Last Chance Monday Raid!
Team RP is essentially on hiatus now, so the Monday night spot was open this week (we did a very fun flex on Thursday last week, continuing from where Tuesday flex left off). Tay and I, after talking in Mumble about it late Thursday night, decided it was time to try a 25-person normal guild raid. As best I can recall it, we have not done 25's as a guild since Wrath, which was the last time 10 and 25 mode did not share a lockout. This particular mode of raid, moreover, will be extinct come patch 6.0, as that will bring the new mode of raiding for WOD: LFR as currently, normal (which will be flexible 10-25), heroic (flexible 10-25) and mythic (20 people only). We have been doing a lot of guild flexes, thanks to Nina, since they debuted, and frequently have had 25 guildies in the flex raids, but we'd not done a 25 person normal in MOP. The only hitch for this one was that since Team Z is currently working on Garrosh, and Team Kaels was on heroic Dark Shaman (yeahhh! they got them Tuesday night!), they needed to bring alts.
I was a bit nervous that we would not get a full group, and I had forgotten Tay and I had talked about 9:30 rather than 9PM, so we didn't get going till about 9:20 - but we got 24 people (25 by the time we reached Norushen, I think), including about half of Team Kaels (on alts as they were locked already for wing 1) and Team RubiPam on their mains (or equally geared alts) and most of Team Z on alts, plus several people from the guild who don't raid with any team currently. For some reason, the dps was pretty evenly divided between hunters and warlocks, with a sprinkling of priests and mages, and Thanael and Gromn tanked it. It was a ROUSING success, and not just because we one-shot our way through wing 1 before calling it at 10:45 or because people got gear (so much drops in 25's, I had forgotten!). It was one of those nights that reminds me why I love this guild and the people in it - we were joking and laughing the whole night, and then many of us hung around in Mumble afterward to talk about the Emmys, which were going on that night, Breaking Bad, great episodes of Buffy, and other things that had NOTHING to do with WOW. The finale, for me, was the transition from a brief discussion of how fun and goofy the movie Guardians of the Galaxy is into, as Carune described it in guild chat, a "geek-off in Mumble" between Thanael and Voban over what I believe were their respective comic book collections. It was hilarious! The whole evening, in retrospect, was like a really good party with all good friends, people you like and trust, having fun and good conversation - and it was an example of what the internet and games like WOW can give us in the way of communication and friendship. It was awesome. So I've put another one on the calendar for Sept. 8th (Sept. 1st is a holiday in the US), and I'll keep the lockout on Pamena since I'm not doing much with her these days so we can start on Wing 2. Should be big fun!
The whole evening got me thinking about how the guild has evolved over the last 5 years and especially during MOP, which gave us many opportunities to do stuff as a guild on content that was accessible to folks other than the regular raiders. I guess it really goes back to when Luna and her husband organized a guild take down of that big boss that roams around one section of Twilight Highlands - when MOP brought us a number of world bosses like that (Sha, Galleon, etc.), it was a great opportunity to set up Saturday Night Massacre, which gave a lot of people a shot at doing those bosses, and which has evolved into our own guild variety show on Saturday nights, sometimes doing heritage raids, sometimes achievement runs, sometimes guild LFR's, under the leadership first of Pamena, and now under Mageartin with Tvath and Tony sharing the nights. Similarly, Nina started her Sunday night pickup raids at the end of Cataclysm, and then took the flex concept to Tuesday nights where it has provided a great chance for many in the guild to get into Siege in a better setting than LFR. Tvath organized many guild LFR's over the latter part of 2013, and we did many group Barrens Battlefield groups when that event debuted last summer. All in all, I think the guild has matured well, with so many great people now willing and able to step up and organize events, so that we give people a reason to log into the game and have fun. I hope the trend will continue in WOD!
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