A hero is nothing, if not but for his or her weapon. And weapons of legend, my friend, are created. And so it is with great honor and esteem that we deem Wraithedge worthy of the Twin Blades of Azzinoth that he has so richly earned. Neither blood, nor sweat, nor tears, and certainly not wipes on shears could stop this ineffable rogue from completing his mission to loo--- I mean CRAFT! - Illid-- uh, his own glaives.

We doff our hats, ol-- young Wraithedge. We commend thee.

 

 

PUT BEAST STRIKING ON THOSE SUCKAS!

Right, Adrine?

Yorex: "I can't be the only person who's seen porn that has a guy with more than one dick."

....

Cause he is leaving.

Updated with doggy dipers.

We've got a huge backlog of newsposts to get through. Some got lost in the great website rollback of 2008, and others were never posted since images were broken. Images are still broken, or I'm too stupid to make them work so in the meantime, handy dandy links!

In Warden's Reprise news, we've been steadily pushing into the Sunwell Plateau. Kalecgos was defeated sometime like in May or something like that. He was a big jerk, but our strategy of creative naming led Team Doth, Fat Angry Tree, Chalupagorditatacoburrito, and Magical Carebears to a spectacular victory!

On June 22nd, Warden's Reprise gleefully defeated GenericPitLordModel2, aka Brutallus. Congratulations on making the DPS check!

 

Bane of the Betrayer has been on an epic killing spree in the last months, taking out High Astromancer Solarian, Hydross, The Lurker Below, Leotheras, Fathomlord Karathress, and Morogrim Tidewalker. Mclintock, Bane's fearless leader, had this to say:

"As leader I am glad to see us succeed though hard fought efforts of everyone. Some people where introduced to new roles, some people made leaps on there original roles. All in all we had a great effort. A special thanks goes to the WR members and Bushidox who helped with the kills. It's been more than I could ever ask for."

 

Also on June 22, the members of Bane of the Betrayer, Warden's Reprise, and others from the GoG joined forced for Team Building Exercise '99. It was a great success with almost a full 40 people showing up to tackle AQ40. At the end, C'thun lay dead which was a GoG first and a personal goal of many of us who never got the opportunity to beat him at 60. Thanks so much to everyone who came out!

 

Several of our members have also had a busy couple of months in their personal lives. Congratulations to Enny and Kronen who recently tied the knot. We also wish the best of luck to Adrine and McKinsey who are expecting their first baby, Barrel and his wife who are expecting their first, and Gradar and Azsharlis who are expecting their second!

 

Our new raiding team, Bane of the Betrayer has been making waves of their own.

 

Led by the brave and ruggedly good looking Yenom, the team has scored wins in Serpenshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. A few moons ago there was some controversy over who the team mascot would be and through some underhanded moves Warden's Reprise stole our Golijov. Little did Warden's know, Bane would secure a new member that idealizes the excellence? What? and amusement of Bane: Jekab!

That's right. A....Retribution....Paladin...ummm...

Screw you guys.

Now accepting donations for the mascot uniform: a unicorn with rainbows shooting out the ass.

The power is undeniable.

We couldn't figure it out - we had been wiping, little things going wrong that turned into big things going wrong, people panicking, bad luck. All of it combining to thwart our attempts to defeat Illidan time and time again.

Then Fellina equipped... THE trinket.

He died that go, and it wasn't even close. I swear to God, this is a true "I win" trinket. When we go into Sunwell, we'll be through it in about 10 minutes, tops.

 

 

Congratulations to Fellina on Shroud of Absolution, Gradar on Lightbringer Chestpiece, Amnarak on Black Bow of the Betrayer, and Garainla on Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer.

I want to give a special congratulations to Shyeera and Nellenya, who took up one of the most difficult jobs in the game: tanking the Flames of Azzinoth. Having to deal with that amount of pressure and wiping the raid repeatedly as you learn how to handle it is not for the faint of heart, and I appreciate both of you sticking with it.

A while ago, I wrote that one of the goals that I had was to defeat Illidan before the Sunwell dropped in patch 2.4. We've accomplished that, but a lot closer to the release of patch 2.4 than we wanted. The last few weeks have basically been a whirlwind for us - after canceling our raids a few weeks ago, many of our membership were in California the week after, attending Greg's service. Killing Illidan was pretty much the last thing on anyone's mind.

But this game, no matter how silly and trite it can be, no matter how frustrating, can also be a place to laugh and relax; a place to get your mind off of things, no matter how painful they may be. For years, I've been telling anyone who would listen that it's not the gear, it's not the bosses, it's not the gameplay that keeps people logging onto to a game like this - it's the people you play with.

It's the Canadian who finally spoke on vent after we killed Kael.
It's the psuedo-Canadian who passes on everything so other people could have gear.
It's the mod author who designed the most-used threat mod in WoW and still pulls aggro off the MT.
It's the gnome with a twelve second cast time on ice block.
It's the quiet warlock who causes us to wipe multiple times when he's not there, because we're just so used to him doing what needed doing.
It's the kindest, gentlest person you can imagine, until she tells you to stop fucking sucking.
It's the man who would wander off the highest places you could find.
And it's those people who gathered in a circle one night to reminsce and honor that man.

I'm not going to make some silly comment because of this kill like "If Gregil were here, he'd be proud of us." First, it's a kill, it's an accomplishment, but it's a computer game boss dying. There are far better ways to honor his memory. But the real reason I wouldn't make that comment is that it's just not true. If Greg was here, he'd say something like "What took you dipshits so long?" If he was still awake in his chair. Which he likely wouldn't be.

Instead, what I take, and what I hope everybody takes from this kill isn't some sort of honor'ing of our friend, or even how leet we are(which is pretty damn leet). It's how so much of this raid has stayed the same over the years, the friendships that we've created during this time, how so many of us have moved from content tier to content tier together, always wiping and screwing up and rezzing and wiping and rezzing some more. It's how we've met new people and they've become our friends, becoming part of our joyous cycle of screwing up and wiping in new and horrible ways. God, do we get frustrated sometimes, but it always seems to turn out okay(even if it's Archimonde). Forgive me for getting sentimental, but we've created something special here, and it won't matter if we're the first to kill Kil'jaeden or the last. It's the people I play with that will keep me coming back. It's people like Gregil.

That's the best way I can think to honor him. Not by killing a boss, but by relating why this is so important to me. I hope it's important to you.

Congratulations, everybody. See you in Sunwell.

I'm a bit late in posting this, but in honor of Greg, his father has established the Gerg Foundation.

I established “The Gerg Foundation” yesterday. It will be providing
scholarships to computer science students at Westmont [the college in Santa Barbara, CA that Gerg attended].

I’m requesting contributions to the foundation in lieu of flowers.

While the flowers are always beautiful, they are as fleeting as Greg’s life was.
I’d like to have something more lasting and I think Greg would have liked the opportunity to help other students.

If you could post something where his friends could see it regarding this I would be very grateful.

 

If you'd like to donate in Greg's honor, you can visit the Gerg Foundation website.

They've also posted a lot of pictures from Greg's life and from his service. We had a lot of GoG'ers present there, and all of us were there in spirit.

Last night, we found out we lost our friend, Greg Gilbert, known to all of us as Gregil.

Somebody called him the rock of the GoG last night, and it's the best way I can think of to describe him. For as long as I've played this game, over two years now, Greg has been a part of it. He was the leader of one of our member guilds, Alligare. This website was created by him, the domain paid for by him(along with the 36 other domain names he owned). He's been a part of every single step of our progression through WoW, starting with Onyxia so long ago all the way to our first attempts on Illidan just a few days ago. He was a key part in everything we've done in this game.

But it wasn't what he had done in WoW that inspired dozens of us to meet last night in game to sit down and reminisce about Greg. It was the good times we had with him both in and out of game. It was the kind of person he was, the way he was friendly with so many different types of people, how he could be bitingly sarcastic and often hilarious, how he improved the lives of everybody around him. It's a testament to him and his memory that the gathering only seemed to get bigger as it went on last night; that he could call people from all walks of life and from all around the world friends, and that they all came out to honor him the best way we knew how - getting drunk and falling off something high.

Hey, he was the only person I knew who had an alt dedicated entirely to storing alcohol.

Greg Gilbert was far, far too young and I'm going to miss him terribly. We're all going to miss him terribly.

HWAH

Oh yeah, after a grueling four hour long battle with the Illidari Council(Marlon, Jackie, Jermaine and Tito), we got to meet Michael himself. He's much more of a whiny little emo kid in person.

Anyway, the Council sucked so much that we decided to take a killshot picture with Illidan, because he's actually important. FLYING V, ACTIVATE!

We finally got to devote some real solid time on them - we filled out some roster spots and got to spend some quality time in SSC and TK as a result, reacquainting ourselves with our old friends Vashj and Kael, but unfortunately at the expense of the new crew we've been hanging out with. We'll make it up to them, believe you me.

Congratulations to Cinara on Helm of the Illidari Shatterer, and to Adrine and Golijov on Slayer's Legguards!

Onwards towards beating the game! At least until 2.4 gets off PTR!

You're all probably wondering why we haven't had any new boss kills lately. Part of this can be blamed on our ordinarily hilarious news-master. He's been getting a bit lazy and never posted that we killed both Reliquery of Souls and Mama Shaz. Other than that we've been on a short break. Good times are had by most at our raids, but raiding constantly can still be tiring work. Just look at this poor guy, he's all raided out!

 

 

Don't fear though, we'll be back. Just as soon as our leet healing squad catches their breath, our tanks recover from their concussions, and our DPS refill their sippy birds.

Warden's Reprise ended their 2007 raiding season yesterday night by giving Gurtogg one last go - some of you may remember how some unnamed Paladin suggested going after him before Teron and spending about a week wiping to him as result of having seven healers. Consequently, people were looking forward to this raid about as much as I look forward to the feats of strength during Festivus.

However, bringing in Lytania and revamping the healing strategy, as well as the power of a fully operational feral spec healing turned the tide, and we were rewarded mightily. A shot of us preparing for the feast below:

And the aftermath:

Congratulations to Garainla on the Wand of Prismatic Focus and to Cinara on the Unstoppable Aggressor's Ring.

With this kill, we're officially on hiatus until 2008. However, it may be helpful to take a look back and see what we've done in what surely is our most successful year of raiding so far.

On December 4th of last year, the GoG killed Noth the Plaguebringer. That was the last major 40 man boss we'd kill before the expansion hit, and the transition to 25 man raiding took a great deal of time, effort, and patience. Gruul fell on March 25th, but we'd have to wait a whole three months for Magtheridon to die, on June 17th. Back then, we were raiding one, maybe two nights a week, and often having to cancel raids because of a lack of interest. The fact that we had gotten Magtheridon down was almost shocking, for the amount of time we had spent on him, and the number of raids we'd been forced to end early or cancel.

Things started to pick up after this, and we began to transition to a raid group that raided more often, and were rewarded with greater success as a result. The GoG as a whole downed Doomwalker and Doom Lord Kazzak in July, and WR went on a tear, killing Void Reaver, Hydross and the Lurker Below. When we finally added a third day, major raid bosses began to drop. August saw the rest of SSC fall in a matter of two weeks, with Vashj only a week after Leotheras. Al'ar fell in September, and Solarian as well, though we spent a far greater time waiting for a patch to hit than we actually spent time in TK.

October saw one of our greatest successes, as we transitioned to a steady four-day raiding schedule and downed one of the most challenging fights in the game, Kael'thas Sunstrider. The amount of effort put into the Kael fight by everyone involved is really the best reflection of this raid group, as we spent a LOT less time on Kael than is customary for most raid groups. The amount of preparation by everyone involved, and the amount of focus displayed in defeating one of the hardest fights in the game was really a joy to watch and be part of.

With the hard part done, the easy bosses in T6 content rounded out the rest of October, as we went on a bit of a rampage. Kael died October 15th, Rage Winterchill the 16th, Naj'entus and Supremus on the 17th, Shade of Akama the following week. The aforementioned foray with Gurtogg only slightly dampened our spirits, as Teron began November. We then turned to Hijjel, having much more trouble with trash than most of the bosses - Anetheron, Kaz'rogal and Azgalor rounding out the month.

And finally, we have December - two weeks to get Archimonde, and a single day spent on Gurtogg, leaving us having cleared Mount Hyjal and only three bosses between us and Illidan Stormrage in Black Temple.

Of the kills, I think Archimonde and Kael'thas really stand out as being two people really rallied around - working through a continual stream of wipes to figure out where things were going wrong, keeping positive about it and moving from wiping seconds into a fight(in the case of Archimonde) or seconds into Phase 2(Kael) to finally downing them.

What's in store for 2008? Well, our goal when we established WR was to defeat every 25 man raid instance before the Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes out. A second goal that I personally have, and I know many others share, is to defeat Illidan before the Sunwell drops. We're well on our way to doing both, and this is a goal that's only in sight because of the amount of effort put in by the people involved. But even if we're unable to meet either or both of these goals, that shouldn't detract from the amazing successes Warden's Reprise has had in 2007.

It's a good time to be a member of the GoG. WR is doing very well in progression content, and Bane of the Betrayer is being revamped to provide a casual approach to 25-man raiding, and I'll be excited to see Bane's members posting killshots on this news page in 2008. But independent of our raid groups are our casual members, our PvP'ers and our RP'ers, members of Alligare, Northrend Commonwealth, Southsea Buccaneers and Unbroken, all of whom are making this game fun to play years after launch, who are making our server a more enjoyable place to play. It's a wonderful thing to have pride in something you're a part of, and I think every member of this alliance can say to anybody on this server that they're a member of the GoG and be proud of it.

I hope everybody has a safe and happy holiday season - may your Festivus pole be bright, and your tinsel never distracting. See you in 2008.

Remember that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Dr. Crusher gets trapped in a warp bubble and they have to get her out by summoning the Traveller and then him and Wesley had to turn all invisible and shit in order to save her?

THIS MADE MORE SENSE THAN THIS INSTANCE DOES.

HOWEVER.

We did finally find the first really challenging boss in the "BATTLE FOR MOUNT HYJAL THAT ACTUALLY ISN'T THE BATTLE IT'S JUST A TIME BUBBLE THAT'S NOT REALLY HAPPENING BUT WOO EPIX," and it just so happened to be the last boss! So much so that as the wipes piled up, some of our raiders began to take it hard. Some got angry:

Some went insane:

And some just went and hid:

Still, we found ourselves suffering wipe after wipe. Until we came upon a glorious discovery - the Tome of Dipshittery, whose power unleashed would prevent us from wiping constantly. Here is a page from this amazing book:

With the power of this holy artifact, not even Archimonde could defeat us! ....the 49th time we attempted him! WOO!

 

Congratulations to everyone on a very well-deserved kill - and to Cinara for Cataclysm's Edge, Bushidox for Scepter of Purification, Dimitra on Skyshatter Helmet and Fellina on Hood of Absolution!

 

Last night's raid was interesting, in that it possibly started out as one of the worst night's of raiding we've had in a while. Not only did we manage to wipe three times on Hyjal trash before ever seeing a boss, but we started late, made generally silly mistakes, and managed to spend over an hour killing things that didn't even have the decency to drop something useful.

This is what Cinara might call "farming Hyjal rep" instead of "wiping over and over."

Strangely enough, after "farming Hyjal rep" for what seemed like forever, we finally faced Kaz'rogal, and to our shock (and awe), we utterly decimated him. Revitalized for the coming trash, we plowed through it like we were on mission. At least until we hit the 14 caster wave. I mean, really. Fourteen?

After slightly tweaking our strategy, we found ourselves easily through even that wave, thanks in part to judicious use of a warrior sponge and overpowered horde racials, and minutes later, Azgalor was plowing through our base, killing our mans. We'd had a bit of trouble with Azgalor the two other times we'd faced him, but this time, we took to heart the wisdom of Vontre, who in a fit of clarity once said: "Sometimes, there is fire. You have to not be in the fire."

After we stopped trying to hump the fire, the fight was easy.

This kill was one of the most shocking and possibly second-most rewarding we've had (Kael still wins), because of how poorly the night began. The night very easily could have devolved into finger pointing and sniping, but instead, people worked through it, and a one-shot of our first T6 boss was the result. Awesome job.

Congratulations to Weazus on Bow-Stitched Leggings, to Drinks on Handguards of Absolution, and to Argat on Lightbringer Gloves.

What's next? NO TRASH. Oh, and this guy.

I'd also like to wish farewell to Chesible and Eluvial, who are quitting WoW to focus on other, slightly more real opportunities. They are two of the longest serving members of the GoG, in fact, I remember hitting 60 two years ago and finally getting to go on the UBRS raids which Eluvial was always going on. This was back before we thought Paladins could heal - in fact, I have screenshots of myself in the Big Bad Pauldrons from Zul'Farrak laying the smack down on the Beast. I'm glad that we got to see Archimonde in their last raid with us, since they've been such a large part of the GoG for such a long time.

Even if Chesible is ruining my epic shot of the coming battle with Archimonde by wearing a pumpkin hat.

Reason #1 Gradar says why damage meters are potentially harmful: Some people take them too seriously and attempt to do anything in their power to do the most damage on any given fight.

Enter the Weazus.

By the time his reign of terror had ended, Kaz'rogal and about 10 others lay dead at his feet. While we celebrated and rezzed our dead, we now live in fear of the day Weazus snaps again, and unleashes his shamanistic rage upon this unsuspecting world.

Until then, we're gonna keep taking treasure from dead bodies and taking pictures of us celebrating around the corpse!

Congratulations to Amnarak on Valestalker Girdle and Gradar on Hammer of Atonement!