Want to play a game?

How about Global Thermo Nuclear War?

Bad idea, but luckily Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, and the WOPR learned the hard way that the only winning move is not to play, so we don't have to.

Nope, us adventurers who stumble into Karazhan only have the option of a game of Chess.

This is just plain cool. A total split from the normal PvE routine, and a nice fun little diversion.

Of course, getting there was a pain in the butt for our first time through. Lots of trashy pulls who are only vulnerable to physical damage. Lots of vanishing and reappearing guys making the pulls difficult. Mostly just slowing us down, hopefully as we learn the pulls, we'll be able to cruise through from the Curator's Menagerie to the Chess Event in no time.

And we were lost. None of us had ever been this far into the dungeon, so we had no idea where to go. We stumbled upon Illhoof's secret book case. I think we started to head over to Shade of Aran for a bit. Then we went up when we should have gone down and found Netherspite before the Chess thingie.

w00t, we found it. And how cool is this room?

As a first time raider, I really am blown away by how much cooler the overall dungeon is in Karazhan than in the 5-man zones. Different music, much more elaborate setting, twists and turns and entry ways to rooms that just make everything seem that its on this giant scale. Just a nice job.

Each new encounter gives such a rush. Even something like chess. I've read countless blogs who just say how easy chess is and how its just freebie epics.

Well, try reading the WoWWiki page from the perspective of someone who's never seen it before.

Confusing as h3ll.

So we review the strat over voice chat, come up with a plan. Took us a few minutes to figure out how to initiate the fight, lol.

We all take over our pieces. And now what? None of us can even figure out how to move.

After a while, somebody figured out that the movements are on your action bar.

Ah. Of course, by this time, most of our pawns are in really bad shape.

But we held on and with only the two kings left out there, we won. I don't care if people say its easy or not, I'm still counting it as another first appearance one-shot for the week. The other was Big Bad Wolf who got one shot in our first ever visit to his show.

Some lewtz dropped, one got sizzled as we didn't have a shammy with us, and the other went to our sub rogue. I'm not convinced the purple was an upgrade over his existing blue gear, but oh well, he was excited and wanted purple. Cool, none of us wanted it, so go to town, fella. Why is looting that chest such a pain? Why does Blizzard have to make us each take turns looting to get our badges, only to click the chest and have it say the item is already being used by somebody else. Stupid newbie programmers. L2 use semaphores.

Since it wasn't too late yet, we decided to go take a peek at Netherspite, largely because we felt our repair bills were too low from not dying on the Chess Event. That, and also to get a small taste for the fight, so that reading about it will make some sense while prepping for next week.

Seems reasonable. Gotta get a better taste of what it really means to get the buffs/debuffs from standing in the beams, and how the whole beam-blocking rotation will work, as we didn't survive past the first non-beam phase of the fight. We did get him down to 96% though, lol.

All in all, a great night to close out our by far biggest progression week ever...

First night o' four bosses.
First appearance and one-shot of Big Bad Wolf.
First kill of Curator.
First win at Chess.
First viewing of Netherspite.
A bunch of new gear.
A bunch of newly dinged reputation tiers with Violet Eye and the fun ring upgrades.
Lots of fun.

Now to ready ourselves for next week, and the psychological issues of keeping everyone happy with what will probably be much less progression, and hopefully we'll be able to at least repeat all these same boss kills.