I finally killed Arthas for my first time tonight!

This is a huge accomplishment for me for a couple reasons. I have a girlfriend and like to spend time with her. I have a job and work during the day. I have kids. In other words, I don't have a huge amount of time to play, so I would consider myself a casual.

That doesn't mean I don't raid at all. But I've been playing since vanilla and never got to kill almost any of the raid bosses of vanilla or BC. It's not that I'm a bad player either. I catch on to fights quick and usually only need to see them once to understand them. I 1 shot half of the raid bosses I fight the first time I encounter them.

The problem was that I had never been in a position to raid hours a day every day of the week ( or raid on any sort of fixed schedule at all) and that's why I'd like to sincerely thank Blizzard for the following changes to the game that made this incredible event possible :

• Removal of the honor grind : Getting to rank 7 and then realizing rank 14 was impossible actually made me quit the game.


• Flying mounts : This plus the honor changes brought me back.


• Heroics and badges : I could never get into raids in vanilla because i was in full blues. In BC, I was able to start Kara because of heroic and badge gear which could be acquired on an hour a day.


• 10 man raids : Raid content became widely pugable when Kara came out because managing 10 people you don't know is a lot easier than managing 40.


• 10 man versions of 25s : I still never saw sunwell or bt when it was current because those were only available as 25s and you still needed a raiding guild for those. I could only ever get into 10 man guilds that didn't have dedicated groups because the members had busy lives.


• LFD : I love tanking. This is a huge advantage with instant queues. I can literally farm badges in 15 minutes a day now.


• Heroics scaling with raid content : I love alts. I have 4 80s and have played all other classes to 70. This locked me out of raid content in BC because you had to progress through the raids in order. That took forever if you weren't in a 25 man guild that had all content on farm. With heroics dropping 232 gear, I was able jump straight into raid content 1 tier below the top (toc). This is great because you still should farm toc for a bit to gear up for ICC.

I love Warcraft because of the story. Playing WC3 and the Frozen Throne in god mode is like watching a really long movie. Thank you, Blizzard, for allowing me to experience the rest of the story through all the currently available content as a casual player.

Signed,

Someone who loves their paladin

[Edits for comments later in the thread]
-I main tanked this (the ret gear you see in my armory is because I was doing loremaster quests when i logged)
-I pugged it from something I saw in trade, this was not a guild run. Also, when Arthas fell, I saw at least 7 other people get kingslayer, noone was carried in this group.
-With how much the levelling curve has been adjusted, my 4 80s and several 70s only required 1-2 hours of playtime per day over 4 years. That's only 2.5 max level characters per year. Taking 4-6 months to get to 80 is still casual IMO.

Congratulations! It's always great to hear about these types of positive experiences. :)