The Horde Raid On Sentinel Hill

13 November, 2006. 385 words.

I saw the funniest thing on Undermine last night: A full-blown Horde raid on the Sentinel Tower in Westfall.

This was no small raid, either. This was a coordinated effort by dozens of high-level Horde players. It was quite spectacular to watch — it was like a virtual version of a battle scene from Braveheart.. Fire rained from the sky, arrows flew, swords clashed. There must have been fifty or more people in a mass chaotic melee between the Horde players, Alliance players, and Sentinel guards. It was hilarious.

The opening minutes of the raid.

I can’t imagine why a Horde raiding group would be interested in capturing Sentinel Hill, but it certainly provided me with a great deal of entertainment. I didn’t get involved, though, despite numerous taunts from the Horde raiders. I didn’t see much point in jumping into the middle of a sea of Level ?? Horde players with my puny little Level 17 alt warrior (for non-gamers, that would be like sending a 6-year-old with a pointy stick into a fight against veteran knights wearing plate mail armor). One Level 19 guy standing next to me was dumb enough to join the melee and died about 2 seconds later.

I think the Horde raiders were eventually defeated. I got tired of watching after the first wave of attacks was beaten back, so I wandered off back to my quests.

After the battle, the ground was covered with skeletons.

Watching the raid made me think about my future in WoW. Once you reach the top levels, there’s apparently nothing else to do but go on raids. While that sounds like it would be fun, I can’t even imagine the amount of time it would take to coordinate a large raid like that. When I played Quake, it sometimes took hours to setup a simple match with 10 people. Putting together a raiding party of the size I saw last night must have taken all freakin’ day. When I want to play a game, I want to play right now, I don’t want to have to wait. And the battle itself was complete chaos. How anyone could see what they were doing in the thick of all that, let alone keep the attack organized and focused on an objective, I have no idea.

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