It's like a turducken.

After us finally conquering Heroic Shannox, Rhyolith, Alysrazor, and Majordomo Staghelm, Enaku siphoned enough fire power out of their corpses to become one with a dragon. He's subsequently taken over the raid and makes us run Firelands for his own amusement.

Please help us he has a legendary

(Grats Enaku on your legendary staff!)

I've never had the same wit or eloquence as some of our other news creators here. My steam comes from being bubbly, energetic and positive. That being said, returning to a fight that I never fought beside some of my raid-mates when it first occurred feels odd; something broken in the fabric of time but no less grand. Instead of focusing, however, on the sheer enormity of the problem before us, this time we cobbled together those skills that had been learned, trained and repeated ad nauseum across the years. It feels important to mention though, those feelings that all of us had at one point or another, standing in the Molten Core those many, many raids ago. Witnessing something so large that it stretches beyond the boundaries of your imagination. It forces the outer reaches of your impossibly small universe into the nothingness. We had banded together with twice as many people, but feeling twice as insignificant. Insects running rampant, as it were.

Walking calmly back into the home of Ragnaros now felt less like a retread of familiar ground and more like the complexity that was rightfully demanded of us now, experienced and older. It was the same evil beckoning us but with new tricks. Well, Firelord, we have them too. We have the benefit of wisdom, tenacity and renewed strength. But most importantly, friendship.

I feel like even though this is simply an end-boss fight and in many people's eyes, just a step towards eventual heroics, that it always makes us look back and reflect on things that have gone before. If anything, the real thread that ties those many wipes in the hallowed core to the many wipes now at the hands of giant flaming balls of death is our friendship. Sure, the tune may have changed over time, but the reprise remains the same. You could say that this is the real lesson from all of this.

It makes me sad then, that I've had to pick up the pen again in order to catalogue our triumphs. Not because I don't appreciate our victories, but because there are better men with better words and better jokes. And like Argat before, now Arnesca is leaving our raid in order to enjoy his days being a casual. Paladins are flighty creatures, having been in the raid for only 6-7 years at a clip, you know?

It feels so weird to suffer these changes but they are for the best and all stories tend to weave the same fabric. Despite all that, even with some of our elders passing on, we are witnessing the rebirth of something great. I don't know how the rest of this is going to play out, but we all know how it ends.

Falling off a bridge and pulling Garr.

Alternative Title: Two Birds, One Fireball
It is that time of year again: summer raiding! And boy is it hot! Reprise has been hard at work killing bosses, staying cool and making egregious puns.


Even though 4.2 and Firelands have only been out a few short weeks, we've been hitting normal content pretty hard in anticipation of Ragnaros and his fiery new legs as well as looming heroic modes. While I haven't quite retrieved my data from my gnomish photocorder for our Beth'tilac, Lord Rhyolith or Shannox kills, I can assure you we armed ourselves with a giant can of RAID, dispatched some dogs and broke some rocks apart.

From there, it was on to Baleroc, Alysrazor(Arnesca's favorite fight) and everyone's favorite grumpy druid, Majordomo Staghelm.
We've been feeling really confident about our progress lately, so let's hope we don't wipe on trash.
If you can't take the heat, stay the heck out of Firelands!

Hard mode kills are very hard to talk about. They're not so different from the normal versions of the encounters that they can spawn any new and exciting jokes. Healers are still having heart attacks, just bigger ones. The DPS are still standing in things, there are just more things to stand in. That isn't to say these kills aren't accomplishments -- they are! Every single one of our raiders have worked their tails off for these kills and we're proud of all of them, and they should be proud of the personal improvements they've made over the last few months.

Since our last news update, we've scored a number of kills:

• Al'Akir
• Heroic Magmaw
• Heroic Chimaeron
• Heroic Atramedes

Heroic Maloriak (which I will never call 'Mali' due to his distinct lack of blue pigmentation) has been put on notice, and we've already made strong progress. As soon as he's done being a huge smelly jerk and stops locking our melee in ice blocks en masse, we'll have that kill under our belt, too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to make a trip to the gas station for a bag of ice.

We've already killed Halfus Wyrmbreaker on the normal difficulty, and while doing it on heroic mode is certainly a much more difficult task, the kill shot ... doesn't really look any different. Let's be honest, we could just copy/paste the same exact screenshot up here and nobody would really know the difference. The guy doesn't grow an extra toe on heroic or anything. So to spice up the screenshot, naturally we fell back on what the GoG has always used to make things more interesting -- the flying V. Fight on, brave ... Vs, I guess?

Major props to our healers on this one. Saying a fight gave our healers heart attacks is becoming something of a cliche in these news posts, so I'll just insert Jadiera's wonderful MSPaint of the encounter instead. I'm fairly sure it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense if you're not actually in the raid, but maybe it's better that way, eh?

I've spent many hours trying to come up with some sort of gimmicky joke for this kill post, but I've come up dry. No jokes here, just major kudos. Nefarian was our biggest challenge yet in this expansion and we tackled it like heroes. Morale was high all around the whole way through and we made clear, tangible progress on every single pull (if you don't include the ones where Sartania pulled aggro within the first seven seconds of combat). Everybody had a tough job on this fight and it made every single one of us better at what we do. It trained us in using our cooldowns and our interrupts more than anything else has this expansion, tools that we will absolutely need going forward. We've all become very well acquainted with our interrupts this expansion.

The loot:

• Nemesis Robes: Phariacles
• Nemesis Robes: Grennel
• Prestor's Talisman of Connivery: Wraith
• Lok'amir il Romathis: Enaku
• Head of Nefarian: Gradar

Onward to Al'akir, our final challenge of this raid tier! ...well, until heroics. Stupid heroics. Always cramping my gravitas.

All of us stumbled our way into Bastion of Twilight last night, nursing the final dregs of our post-Super Bowl hangovers. "Wow. Where did all of the trash go?" Balgar questioned. How curious! It appeared that raid fairies had taken to the Bastion on Sunday night in our stead! No Halfus to contend with. No Valiona and Theralion flying around ... doing whatever it is that they do. Not even the Ascendant Council, who we'd beaten for the first time the week prior.

Fortunately for us, the magical raid pixies left one boss for us: Cho'gall. An hour and a half later, we scored our very first Cho'gall kill! With no deaths. Wtf, guys? When did we become the ballingest ballers to have ever balled balls?

Good work, ladies and gents. Let's keep it up!

Atramedes, also known as "that blind dragon", fell at the hands of Reprise last week. As we valiantly fought our way through, I couldn't help but wonder what his fire breath actually is. It's called Sonic Breath. Is it fire or sound? Is it both? Is he lighting you on fire so he can hear you scream or is he using echolocation, like bats or dolphins? Man, have you ever played Ecco the Dolphin? Did you know you fight aliens in that game? What the hell. When I was a kid, I swam around murdering jellyfish for days. I didn't know you fight aliens. Dolphins are assholes. I thought murdering jellyfish was a pretty authentic dolphin experience!

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, boss kills. We killed Chimaeron as well. Seriously though, dolphins. What is their deal?

Reprise made some fantastic progress this past week to follow up on our success against Magmaw and the Omnotron Defense System. This last week saw the deaths of Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Valiona and Theralion, Maloriak, and the Conclave of Wind. All of those are second, however, to the feat that was killing the Whale Shark before Ipajevae drowned to death.

There were far too many killshots this week to include all of them in this news post, so I will leave all of you with the very important lesson we've all learned these many years together. Onward and upward, Guild of Guilds.

Reprise made the most out of its first official day of raiding this expansion. Food eaten, flasks imbibed, we ventured into the depths (heights?) of Blackrock Descent. Magmaw fell first, only living long enough for Adrine to realize that "click on his back" means you should click on his back and not some other, unmentioned part of the fireworm's anatomy.

Then it was on to Omnotron Defense System, which you shouldn't confuse with the Omnitron Defense System like our raid photographer did below. Seriously, it's Omnotron. Look at the achievement. The fourth letter is clearly an O and not an I. From now on, I will be proofreading everything you say in raid chat to make sure you don't screw it up.

Overall, a successful first night of raiding. ...Okay, fine. That wasn't our first night raiding, but two boss kills on day two made for a much better story than the hours of wiping on Conclave of Wind on day one. We're going to pretend that never happened. You can call a mulligan on an entire 24 hour period, right?

That bastard right there. You know, I'm not sure what we ever did to piss off that dragon so much, but that thing was a thorn in our side for like a year.  A year.  That's a true testiment of just how awesome you guys are; we clobbered our heads against content for over a year, attempting to get the most out of the place for as many of us as we could possibly do.

WotLK was a rocky start for us, for many reasons, and not all of them within reasonable control.  Yet, we came together, endured the insanely easy level of content that was Naxx and moved on to Ulduar, then the trap that was ToC, and finally the endurance run that was ICC.  I don't mean to make it sound like it was all doom and gloom, though there were some complications and such along the way, as there was a wealth of good times that resulted in some really awesome moments for us.  We completed four Shadowmournes, for example, which I'm not sure if other raids did.

But the thing to be most proud of is that we're coming out of WotLK stronger than we went in, more focused and prepared for Cataclysm than we have been for any expansion before it.  I'm excited of where we're headed and just so proud of all of the folks we have on-board and supporting us.  You guys make it easy to want to log in for the 8-9hrs a week we put in.  It's all worth it because of you.

So, let's look at a bit of a timeline for the stuff we've accomplished this expansion (thanks Deo for compiling it):

• Naxxramas: Completed 12/28/08
• Ulduar: Started 4/19/09 and completed with Algalon on 4/26/10
• Tourneyment of Champions: Started 8/5/09 and completed with heroic Twins on 10/12/09
• Icecrown Citadel: Started 12/9/09 and completed... well, yesterday.

For a full list of just what we took down and when, take a peek at http://guildofguilds.org/node/4140 which will be updated with Cataclysm raid kills as well, but the long list just goes to show where two years worth of effort went.

In that time we had a fair number of members come and go, as we went through several stages of recruitment.  None of that would have been possible without the officer core, whom I am very thankful for.  I owe Myaa a special deal of thanks for all of her patience, particularly with me, and all of the hard work done to even get Reprise going in WotLK.  And I owe all of you a great deal of thanks for putting up with me, struggling to figure this stuff out and to keep it all going, as well as tolerating all of the hiccups and bumps along the way.  Some of you have given a lot, others given more than others might realize, and yet hopefully along the way I've let you know how much I appreciate all of it, and all of you.

There have been others that have given a lot to be here, stories of folks traveling to friends' houses (even in snow storms) or putting up with massive personal complication just to be here, folks that have given me their home numbers just to be sure to remain in contact. We had several folks that had to scale back on their play due to real life situations, and some of them even came back to fulltime membership again.  I like to think that despite some differences here or there, we're all pretty supportive of one another, and I think the strength of our roster only reflects that.

I'd like to think that all of that desire to be a part of us is a reponse to the quality of environment we provide and the sheer awesomeness of the folks involved.  For every headache that I've had along the way, just the reminder of who's on the roster and what folks do to be there every week just makes any of those complications all worth it.  In short, you folks are great.

Thank you for being awesome.

So, here's a list of everyone that's been a part of Fordragon's Reprise, with the current folks in bold.  Thank you to everyone that's help us get to where we are, thank you to all of the previous raid members who got us through the 4-5 years previous to this, and thank you to everyone that wants to be a part of what we're going to be doing in Cataclysm.

• Death Knight: Deodan, Verrodd, Krayce, Talionis
• Druid: Druadan, Llaendrew, Ashke, Enaku, Leafi, Nellenya, Winterstar, Glistone, Faiye, Kacius,  Myj, Caliali
• Hunters: Thrain, Kivharo, Keshet, McKinsey, Balgar, Morhanon, Amnarak
• Mage: Aislinana, Jelzok, Probata, Garainla, Metaneira
• Paladin: Gradar, Orinfoo, Arnesca, Geneiveeve, Zarnz, Sharos, Mojitos
• Priest: Stregheria, Cirua, Requite, Ayelle, Kallindril, Dienae
• Rogue: Wraithedge, Aelussa, Adrine
• Shaman: Jadiera, Lysala, Zaythi, Lykria, Myaa, Niada
• Warlock: Phariacles, Kerena, Lilgoth, Sevss, Weazey, Nafsasp
• Warrior: Shyeera, Dreaming, Sartania, Lessar, Rizzan, Edagh, Bibby

So, a week to go and Catclysm will be upon us.  We're going to be somewhat aggressive in a start date, hoping to get back to things around the start of the new year, so expect new updates from us about then!

See you all on the other side!