SWP burst onto the scene complete with its (stupid) gate system. Not that this was a concern for us as the first boss Kalegcos was enough to keep us busy for a little while. Before raiding got underway the great race for exalted with Shattered Sun Offensive got underway (otherwise known as the ‘I play too much’ competition). Worryingly it took Biitti until Saturday night to manage it.

The trash in SWP continued Blizzard’s policy of trying to stop people afking through trash. While not hard, it is difficult to slack through. On the other hand trying to do it with a single mage is in no way recommended. The trash drops are of high quality with the crafted items currently amongst the best ingame, superior to T6 in many cases.

The first boss, Kalegcos, is a brilliant fight. It continues the trend of “one retard = wipe”, and is certainly a fight along the same difficulty as the Four Horseman. Tank rotations, healer rotations and dps rotations are all involved and incorrect positioning and/or taunting dooms you to failure. The added twist of keeping alive a aggro-whore npc makes it challenging on many fronts. We would however strongly advocate more regulation on the portals (or removing some the bugs) and we just love the increased cast time on heals.

Still we always know how to motivate ourselves, and one cunning plan later we were good to go (while I would in no way promote the pimping of female guild members - sometimes leaders must make brave decisions).

Our performance on the dragon was not brilliant but it came together slowly as we rotated through people, giving everyone a chance to participate in the wiping. After a couple of close calls it was finally time for it to die, revealing the way to Brutallus.

An enjoyable little cut scene followed introducing us to the ugly little pit lord.

It seems however he did not enjoy his little levitation trick.

We’d like to thank Blizzard for their (eventual) release of new content, there were some in the guild who were getting a little strange…..

Recruitment remains open in some classes, check for details!

The question of what to do once the content runs out is a taxing one. One fact is certainly true - we are glad that, like Nihilum, we did not have to wait for 10 months for new content.

As so often is the case when given time to reflect, thoughts turned to the past and in particular to Aq40. One guild message of the day later and we were off to Silithus to let our newer members experience the beauty of the fights there. Both the Twins and C’thun were brilliant fights and even at lvl 70 promised to be entertaining. Breezing through the first encounters boredom set in and someone had to ask the question of whether it was possible to pull all the trash between Fankriss and Huhuran in one go. The answer of course is yes. However if the question had been was it possible to survive if you pulled all the trash the answer would have been different.

The red beam of doom on C’thun provided entertainment, killing a surprising number of people who had died on it 14 months previously. Then onwards to Viscidious, a boss we had not killed pre-TBC due to a) our lack of mages and b) his loot table vs farming consumables to do it. We were happy to pop in and see him at 70 though, it is ‘slightly’ possible that Seed of Lol breaks this encounter. Still witness the triumphant team!

While there were no new 25 man instances we were pleased to receive ZA and the challenges of the timed run. Blizzard deserve congratulations for a perfectly balanced encounter - the first team to succeed had a little over 20 seconds left at the end. The raid balance was not perfect but it showed that the testing to balance the time was excellent. Since then we have ‘beared’ up, with the mount becoming the favoured choice for our raiders - a small selection of whom had a bear tea party under the world tree.

The rest of our time was taken up with advanced slacking, giant pets and gearing in BT/MH. Our loot luck remained perfect with Illidan coughing up 12 shaman (hunter/warrior) chests in the first 8 kills. While our shaman trials seemed to enjoy this, no-one else did. The increase of the number of tokens to three was greeted with reasonable optimism until on our first Hyjal clear after that Archimonde decided to cough up 3 shaman helms to compliment the two the week before. When your shamans have a t6 resto chest, elemental chest and flatspec chest as well as one banked for exchange for the pvp one you know there are problems!

Aside from that we took the opportunity to revisit one of the better quest chains in game. The encounter with the spirit of Eranikus. At this level it is not too challenging but I would recommend it for the fun. It should be relatively balanced for about 15 people

All in all we were rather pleased to see the arrival of Sunwell.