and lasts from 8:57 pm to 9:05 pm. Of particular note is that Roger dies from aggro: “lol. he must dump most agg at knockback. i think i got to him quicker then the tanks.” He assumes that Ragnaros resets his threat table when Knockback occurs, thus it would be easy for a rogue or non-tank to then generate threat faster than a tank and therefore draw aggro. This is not, in fact, the case. Instead, it is simply that Roger got to Ragnaros before anyone else had.

My fist weapon (Eskander’s Paw or something) breaks, causing me to prematurely start running to collapse point, since I thought that Ragnaros had submerged early and that was the reason why none of my abilities worked. After just a few steps, though, I realize my main weapon had broke, so I run back and switch to a lower DPS weapon for remainder of night (Cho’Rush’s Blade and The Thunderwood Poker).

It seems like we did better with the Sons.

Debrief

A lot of talk about gear and consumables ensues, basically because the raid realizes we aren’t outputting enough DPS. I say that my weapon broke mid-fight, which probably didn’t help with our lack of DPS, and other raiders confirm that their weapons are starting to break as well. We’re running out of potions and other consumables that help make us more powerful. In other words, any chance at downing Ragnaros tonight will have to come from tightening up our coordination as we are losing our potential power pretty rapidly.

Various people, as with the other times after a raid wipe, use the general raid text chat to let healers know where their bodies are located and ping the overhead map.

Attempt 4

Preplanning

Maxwell mentions to the casters that most of the rogues and other melee raiders have gotten their fire resist gear requirements from the raid’s crafting resources, so they should start requesting gear. Apparently, there’re plenty of available raw materials for the crafters to use, so we should be taking advantage of that as much as possible. This is somewhat surprising news since during the preplanning phase of attempt 1, the rogues had determined that we weren’t all geared enough with fire resist. I make a note to myself to request more gear. Casters and hunters need fire resist gear, so, again, maybe the difference between failure this night and success the following month is partially due to having gear that lets us survive longer during the fight.

When we’re ready, the raid leader sums up the fight: “Alright, let’s focus. Same as last time, we just need to refine our Sons approach a little bit more, but that’s basically it. Blow shield wall, keep them all in one area, and focus fire on my command.”

Fight

The fight starts at 9:19 pm. I use sprint to jump across the lava and don’t get hurt as I did in all the previous iterations. Roger dies on the first Knockback and says on raid channel, “i hit him once. that made no sense.” Maxwell replies via voice, “Roger, they may have been out of position for just a second which is enough for anyone else to get aggro who is in melee range.” This would seem to finally gel what we’ve learned about rogues and aggro/threat for the night, but Roger ignores the raid leader and, after checking his combat logs, says, “wtf. i didnt even hit him, it was a miss. lol.” Wendy replies that Ragnaros just turned to hit Roger because he was there, not because Roger had hit Ragnaros, but her message is vague: “No, Roger, he just turned.” Roger doesn’t take this up, still seemingly ignoring Maxwell and Wendy by typing his system message: “Your sinister strike misses Ragnaros.” This exchange happens amidst the chaos of the fight. It also prompts a brief digression about the pointlessness of trying to heal rogues if they do get aggro. The digression might have prevented us from realizing the full extent of what it means that Ragnaros hits whoever is in melee range. It’s not until the next time we fight him that we know to wait a sec until a tank grabs Ragnaros’s attention before engaging after a Knockback. Full text from this interaction:

[Raid] Roger: i hit him once.

[Voice] Maxwell: Knockback coming in about uh… 5 seconds.

Ragnaros yells: BY FIRE BE PURGED!

[Raid] Maxwell: *** 5 SECONDS UNTIL AE Knockback ***

[Raid] Roger: that made no sense.

Ragnaros yells: TASTE THE FLAMES OF SULFURON!

[Raid] Maxwell: *** AE Knockback ***

[Voice] Warren: Knockback.

[Voice] Wendy: Alright Warren, he’s all yours. Okay then… he’s mine.

[Voice] Warren: Okay, I’m in.

[Voice] Wendy: Alright.

[Voice] Maxwell: Roger, they may have been out of position for just a second which is enough for anyone else to get aggro who is in melee range.

Ragnaros yells: BY FIRE BE PURGED!

[Raid] Maxwell: *** 5 SECONDS UNTIL AE Knockback ***

[Voice] Willy: That’s all it takes.

[Raid] Roger: wtf. i didnt even hit him, it was a miss. lol.

Ragnaros yells: BY FIRE BE PURGED!

[Voice] Wendy: Yeah, actually… he got knocked back, I was trying to stay back so I wouldn’t get knocked back.

Ragnaros yells: TASTE THE FLAMES OF SULFURON!

[Raid] Maxwell: *** AE Knockback ***

[Voice] Wei: Oh my god, the whole group just flew. The whole melee group just flew.

[Voice] Willy: Yeah… we were back as well.

[Voice] Maxwell: It happens.

[Voice] Man: I’m down.

[Voice] Wendy: No, Rog, he just turned.

[Voice] Maxwell: You gotta– Hey, you. We can talk about that afterwards. You’ve gotta spot heal ranged dps.

Ragnaros yells: BY FIRE BE PURGED!

[Raid] Roger: “Your sinister strike misses Ragnaros”

[Voice] Willy: If a rogue gets aggro from Rags, there’s just nothing you can do.

[Raid] Maxwell: *** 5 SECONDS UNTIL AE Knockback ***

[Voice] Willy: It happens too fast.

Ragnaros yells: TASTE THE FLAMES OF SULFURON!

[Raid] Maxwell: *** AE Knockback ***

[Voice] Wendy: Rog, the short reason is that it was my fault.

[Raid] Roger: Indeed Will.

Ragnaros yells: BY FIRE BE PURGED!

[Voice] Maxwell: That’s actually why, um… there’s actually not much healing set up for the rogues because they can’t live through any direct attacks. The only thing they need to be healed for is the fire AE.

[Raid] Maxwell: *** 60 seconds until Ragnaros submerge & sons of flame. ***

[Raid] Mandy: 50 seconds

[Voice] Willy: That’s right.

One thing I notice is that we all collapse this time instead of ranged and then melee. Wendy complains about Frost Nova, a mage ability that makes enemies immobile for a few seconds. Maxwell says it was justified. Wendy says she couldn’t grab the Son and take it out of the caster pit because it was frozen. Maxwell says that that’s moot, which shuts Wendy up, but it is unclear to me how her point was moot.

It seems that we’re finally getting the hang of managing the Sons of Flame, but our healers are running out of Mana. (We just need to stay alive better during Sons. If casters had FR gear they wouldn’t get hurt as much and therefore healers wouldn’t have as much of a Mana problem. Alternatively, if DPS was higher, that would alleviate some of the endurance fight requirements, too.)

Fight ends at 9:27 pm with Ragnaros at 28%.

Debriefing

We had a minute left before the next Sons of Flame phase when the raid wiped. If we had enough DPS survive the second Ragnaros phase, we would’ve downed him. This elates everyone’s spirits, and renewed energy is put into talking about working during the coming week to farm materials for potions and other consumables to help boost our DPS. 

Attempt 5

Preplanning

The warriors talk about a little used ability, Slam, discussing its utility here. The problem is that it is such a useless ability normally, such that warriors do not immediately think about using it. It sounds like they’ll be spamming it on the Sons from now on though.

Interesting that the rogues barely talk during this and the next attempt. Possibly Roger is stewing over getting aggro in the last attempt.

Fight

“Warren, gonna hit incoming…” Maxwell’s voice, followed by a long silence in the voice chat, but there’s a lot happening on screen. CT Raid Incoming announcement, Attack announcements, the melee DPS runs and jumps into positions autonomously, having done this before many times. Our skeletal remains litter the ground from previous attempts. Bong of AE Knockback and “Melee attack!” command. We charge and start building up CPs. One of us drinks a potion that enlarges him, presumably making him hit harder. SCT and all my other add-ons sending a constant stream of text and visual information to me. The only voice happening is Warren saying “knockback” predictably after the CT Raid Bong, followed by “Ok” when he gets back into position and Wendy saying “Go ahead” letting him know that she’s backed off (after having stepped up when he got Knockback). Once, after a Knockback, I go into melee range with the rest of the melee group before a tank was able to regain aggro. I was quick enough to hit Vanish to lose Ragnaros’s aggro rather than stepping back. (Dangerous!) Snick snick snick, grunt, until 5 CPs. I hit Eviscerate instead of Slice n Dice because I see the Knockback timer about to expire and I’m about to step back after hearing the ding. Going back in and getting SnD up, build to 5 CPs, Eviscerate, miss, wait for energy… Eviscerate again. Hit. Step back. Bong.

When notified of collapse to prepare for phase 2, we all run to the collapse point while strafing Ragnaros. Maxwell lets raid know he’s out-of-mana because Ragnaros hit him in the middle of Evocation. Then he lands in the lava and dies, making the fight that much harder since he’s the one calling targets for us. We press on. Sons charge in, and I run to grab one away from the casters. All the melee do the same. The rogues assist tanks with their targets. I see the Immune text scroll up and the dark translucency effect on my current target who got Banished. I switch to a new target. It gets Banished, too. I switch again. It’s frustrating to waste time hitting targets that get Banished. Somehow, I pick a Son off a tank and had to use a Health potion. A warrior picks it off me. Various people shout in the voice chat that there’s one in the caster pit. I run in there to grab it. Others shouting, “Run to us,” meaning for the caster who has aggro to run out of the pit to the warriors. After this happens a couple of times, Warren dies, and Wendy runs to prepare for Ragnaros. We down the last Son and start running back to positions as people say, “Run to positions,” etc. I get knocked into the lava as I am getting back to position. I jump up and down, moving towards the safety of the shore, but I die right before getting out. Couldn’t use a Health potion since blew one during Sons. About half the raid is dead. Meanwhile, Maxwell is still giving us commands, but I wonder whether they are helpful since his view is occluded. Wendy dies, but Warren is back up after someone battle rezzed him. Ragnaros yells, “BY FIRE BE PURGED!” each time he launches a fireball at someone, usually marking their death. The tanks drop like flies. Wei runs in and immediately dies. The hilarity of the situation is noted and a woman calls it, “a valiant effort.” Raid wipes at 9:52 pm with Ragnaros at 35%.

Debriefing

The biggest concern at this point is our broken gear. Each time one dies in World of Warcraft, the equipped gear becomes worn down. With enough deaths, gear eventually breaks and one has to get them repaired at a blacksmith located in towns or commerce hubs. It’s possible, however, for some characters who have studied Engineering to create a repair bot for the raid, saving all of us a lengthy trip to the nearest town. So, some of the raid starts talking about what it would take to create a repair bot. None of us have the necessary materials, but it’s possible to send someone to a major city to use the Auction House to search for the materials and then to teleport them back to the rest of the raid group. We weigh this option against the fact that Ragnaros is only up and attackable for two hours, which means we don’t have much time for many more attempts this night. Eventually, the raid leader decides that going through the trouble to get a repair bot ready is not worth it since we realistically only have one attempt left tonight, anyway.

Attempt 6

Preplanning

This will be our last attempt of the evening. The way attempt 5 went put a damper on our earlier elation. It seems that people are starting to get worn out from playing so long and the effects of running out of consumables and having gear break is definitely starting to show. Most of the talk now is about how broken everything is and how lacking in resources everyone is.

Pall and I occupy ourselves by talking about In-N-Out and Burgerville. :p

Fight

22:06 – 22:11

Debrief

[Raid] Maxwell: This was a very good evening

[Raid] Heather: we done good

[Raid] Maxwell: we made tremendous progress

[Raid] Wei: This was more’n excellent.

[Raid] Maxwell: YOU HAVE ASSIGNMENTS

[Raid] Wei: I shall do my homework.

[Raid] Lori: I hate homework.

[Raid] Hattie: I’ll beat someone up to do my homework for me.

[Raid] Maxwell: 1st:  Bring consumables,  I want you all to have fire pots, and healers, mana pots

[Raid] Maxwell: ALL OF YOU

[Raid] Drusella: My Kodo ate my homework

[Raid] Wei: ive been watching movies for weeks

[Raid] Wendy: shhh let Max talk please

[Raid] Wendy: please

[Raid] Maxwell: 2nd:  I want dps to learning everything they can about maximizing their dps

[Raid] Maxwell: *learn

[Raid] Wei: We had some breakthroughs in the Warrior Channel about that, Maxwell. *grin*

[Raid] Matt: Mages need wizard oil and arcane power potions

[4. splittranq] Hall: Mongoose pots. Get ‘em, love ‘em. Best dps boost you can get from a single consumable.

[Raid] Maxwell: 3rd:  casters and ranged need to start asking to get gear crafted

[4. splittranq] Hattie: yep

[Raid] Maxwell: Matt is right

[Raid] Heather: I can fire res cloaks…

[4. splittranq] Helga: aye i usually come here with 10 mongoose and 15 FR pots

[Raid] Mandy: I can arrange for both Wizard Oil and Arcane Power Pots.

[Raid] Maxwell: with those, I was able to hit 1200 damage non crit bolts

 

We end the night dividing up loot from the bosses we downed before attempting Ragnaros and then dispersing.