To Kill an Old God... (OOC)

Another day, another old-world raid, and this one is one of the ones I love most lore-wise: The Temple of Ahn-Qiraj. The history of the entire zone, scattered around Silithus, is one of a bleak, near-hopeless war against the alien silithid. Between the bones of the great dragons and the droning hum of a million insects, it was perhaps one of the most forbidding areas of Old-World Azeroth.

It was reading about the Gates of Ahn-Qiraj and the 10-Hour War that really caught my interest-I've only been playing since the New Year's before Wrath, and none of the world events had anywhere NEAR the raw magnitude and desperation of the Ahn-Qiraj event. Both factions raised NPC armies and joined together with their longtime foes, while even the most lowly of adventurers were exhorted to send cloth or food or other supplies to help the war effort. It was the command Might of Kalimdor-the greatest army that Azeroth could raise-that cemented the legendary status of High Overlord Varok Saurfang (plus, of course, his ability to be similar to/more powerful than Chuck Norris in the course of jokes, but let's ignore that for now). And the War-once the chosen one (supported by the best of the raiding guilds at the time) rang the gong, a massive, 10-hour battle between a true swarm of Silithid, the Might of Kalimdor, and the aforementioned raiders took place, until the dark tide was pushed back into its subterranean lair.

The sheer epic quality of the 10-Hour War continued with the raid, where you delved into the forgotten depths of Azeroth to bring down an Old God, corrupter of the Titan's creations, older than life itself on Azeroth. And the creamy custard center of this rich lore doughnut is the rather impressive difficulty leve; for example, I had been in a full 40-man raid of people 10 levels over the raid's content who wiped on it until we could stand no more and disbanded.

So it was with this mix of fascination and dread that I headed into the raid with Niqora, Towateke, and the rest of the fine folks of Bloodriver. The first part of the raid is a breeze-we rip through the trash, pulling two to three pats at once and rolling over bosses with ease. Then, as feared, the Twin Emperors hit us. Hard. For those of you who haven't heard of the fight, there are two giant humanoid-bug-thing silithid, one who uses spells, and the other who uses a large and uncomfortably painful sword. They stand on either side of a large, squarish room. Mr. Caster can only be hurt with spells, while Mr. Sword can only be hurt with physical. Periodically, the pair swap places and wipe threat. Most painfully, if the two ever get within a ludicrously long distance of each other, they heal. For 30k Hp a /second/. Even for 80s, this is insurmountable (as we only had 10 people at this point).

Conventional wisdom dictated 4 tanks: two physical tanks and two magic tanks (usually warlocks). Each dissimilar tank pair took up station on a platform, and when the bosses teleport, the tank capable of pulling threat did so. We tried this...it didn't go too well, as our tanks kept losing threat on the switches, followed by the bosses full-healing. We wiped a number of times, and our PUG members (we had a few) got bored or lazy and left. Well, that's their loss, as we brought in paladin tanks (who can dish out the physical AND the magical smackdown) and proceeded to methodically demolish the two.

Finally, we marched our way to C'thun's lair. After a false start to learn what the fight description actually *meant*, we dropped the ugly bastard, leading to the screenie you see on this post. ^_^

I know it's not so much of an accomplishment now that 80 is the level cap, but there's still something incredible about the experience. The story and atmosphere are still quite compelling even with all the shiny wonders of Outlands and Northrend to compare them to.

I kind of wish they had another event like the Gates of AQ...the server events since have been interesting, but they don't seem to have the same epic, urgent scale as repelling the invasion of an army that's been building for 10,000 years. Who knows, though-perhaps the AQ event wasn't as interesting at it seems, looking through the windows of someone else's past. In any event, I can say now that Kazi has helped kill an Old God. Expect a post on it...eventually. I am going to try to keep a rough chronological order to my story posts.