Anyone following this blog from day 1 will know that the reason for me starting to blog was to write about my progress in WoW and while that has sort of happened I've never really caught up with my pre-blogging story. My last installment was, as has become tradition, many months ago and in it I got got to the beginning of the Trial of the Crusader in terms of game progression and had just switch guilds leaving Encore and joining Quercus. Anyway, the story so far can be read in the following posts The Backstory: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13 and Part 14.

Quercus were more the type of guild I was accustomed to being in albeit it ranked a few places lower on the Tier 7 progress than Deadwood, but they were actively raiding and were a progression type guild. The folks there were a friendly bunch and, as expected were damned fine raiders too. They also knew how to have fun and that meant an awful lot to me as that was something that never seemed to happen in Encore and had slowly vanished in Deadwood as the guild slowly died. The only remotely odd thing was that the guild leader was absent as she was away in the US but her husband was leading the guild and doing a good job in my opinion.

The raiding schedule was hectic though in the 3 nights we raided we cleared Ulduar on 25 (as they were attempting to get the guild's 2nd Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings) and Trial of the Crusader on Normal and Heroic. The "off" nights were spent raiding Ulduar 10 working on hard modes in 2 groups and Trial of the Crusader (normal and heroic) in 10 man. Back then that didn't feel like a chore, mainly because my work schedule allowed it and because the guys were fun to be with following the mantra "work hard, play hard". In early December the guild leader returned from her break and things almost instantly took a more serious note when raiding but as Icecrown Citadel had just been launched I just put that down to us having to learn new fights rather than simply farming known content with the exception of heroic Trial of the Crusader (25).

The first boss in ICC, Lord Marrowgar died in the first week and boss #2, Lady Deathwhisper, died in the 2nd as did the Loot Ship. Saurfang slowed the guild down a bit and it was this that seemed to be the catalyst that saw a character change in the guild leader, as she became very rude with people and I remember her kicking a tank mid-raid for making a small mistake. A friend who I had encouraged to join the guild was so angry at this act that he left the raid and quit the guild instantly. It was at this point that I too decided to look for another guild, a process that took me only 2 weeks and during those 2 weeks the mood of the guild changed dramatically. A few days before I had got accepted into my new guild, Immersion, I was guild kicked without any explanation and to this day I don't know why, but can only assume that she found out about my application. This was proof enough to me that I was lucky to be out of the guild.

Today Quercus are one of the best progressed raiding guilds on Shadowsong EU despite having the guild leader still at the helm with some of the same faces that were there in Wrath. Hopefully, the guild leader was just going through a bad patch in her life and is now a friendly and likable person. However, she remains the only person I have encountered in game that I have ever had feelings of pure hatred towards. It doesn't make me feel big or clever however, she was the real inspiration at me starting this blog so I guess in someways I owe an awful lot to her. So Myrgthe I salute you!

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Oh my UI with super huge buttons, badly positioned unit frames and 8fps!!

Anyone following this blog from day 1 will know that the reason for me starting to blog was to write about my progress in WoW and while that has sort of happened I've never really caught up with my pre-blogging story. The last installment was 10 months ago and got to the end of Ulduar in terms of game progression as I just joined the guild Encore. Anyway, the story so far can be read in the following posts The Backstory: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12 and Part 13.

Encore were a very different type of guild to what I had become accustomed to in Deadwood. While they were a raiding guild they were much more relaxed in their approach to raiding, in hindsight this wasn't actually a bad thing but at the time it frustrated me greatly and I think I also had not really come to terms with being part of the rank and file of the guild after so long as an officer.

That said the majority of the folks there were good people and they were raiding 25 man which was one of the 2 reasons I left Deadwood, the other being the need to have people in /g to chat with and hopefully run dungeons with (remembering that this is pre-dungeon finder). However, their progress was slow as they had only just gotten to Freya, and I was used to clearing Ulduar. Their casual style and their unwillingness to move into the Trial of the Crusader because, "the 3rd boss is a PVP fight and we're not a PVP guild" according to their GM.

So after only 3 weeks, I decided that Encore was not the guild for me and posted an application to join Quercus, one of the other 2 guilds on my original shortlist and on October 15th 2009 I got the mail to advise that I had been successful in my application to join them and a new adventure began...

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Back in October 2012, I set up a plan to attain the Herald of the Titans, Feat of Strength. This involved setting up home on a new server (Defias Brotherhood) with my Horde charcters, rolling a new priest and setting up a new guild, including a new website.

Thankfully I was able to recruit some friends from Exhumed, and through the realm forums and some advertising on the Rawrcast and Convert To Raid podcasts, I was able to fill a few more spots.

If you've been watching my achievement feed to the right you may have noticd I got the Herald of the Titans a few days back and may have wondered why I hadn't published anything yet and it has simply been a matter of unavailable time until today.

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Our first official raid night and a valiant band of 7 heroes entered Wrath raiding at the beginning and we kicked some ass!

The team was Artherion, Cumingallove, Evangelysm, Heideroosje, Krius, Shifthead and Zombaal.

The Necropolis fell first as Kel'Thuzad and his minions failed to stop us, although they did take more than a small bite out of Zombaal who seemed to be their main focus. He has therefore become the official ReExhumed sacrificial gnome!

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Yes this is 2012 and yes Alaglon was way back in 2009, but for Project Titan, Algalon will be proper content!

We're still looking for some players who are interested in getting the Herald of the Titans title and Feat of Strength, so if you're keen and able to bring a level 80 Horde character to the party and preferably to the Defias Brotherhood server, get in touch with my by:

• joining our forums at the ReExhumed guild website;
• in game mail to Evangelym on the Defias Brotherhood EU realm;
• an email to evlyxx at evlyxx dot com;
• or leaving a comment on this or one of the other Project Titan threads

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Things have moved on with Project Titan, I decided to go Horde as me and most of the folks from Exhumed haven't experienced raiding Horde. After a suggestion from my pal Gricey, I'v e gone on an RP PVP server, Defias Brotherhood EU and have even created a guild, ReExhumed.

The reason I selected that realm in particular was, according to WoW progress, that it was the most advanced raiding server of all the EU RP realms AND has a reasonable raiding population both of which means the AH activity is OK and will hopefully give us access to crafted raid patterns. There is also a nice Horde:Alliance population balance.

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I have a burning ambition to do something challenging. Some may call it stupid, others pointless but it is something that I want to do but I need help from 9 others to achieve. There is no time limit on getting the team together to do it though. You're probably all thinking what the hell is he on about. OK so you may not, but regardless. 

I'm going to share this dream with you today, because my dear friends, the dream I have is to become Evlyxx, Herald of the Titans (in game not in real life). Now the main issue I face with achieving this is that this became a Feat of Strength in Cataclysm and with the account wide nature of achievements, it is now possible to get it on your main regardless of their level. However, while it is still obtainable there is a catch; all raid members have to be level 80. The second obstacle for me is that I have 11 characters on my home realm and really don't fancy reopening my second account.

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After 3 years and 4 months I have finally gotten my legendary mace, Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings and I appreciate that it is an expansion too late but my first fragment was gained on April 15th 2009 (the day Ulduar was introduced in Patch 3.1) thanks to one of my healing crew passing up the chance for the fragment, thanks Spicefang! 

Finally last week I hit the magic 30 fragments on our Leviathan kill, which meant all I needed to do was grab myself a Yogg'Saron kill with 1 keeper missing and throwing the Shattered Fragments of Val'anyr at Yogg. But we were a small group and many had never seen the Yogg fight and there was a lot of tired people failing miserably so my planned night of victory failed at the very final hurdle.

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It really is strange, I made this blog because I wanted to tell the story of my progress in WoW and I am not even close to telling the story upto the point I started the blog some 27 months ago. Anyway, the story so far can be read in the following posts The Backstory: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, and Part 12, which ended with me in a guild called Deadwood at the end of Burning Crusdae. 

Today I'm going to give you the next installment.Wrath launched and with it came a new found passion for the game, the guys of Deadwood were hoping for big things and we had retained most of the guild during the end of expansion lull and had even strengthened the roster with some cross realm recruits, from Nagrand iirc. 

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No, not my total days played, but rather the number of days it took me to clear all raid content in WotLK. Sure I had defeated all bosses before over all of my characters but the Halion kill was on an alt and Evlyxx still needed that kill for me to consider him, and the rest of the WotLK raid content beaten. Sure I still have to kill a few bosses on hard mode (10 and 25) and of course there is the small matter of a 10 man Artard kill, but overall if Cataclysm was launched tomorrow I would have no regrets like I did at the end of vanilla and the Burning Crusade where I was a step away from entering the last raid tier each time.

My self induced progression stress is all now gone, its now fun all the way to Cataclysm, and thats not to say it hasn't been fun to get here! The surprise for me was not the fact that I had finally gotten to the end of the raid content in an expansion, that was my goal this time around all along, but rather the fact that I have got so close not on one alt but 4, Strigimaga my lock is closest with just a Lich King kill eluding the lil gnome, closely followed by the Mikmaq, my shaman, who mises only Lich King and Halion and then comes the mage (Valdaran) and the evil Evlyxx who both need Sindragosa, Lich King and Halion. I'm not going to repeat content from my previous posts about the State of Raiding  but the content wasn't as hard or maybe I just got better and/or surrounded myself with better players.

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This weekend my 10 man raid guild decided that the summer was too good to miss and with Cataclysm just around the corner a break was needed for us all to charge our batteries and be fresh for the next wave of challenged.

I must admit I wasn't ready for this myself and the announcement came out of nowhere, but as enough of the group had asked for the break to our raid leader he did exactly as I would have so /salute to Posie for doing that. At the end of the day most of the guys and gals of All about Beer are not hard core progression raider types, their attitude to raiding is very casual and focused on having fun although their drive is first class and that is what made raiding with them worthwhile.

It all started in June 2009 when I got dragged kicking and screaming on an alt into Naxx, I was focusing on my mage as the primary alt at the time and I took my bad DPS into Naxx with a group that was completely unknown to me except for Posie (on his priest), Aphra (who I knew as a mage, Xabinkinniel) and Stabbster (an alt of a guidie, Wollo). The rest where in fresh faced raiders ready to learn their craft in Naxx. It turned out that there were 3 married couples in the team and we had a riot. OK progress was made half the team as we downed Kel'Thuzad and went on to slay Sartharion (with all drakes dead). A top night was had but, I had low expectations about things lasting long. How wrong I was to be!

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