The Amani War Bear is a very fast mount, "epic" even. But there are lots of epic (fast) mounts in the World of Warcraft available for gold, reputation, lucky drop or from pvp. But the War Bear is a specific type of vanity mount -- it's only available to a group that completes the first four bosses of the10-person instance Zul'Aman in 45 minutes or less.

Accomplishing this run was no small feat for us. A group of l8raiders has been working on the speed, route and technique to do this since late May. Our first attempts saw us running ~14 minutes slow. We needed to do it in 45, we were doing it in an hour. Over the past 2 months we've worked on it about once a week and last night we finally managed to execute at near perfect-levels for 45 straight minutes. Gratz to l8raider Darsonsind on his new mount.

I wouldn't have minded winning the mount myself, but for me the joy was mainly in redemption. Two Mondays ago, we had been in a total groove and arrived at the final group of mobs to kill before the last boss and I screwed up and aggroed the boss and the mobs. We wiped and missed the prize by a minute. Being near-perfect for 44 and a half minutes just won't do.

But last night we did it. I hadn't actually screamed "f**k, yeah!" out loud on a kill in a long time before last night. My 14yo daughter head me and thinks I'm nuts. I guess that's not news. It does mean we were able to accomplish something that not every group of players in World of Warcraft can get to. Acknowledging this, Blizzard has indicated they are taking the ability to get the mount out of the game in the next expansion in order to preserve it's pride status as having been accomplished when it was hard.

Succeeding in this run requires 10 people staying in complete sync for 45 straight minutes. Tanks tank. Healers heal. Dps does damage. And no mistakes. No overpulling, no healing gaps on the tanks, no aggro pulls of the mobs off the tanks. The overall level of dps has to be very high to maintain the speed. We learned that trying to shave the 14m off our early attempts. Everybody needs to know the whole route and the special abilities of the four bosses and most importantly, how to work together as a team.

You also can't really do this in an egalitarian way. You need people with lots of experience and really good gear from other raids. It was tough turning away people who wanted to come try the run with us (and we'll be working on getting more people into the run now that we've got it down). But it's hard. And that's why meeting the challenge is so rewarding.

People raid for a lot of reasons. Most of them are based on the feeling of pushing yourself and your team and meeting terrific challenges. Plus sometimes, you get a little something to show off for your success.

Comments [14]

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Lynxara

Thank you for including a screencap this time! Having seen how rad the bear looks, I can understand why it's such a satisfying trophy for the Herculean amount of effort involved. This post made me twitch hard to install WoW, despite knowing how dangerous that is for someone in my profession.

Mandifesto

Come to the dark side Lynxara....give in to the twitch! Also, play on Elune and /join l8raid and join in the fun.

Arturis

@Lynxara

Its all a matter of setting priorities. I mean, I consider myself a more-hardcore-then-most WoW player, and yet I've had to skip out on raiding with L8Raid the past few weeks because of crunch time on a big GamePro related project (to be revealed soon!) As much as my addiction runs deep, I know my time is needed elsewhere and I can work around that.

Also, to help those that could easily be "sucked in", Blizzard has just added an in-game alarm/timer interface. You can set the timer for whatever length of time you plan on playing, and once it goes off, use your hearthstone (an item that teleports you to the safety of an Inn) and sign out.

Mandifesto

The beautiful thing about the ZA timed chest run is the synergy required to pull it off. You have ten people, all working together, running at the peak of their skills. There is no wiggle room for stupidity and not once do you have to ask someone to stop and regen mana. The run normally can take up to 2 hours with a group that is inexperienced or running with subpar gear, so any group that is able to fight 4 bosses in 45 minutes has got to be comprised of only the most elite. But when you're there, when you stand amongst a group that works so seemlessly you would think they were sitting in the same room, when the bosses topple one after another in a neat little pile, then you know you're truly raiding.

Lynxara

@Guys,

Hah, thanks for the invite! If I ever do join the dark side, I'll stop by. =)

You've got some good points, Art, and the timer is intriguing... I'm just wary. Most of my work as a writer is with consoles, and an MMO commitment is always going to tempt you away from deadlines if you end up with a lousy or very stressful game assignment. Especially if you've been at your terminal for hours, slogging away at a replay of some game you've already beaten to death to get screenshots...

Avoiding temptation is entirely what kept me out of City of Heroes/Villains and LotRO, where I have friends who've played at pretty high levels for quite some time. WoW is a unusually tempting because I know it's very solo-friendly, so if I fired it up at 3 AM because I couldn't sleep, it would presumably be easy to have fun. Then I start wondering if a solo-built character would ever be worth a damn if I had a chance to raid, and I end up not making a decision...

Mandifesto

I hate to be the bearer of good news, but it is entirely possible to level a character and gear them on your own and be able to slip fairly comfortably into the end game. Blizzard has done a lovely job of making quest rewards worth the time and effort to acquire them, and I have never encountered instances with as much beauty and innovation in any other MMO. Two years ago I would not have been able to make this claim, but itemization has gotten quite a workover since the release of the first expansion, and is even better in the second.

Lynxara

Presumably you'd need to go through a transition period where you picked your endgame "specialty" and geared/specced for it, right? Or can you solo with that in mind and build toward it?

Arturis

To answer your question, you can do either/or/and both. ^_^

Some characters I start off with a clear picture of exactly what I want that character to be doing. For example, I have an undead priest that I named Shadowtaint with the intention of being a Shadow Priest. So from the moment I submit the character creation screen, I know that I'm going to be focusing on building up my +Shadow damage gear, even though you dont start actually choosing your specialization until level 10.

Other characters, I just decide "Hey, it would be neat to try out class X" and dive right in without deciding what it's role will be. A good example of that is my hunter, Zhyn, who has switched specs a good 10-15 times on her way from 1 to 70. Originally she was fully Survival specced, but after awhile I gave Marksman a try, then set about finding the perfect balance between the two, spreading my talent points evenly.

As you go along, you are going to be picking up TONS of gear, and its always a good plan (even through those firm on their spec) to grab a second or third set of gear for doing off-spec or respec tasks. My main, Arturis the Paladin, at one point had five different sets of gear! Tanking, Healing, Melee Damage, Spell Damage, and AoE Damage sets! Thankfully they have been making some serious changes to Paladins to minimize the need for lugging all that armor around.

So I guess my final answer is, you can always respec, and you can always re-itemize. The only thing you are locked in to is your race/class/gender selection, and if you want to try another one, you've got 10 character slots per server to do so.

Mandifesto

@ Lynxara

While it is defintely possible to pick your endgame set of abilities at the beginning and ride on through to raiding (I've done it with a couple of characters), with some classes it is better to transition as you say.

A good example of this is the warrior, who when specc'd to take all the hits and keep the nasties off the other players does very little damage. Leveling as protection is obviously possible, it's just VERY VERY cumbersome, so it is much easier to level as a DPS warrior and then respec when you get around the levels where you will be grouping with others. I leveled my priest as shadow up until I was ready to start raiding with her. It's just a matter of collecting two sets of gear as Arturis mentioned.

Now the two sets of gear thing will be greatly minimized with Wrath of the Lich King because they are combining stats. Instead of items that will boost healing and items that will boost damage, there is something called Spellpower, which encompasses all spell abilities. Essentially there is no need for a caster to have a healing set and a dps set. I also believe they are combining resistences, but I have been playing around on the beta with professions and Death Knights too much to know for certain.

Short version: Wrath will make it even easier to solo on through to endgame.

Mandifesto

And big congrats to Beros, who got his very own Amani War Bear this week. Should he be called "Bearos" now?

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