The path to the Frozen Throne was arduous indeed, and yet now that we can scale the icy summit in less than 3 hours, we face the greatest challenge of all. The battle against the Lich King is a hard one, certainly the toughest challenge since the days of 40-man raiding and the insanity that was C’thun. The fight mechanics create a setting in which one individual mistake can set off a chain reaction that ends almost inevitably in a wipe, since this is a battle where the classic RPG trinity of tank, healer and damage-dealer needs near perfect co-ordination. The Lich King heroic encounter pushes everyone into individual tasks that are, in their own way, vital to the success of the raid. Brilliant in design, brutal in execution.

So slowly but surely we have pushed on, perservering through wipe after wipe, steadily improving and realising that victory is within our sights. It felt good to get to Phase 3, didn’t it? I certainly felt a sense of approaching a finishing line as we battled that second round of Raging Spirits. It justified all those other wipes, the discouraging nights where no progress seemed to be made. Suddenly we were ‘here’, looking at the last hurdle with grim determination and a spring in our step.

Old enemies are seeming to pose no problem recently, one benefit of doing battle with the cold-hearted monarch of the damned and his minions. Yogg-Saron keeps rearing his ugly toad-face, and we keep stamping on it, providing several of the luckier members of the guild with shiny new flying mounts, tokens of their increasing prowess. Yet our greatest enemy remains alive, and in the coming weeks we must find the will and the determination to keep thrashing at Arthas, hounding him until we taste the victory that we will have earned.

Azeroth prevails.