Written by Sil
Tuesday, 25 September 2007

The last time most of us saw Jaina Proudmore her lifeless corpse was in front of us in Theramore tower. On this occasion however we stood alongside her, fulfilling our part of the ancient alliance between the Horde and Alliance. Her aura did manage to endear to her a fair part of the raid. We drew up our depleted forces alongside her meagre (and brainless) alliance forces. Some of us got a little too confused though.

Blizzard have put a lot of effort into Hyjal, recreating the atmosphere of Warcraft 3, mirroring the unit and layout of the towns. The ‘trash’ consists of timed waves, each different from the last, crashing against the towns defences. This is certainly one instance where afking the trash is not advisable.

The ghouls and crypt fiends poured towards the town, supported by the trundling abominations and necromancers - the Umbrage forces met them with precision and planning but alas things were not to run so smoothly. Exhibiting the worst aspects of a pug group the alliance npcs charged around, randomly breaking crowd controlled mobs and pulling aggro. The ‘melee hunter’ was represented by riflemen hitting mobs with their tiny axes and, in scenes reminiscent of our Molten Core days, sneaky casters were seen to be spending their time levelling unarmed and staffs instead of actually casting spells. Despite the best efforts of the alliance retards our slightly unmanned raid swept aside the undead and arrived at the oft-mocked Rage Lootchill erm Loot Winterchill. Luckily there was not much time to debate which it was as he floated into range promising death and destruction and all the usual crap.

Despite his reputation we swiftly learnt that 5 healers is sub-optimal especially when said healers are carrying giant signs saying "icebolt me now". Once was enough to see the fight and after more little trash waves he fell to the floor allowing us access to his much desired bracer collection, ‘Bracers of Void Crystally Goodness’ seem very popular.

A brief respite during the dusting allowed everyone to relax a bit and enjoy the fact that almost every npc seemed to have died to death and decay. Stupid NPCs, I mean who on earth wouldn’t be able to move out of that…..

More waves of trash arrived to be dispatched, allowing access to Anetheron. A slightly tougher position with his carrion swarm and infernal friends, it was apparent that our 5 healers were in deep trouble, bravely drinking pots the healers valiantly persisted. For another 30 seconds. With the Black temple attunement done we hastened back to Akama for our reward, leaving Anetheron for another day. The raid expectantly gathered at Akama awaiting praise, purplez and pretty cut scenes…

Yawn. The raid expectantly gathered at Ad’al awaiting praise, purplez and pretty cut scenes….

Yawn. The raid expectantly gathered outside BT ready to, at last, get our reward only to be told that we had to escort Akama and his night elf girlie to the entrance to Black Temple and ‘protect them’

Buffing up we decimated the gathered demons while the dawdling NPCs were still preparing. It might be noted that it is rather unsporting to make a mob immune at 1% and force the raid to wait while Akama makes as much progress towards the gate as an asthmatic ant carrying heavy shopping. Eventually he made it, allowing us our first look inside BT. Catch up with out Black Temple adventures next weekend!

The following day it was time to play with Anetheron again and clearing through his waves of charming undead minions we implemented our new and improved plan, ‘don’t die cos now we have 6 healers’. This surprisingly simple battle plan worked wonders and we silenced him on the second attempt. His loot looked awesome!

Jaina informed us the alliance town was screwed (she used more words) and urged us to leave, Noticing her cast bar showing her casting ‘Mass Teleport’ we gathered round as the undead hordes swept towards the town. The spell finished. She disappeared. We did not. Bugger.

Riding madly for Thrall’s camp our miners played the fun game of ‘try to mine before the ghouls gank you’. Luckily for us the ghouls contrived to fall off the mountainside and bug half way down the slope - our mirth was somewhat lessened as each of us in turn was teleported to them. Collecting our corpses we went to visit the glorious horde base and learn the trash waves there - as well as spent quality time with Thrall. While we all hold the mighty orc in high regard some people wanted to be his bitches more than others……

Playing around with the trash we confirmed the fact that Taurens > all. A long discussion on where our taurens might find tree trunks with which to mash our enemies followed. Having succeeded in defending the alliance hovels we look forward to aiding the defence of the splendid horde encampment.

Despite our progress we have enjoyed other pursuits this week. Our Karazhan run providing valuable advice for budding paladin alts, when one of them demonstrated a chronic failing - namely dying.

Elsewhere we devoted attention to trying to amuse ourselves while Telonicus thought it would be hilarious to remote toy 4 or 5 tanks in a row.

In other news, while foot and mouth is spreading in England we are a little more concerned about an outbreak of mad cow disease……

Stay tuned for the incoming Black Temple update!

Written by Sil
Thursday, 20 September 2007

There is only so many times you can hear "Let’s see how you hold up against the might of the Darkener, Thaladred" before nightmares start to invade your life and you start having delusions about a lumbering nub endlessly trailing after you throwning his axe and hoping for invisible terrain to block you in. Luckily last week we ensured that for at least 6 days none of us could hear it again. The hugely entertaining Kael’thas fight, marred only by the length of phase one and his endless babbling, was over. There was a comforting silence throughout Tempest Keep, a silence not mirrored on our Teamspeak.

After a close call on the previous reset an abrupt change to our usual raid schedule brought us to Tempest Keep last wednesday. We drifted through the other bosses, everyone’s thoughts on the annoying blood elf and the gateway to Hyjal/Black Temple. A slight ‘misjudgement’ on Void Reaver and the fact that the Al’ar kill was so slow re-blessing was required meant that by the time we got to the Kael’thas trash time was running out. Over the previous weeks the Kael’thas trash has succeeded in providing light entertainment for the evening - the deaths of the melee dps classes who can’t cope with not dpsing for a whole mob (note: they call this dedication and bravery, the healing channel has another word for it) - and the ever popular "kite the battlemages over semi afk people and see if they can get one-shotted". With adrenaline rising however there was no time for that and instead the trash was promptly dispatched leaving us in front of the giant elf and his 3 evil minions (the fourth being of such a beautiful construction no bad word may be said about her).

A few warm up pulls were made but in order to continue our policy of killing things at the end of raids we waited until almost the end to put all the hard work of the last few weeks together and clear the instance. Dispatching adds and weapons with ease the raid ploughed into phase 4 & 5 steadily beating his abilities until at last his voice was silent.

The gateway to Hyjal was open……

Running around like ten year old children on a sugar high most of the raid decided to visit Hyjal - not to make a pull but to have a look round and generally let off steam. Brief drooling over the stats on Tier 6 made way to mocking those classes Blizzard hates in terms of looks. Even in an instance with few enemy mobs people found a way to die - taurens doing their headless chicken impressions plummetting from the cliffs and falling to their deaths. Eventually growing tired of flapping around we gathered in front of Jaina and decided there was no harm in trying a pull - no harm except that 18 half dressed players and no heal setup is hardly a good way start. The first waves however were no problem and it was only about half way through that it became apparent that things were about to get painful, wave 5 demonstrated this very effectively. There was however plenty to time for all to agree there was much fun to be had and our return on sunday met with different results.

Find out about life in Hyjal in part two of this update!

With Kael’thas holding the key to the new instances we have found other ways to amuse ourselves, sauntering through SSC is hardly the most entertaining of nights and even the outdoor bosses failed to amuse. It was with relief that Battery-baiting raised its head once again and the bored dps classes took every opportunity to mock the poor little protection cow and endlessly challenge him to duels. One night (probably misclicking) one of them managed it.

Sadly for the self styled "overlord of uberness" it all went rather badly wrong. Warlocks, remember, are a very underpowered class

Not to be outdone his partner in crime took advantage of the situation to initiate a duel of his own. Oh dear.

Umbrage recruitment remains open in limited classes and while we will consider exceptional applicants in all classes at the moment we are only looking for 2 warlocks, a healing druid and a shadowpriest.

Follow our intial foray into Hyjal with this weekend’s update!