Raid Night

By: Michael “Darthaggro” Berard

I don’t know about you guys, but nothing made my week quite like a Tuesday or Thursday night.  Anyone who has ever played World of Warcraft, Everquest, SWTOR, and many other MMORPG’s might know what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about a raid night.  Absolutely nothing beat raid night on World of Warcraft for me.  Every Tuesday, I’d wake up and be so pumped, because I was going raiding tonight.  Throughout the day, a checklist would be made in my mind to plan whether or not repair gold was going to be a problem or if pots needed to be bought oh and I need snacks to munch on tonight too!  Yep, it’s going to be a great night tonight.

For many of you who have no idea how a raid night feels, imagine a Saturday night but not on a Saturday.  Imagine a party but in a better place: on your computer.  Raid night only meant that you were going to be in a group with 9-24 other people who have just as much of a life as you do and use it to grind all night on trash pulls, bosses, wipes, buffing, rebuffing, resurrections, misdirecting aggro onto the mage because he’s a clothie and he deserved to die that pull.  As sad as it sounds, everyone who tells me I’m missing out on life, saying I’m “playing too many video games” has no idea what it feels to attend raids with your guild.

The scheduled raiding times were every Tuesday and Thursday (Friday was a bonus) from 7:30 – midnight.  We’d all gather on Ventrilo and right away you’d start hearing people obliterating each other with comical insults.  Then you have your raid leader telling everyone to hold on while the stragglers came online and to make yourself useful by heading towards the dungeon entrance to help summon people with the summoning stone.  Then you’d hear something like “buffs people, and pop your flasks” followed immediately by a ready check, which meant that was a green light to ready my fingers and mouse for some good ol’ fashion priest healing.

I played a holy priest at this time.  It was during the Burning Crusade expansion and my guild at the time <It Burns When I PvP> was a hardcore/softcore raiding guild looking towards progression, and we were currently farming Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon’s Lair for gear leading up to Serpentshrine Cavern.  Although we were farming it, we still had a little trouble with those raids…but whats the fun if it wasn’t a little hard?

I always refer to World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade raiding because it was the first time I’ve ever raided.  The best times I’ve raided was the beginning of Cataclysm when I raided with only a group of people I knew IRL.  I have played World of Warcraft since vanilla and still play casually to this day, but unfortunately I’m not a very active raider anymore due to time constrictions and its difficulty being changed to accommodate those who don’t take raiding as serious.  However, recalling raid night times always brings back nostalgia and amazing times.  I mean, to us nerds these were some of the best times of our lives.  I loved raiding nights just as much as going out with my friends to an amusement park, for example.  Yeah, comparing the two seems like a no-brainer that going out with friends should be better times but…nah, I loved raid nights way too much.