20 Percent Awesome Makes Up for 80 Percent Suck

The Black Morass...not for weenies.

My weekly goal for this past week required revered reputation with the Keepers of Time, and completing the quest for 'Caverns of Time: Dark Portal' yields more than 8000 reputation points with the Keepers. The instance also serves as the final step in Karazhan attunement. So I figured this weekend I'd just jump in a PUG and knock it out.

Ha...not so much.

I probably ran this instance six or seven times before one of my guild mates in Full House was able to join to help. My first run was the best one before the last one; we got all the way to the second wave after the second boss. We wiped after the hunter lost his connection.

After that it was a steady stream of freakishly bad groups. I lost every roll on every boss drop (although one of the gators randomly dropped a green belt, which I won). I died repeatedly, most notably during the clearing phase of my second- or third-to-last attempt when my group mates would not help get crocs and spiders off me when they were standing right next to me. "After we're done with this mob we can help you." You have died. 6 minutes until release... Somewhere in there I lost my connection for a moment, only to come back to people typing ARAWN YOU F'ING IDIOT and the like...

By the time this ridiculousness ended, I was totally enraged and had taken to typing in all caps (which, ironically, doesn't really help abate the rage...in fact, it seems to feed it). I had wasted an entire PvP holiday on running an instance I had yet to finish. I was tired, I was grumpy, and I was ready to throw my laptop out the window.

I logged out for a few hours and watched a chick flick with my wife. I logged back on once she went to sleep fully expecting more ridiculousness.

When I logged back on, though, one of my guild mates, Unclejesse, grouped up with me. We got a warrior (gnome lady...hilarious visuals) and a healer, and somewhere in there I think we had a rogue.

This was probably the best group I've had since clearing Arcatraz on the first try. The healer had a ridiculous mp5 score, and Unclejesse was a Jedi master when it came to managing the trash mobs attacking Medivh's shield. We had only one death (Unclejesse right before the last boss...doh!) but things were going so well that they didn't even wait for him to make it back (sorry!) before aggroing the last boss, and no one came close to dying. It was amazing.

At the end of the run, I hit revered status with Keepers of Time and finished The Master's Touch. All told, the final run resulted in me getting:

• Continuum Blade
• Star-Heart Lamp
• The Master's Key
• Key of Time

That final run made up for the entire weekend. Now I'm Kara attuned and have access to the heroic Caverns of Time instances, and I managed to bank around 10k honor points afterwards towards this week's weekly goal.

The last 20 percent awesome definitely made up for the first 80 percent suck.