((This is the first half of my recent entry into Blizzard’s Creative Writing contest. I put only the first part up for now because of the length. Bear in mind I had to rush this a bit, as I only found out about the contest about 3 days before it ended, so some descriptions are a bit underdone, etc etc. More to come soon though, perhaps!))

There are people who believe that whenever we begin a significant journey in our lives, the outcome of that journey is predetermined before you even embark upon it. Some choose to call it fate, or destiny, while to others such results may appear as only a series of coincidences, a myriad of intertwining choices and possibilities, all affecting certain lives in certain ways. Most wise men know that even the gods and goddesses of this realm have little or no control over this chaos, although many of the deities try their hand at changing certain pathways, attempting like so many before them to control, through subtle guidance of a mortal being.

The god-touched, while often becoming prominent amongst their peers, very rarely know who they are, although a few figures stand out in our world’s history. The High Priestess Tyrande Whisperwind is one obvious choice at least, whose relationship with the gods surpassed a mere worshipper during the First Great War. Dare I mention Thrall, or even Arthas? Their paths are surely what those people who believe such things would call ‘fate’.

Read more

It’s been five months now since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has been released and looking back … I can’t believe we did so much Naxx! Ulduar couldn’t have come sooner!

On a serious note though, it’s been great fun to see THC growing from a handful of ingame friends to a living breathing community and a successful raiding guild. Above all we were lucky to have had all these funny, skilled and all around great players join us over the last few months.

We’ve cleared and farmed all the raid content this tier had to offer and we’ve gotten almost all of the raid achievements done in time before the 3.1 content patch.

Looking forward, now that our roster is in a very solid shape and all the guild infrastructures are in place we intend to be fully focused on raid progress, completing every raid achievement and hard more encounter in Ulduar, all the while not forgetting to make sure we keep that community feeling that makes people want to log on.

But enough talk for now – the guy on the right is waiting.

So to our rather significant surprise we woke up today to discover that the patch would be hitting no later than tomorrow. Everyone was rather giddy as expected – everyone, except one person.

Our dear mage Vredens was missing the And They Would All Go Down Together achievement from the 4 Horsemen encounter. As you might know, that achievement is a rather trivial to accomplish requirement to completing the Glory of the Raider meta-achievement which awards a very nice mount, and it was the last achievement Vredens was missing.

The only problem here was that once the patch hit this reward would no longer be available, and to make matters complicated, Vredens wasn’t supposed to be able to play today and none of us has been able to make contact with him all day long.

Clearly though – such petty details do not deter the valiant cold and hungry raiders of THC. Argha took the initiative and at the early afternoon organized a raid to be on standby in case Vredens shows up. I tried to e-mail him to let him know we were here and waiting in case he checks his mail. The hours crept on though and hope was slowly diminishing. Some people gave up but still could not bring themselves to logoff.

Finally! At 2AM sharp, one hour before the servers were scheduled to reset, he came online. Quickly the raid was set up, people relogged from alts, scrambled to respec, made scrolls to cover for missing buffs, flew off to summon and started clearing trash.

Bosses fell left and then right, and with 20 minutes left on the clock we stood before the 4 Horsemen – *BOOM* *GRRRR* *PEWPEW* *AHHHH!!!* *HAEL!!!* *ZERG!!* – and they were all dead. Operation “Lazyass Troll” was thus complete.

Grats Vredens, and thanks to everyone that stuck around for a fun and crazy way of saying goodbye to T7 content.