Wintergrasp 3: To the Death!!
I returned to Lake Wintergrasp this evening. No, this wasn’t like my half-hazard return to Stratholme where I can’t really explain how it happened. I hearthed to Dalaran with under eight minutes to go before the Alliance was to defend the fort, but was quickly booted from the server. I logged back in, and by the time I got control of Gav, there was less then 30 seconds remaining. I ran like a bat out o’ hell to the portal, popped through, and prepared myself. I had bought a Flask of Endless Rage earlier, so I quaffed that, and buffed myself up. However, there was a sucky raid administration running the gig. Something like five minutes passed before I was able to secure an invite. In fact, no one was getting their invite requests answered. It made the first half of the battle very, vey sloppy, with no coordination. However, once the raid was intact, we put up one hell of a fight.
When I first got there, I first went around, hitting folks with my buffs and healing where necessary. When a wall fell, I went out and attacked a steam catapult. Bad frickin’ idea. I didn’t die, but it was damn close. I finished off one blood elf paladin who was already hurt, netting me a solo kill. Later, a troll warrior squared off with me, one on one, and although I stood my ground well (for having a five level disadvantage), I finally died. Once respawned I zipped back down to the gates, where the raid was finally coming together and I got my invite. Yay! Now buffed and ready, I was game to be aggressive.
I attacked whatever hordies came through the gates, healed some allies, and got another killing blow. I also blew up two siege engines with my Hammer of Wrath. In a strange anecdote, I once tab-targetted Blueyes, the blood elf paladin I had helped kill outside Stormwind, but wasn’t able to see him or close in to do battle. Anyway, around about the 10 minute mark, it seemed that we were driving them back. We were going to win! However, the Horde was simply re-routing their forces to the other side of the fortress, and with us chasing them instead of defending the fort, they had little resistance getting inside the walls. We fought hard, though, pushing them back out for a while. Finally, however, they were simply too much and they finally captured the fort with under five minutes left. Afterwards, I was attacked by a tauren warrior I’d fought earlier in the battle, but he was yanked away by a death knight, saving me. In a fitting closure, however, I was sought out in the post-battle scrum by the blood elf paladin I’d killed earlier, and we did battle in the now nigh-empty courtyard. It was touch-and-go for a while, with us exchanging judgements and seals, using all of our tricks to try and win. As he was finally overcoming me, I backed up into a newly spawned abomination (the horde’s guards), and was slain. Oh well. C’est la vie, no?