Friday, April 1st

At this point, I should mention that I had received a major take-home graduate physics exam that week, which was due on the following Thursday. I made a schedule of what problems I would work on each day and even scheduled breaks and rewards for finishing them. One of the things I scheduled was that if I finished problem #1 (an admittedly easy problem that would only take a day to finish) on Friday, I could then spend Friday evening taking a break guilt-free. An evening of Onyxia runs fit the bill nicely.

On Friday, after successfully finishing the problem, I logged on to WoW at a quarter to seven and found the server strangely devoid of Offenders. None of the main raid leaders were on and when I did a "/who offenders," everybody was in instances runs of some kind. After putzing about Orgrimmar for a bit, I finally messaged one of them asking about the Onyxia raid:

Neriad: Hi! What's up with the Onyxia raid?
Name_Withheld: It's at 7, I think.
Neriad: It's 7 now.
Name_Withheld: Oh, dunno. Nobody's on.

I rolled my eyes and continued to putter around. It was hard to figure out what to do. I couldn't join an instance run, if there was a chance that the raid would be starting up sometime soon (if a bit late). And anyway, after an exhausting day of solving physics problems, I didn't feel like it. I was either going to do an Onyxia run or log off for the night. I did some auction house stuff and learned fishing for the heck of it. At around 7:30 with no sign of any fresh activity on the raid front, I messaged another Offender.

Neriad: Heya! What's up with the Onyxia raid?
Name_Withheld2: Dunno, nobody's on.
Neriad: Yeah, I noticed.
Name_Withheld2: I think they wanted more people to get their keys.
Neriad: Ah, that makes sense. Too bad. Well, I'm going to log off and do some homework, then. Could you send me a message saying when the next run's going to be when you find out?
Name_Withheld2: Sure thing.
Neriad: Thanks

I was disappointed. I was looking forward to the Onyxia raid very much, but hey, things happen. And I could understand if they wanted to get more of their guildmates to get their keys. At least 15 people in the raid on Thursday weren't Offenders or part of their regular raiding group. They might have been thinking that they'd have a better chance if more of the regular crew was involved.

I later found out that this wasn't what had happened, though. It turned out that the Onyxia run did happen -- only a couple hours later than the scheduled time, when people actually started logging onto the server. When I found out about this, I was annoyed. If you say the raid is at 7pm, then show up at 7pm. Or if people can't show up until 9pm, then schedule the raid for 9pm. Don't say 7pm and then show up at 9pm! And understand, this wasn't just a few people. This was the raid and guild leadership who did this. I was pretty damn pissed. (And yes, for a moment I did consider the possibility of an April Fool's Day joke. No, that's not what happened).

Oh, well. It was a busted evening, but Real Life happens. I logged off and started working on problem three of my physics exam (I skip around on tests). I figured I would log in the next day to find out if there was another Onyxia raid scheduled for the weekend, but it turned out that I got into "the zone." Seriously, all I did for the next four days was eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, and do physics problems. I may have taken a shower. I'm not sure. As far as World of Warcraft was concerned, I was incommunicado. In that time, Grim Vengeance/Basin and The Offenders may have held some Onyxia runs, but I wasn't a part of them. The Great Onyxia Race continued without me, and I would have to wait until my own Real Life issues were resolved before I could pick up the baton again.