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

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:

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.

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.

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.

The most important skills for you to have are an ability to improve and to learn - not only the encounters but also from others. On new encounters people are encouraged to try new specs and help everyone to improve. To facilitiate this we operate class channels to encourage discussion - led by a senior member or advisor. We find this in an invaluable way to improve as a whole. Of course I can’t claim that everyone uses them for such noble reasons…..

As we aim to be at the forefront of raiding we expect our members to show the dedication and preparation needed - to ensure they have flasks, food, and correctly set up gear. The guild is happy to share some of this burden, sponsoring epic gems and enchants for raiding gear and the occasional night of free repairs.

We expect all guild members to be able to perform multiple roles - not only for fun during farm raids but also to enable us to adjust to the needs of individual encounters. As such our tanks and healers have dps specs for when required. This has the added bonus that if you beat the pure dps classes you can brag, and if you suck you can claim that it is not what you normally do. Currently however it is the pure dps classes that we are looking to recruit. Please see the recruitment list to the left for open slots.

We will consider applicants in other classes - but those are the ones we are specifically looking for. You should have experience of Ulduar and Coliseum. Applicants should have completed Coliseum 10H and ideally have at least some bosses killed on 25H. In Ulduar you should have (or almost have) GotUR. We expect your gear to be gemmed and enchanted correctly and you should be prepared to discuss your gear/gem choices as well as spec should you be asked.The easy availability of badge gear means that a solid level of gear is easily attainable.

Applications can be made publically or privately as a PM to Sil. We endeavour to get back to you within a day or two. Please be aware that if you can’t be bothered to fill out the application form correctly you will likely find you do not get a positive response. We are looking for long term, active raiders and time spent on an application is not wasted.

Our raiding hours are Monday to Thursday 1950 to 2330 and then on Sunday 1900-2330. On occasion we will delay the finish by 30 mins on a progress night that is going well. Fridays and Saturdays are ‘free’ - which essentially means alt runs to Coli 25 and other instances for those of you who desire.

It was many years ago that I first remember Onyxia, but even that was not the beginning of the story. Of all the meeting places for raids Blackrock mountain was the most entertaining, a 5 minute ride in from Kargath and then into the mountain itself (along with 100 other people) and the amusement of lagging as you ran down the passage and into the lava - your screen just catching up as you sank to the bottom of it. Clearly the Blizzard Health & Safety team had not got round to installing safety barriers. Once this was negociated (by moving at snail pace) the ‘tricky’ jump to the balcony which involved half the people falling to the ground. Standing outside UBRS was a dangerous business as training mobs onto the people waiting there was a hobby enjoyed by some. I am not sure how many BRS runs it took to get the relevant key - all i remember was that it was a lot. Then UBRS runs, endlessly, stupid low drop numbers on the Blood and repeated trips to Desolace to find Rexxar the Disappearing NPC who wandered on a looooooong path before depopping. And that was before you even got to the dragon.

In the heady days of Molten Core there were not really phases to fights. Compared to modern standards there were hardly even tactics until you reached Sully the Shrimp. Onyxia was a different type of encounter for people, very little trash and then a boss in a big room. In the days where Ragnaros was unseen by all but the top guilds, for most Onyxia was the most complex and exciting encounter. The aggro was horrific in P1 with the knockback, i remember countless hours of auto-attacking through it and then spacing out in p2, the ’special’ rogues having the honour of meleeing from under her while the ranged dealt with loads of whelps and trying to dot her enough to stop the deep breaths. The deep breaths themselves were fast and covered the majority of the room, and were essentially raid wipers. Then came P3. In an era without Omen and when people didn’t fully understand the mechanics of aggro there were nights of people getting aggro and running to the middle, hoping the tank would get aggro before they died (never happened) and then eventually one of your 4 tanks getting aggro and seeing if you could survive. Stance dancing the fear, getting feared into the whelps (via the tail), overambitious dps aggroing and Onyxia flame breathing half the raid, having to stand in the right place so that when the fear hit you were away from the lava cracks because 2 bursts would kill you. The long run back from Brackenwall, pressing the map and seeing a long train of corpses running back for the 10th time. At the time it was a superb encounter.

While Blizzard had stated that Onyxia for the fail-generation would be there more as a tribute than a challenge it was still something to look forward to. Unfortunately the encounter was just destroyed. P1 may as well not have existed it was so pointless, P2 had no spacing issues and no whelp issues - the deep breaths cover about 5% of the room and take such a long time to start that you can crawl out of the way, not that it matters as you can survive them anyway. Then just as the promise of having an issue at start of P3 loomed it became apparent she was tauntable. Added into that the lava damage is pretty much the same as it was at level 60. Only now i have 26k hp instead of 4k with my imba “of the monkey” gear.

At least the achievements had amusing names and the most excitement was for the loot. Helm of Wrath! Can openers all round - now if only they would re-release the shoulders from Molten Core/BWL……..

Luckily to mirror this is the Coliseum, which has offered some entertaining fight and achieved something I never thought I would see - people whining there is no trash. Clearly the “I AFK on trash” brigade has found that they can no longer slack for half the raid. Poor darlings. The normal modes are uninspiring and limp, easily cleared by alts and undergeared players alike - the step up to heroic though is massive, especially in 25 man. The benefits of having to clear it on normal first are apparent as the heroic mode learning has been aided by the fact people know the ‘base’ fight.

The ten man heroic is an enjoyable instance, done in less than an hour and offers a reasonable smattering of loot for the effort. In particular the addition of limited tries has proved excellent, although in our case somewhat frustrating as our obligatory one wipe per instance has hampered our accumilation of nerd points. For the time being we’ll have to settle for the lesser achievement.

Heroic 25 man was a different matter! Not quite the stroll in the park which 10 man was, progression through the Beasts was nice and steady, with overall improvement until we got to Icehowl, relaxed and got trampled to death. Still perserverence was the key and they were vanquished swiftly followed by Gnome-Killer who didn’t prove much of a challenge. The Faction Champs on heroic are a lot more fun, and a lot more vicious. Aside from the fact no-one had PvP talents in their PvE build the challenges came from movement, the obscene amounts of damage to random players and having to deal with a multitude of debuffs and mobs. The pleasing thing about the encounter is that you can see it improving, from getting the first mob to 70% to 50% and onwards, you can see people improve at moving, improve at crowd control and slowly master the encounter. Added to that the differing setups of your own raid and the Champs means this will remain a difficult encounter (until the nerf bat hits).

Then came the Twins which, aside from wrecking everyone’s FPS, turned out to be most enjoyable and provided endless amusement to the girls in the guild when asked to ‘catch the balls’. Clearly the generalisation that girls are more mature than boys was not based on the actions of this lot. There were also a few issues with clicking the portals to change colour, which led to the inaugural “Who has the dirtiest mind” competition.

The Twins went down remarkably fast which left Anub’arak to occupy the remaining tries - a task he seemed well suited to doing. After all Blizzard’s efforts to equalise tanks this encounter proves that occasionally it is simply not possible. The offtank invitation clearly states “No Shield, no entry”. We look forward to dying a considerable amount on this encounter!

Back in Ulduar there was some unfinished business to take care - some trees and a gnome! Freya and Mimiron had escaped our attention for a little while but it was about time they were put in their place. Freya was first, a fight which it has to be said was a little ruined by having coliseum gear. The biggest problem was always keeping people alive and with the additional hp on that gear it was not an overly troublesome fight. That left only Mimiron - still one of the best encounters in the game - to beat and despite being incinerated a fair few times we slowly mastered the phases and saved the needed time in the earlier phases to poke him to death before the room imploded. The way was clear for us to summon Alganon, we are sure he will enjoy meeting us.

While the 10 man proto-drake had been aquired a little while back there were a few still flapping round on slow fat mounts and with only a single achievement left for the Ironbound Proto it seemed it was time to go and poke Yogg Saron with only one keeper up. This was a fight we had practiced a bit pre-coliseum (namely how to stop people going insane!) but had not been near for a month or so. After a brief period re-acquainting people with green clouds, dps control a few other old favourites we dispatched him with only Thorim to help us. Which made a lot of happy people (and retarded amounts of guild spam).

A few other achievements have come our way over the summer - including winning the race to the Conquerer of Ulduar title.

Elsewhere we have swelled our numbers a little and closed recruitment in most areas. Top of the shopping list is still a mage or two and a shadowpriest would be very much appreciated. Elsewhere there are possibilities for a boomkin and an enhancement shaman. If you are interested in joining please feel free to visit us on Arathor, any of our members will be happy to guide you in the direction of the best person to talk to.

Although most in the guild have returned from the summer rested and ready for action some have become a little more strange

Like most we have spent time on the less worthwhile achievements too - including trying the ever popular “Don’t get hit by the eyebeams on Kologarn”. While I feel this is not the greatest challenge there are those who felt the need to celebrate dodging them. Well temporarily.

The summer also provides the opportunity for a variety of parties. Not everyone seemed to have their priorities right however…………….

Did you ever wonder what would happen if the Action Man/He-Man/My Little Pony that you casually hurled into a corner or against the wall took exception to this and decided to shove its gun/sword/ erm tail (?) where the sun doesn’t shine as a sign of its displeasure? Well it was time for XT to learn that toys should be respected too!

The XT hard mode is a variation on the normal one with a much higher damage output and the removal of the adds (which sadly removed the fun of letting bomb bots reach him ‘deliberately’ to see which melee were paying attention) and drastically increased light bombs/gravity wells. Nothing about the fight can be deemed hard but it is good for seeing people who can’t change targets fast! The enrage is fairly soft and now that Blizzard seems to have sorted out the lag this is a nice introduction to the world of hard modes - and now poor Flamey has been reduced to his current pitiful level is the first fight which makes you die but not too much!

Next up for hard mode spanking was Thorim and after a day of trying to see what it would be like doing it without any aura of celerity we decided to let one of our shadow priests have a giggle and find a new friend. This fight has quickly become one of the least favourite hard modes - mostly because it is just annoying, blizzards, frost novas and frostbolt volleys all combine to make it intensely annoying, especially as it is one of the few fights which does seem capable of randomly killing people by bolting them repeatedly in a ridiculously short space of time. We like tentacles however, so any fight with them in gains bonus points. With the second of the four keepers having surrendered his sigil we have looked at the hilarious Mimi hard mode and the less entertaining Freya & the happy huggy tree friends - certainly two fights which will keep us occupied.

One more hard mode lurked in the shadows, awaiting our attention - it was the turn of the Iron Council. Having killed Brundir last the first week of Ulduar and the Runemaster shortly afterwards this fight has been a little neglected and just finished off as and when for loot and badges. The fight with Steelbreaker last is certainly interesting - and from a healing point of view somewhat stressful especially as it quickly became apparent that melee just love taking huge amounts of damage while killing Brundir. For the dps the first part of the fight is reasonably slack but then they have to earn their reward in phase 3 as it turns into a massive burn before Steelbreaker either kills the tanks by hitting them for 60k or lobs static discharge onto some poor sod incidently dealing them 30k damage. While Hodir provides a gear check with some randomness (lucky buffs can give you a bit of an advantage) there is no such trick for this fight - just a race against the fat giant. To be fair to him he won the race a number of times but slowly the dps got closer to that magic number and the healers managed to get the tanks to live longer and longer.

Recruitment remains open in the following classes:

Protection Warrior
Enhancement Shaman
Elemental Shaman
Mage

We will consider applicants in other classes but, as ever, it would take an exceptional applicant to succeed. Please see the forums for additional details on how to apply and who to poke for any further information you would like.

Ulduar 10 man has provided some entertainment and post-nerf Mimi, while considerably easier, is still a challenging and fun fight. The most fun seemed to be had by Fail Mod but everyone else had a little giggle. The moment was immortalised in the below video which is well worth watching to get a overview of the fight.

Umbrage vs Mimiron Firefighter 10 man

This left the way open for our first trip to Algy, the start of the enocunter was met with a mixture of joy (from those with high end computers) and groans (from those with hamster powered computers). The encounter looks superb - although the healers did not particularly appreciate his direct damage. As most encounters seem to gain complexity and fun on 25 man this promises to be an awesome fight. Just Freya and Mimiron stand in our way - although no-one is under any illusions about the time it will take to master those encounters.

For those of you who have followed us for a while you will note that one thorn in our side has always been the lack of a tree-friend to help us out. Recently things reached desperate levels as we investigated all possible options to try and find one. Annoyingly it turns out that not every tree will do…..

There has also been a recent addition to our officer team - something some of our trials have been quick to notice and have suddenly become a lot more pliable….

Since that day this concern has been niggling at the back of the minds of the guild officers and this week we decided it was time to show the gnome that he could take his help and shove it. Leaving gnome-boy behind we descended down to Yogg Saron with the backing of the 3 more palatable keepers and the fun began again. Well executed this fight is a joy to partake in - the nerfs to phase 1 are understandable and have certainly allowed a lot of guild who were incapable of getting past it progress and clear in the last few weeks. Of all the phases the first remains the least changed by having less keepers and so the nerfs to it are not overly important as the fun starts later in the fight.

While not a ‘hard mode’ the increase in difficulty is quite sharp and as more keepers are removed the potential to recover from mistakes diminishes. Already the mind boggles as to how you do this without any keepers (lack of sanity wells and immortal guardians in phase 3!), however the journey will be an enjoyable one. A few slots remain for people looking to join in the fun!

Open recruitment

1 Mage
1 Ranged Caster Class
1 Holy Priest

There is also a potential slot  for a well geared rogue and a resto druid. The forums contain more details on how to apply and the relevant classleaders - failing that feel free to poke Effis online.

For vanilla wow this was Patchwerk - and while the fight was more challenging for healers than other classes it became the favourite of the meter maids. Pride was won (and lost), gold was won (and lost) and egos were enhanced or trampled underfoot. Some people never recovered and were left hollow shells, crumpled and broken in the corner, never to emerge into the light again.

TBC gave us Brutallus where the vast improvement in class understanding played an interesting factor. The plethora of excuses for being beaten in the meters flowed forth “I got Burn!”, “My group is not as good as his group!” “i had to apply debuff X which basically halves my dps” “I had to stop dpsing for fear of aggroing”. As an encounter Brutallus was tuned to give you a cushion of about 6 seconds assuming you played well and no-one died. Once you progressed beyond him the additonal gear shaved plenty of time off this but at the time you needed everyone in good gear, playing well. And so it is with Hodir.

Despite a little bit of randomness included with the buffs this represents the purest burn fight of Ulduar so far - limited add (npc) action, limited movement and a big fat health pool to burn through. It took a little whlie to eliminate the frost freezes, the frozen blows deaths and the ice shard impaling but when all is counted up it seems that we are the winners!

[Disclaimer: All assumptions made on the above should also take into account - unfair distribution of buffs, lag, cats stepping on keyboards, being relentless discriminated against by ice shards, tank deliberately moving the mob away from some players, bugged flash freezes and being forced to dps with one hand while eating. In short everyone would have been the best 'if only'].