It seems that WoW has moved on - from the frozen throne of the Lich King to the sweltering hot halls of Neffy, with the excitement of a new expansion - the joy of questing again, the discovery of new talents and spells and then the obligatory whining about which class is the most OP.

Cataclysm has breathed new life into the game (as well as new life into some long dead bosses) with its shared raids and new encounters. Expansions are predictable things, everyone is full of doom and gloom about how it will wreck the game, then everyone is blown away by new graphics and mechanics and finally we are left with a revitalised game, offering new challenges to those who want them, new achievement points to whore and a pointless new secondary skill which provides useless items to clog up your bags with (and no, I am not at all bitter i still haven’t found my dolly).

As a guild one of the challenges of a new expansion is dealing with the turnover of members - new people come, old people drift away and some even older people rediscover their love for tha game. We have been pleased to welcome back a handful of older members - some of those who stood for the first time listening as Nefarian blathered on about something or other and were then destroyed by a flood of dragonkin. We also welcome our newer members, many of whom are likely unaware that the screenshots of guild conversations have a habit of ending up here…..

And of course we welcome the new raid instances. Again Blizzard has managed to invent some new encounters, offering a diversity in its bosses not previously seen. After many revamps of the same fight it was nice to see the effort in development, although i have never liked the idea of heroic and normal - it was always great to beat a boss for the first time and know you had it beaten - not that you would be back in 5 weeks to beat it again - just with more dps, healing and one or two extra annoying abilities.

That said we have enjoyed our time in them. From the elevator deathtrap that is BWD to the lava flanked stairs in BoT to Al’Akir’s floating platform - we have loved the new and interesting ways to plummet to our deaths. The guild has progressed through the normal modes and started on the heroics, struggled with the idea of using more than 5 healers on a fight and realised that resilience is not optional in pvp. Now, as we look to beat more heroic encounters, we seek a few more players to compliment our existing stable. If you are interested in joining please find your way to the recruitment forum for more info.

We have enjoyed the little glitches in the game - particularly with the food and have found a multitude of ways to entertain ourselves with fish. It is astounding how many people will follow the fish-bread road around Orgrimmar or lie down on a bed of fish.

Some of our members have tried to find new and interesting ways to avoid having to go to wipe nights….. as well as ways to demonstrate their somewhat dubious habits

Welcome to the summer and in order to pass time before the World Cup Umbrage is offering two competitions to allow you to get your hands on some rare items.  There really are only two rules

1) You must have a horde toon on Arathor in order to participate (the prizes will be traded directly to the winner)

2) You must have entered by 15:00 cet on Friday 11th June.

Read on for more information

Warcraft Quiz

For those of you with a detailed knowledge of the game, and more specifically of Arathor there is an 80 question quiz designed to test your knowledge. Please follow the link below to the quiz, completed quizzes must be sent to Sil via the PM system before the deadline. This quiz has an entry fee of 1,000g.  The wonderful prizes for the quiz include:

Screenshot Competition

For those of you with an artistic flair please post your screenshots in the thread below. Basic instructions on how to host your screenshots on our webpage are included. The only restriction is that the screenshot must be taken on Arathor and cannot be photo-shopped or in any other way altered (other than cropping etc). This competition has no entry fee. For the winner the following awaits:

And who said raiding was repetative.

Well many months have passed since the last update and during that time we have delved deep into the bowels of Icecrown and cleared through on normal modes. Icecrown has provided numerous fights - some have lived up to their promise, others have been disappointing. One of the main aims for WotLK was “pick the player not the class” however some fights have failed spectacularly at that, to the point of absurdity shown by Paragon.

It was 10man which first felt our wrath - while we place a much lower premium on this size of raids it gave a valuable insight into the encounter. Although it didn’t really seem worth it when the loot dropped. Got to love random loot tables.

Progress on 25 man followed, first clearing out the Blood Queen. The wing became a firm favourite as her trash brought back memories of Neffy with healers spamming tanks to see how high they can get the ticking debuff caused by direct healing spells. The two dragons provided a far more entertaining time, both providing a little twist on normal encounters - Valithria providing a healing race (omg healers looking at hps charts!) and Sindy providing unstable magic to liven things up. In time these two were sent to their graves and only the Lich King remained. Much as we appreciated the long intro after 20 times it was too much and we became rather serious about killing him. The fight itself is not made up of complex elements - but combined it is a superb encounter. Death was inevitable, for both us and him but in the end the little pally finally pulled his ass out of the tomb and help out. Result = One dead boss

Heroic encounters beckoned and the past few weeks have seen us push through them, picking off the easier ones and learning the harder ones. With over half of them down we are faced with the challenging ones and we look forward to defeating them. We still have a few slots open for recruitment if you wish to be  a part of this. We are happy to accept recruits from all walks of life (even ex-gnomes). Even people from RP servers can move and embrace new opportunities!

As mentioned we welcome all classes and races but if you are a tauren you might like to beware - raid breaks can lead to some worrying conversations.

Elsewhere it is nice to know that some of the old school mobs are still doing their part for wow.

I’ll leave you with some words of wisdom which were shared with us. Possibly an overshare.

At last ICC has coughed up a worthwhile fight! Professor Putricide has provided the first real challenge of the instance - while others might end up being hard on heroic this one has an increased degree of difficulty on normal. Never having seen Futurama I understand much of the humour was lost on me so i was forced to focus solely on the encounter itself. Like most good fights it works on a simple initial encounter and builds on it. Never having been a fan of one mob encounters I always rejoice at seeing adds - all the great fights thus far have had superb add phases (C’thun, Neffy, Vashj) and while this is not at the same level it is an added level of complexity which makes the encounter work.

Mass movement is never the strongest point in this guild but previous experience has stood people in good stead and there was focus from the raid - after narrowly missing the kill last week we were looking for a good solid kill, preferably within a few tries to enable us some playtime in the new wing. Fortunately this is exactly what we got and after a single wipe he was put to rest. Phase 3, as well as causing flashbacks to Vashj, provided a welcome feeling of excitement and a feeling of achievement for having killed him. This also meant that the trash had caused more wipes than the first 7 bosses, one day i will learn that “yeah pull whatever when you’re ready” leads to a legion of rampaging mobs coming from all directions. At least it isn’t boring!

The new wing has certainly provided more fun in ICC and showed that Blizzard has not lost its touch with raid encounters, it has also proved to me that I understand girls even less than i used to. I was vaguely able to understand the attraction of tentacles (well not really but i was able to nod along and pretend they were not insane) however I am not sure i can get on board with ooze worship. Still whatever keeps them happy……….

Still it is nice to see they remain moral and practical as well.

The delights of a new wing await us and we look forward to the Blood Princes - generally speaking those types of encounter have always provided amusement (and wipes) especially the Illidari Council. A few slots remain open, please visit the recruitment page (or glance slightly left and up!) in order to check what they are.

It is always nice to reach the end of content and we have certainly enjoyed our recent reduced raiding schedule over the Yuletide period. However we are now eager for new challenges and look forward to delving further into Icecrown.

Over the last weeks we have polished off the remaining content. Significantly strengthened by an intake of trials at the start of December progress on Anub was swift and he was defeated several weeks ago. Since then our tactic has proved highly repeatable and this has meant steady improvement over the last weeks. After enduring an 8k wipe preventing us from getting Mad Skills we regrouped and conquered the achievement a fortnight ago, the first Horde guild to do so. This week we went one better achieving A Tribute to Insanity - from a slightly iffy start of letting Icehowl enrage twice by standing in the way of his charge everything came together and concentration was maintained until the end.

The last undefeated boss in Ulduar, Algy, also tasted defeat in December as we finally got round to utilising our time on him. Sadly by this time the loot is not worth the effort - but it is always nice to beat the encounters. Only Yogg Saron +0 remains in Ulduar although progress on that depends on Icecrown.

Icecrown itself burst onto the scene complete with full instance servers and monumentally simple bosses. While there is something to be said for releasing pussy mode bosses before heroic ones but leaving us with only 4 for 4 weeks was particularly mean. The good news is that some look like they will be very enjoyable on heroic and may present a challenge. We eagerly await the release of the subsequent wings and the unlocking of the heroics. The second batch of 3 presented far more interesting fights and Professor Putricide looks like it will be an awesome encounter. If you would like to learn this and other encounters with us and contribute to our raid progress then check out the open recruitment slots and have a browse of the forums. Although you may have to compete with this guy who joined a Coliseum raid a while back…..

Alt runs have dominated much of the last weeks ’slack time’ - enabling people to experience encounters from a different perspective and see some of the problems and challenges which other classes face. This has provided immense amusement and allowed us to experience ICC multiple times a week.

Elsewhere the holiday seems to have drained the brains of some people - mostly ex-alliance we hasten to add - the amount of food and alcohol consumed seems to be directly linked to the drop in brain power.

We’d like to point out the success of the holiday period in bringing people closer together, a time for loving and sharing, nurturing and developing.

As well as time spent on valuable and worthwhile tasks.