Re-activating your WoW account, or interested in "Trying Before You Buy"?How To Have A Relaxing "Undying" Run
Ironic: Shrimproll the Undying
Shrimproll the Undying
On March 21, our Saturday night Naxx10 group completed "the Undying" achievement by not having any deaths during any boss fights throughout the entire instance.
We attempted it with a solid group of regular raiders for 4-5 Saturday nights before we finally got it.
The deaths during the failed attempts were all flukes due to bad timing more than anything, too. We didn't have any people in our group who hadn't already gone through Naxx25 with no deaths of their own (too bad there's no personal Undying/Immortal achievement) - everyone knew every fight like the back of their hands.
Healer Girls Listening To Boys Talk
Not all of our Healers are female, of course, but for the Saturday night Undying runs, it just happened that myself (holy priest) and another female healer in our guild (holy paladin) were the two healers, and the two females in the group.
One thing we agreed upon as females was only relayed in whispers to one another, while we all sat in Vent as well:
Her: "boys are noisy and talk about silly things"
Me: "yes they are! but they lift heavy things for us and help us with our cars"
Her: "hee hee, that they do"
My View Of The World Is Unique (in my guild)
I must admit, I've been listening to Jerry and Esther Hicks' "Law of Attraction" Seminar and audiobook material for a couple of years now and it has made a huge impact on the way I look at the world.
The music I enjoy has changed - some songs I used to love and sing along wholeheartedly with now make me shudder and skip past them (Alanis Morrissette's "Isn't it Ironic"), while other songs are even more amazing than ever (Barenaked Ladies "If I had a million dollars").
I generally don't talk about this "weird" stuff I listen to and have gained great value from in my life, but it was amazingly helpful for me in this successful Undying run.
What Conversation On Vent Sounds Like...
Since our Undying runs weren't on official raid nights, vent was much more active than usual on those nights. General chatter between various people went on, with very little discussion about the actual fights at hand, because again, we all knew the place backwards and forwards.
Really, I don't even remember what exactly the topics of conversation were, but they had absolutely nothing to do with the raid, and everything to do with boys razzing boys about different things in life, and coming up with ridiculous topics to build upon each other with.
Frankly, it was annoying to have to listen to. On Vent everyone is a different volume and needs to be adjusted individually, and in regular raids, Vent is very quiet and used only to relay IMPORTANT information to the group.
STFU, eh?!
Normally in our guild raids, the Signal-to-Noise ratio is very high, but on these Saturday night runs, there was way more Noise (general chatter) than Signal (useful information). Blah, noise on Vent sucks.
Joking around in whispers with my fellow female healer gave me a feeling of relief, tho, after feeling a buildup of annoyance at the low signal-to-noise ratio of the discussions. But it was only a temporary relief because the noise continued.
So, because I don't like the feeling of annoyance, I reached for a better feeling thought (a la Abraham Hicks) and came up with the fact that I know this place cold, and really don't have to listen to vent for the run to be successful.
There was so little important information being relayed that I made a decision for the run that we ended up getting the Undying achievement on - I logged into vent so as to be "present", but then muted all of the conversation and whispered my fellow healer for fight coordinations instead.
Don't Psych Yourself Out!
One thing I found interesting about the runs was that all the freak deaths from the weeks before were recorded, and those individuals were reminded of their deaths just before the boss that killed them previously.
In fact, the deaths were recorded as part of the text on the Calendar that had invites for each Saturday's attempts, so that each of us could read and review it if we desired.
Do you remember that I said that all the deaths were freak accidents, and that all of us in the group know the instance like the back of our hands and have made it through Naxx25 without dying (individually, not as a 25-man group) to any bosses?
So, yah. In my mind, we didn't really need reminders about where we died the previous week. It's not like we needed to go practice any skills in the mean time to ensure we wouldn't die... they were FREAK DEATHS!!
In the context of Law of Attraction, this is called "attracting into your experience what you DON'T want, instead of what you DO want".
Forced To Unmute Vent For Sapphiron
The main reason I logged into vent but then muted it was so that others would think I was there, and mind their own business.
Unfortunately, I had to admit I wasn't listening to Vent just before we started to battle Sapphiron the Frost Wyrm, and the reaction was just as I expected:
"OMG! You need to be listening to Vent! Get back into Vent!"
So, I rolled my eyes a little bit and unmuted them for that battle.
I muted them again for Kel'Thuzad because it was just so "Psych Yourself Out" crazy that I instantly felt everyone's anxiety at how close we were to the achievement and how focused they were on "not dying".
The Sapphiron battle was just dumb. I mean, again, we all know this fight in our sleep, and therefore my view is that if we all just STFU and do our jobs we'll win.
But holy mackrel, if I had a dime for every time some (non-healer) said "don't die! OMG heal X!" I'd be able to go and buy myself a nice bottle of Vodka!
A Key Thing To Know About Vent
If you're relying on it to relay information that needs to be acted upon within split-seconds like Kel'Thuzad's Frost Blast, Vent isn't the way to go.
By the time the name is relayed on Vent and I find that person on my Healbot skin, it's too late, especially if there's any lag to the Vent server itself.
That's why I've got Healbot configured correctly in the first place - the instant the Frost Blast lands on someone, I can see it on my Healbot, and I react to THAT, not to your panicked voice on voice chat.
In other words, during an Undying run, which must by description have members who are extremely experienced with the fights, Vent can be more of a hinderance to some than anything.
How To Have A Relaxing "Undying" Run
Truthfully, my "log in then mute vent" trick was a pretty Passive way of handling the management of my own emotions. I know that too much noise stresses me, but I know that people who like to make noise to relax themselves don't understand this, and there were a lot of noise-makers in the raid.
Next time I'm going to follow the advice that I write below, for anyone else who is attempting the Undying or even Immortal Naxx Achievements with a solid group of guildmates:
Tell your teammates you're going to forgo Vent for this stressful run, because you find it important to feel relaxed in order to do well, and listening to chatter on vent (sorting out the important stuff from the BS) is more of a distraction than a help.
Put on music (or in my case, Abraham Hicks seminars) that brings you joy but that doesn't distract you from the task at hand.
Let auto-pilot take over. You're obviously experienced with these fights or your guild wouldn't have invited you along, so don't worry too much about each battle. Go in knowing that you've done this before without dying, and feel the confidence you'll be able to repeat that without a problem.
Auto-Pilot, Auto-Pilot, Auto-Pilot
Reduce what it is you think about, and really, I can't say this enough: Let auto-pilot take over.
If you find yourself getting anxious about how far in your group has gotten without a death, re-direct your thoughts to something that has nothing to do with living or dying on a video game. Re-focus on the joy the game gives you, and the joy the music is giving you as well.
Re-focus on the fun you're having with the raiding guildmates that you particularly like. Let your heart sit for a while in the thought of enjoying experiences together with friends.
Remember: We raiders play this game to have fun, meet neat people and be able to share experiences with them. Focus on that part of the game, and you'll forever be joyous.
Focus on "OMG, don't die!" and you'll not only die more often but you'll be distressed during the part of the game where you're playing fine and NOT dying.
Don't Psych Yourself Out. Stick with a feeling of joy and you'll be much better off.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related posts:
- Challenge Exists In Chaos
- Why My Raiding Guild Rocks, Part One
- How To Remove Your Group From The LFM List
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One tactic I've seen used to good effect is cordoning the DPS into their own vent chan so we can blather on as we do, and leaving the main raid vent channel for tanks and healers.
I wish there was a way to be in two channels at once- so someone could relay any important info to the DPS chan...
Search Google for "normalize ventrilo". Those settings will make loud people quiet and quiet people loud. That should make the audio a little less annoying.
Neat little hack for Vent voice normalization (makes everyone's voice volume sound the same), if you are anyone else is interested.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/08/01/how-to-normalize-your-ventrilo-settings/
Agree 100% about vent. It can be useful, but sometimes better left muted!
The Abraham-Hicks/LoA stuff - pretty interesting. I hadn't heard of it before but found it spot on for what ails most of us - self included!
Glad you posted the link
Hey,
So I just read your nice long post and wanted to reply again. I totally agree that sometimes vent chatter should really be kept to a minimum. Did you guys not have a dedicated channel that just the raid members wanted to go into while you were doing the undying achievement? Or was it just everyone in the entire guild that was in there talking..Or was it just the raid members that were making up for most of the chatter?
Anyways I wanted to make note of a few things you said, first one was your last paragraph the auto-pilot thing was a great one to read. It makes a huge amount of sense to just sometimes take yourself away from what you are doing in order to actually do things correctly. I cannot count on how many times if you are focusing on something sooo hard that well it's bound to happen. Repeating in your head or across vent to Not die..or heal so and so...well it get's frustrating and very confusing as someone that doesn't want to focus on that...as dps hearing don't die..you think instinctively well damn i should start hitting harder..next thing you know you pull threat and you are dead...Just like i'm sure you as a healer don't want to be told who to heal because it throws you off..you heal the tank and then someone says that they or someone else needs a heal you may interrupt your cast and listen to them when you were already healing them or healing someone else that needed it more. Anyways was a great little post you gotta take yourself out of the moment just enough but still be able to play and concentrate on the key essential elements at hand.
The next thing I wanted to comment about, and I know your guild is Much more experienced than where I was at the time when I used to play so your whole thing when singing up into a raid and it says how you died (although they were freak accidents)...this is something that your guild was recording right..it's nothing new that was added to the interface for the game? Anyways I have not played since before sunwell patch came out, but our guild was not a raiding guild so much...we had just started doing kara and Gruuls when i quit. But we didn't have a dedicated 10 people to always run each week with us..if it was something in game that was able to record stats like that so when you sign up or maybe just before a boss fight it would pop up a warning like...when you do a ready check or have a 2nd thing the guild leader can click to have pop up on everyone's screen at anytime...something to remind you of how you died..but you could uncheck to hear about those things for your type of guilds. For the casual raider as some might only participate once or twice a month it would be a great reminder of what they did wrong and to remind them of what NOT to do again during this fight. Sure it may slow things down a little bit initially when prepping for the fight...but those few extra minutes of prep and warning...may save you from dying and having to do the whole fight over again, which would probably account for longer waiting time than the time it takes to remind ourselves of what had happened the last time.
Anyways I thought this was a great little post you had put up and i'm glad you finally made it through Naxx 10 without having anyone die, Congratulations! Looking forward to hearing more about your adventures!
Glad to share what's been a great way to keep happy in my own life :)
Some of the message is undoubtedly very weird (and took me quite a while to get used to), but I just shrug off what I don't resonate with (or sometimes even understand) at the time and keep focused on the underlying concepts which resonate very heavily.
It really does help me keep my game-playing a joyous activity, even around other people who are ... not so joyful ;)
Dernit.
"Not supported yet"
<-- is on a Mac.
Awesome! Another commenter left a URL about the same idea, I'll make sure to update this post with that useful information.
Unless, of course, you're on a Mac... you've got to be happy with changing individual volumes, which in itself is a pretty "brand new feature" for us Mac Vent users. Ah well. The price you pay for rarely (if ever) having to worry about spyware or trojans, since they target the larger PC market ;)
That splitting out of vent channels is a decent idea, although our main raids don't really have the "chatter" problem, thankfully :)
I have seen our officers in 2 channels, with some type of "ghosting" into another. I've got my own vent server now, perhaps I will look into that and see what I can find :)
Great to hear from you again! I've got a big smile on my face, it's great to get such thoughtful, interesting responses to my adventures!
In answer to your questions:
Who was blabbing on vent?
4-5 people in our raid who probably think it "relaxes them" to talk when they're nervous :)
Nobody else was on vent, and our raid guild really only uses vent during raid time - we've all got "social" vent servers that we hang out on outside of raid time.
Regarding the recording of deaths:
Yes, there's a new in-game Calendaring feature that lets players know about upcoming events (Darkmoon Faire, seasonal events, PvP weekends, etc) and is also programmable in that players can create their own events and invite their friends to their events, and it's used to plan off-night raids in our guild. In the text area for comment about the event, someone copied and pasted from week to week who had died where, as a type of social pressure, I suppose, to not repeat the event.
Once I knew it was there, I never read it again. I don't care who died from week to week, because I know it was a freak death, not that someone *again* stood in the wrong place XYZ fight.
Regarding the casual player's learning curve:
I'm beginning to believe that it's better to talk to the Casual player about what a successful boss fight looks like from their role, instead of pointing out what they did wrong last time.
Why? Because I know that when **I** think about success, I feel better than when I think about what I've done wrong. What I've done wrong, in the past, I can't do anything about, but when it comes to my future success, I have a huge influence on it, and a bigger sense of personal control.
How's it make you feel? :)
As for the whole blabbing well like you said everyone is different therefore in order for some people to calm down they don't think about the fight by talking about something completely out in left field that makes no sense, where as on the other hand some people myself included would find that a bit annoying where i need to concentrate just enough about what's going on to know what's happening and not chat about other things but not focus so much that i am over thinking how things are being done.
The in game calendar thing sounds like a really great improvement. I know one thing was that no one wanted to ever go to the guild web page to sign up for raid nights and stuff like that because it's i guess to much of a waste to open a browser while playing and check..so for those people it probably makes organization with guilds just that much more efficient.
As for how I feel about the whole learning curve and such...yeah of course I am the type to love hearing a story about someone's triumphant defeat over their hardships. Maybe it's a quest you couldn't do or a raid boss you were having trouble with..or maybe it's just over coming the fear of getting to know other people in the game. 2 comments I can think of are the first one being that a friend of mine just started..well a while ago now i guess..but rolled a hunter and played until 80 and then just wanted to give up after that..roll another tune not play her main character or whatever. I started to help her figuring things out since she doesn't enjoy a lot of the parts of the game...she doesn't enjoy PvP, or raids or even instances...so gearing up for her is a big troublesome deal..either buy things or do dailies. I got her started on doing one faction of dailies a day until she was going through all the different ones I could find. Now she is exalted with 3 of them (The Kalu'ak being one thanks to reading about your fishing stories and your adventures you posted a while ago) So it's great for me to know she is doing much better and knows certain things to do now that she is 80, but she still has a hard time finding groups and over coming the fear of talking to other people in the game because she doesn't want them to think she doesn't know anything when she doesn't understand what they are talking about in an instance. The 2nd was just about how raid progression worked in my guild..we were very very casual as I said before and it took us about a month before we got to Prince in Kara, but still it was very encouraging how seeing each week would would progress past another boss or at least go through the ones we had done the week before in a much faster time. I remember doing Attument for the first time and the horses had all re-spawned during the middle of the fight so we all wiped..the next week we were half that time..the week after it took probably less than 10 minutes to clear everything to him and beat the boss....So hearing those kind of stories is a really big encouragement to keep on pushing to go further. What i've been really depressed and probably hung up over is the fact that when I finished playing we had got Prince down to 1%, and everyone wanted to stop that night...which is the last thing i really remember about playing..after that they downed him the next day and for the weeks to come they cleared kara no problem.