Raid Bosses

Raid bosses are just what their name implies- they are meant to be taken down by a raid. They are also a level of ??, meaning that they lack an actual level. This does not mean that they do not have an actual level. In fact, bosses are dynamically-leveled, meaning that they are always at least three levels higher than the player fighting them. At level 60, a raid boss would have been level 63, 70 would have been 73, and so on as the caps progress, with the current cap being 85, and raid bosses 88.

Now, raid bosses are categorized into three types- tank-and-spanks, DPS race, and Battle For Survival. A tank-and-spank boss is one that really doesn't have much movement involved in terms of raid positioning, the mechanics are extremely simple and/or mostly harmless unless they're not kept in check. These encounters are usually gear-check bosses. A good example of this type of boss is Attumen the Huntsman in Karazhan- two tanks were all the raid needed, and whoever was capable of removing curses was responsible for the raid's survival. DPS race bosses are pretty much that. The raid's survival is actually placed on the damage dealers' ability to kill the boss before it wipes out the entire raid. These bosses are usually tank-and-spank with a few hurdles thrown in, can hit pretty hard, and usually have a high amount of health. They are also on shorter enrage timers, such as 6-7 minutes. Excellent examples are Patchwerk from Naxxramas and Brutallus from Sunwell Plateau.

A Battle For Survival boss is for the more complex-styled encounters, and these kinds of bosses are usually found at the end of a raid dungeon. Such bosses may have anywhere between 2-5 phases where the mechanics will switch up significantly. A Battle for Survival can throw in DPS race-like elements or tank-and-spank elements at certain phases, but the key to winning such fights relies on the raid's ability to stay alive. Usually there will be an item or nearby environmental object that players must activate to weaken a boss, expose a weakness, or temporarily boost defenses to survive an attack that would otherwise be impossible to avoid or not die from.

It's hard to give a good example since the end bosses of all the WoW raids are battles for survival, but a unique example would be Archimonde from The Battle for Mount Hyjal. In this blast from the past event, players had to help weaken Archimonde so the wisps can blow him to shreds as they did in the actual timeline of events. However, doing so was no easy task. A player death on this fight could easily result in a raid wipe. Whenever a player died, Archimonde would gain a Soul Charge. The effect of his next attack using the Soul Charge depended on what class the dead player was. Archimonde had three different abilities for the nine different classes. Either way, they were all pretty devastating, but some were survivable depending on your healers's abilities. Archimonde also had an additional number of abilities at his disposal, a Fear-effect, which made all players run about in a daze, a Doomfire move which unleashed a stream of flames that followed a random player until it stopped, otherwise it would leave a ticking damage-over-time that progressively grew stronger, a Curse that needed to be dispelled, and an air burst ability that would blast three random raid members into the sky. The air burst was deadly, as it sent you high enough to fall to your death; an item given to you before the start of the encounter was to be used to slow your descent. Although players had nine minutes to bring Archimonde down to 10% of his total health, it was more than enough time to actually get him there because of the mechanics.That extra time was to focus on survivability.

Gear check bosses, by the way, require a certain amount of gearing before a raid can even attempt to take them down. This means getting your tanks the best possible armor from previous encounters, your damage dealers the best weapons/armor/gems and enchants, and your healers the best possible spell boosting gear. With that being said, if your raid can meet all of the above, a gear check boss shouldn't be much trouble on your first few attempts.

Mounts!

If you're relatively new to the game, or haven't played before Wrath of the Lich King, players couldn't originally mount until they were level 40. Yes, this meant you had to continue to run around for another 20 levels and using the flight masters to get around. Of course this is what slowed down leveling times significantly. That and you needed about 90-100 gold to buy the training, and 8-10 gold for a mount. All for a 60% movement speed increase. At level 60 you could upgrade to a full-on 100% speed increase but that required about 900-1000 gold and another 80-100 for the mounts.

But, Warlocks and Paladins did not have to bother with any of the above steps to get their mounts. To get their level 40 mounts, all they had to do was complete a simple quest and learn the spells to summon their mount. At level 60, they had to gather a whole bunch of obscure materials and a bit of gold (much less compared to 900-1000 though) for a very lengthy but epic quest chain that ended in interesting final battles. As Paladin, I completed these quests with a bit of difficulty, as I hit 60 a week after the Burning Crusade dropped, and suddenly found myself unable to find groups easily to complete the dungeon portions of my Charger mount quest. Eventually I'd pull through and with the help of some friends I was finally able to complete the quests. That was quite the accomplishment for me.

I'll never forget that day.

At level 70, players were now allowed to use flying mounts, which originally boosted movement by 60% both on land and air. Going from a 100% movement speed increase on land, this felt very slow. If you had the money, however, players were allowed to fly even faster, at 280% movement speed, and 100% on land. But this option was very costly, setting back players 5000g, which wasn't too hard to save up if you did your daily quests and made constant use of your professions and the auction house. There also existed flying mounts that solely flew at 310% movement speed but were very hard to obtain. Nowadays 310% riding speed is just another available riding skill for another 5000 gold, or less when you apply the faction discounts.

Happy riding!

Reliquary of Souls

One of the more annoying complex bosses in Burning Crusade. The Reliquary of Souls in Black Temple was a DPS-raced styled boss, in which you had a very limited window of time to defeat the three forms of this monstrosity one after the other.

Before facing off with this boss, however, players needed to rush through a weird gauntlet filled with ghosts. They had to to be killed fast enough so that the raid wouldn't take too much damage and to conserve resources as you had to fight the Reliquary of Souls immediately after, which meant you couldn't eat or drink to replenish yourself.

In its first form, the Essence of Suffering, players were hit with an aura which reduced all healing done and mana regeneration by 100%, armor by 100%, and defense skill by 500. As players had no way to heal one another, tanks had very limited defense, and a random threat table, the key to defeating this boss was fairly simple:

1. Healers, while they couldn't heal, had to work on dispelling a very deadly Life Drain debuff from other players
2. Tanks stacked shield block and as much block value as they could to prevent taking damage, although the boss didn't hit very hard to begin with.
3. When the boss enraged, a rogue would step in close enough to become the boss' next target and blow their Evasion ability.

The above steps repeat until the first form is done away with.

Between the phases, ghosts with very low health would spawn and attack random players. Killing them would make them burst and fully replenish the players in range. You had to make sure everyone was topped off between phases.

The Essence of Desire was up next. It gave players an aura that doubled the healing done, but would gradually reduce mana pools until maximum mana was 0/0. Also, players would take half the damage they did to the boss in return. Players only had 160 seconds to defeat this phase, as the healers would have no mana to continue healing the raid. A warrior main tank makes defeating this phase very easy, as Spell Reflection could be used to counter the Deaden ability, which increases the damage done to the target by 100%. If it hits the main tank, an off tank would take over while the effect of the spell ran its course. Interrupting the ability Spirit Shock was an absolute must in this encounter, as it would deal heavy damage and disorient the main tank. Usually Spirit Shock would be followed by a Deaden, which was also crucial as it had to be reflected back to the boss for maximum raid damage output. Letting a Spirit Shock go off usually meant a wipe, as the boss would start wiping out the next target on its threat table, which would usually be a damage dealer. Every so often the boss would put up a shield on itself which absorbed 50,000 damage and granted immunity to interrupt effects. Getting it off was critical.

After the Essence of Desire the Essence of Anger would be the final form. A soft enrage-type boss, players had to defeat it before the aura that this boss gave off started killing the raid. It dealt increasing amounts of Shadow damage every 3 seconds with the damage increasing by 100 each time. Also, players would do 5% more damage every 3 seconds. Taunting the boss (or it switching targets at any random time) would give the entire raid a debuff that increased their threat gained by 200%. The boss would also gain double the attack speed and a noticeable size increase. Along with a random damage over time debuff that could be mitigated by Nature Protection potions, the boss would deal a frontal-cone area-of-effect attack that burned any resources on the player and dealt damage along with it. Only tanks should be hit by this ability.

Defeating this boss would allow the raid to advance one step closer to the final area of the Black Temple, where the last three boss encounters would reside.

Burning Crusade Raids

With the release of Burning Crusade, I was able to step into raiding for the first time. I wasn't playing early enough to experience 60 raiding but I can bet you that those were great times had by many.

Burning Crusade kicked off with Tier 4 raid dungeons and ended at Tier 6, with additional raid dungeons adding extra item levels in between.

Karazhan, the first raid dungeon level 70 players would encounter, featured eleven bosses, and the tokens to the Tier 4 gloves and helm could be found here. Initially, the dungeon was fairly difficult as many players had not yet grasped the concept of heroic mode dungeons and therefore found themselves up a creek without a paddle. Eventually raid coordination and class mastery would prove to overcome many of the raid's dangerous bosses. My favorite encounters in this dungeon would have to be The Curator, Shade of Aran, Netherspite and Opera Event. For a 10-man raid dungeon it proved to be among the most memorable instances ever created.

Gruul's Lair, located in Blade's Edge Mountains of Outland, was the first 25-man raid dungeon players would encounter after Karazhan. Its two bosses, High King Maulgar and Gruul, were two pretty tough cookies. The dungeon would later receive minor re-tuning in the form of damage reductions to help beginner guilds down the content more effectively. Defeating the bosses here would yield players the tokens to the Tier 4 shoulders and leg pieces.


Magtheridon's Lair, the last of the Tier 4 raid dungeons, only featured one boss and fairly annoying trash packs. It's located in the Hellfire Peninsula at the very bottom of Hellfire Citadel. This boss was once a requirement towards the Tempest Key, an item needed to access the Tier 5 raid dungeon Tempest Keep. Magtheridon was the final obstacle in obtaining the final piece to the Tier 4 raid set, the chestpiece. After the Tier 5 attunement quests were done away with, many guilds would skip this raid dungeon as it required a fair amount of raid coordination to complete.

Serpentshrine Cavern was one of the two Tier 5 raids, the next step up from Tier 4. Located in the Coilfang Reservoir of Zangarmarsh. Beating Nightbane in Karazhan and Gruul were key to entering this dungeon after a chain quest found within one of the Coilfang heroics. It was advisable to use Nature/Frost Resistance gear in this dungeon in order to get past the dungeon's first boss, Hydross the Unstable.  The final boss of this instance was Lady Vashj. In total, this dungeon featured six bosses, but only the Tier 5 glove, leg, and head piece tokens could be found here.

Tempest Keep: The Eye is actually the raid wing of Tempest Keep, a series of floating ships surrounding one big floating structure with massive pipes absorbing energy from the various manaforges in Netherstorm. Four bosses protected the interior, along with seemingly countless waves of trash mobs. Many guilds would find themselves challenging the Void Reaver after the attunments were done away with for an easy shot at the Tier 5 shoulder tokens, but Kael'thas Sunstrider proved to be a truly formidable opponent and was one of the stepping stones to the Tier 6 dungeons, something many guilds found themselves stuck at until the attunement quests to the Tier 6 raids were ultimately lifted. Many surely didn't get their Tier 5 chest pieces from this guy.

The Caverns of Time: The Battle For Mount Hyjal in Tanaris, was the raid portion of the Caverns of Time in the Burning Crusade. Taking place during one of Warcraft's earlier and most well-known events in its history, players were required to take on oncoming waves of enemies before facing the next boss. This dungeon was the first of the Tier 6 raids, and defeating the last two bosses yielded the Tier 6 gloves and helm. The last boss of the instance, Archimonde, was very unique in that a single player death could potentially wipe the entire raid if they are not careful enough, as the fight threw many curveballs to force players to their deaths.

Black Temple, originally supposed to be the final raid to the Burning Crusade expansion, was the end-all to the game's main plot. The nine bosses would prove to be among the most challenging ever faced in any raid. Being able to enter the Black Citadel required completing a very lengthy quest chain that would tax the most hardened of players, but players were rewarded with an epic quality necklace that would later allow players to teleport to the Black Temple upon fully completing it for the first time. Players would find the Tier 6 shoulders, leg and chest tokens from the final three bosses of the instance.

As far as the Tier raids go, two more raid dungeons would be introduced:

Zul'Aman, which was added sometime after Black Temple, was a 10-man troll-themed dungeon with rewards and loot somewhat on par with Tier 5 items. Featuring six bosses, defeating the first four in a timely manner would yield the raid a unique war bear mount which would later be removed with the release of the second expansion. The dungeon would later be revamped for the game's third expansion with a newly designed bear mount.

Sunwell Plateau, the official last raid of Burning Crusade, was thrown in after players found themselves without any fresh content to work on after almost a year of Black Temple. The dungeon's six bosses were among the hardest ever conceived but the rewards were among the most powerful one could hope to find. Not many got to experience this raid, although an attunement wasn't really required. The Tier 6 armor set was also expanded by three slots to include the belt, boots and bracers, so players would not lose their set bonuses. I never really got to see much of that instance.

Alternative Characters

In the World of Warcraft, alternative characters, or "alts", are exactly as the term suggested. A main character was your primary character, the one you did everything on, especially raiding. An alt character was a character you leveled up and did anything else. Some people would roll alt characters to have a secondary profession master, a materials collector, or simply a "mule", which was exactly what that meant- A character to just hold extra materials and gear.

I wasn't too into the idea of rolling a secondary character to level up, so I only created a mule. It wasn't until my biggest burnout that I threw my hands up in the air and rolled a priest as a healer character. Soon that became a Horde warrior, then a mage, and then a Horde warlock. I was hooked.

The death knight doesn't count. It was a hero class and starts at level 55. Only players with a level 55 character or any other class are allowed to create one. If only I'd started alternative characters earlier.

The Raiding Experience [Part 2]

Running out of options I was, and on the verge of another burnout I did the craziest thing I'd ever think of doing at the time.

Applied for the one of the server's top guilds. Back in the day this guild was one of the best on Alliance- They'd conquered much of the raid content in original WoW and were making steady progress throughout Naxxramas before the Burning Crusade dropped. Once that expansion dropped, they were steamrolling their way through the Tier 4 and Tier 5 dungeons.

I vividly remember the night when they tackled the final boss in Serpentshrine Cavern- Details of that fight were being delivered at what was seemingly real-time in General Chat, which everyone in any of the main cities could read. Interesting night. They'd wiped out with the boss at 1% on an earlier attempt.

At the time, the only way to access the Tier 6 content was to defeat both the end bosses in the Tier 5 raid dungeons, as you had to do with the Tier 5 dungeons before them with the defeat of Nightbane in Karazhan and a lengthy chain quest through several heroic dungeons. I wasn't making much progress after my raid guild didn't live to see Tier 5 content and the guild I joined after dropped me like a bad habit once someone better came along, although I'd dabbled in Tier 5 content with them.

So I dropped a note, and surprisingly the guild had given me a chance with them. So I spent the next month wrecking stuff in Hyjal and Black Temple with my new guild. I didn't get geared up as fast as I'd hoped to so I could keep a spot on the raid team, since I was still mainly in Tier 4 armor with a few Tier 5 pieces I'd picked up. Not very good. Although I was able to remain in the guild due to the guild taking a liking to me, the rough times that had hit the guild a few months earlier had finally begun to catch up to it, effectively ending a 3-year run after clearing out Black Temple.

I'd burned out once again and didn't touch the game for another three months, returning in March 2008 to mountains of whispers from old friends from the server and after some time of settling down with the game after so long, a guild invite to a guild that had grown significantly from its beginnings at Karazhan. Although they were slightly behind from what I'd experienced four months earlier I figured I could lend my experiences to help the guild form their strategies in conquering the Black Temple bosses.

Joining one of the top guilds on my server despite the limitations of my class had made me a "living legend" on the server. Almost everyone knew me. It was pretty surprising to be honest. I continued on to help lead the guild to victory in Black Temple, putting the team's strengths to conquering the dungeon's nine tough bosses.

We didn't finish fast enough to wet our ankles in Sunwell Plateau but the Wrath of the Lich King expansion would throw us a nice curveball, and a new chapter would open in my raiding career...

The Raiding Experience [Part 1]

I became an endgame raider not too long after I finally became a max-level player. It was the only reason I decided to play on, of course. I was much too inspired by the epic tales of conquering humongous monsters with a large group of individuals.

Plus, they'd be places I'd never seen before. Places to explore! Ah! How excited I was when my moment arrived. Back then, entry-level raid dungeons were only 10-mans. In the original iteration of WoW you had Upper Blackrock Spire, and for the really old school players, they had Stratholme and Scholomance. For Burning Crusade, we had Karazhan.

My first night raiding was very interesting, although it was really nothing special. I was in the second raid team of our guild, which was mainly newer guild members looking to raid. We didn't progress as fast as the first group but we managed our own very well. Eventually as time passed our coordination and skills would improve, as well as our equipment. Our team was solid. We'd talk all kinds of trash in our Ventrilo chats and play music as we kicked ass. Wiping was expected. We simply dusted ourselves off and carried on. Change the strategy up a bit.

I also decided to try my hand out at tanking instead of being a damage dealer all the time. I found it pretty admirable at how tanks would stand there and take the damage while his/her team did the pelting. I started on building a new equipment set not too long after I started raiding. It wasn't too long before I got the hang of things.

Once both raid teams were equipped enough from Karazhan we'd finally unite and form our 25-man team to take on the next step: Gruul's Lair. It was a simple two-boss dungeon with not too much trash mobs. Eventually we would go on to conquer both bosses but that was as far as we were going to get. Eventually things didn't continue as they had originally and the guild would go on to crumble, but a small majority of us went on to reform as a new guild, which did decently until that fell apart a few months later.

At the time I was feeling pretty burnt out with the failures to progress and took my chances with one of the top guilds on the server after being approached by their guild leader. So I took my chances. I was primarily recruited to be one of the guild's offtanks and one day a friend from our crumbled guild asked me a question I'd never forget:

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?"

Those who knew me well enough then knew that I did not roll a paladin just to be a healer, as the class had been "pigeon-holed" into from the very start. As a hybrid class, the Paladin was meant to be able to perform all three of the basic roles expected of players in the endgame. Damage, Healing and Tank. Paladins weren't good damage dealers, their tanking ability was sub-par but their healing was decent enough to make worth bringing to a raid. It angered me to find out this truth after I'd started the character, but I was glad I did eventually. As a Paladin, I just wanted to be helpful on the front lines while being supportive, as a holy warrior is meant to do. You wear plate armor for a reason, do you not? 

Tanking was something that suddenly became interesting to me after being a melee damage-dealer and watching our tanks do what they did best, which was something I found very admirable and respected them highly for. Good tanks didn't come by very often and you needed someone worth his salt to tank the most intimidating of raid bosses. I wanted to be able to do just that in the case a raid needed the extra help.

My answer to that question was a yes. I didn't mind putting my tanking ability on the front line, even it meant handling additions to a fight or a secondary raid boss. Eventually that didn't work out too well as a recent recruit who'd transferred from another server was chosen over me as they were better equipped than I. I was quickly running out of options for a decent raiding guild at this point.

The Leveling Experience

Leveling 1-60 was a slow experience, but the game never really rushed you to get there. It was an easygoing experience.

Class quests would enhance the experience though. You'd get special items from completing them.

Karazhan

Karazhan was the first raid dungeon level 70 players were introduced to in the Burning Crusade expansion. Featuring eleven bosses and a totally optional miniboss it would go on to become one of the most beloved raid dungeons ever conceived.

At first, the dungeon was fairly tough with subpar gear which was usually the highest level blue-quality items one could find in any max-level 5-man or heroic dungeon. Raid groups would often spend an entire night just trying to get the first three or four bosses down if anything. Until players were geared enough full runs would take more than just four hours.

Here I am with a makeshift raid group on a test server making a quick run through Karazhan as main tank.

Daily Questing

Back before the Burning Crusade daily (or repeatable) quests did not exist as largely as they do now, they were mostly for reputation gains towards a faction or to make something happen in a dungeon in order to advance.

With the introduction of the first expansion daily quests were expanded upon to help provide currency gains to max-level players who wanted another way of earning gold pieces instead of relying on the auction house as many players had done before.

Patch 2.1 had brought the Black Temple raid and with it, several new daily quest areas in Outland. This would be the first of the many dailies. By the time 2.4 rolled around even more daily quests were introduced.

And so it continued.

Fun Runs

One of the many "fun-runs" our guild would do on offnights. A fun run was a quick run through a dungeon that a guild had already completed and totally out-geared. The purpose behind such runs was to either help guild members gear their alternative characters or to build a set of gear for a main character's alternative specialization. My paladin was mainly a damage dealer but I also loved being a tank when needed. Here I am preparing for this raid boss creature.

Magtheridon's Lair was one of the early raids for the Burning Crusade expansion, if not the hardest of the three Tier 4 dungeons. Defeating the boss here would yield you one of the currency tokens to the Tier 4 chestpiece of your choosing. This boss required extreme amounts of raid coordination as raid members had to manage their time and damage dealing in order to prevent the boss from totally demolishing the raid.

The boss required three tanks to absorb the split damage cleave attack this creature possessed. Healers assigned to the tanks remained close by while the raid healers would spread out. Every minute or so this boss would prepare to unleash an extremely devastating attack that dealt pulses of heavy damage for a few seconds. Letting it go off for at least two pulses would kill the entire raid as the healers would not be able to out-heal the damage. The trick to countering this was to have ten assigned raid members (25 people was the new limit for raids after this expansion) click one of the five floating cubes to channel the beams you see in the picture above. Ten people were needed because a de-buff would be placed on the person who last channeled a beam from the cubes that lasted 90 seconds, so alternating players was a must.

This process would be repeated until the boss was defeated, as the tactics wouldn't change much until the last 30% of the boss' health, when falling debris from the ceiling adds another element of danger.

Supremus

Our guild's first venture into Black Temple ended with a successful first kill of the first boss, and our next challenge would be the second.

By this time I had made my name known on my server as a competent player.

Supremus was a fairly simple boss. He couldn't be handled by a tank in his alternate phase, which would last a minute. For the first few seconds or so Supremus would be tanked by your main tank, while melee damage dealers would lay down as much damage as they could. Ranged damage dealers would help take out the fel fire volcanoes that would spawn from the ground so that there was enough running room for the second phase.

In his second phase Supremus would randomly fixate on a raid member and slowly follow them for a couple seconds. It would be their priority to not get hit by the boss, as there was a very good chance of being destroyed in one blow.

The First of Many Memories

In a way, I miss playing World of Warcraft.

You see, back when the game was still relatively young, it was a major phenomenon that spread across the entire world. At seven million players strong and growing it was one of the coolest games you could ever play. I initially jumped on the bandwagon in November 2006, sometime during the Thanksgiving weekend. My brother had been playing since October and eventually I was able to get a free 10-day trial up and going. Needless to say I immediately went out and paid the $20 USD for an account key. I went straight to work leveling my first character. At the time, the level cap was 60- but the game's first expansion was around the corner, set to release in January 2007. I tried my very best to hit the level cap in the hopes of getting my feet wet in one of WoW's 40-man raid dungeons that'd I heard so many epic stories about through veteran players.

Those were great times. Surprisingly I was able to manage both school and playing this behemoth of a game until my graduation from high school. When I started playing I spent HOURS in front of the computer screen questing and dungeoneering in the smaller 5-man ventures. I was 16 and brainwashed. There was so much to be done though. My goal in the game was to become one of the mighty veterans who teamed up to defeat huge monsters and proudly wear the stylishly designed Tier armor sets many of the level 60s wore, and if possible, dabble a bit in Player-vs.-Player mode for a ranked title. How I'd envy those with a title.

Eventually I hit the level cap, but it was a bit too late, the expansion had dropped the week before my crowning achievement and I now found myself needing to spend another $40 USD if I ever wanted to keep up. I went the rest of January just milling about until I'd saved up enough and by the time February came I was in the newly opened Outland area and questing my way to the new level cap, 70. I managed that in about three weeks' time, and I'd settled down in my then-current guild as a resident veteran.

I wasn't quite happy anymore though. I was faced with now spending my time as a max-level character in a guild that didn't do much and my original intentions were to tackle the endgame. Back then, one needed to be in an established raiding guild if they ever wanted to tackle the endgame. This meant you needed a headstrong guild leader, someone who called the shots in raids and made major decisions that moves the guild as a whole forward. Sometimes the guild leader would leave the responsibility of raid leading to a high-ranking guild officer. Then you had your class leaders, one member of each class in the game who were also guild officers who core/part-time raiders consulted when they needed to itemize their characters in order to maximize performance in raids. Your core raiders were the people that pretty much showed up to every raid that was scheduled and the ones who are the most tight-knit in the guild. If you had a large enough group of core raiders, nothing was impossible.

Of course, my guild was nothing like that. It was basically a friendly, casual guild. I had many friends there, and I'd been in the guild ever since I began playing. Leaving wasn't going to be easy. Fortunately for me, there were other guildmates who I'd leveled with who also wanted to move to greener pastures. We all banded together and said our farewells. It was a pretty eventful day.

We tried to form a guild of our own at first but it didn't work out too well, and that is where we split ways and joined different guilds. Luckily for me I was able to join up with a fellow guildmate from my first guild who joined another one earlier on before he'd hit the level cap. He was an exceptional player himself and pretty much helped me get my feet wet with the new and current endgame.

And so began my WoW career as a raider.