Strangely Ironic

10 Years. So much has happened in ten years that’s its not remotely able to be put in a page.

Where are you now? Are you still on WoW?

If you’re still on Proudmoore, SI can still be joined but is an inactive guild.  If you’re after an Active guild, find us on the Oceania realms (Khaz, Dath, Aman) – alternatively, join the WoW Community.

Would you look at that! Two long years, with so much having occurred in that time.

I thought it best to post the typical achievement snapshots, starting with everyone’s favourite dragon. We could have been like the others and posted a picture of a 10M Onyxia kill, but figured there wasn’t much point:

Then we had a successful innings with Mimiron:

And of course, Anub from Naxxramas’ cousin – Anub:

We also have had some achievement junkies:

Wolff doing what Wolff does best:

A bit of a blast from the past, but some will remember this as a bit of great comedy:

On second thoughts, maybe we do need a picture of the Lady Dragon:

What’s that? 40M? When Onyxia was hard? Awesome!

As is the case for all guilds, eventually you hit a point in your raiding lifecycle where a core group of players can no longer commit the time they once did in order for the raids as a whole to be as successful as they should be.

We have reached that point.

As such, we have decided to discontinue 25M raiding for the moment until such a time as we can invest the time required to accomplish new content. We thank at this point those who have been involved in SI Progression Raiding, both pre and post BC.

We cease raiding on a good note, having accomplished many things – including retaining our position on the Proudmoore E-Peen Ladder after BC. In the interim, we will enjoy the break and look towards ZA.

SI has been extremely blessed to still retain some of its original core roster of players from when we begun. Some of those players have been integral to the success and longevity of the guild as a whole.

Today however we mark the passing of Balditik, who has passed on following the effects of cancer treatment. We offer our condolences to Baldi’s family and his friends; a player and person of his type has been missed in the months he has been sick, and will be missed now that he has gone.

Goodbye and RIP, Balditik

There’s been many famous spouts in the history of the world. Spouts commonly are used to pour liquid; in the context of Warcraft, spouts have also been known to completely own unsuspecting people who are either afk or are on the phone. As part of today’s history lesson, here’s a photo of something that contains a spout:

Once we established what a spout was and why it makes grown men cry, we proceeded to have a 0.0000001% wipe (cue: crying) and after a quick reclear of trash, ended up trumps:

Larger image:
Lurker

We ventured forth into Serpentshrine after a bit of a reshuffle and met face to face with our old foe, Hydross. Previously, he (or she) managed to use its elemental anger to dish out some damage, and we were not prepared.

Add a week’s worth of experience to the raiding group, and on a dry run we scored. Grats to everyone. 🙂

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Hydross the Unstable

Blizzard actually gave the world a present this year; that being free attunement to all of their semi-uber instances to fast track everyone to the Black Temple and beyond. With that present came Void Reaver, a large angry fellow who strikes fear into everyone’s minds. Many a Fel Reaver claimed L60’s in Hellfire Penninsula, so it was time for some payback.

And so Big Daddy Reaver, died:

Congratulations all 🙂

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Void Reaver

Sometimes, we’re not all huff and puff. It’s a well known fact that random singalongs occur in /guild (Hey hey you you I don’t like your girlfriend) and sometimes this brings out gold moments:

So once again, we allocate a decent amount of time inside an instance and start developing routine and pattern. The end result is up there in the Top 10 lists of quite a few players – the defeat of Magtheridon. The rogue pack did their best to make sure we couldn’t defeat something without them, but we managed anyhow…

Thanks go out to everyone who went the extra yards to make today a success, and as always thanks to the guys who come along and for various reasons aren’t there for the final kill.

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Magtheridon

We returned to Gruul’s Lair after the reset, and had the neat result of killing Maulgar twice in 48 hours. It was a bit of a flashback to the old days of Naxxramas and the like. After some initial pulling concerns, Maulgar stood no chance.

We headed up the tunnel of doom (some will claim love) and dutifully wiped on trash as is the SI way (thanks Nestra). Picked ourselves up, and learnt the ropes of this annoying encounter. Annoying if only for the deceptiveness of not reaching your growth benchmarks of 8-15% per growth.

End result was Gruul’s was conquered, even if it meant losing some rogues along the way:

Special thanks to the reserves on hand as always; 25M content is making life difficult for those having to select the groups.

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Gruul

Okay, so we cleared Karazhan and then took a little holiday. No biggie, a lot of people enjoyed the break from raiding and took a more casual approach to Karazhan. The result is that the 2nd group broke through and are now progressing beyond Aran, which is excellent news.

We ventured forth into Gruul’s Lair tonight after a few weeks of scheduling issues (well, warrior issues per say…) and the result was typically SI. Once we can actually invest some time into the place, we reap the results. Not before generalised QQ about lack of progression, mind you!

Special thanks to all who attended on short notice – it was originally going to be a Karazhan night for the 2nd group. Special thanks also to the guys that missed out on the raid because they had to go during the raid (Balditik), were on reserve (Amnion, Zedrif, Florionbeel, Tomminz, Tenel, Troldol) or just plain missed out on the invite (Icet, Phalius).

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Maulgar

The gang went back into Karazhan today, after a rapidly quick few days raiding earlier in the week. After spending a relatively short (compared to other bosses) period of time learning the fun of Nightbane, he was defeated.

At this point, we’d like to thank every player that has stepped into the instance to help the guild progress and defeat this instance. Even if you pinch hit, or came along for some rep (bench warming) – your efforts contributed to this clear.

We also ventured into the Servant’s Quarters to clear the Beast, to stop the neysayers claiming we haven’t killed him:

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Nightbane
Beast

Well done guys!

Progression speed increases when I disappear, so with that in mind the group of troopers defeated Netherspite recently. The ghostly looking dragon with beams of light is gone. Personally, our secret strategy to progression is the presence of orange tabby – present in the majority of first kill shots since 2005!

The second group is also making great progress, moving past Curator and onto Aran.

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Netherspite.

11/12, one to go!

On top of Karazhan, there’s this guy that summons infernals and generally freaks you out with flying spinning axes. We had some shots at him the other night, and came back today determined to cleanse Karazhan of this foul beast.

It would appear we succeeded. Unfortunately, we can only take ten – so special thanks to those that missed out on the kill but broke the encounter in.

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Malchezzar.

In Karazhan we continued, and encountered across this fellow dressed in Arcanist. Angry that he was captured behind a creaky door (protected by stupid respawning mobs), he unleashed frostbolts and arcane missiles and drew fiery circles around us.

Didn’t seem to matter much to the end result, though:

Thanks again to those who did the earlier breakins and missed the kill.

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Aran.

Spurred on by those with more money than people like me, we continued our journey in Karazhan. Many of
us have nightmares of Knightswift using capitals to get us to pay attention. So, we wish to repay the favour
by showing a picture of Knightswift falling over a ledge.

That aside, we made good progress in Karazhan this week. At this point, we’d like to thank the players
that were present for any of the warm up bashes at these bosses but for many reasons, were unable to be
present for the final kill.

We present to you:

Curator:

Chess Event:

and finally Illhoof:

(who earlier gave us a notorious low percentage wipe after he chained our tank up)

Remarkable effort again to all involved, especially considering Monday’s raid was almost cancelled due to lag.

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Curator.
Chess Event.
Illhoof.

and
Knightswift’s Death.

Recruitment Open

We are currently looking in particular for 1-2 Warriors types to complete our raiding roster. Other classes are welcome to apply if they are committed to raiding, however we definitely have no room for Rogues, Mages, Druids or Warlocks.

We have completed Gruul’s Lair and Karazhan, and are looking to proceed onwards in content. Next stop is Magtheridon’s Lair, but we need an extra warrior to handle the encounter.

Applicants should:

1. Be available on Australian time, preferably Eastern
2. Be skilled and geared appropriately for raiding
3. Be mature

As one of the longest running guilds (~2 years) on Proudmoore (US), SI is home to a successful group of players with a track record of accomplishing content.

Prospective applicants should at the first point of call, speak with Tekhen ingame. He will ask a few questions before directing you to the Recruitment forum. Server transfer applicants are welcome if they are finding it difficult to raid on their server because of US timezoning.

We ventured back into Karazhan this week with a slightly reshuffled group due to the nubs who’ve just hit L70 belatedly. With this reshuffle, we encountered a changed Karazhan – one which the easier bosses were buffed to provide a more challenging encounter for players. We got through that with minimal fuss and continued along towards the fourth boss.

We drew the short straw, and got Romulus and Julianne in the Opera event again. For those uninitiated, this is the hardest of the three encounters you can spawn. We tried two Druids and one Paladin last week, but this week only had one of each. After training the new members of the group, we gave it a bash. Barnes did his usual wall of text and spammed us incessantly; so much so, the majority of the raid group now wants to kill him as the next boss.

Here’s the result of our bash:

A truly astonishing achievement, considering it was performed without a warrior on deck. Special mention to Manaan and Icet who weren’t able to be part of this win, but their contributions no less important.

Congratulations to those involved!

Larger image of the kill is available.

And so we enter Karazhan. After some slackness with attunement, a bunch of us ventured forth into the land that houses the undead with some nice results.

Congratulations all involved. Larger images of Attumen, Moroes and Maiden available.