Lëgacy began ostensibly as a casual raiding guild. But we've begun to walk a fine line between the casual and the hardcore as many would put it. We send two, sometimes three, 10 mans into Ulduar on Tuesdays, Maly25 and OS253D on Wednesday, Naxx 25 on Thursday, and Ulduar 25 on Friday and Saturday. But at the same time, we don't have a set attendance standard as long as you're active on the character, and we still send out loot via free rolls. It's kind of a weird dichotomy, and some of the guild members who are used to a more laid back atmosphere, well, a quote from a certain half night elf mongrel comes to mind.
Tensions sometimes run high in the raids as the guild leadership is pushing for crisper performance than some people are used to. And the increased difficulty in Ulduar isn't helping. We wiped over 60 times on Mimiron ten man before getting lucky with the pathing in phase four and not having the tank get run over during a laser barrage. Ignis 25 exposed the weaknesses of our healers, Auriaya 25 exposed the weaknesses of our tanks, and OS253D has shown the weakness of our DPSers. There's room for improvement all around, and people know this. However, I am quite proud of what the guild has accomplished thus far. We're pushing into the keepers on 25 man, and challenging Yogg-Saron himself in 10 man.
A few weeks ago, some of my friends in the guild and I decided to go roflstomping through Zul'Gurrub in an attempt to get a mage her polymorph: turtle. It was probably the most innocent fun we'd had in the game in a while. Just chilling out in vent, having fun, and accomplishing trivial personal goals. That stuck with me for a while, and I thought it was a great idea to implement for the guild. So, monday became Retro Raid night. We began in Molten Core, and blew through that in about a half hour with about 15 people. Great fun was had by all. The loot rules for the retro raid are simple, pass if it's class specific and not your class, greed otherwise. If there was a piece ou really wanted, it went to auction, and the proceeds went to the guild bank to fund progression raids. After the raid is over, a vote is taken, and the guild decides which instances will be run the next week. All pre-wrath instances are eligible.
After MC, the guild decided upon the raids for the next week, Onyxia and the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. This time we had 18 people attend. Onyxia died in under a minute, so fast in fact, that she was actually dead before she landed from phase 2, and we had to wait for her to come down for our loot. AQ40 was just as much fun. Something ridiculous like 30 mounts dropped, and aside from one wipe due to an early, clustered pull on C'thun, it was a complete success. The guild made about 3k gold on bids on some of the crazy items that dropped. The Vanquished Tentacle of C'thun alone fetched 1k, and I threw down 600g for the Eye of C'thun. Next week it was decided that we'd run Gruul's Lair and Blackwing Lair.
The first fight in Gruul's is an interesting one, especially when you've only got one mage and two other tanks. But as always, enough brute force will always prevail, and 20 level 80s is enough, no matter how much time your tanks spend running around as terrified bunny rabbits. We got to Gruul, and some of the guildies who were actually in Progression raiding guilds during TBC were giving us a basic rundown. The shatter was coming, and just as we were advised, we scattered. The shatter came, and our mage noted "Aw, hell, we could stack for that!". Immediately vent rang out with, "Stack on the tank!". Somewhere, burning crusade raiders are waking up in a cold sweat. After downing the big lummox, we hopped a port to Ironforge, and flew to Blackrock Mountain. After bumrushing 14 people through the BWL attunement, we ran through BWL. It was a bit of a drunken stagger. Vaelastrasz died just slowly enough to hit our ret paladin with burning adrenaline. Broodlord Lashlayer got leeroyed while all the adds were still alive and all the suppression's up, but he was zerged down quickly. All three drakes got pulled while a tank was afk, and we didn't even realize Chromaggus was a boss until someone noticed that that trash mob dropped an unusual amount of purples.
Then came Nefarian. As with all bosses that use mind control, Nef actually posed a threat to the raid group. His shadowflame is also still a potent weapon. So I quickly explained that the first shadowflame needed to be LoSed behind the throne, and to CC the mind controlled players. They kinda chuckled at the thought that a mere level 60 boss could actually harm us. We hit phase one, and I got mind controlled right off the bat, and I don't think anyone cared, until I brained our top DPS mage with the Wall of Terror. We downed the 42 drakonids, and Nefarian came down. I picked him up and noticed something odd. All but one of the healers in group 1 were dead, and all three of the DPS in the group with me and the OT were dead. *Sigh* I never pull out full raid frames, just the tanks and healers, so I wasn't quite sure how many people were down. So I asked how many people were still up. Five. The OT, a priest, and a shaman, who remembered what I said about the throne, and our Death Knight's former main, a level 71 rogue who had equipped his Onyxia Hide Cloak, and was looking awfully stylish in his full set of Bloodfang armor, and the third Thunderfury built on our server. But 5 level 80s stand little chance against the Lord of Blackrock, we wiped, the shaman rezzed, and we waited out the ridiculously long respawn timer. On the next pull, suddenly people remembered to hide behind the throne, and Nefarian went down for the count. The guild didn't make as much cash as we did in AQ40, but a ret paladin dropped 1k for three pieces of Judgement Armor, the finest looking teir set in the history of WoW, and I bid 500g for Nefarian's head, being the quest whore that I am.
I jaunted down to Stormwind, and showed off the cranium to King Wrynn, who promptly send me to hang it up at the gates, next to the head of Onyxia some other adventurer brought in.
Afterwords, we had the vote to decide what instance we're gonna hit next week. The result? Sunwell. Oh boy, see you on the other side...
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