Why I Didn't Like Wrath of the Lich King (Continued)

By the time I'd cleared Ulduar and our then guild leader bailing on us I was on the verge of another burnout. The guild wasn't the same anymore and getting our raids back up and running was sometimes difficult, because people stopped showing up eventually. While we pushed for an XT-002 hard-mode kill in 25-man we also focused on the Argent Tournament raid, clearing that out in a matter of weeks.

We failed miserably on the Ulduar hard modes, attempting Freya/Hodir/Thorim and some Iron Council. Highly frustrating when people can't or don't get it together. I also remember attempting the Northrend Beasts encounter on hard mode. Fail.

I didn't get much gear from these raids which resulted in me falling behind gear-wise. It was bad to the point where my off-spec gear was higher in item level than my main spec, all because I used to do the occasional 10-man with the better members of the raid team and tank. 

So now I was in a pretty bad situation- I'd have no chance to guild hop, as the guilds doing more progressed content had gotten a bigger edge and my gear was lacking- I'd been using a iLvl 226 weapon from 25-man Ulduar and hadn't replaced it until the Icecrown Citadel 5-mans had opened up, a bump to 232 (Icecrown Citadel was at 251/264/277). Eventually I burned out for the remainder of the year until the following January. I returned and applied to a better guild. Although my gear was lacking at the time I was allowed a trial run with them. I picked up as much useful gear as I could from the badge vendors but the new Frost Emblems were a pain unless you raided Icecrown Citadel. 

Anyway, I'd easily seen all of Icecrown with my new guild and saw the Lich King fight, although never being able to down him personally. My trial had passed and despite getting some new gear in the process, hadn't made the cut. I was still lacking in the arms department. Soon enough, however, a rogue buddy of mines from Burning Crusade invited me to join his guild, which was breaking into Icecrown at the time. So I did. The guild was fairly successful, tackling most of the instance except for Sindragosa and the Lich King. By that time I'd amassed a decent amount of gear, and even got the axe required to progress through the Shadowmourne quest completed. I was effectively geared out to tackle heroic Icecrown but never saw the opportunity.

With that said, I disappeared from the game once more soon after and came back sometime at the year's end. Cataclysm was around the corner, and I had the upgrade already installed when launch arrived. It was time for a new start, hopefully one that would be better than before.