Rumours of our demise have been greatly exa.. oh wait they're true.
Well, kinda. About 2 months ago our Officer core came to the conclusion that it was largely time to move on from the game. For one I personally was looking at an upcoming move to another state that has been largely life changing, and I did not forsee myself with the time or ability to effectively manage a top-end progression guild after the fact. Moreso however, we just felt the drive was no longer there.
Heroic LK is an incredibly tuned challenging fight that pushes the boundaries as the toughest WoLK fight created yet. We knew we could just sit back and wait for the zone buffs to rack up if we really wanted, but we pushed ourselves hard to get a top kill, night in night out. Soon though however a lot of us realized we just didn't want to do it. The grinding, unforgiving, and momentum sapping nature of the fight was wearing down on us. End of expansion syndrome was kicking in, new and interesting games were coming out that made us woe having to log off for a raid time that was not as enjoyable. A lot of us were unhappy with Blizzard's tuning and recent raid model, and there seems to be little hope of it getting better in the future, be it Ruby Sanctum or Cataclysm. Summer was starting, and the usual attrition bug from all these factors were kicking up. Faced with the choice of recruiting like every other 11/12 guild out there was to keep the grinding cycle of throwing ourselves at LK RNG wipes going, or recognizing this perfect storm of life changes and fading interest for what it was, we decided to throw in the towel.
I'm proud to say however that our members were respectful enough to stay a bit longer and finish our 2nd and last Shadowmourne. Big congrats and well deserved to Hirokal on this great achievement. Thank you everyone for staying long enough to finish this off for a long time dedicated Raider in our guild.
Of course not all of our members agreed and wanted to continue on, and I once again apologize to you guys. A few weeks later I'm happy to see most everyone who wanted to continue on has found relative success with high end raiding guilds and have moved on. We had a lot of members move onto well-respected guilds such as Phoenix, Blood Legion, Casual, and Raiding Rainbows, and I wish all you guys best of luck. I did a count the other day and figured about half of our raiders moved on to other guilds, while the other half has largely quit for RL or other games. I'm sorry this had to be the end of the home we created for everyone who wanted to keep playing, but know that you're always welcome here no matter where your raiding careers take you.
I'm going to go into some homo nostalgia mode now because this will probably be our last front page post for a long time and that's how I roll. I'm EXTREMELY proud of what we've accomplished as a guild. I cannot repeat that last sentence enough. We started back in Feb 2007 (TBC release) as a ragtag group of ex-Kupo FFXI'ers and a few friends that we had made from a brief stint in Classic. We were never meant to be a raiding guild: I had just gotten off a grueling tenure leading a FFXI linkshell for 3 years that had taken all desire to even touch guild management out of me, and just wanted to play with friends. Being a competitive group of excellent players though, it became obvious quite clearly that we wanted more than just heroics.
We started recruiting to fill out Kara groups and soon expanded into the realm of 25 mans, where we were quite terrible through a long period of time. But we had a solid core and slowly recruited some decent talent that stayed with us for a long time and contributed to our success. After a successful retooling we turned a stone and were able to take down Lady Vashj and soon after Kael. We caught up in Hyjal and BT and entered into Sunwell well behind the other Ner'zhul guilds at the time. We finished with a server 3rd M'uru kill before succumbing to the end-of-expansion Sunwell blues. All in all a great leap from where we started, no where.
Entering into WoLK we rebuilt into Naxx and retooled for a stronger pushed in Ulduar. After shedding some fat and recruiting we experienced our best progression push of all with the Ulduar hard modes, taking over a Server 1st position we'd never give up. We finished Yogg 0 Light in the top 20 US, and continued that success in ToGC with a top 20 US Kill on Anub and top 20 US kills in the ICC Hard modes, excluding LK of course. Overall despite not finishing ICC we're extremely proud of the level we pushed ourselves to in WoLK as a whole, going from a mediocre guild to a top tier US guild in the course of months.
Most importantly though is the relationships we've built over the years. Of course we can't forget the departed members who made us who we are. From the early days (Empeekay, Zennie/Eclairs, Zxt) the TBC fixtures (Hotblooded, Midori, Payload), to the great players in WoLK who had to give it up early (Mish, Solkid, Facts), we would not have gotten to where we are now without the help of of those members who shaped who we are over the years.
And of course a great thank you to the core of members who helped push us to the next level over the past few months, from Ulduar to ICC. A huge thank you to the guys who've been with us forever; The FFXI crew that stood with us through it all (JC, Patty, Book, Wolves, Killa, Yumi, Zepp), the dedication of the great TBC pickups (Rej, Qou, Varn, Ello, Rill, Nightfright, Tier, Melb), and of course the great WoLK recruited players who were responsible for pushing us to that next level this expac (Rallik, Meaning, Martyr, Cherob, Nello, Ngata, Apoc, Joe, Niko, Kal, Cptn, Methios, Ippon). And sorry if I missed anyone. Each and everyone of you guys, and all the others who were a part of our great progression over the months and years not mentioned, were responsible for the success and great times we enjoyed, and I'll never forget you all.
To anyone curious, we're not going anywhere. We still plan to be around in other games, ideally one without as strict time commitments and set schedulels. We've got a lot of us planning on being very active in SC2 and HoN, and a large majority of us are extremely excited for D3. We'll still be playing together for a long time. We'll also be back in a much smaller fashion in Cata, most likely as dirty casuals doing 10ms. We look forward to moving on exploring other games and the next expansion as a group.
So long for now Ner'zhul. It's been a great ride and we had a blast. We'll see you guys in Cata! Best of luck to everyone till then.
