Since the start of The Burning Crusade, Stormwardens has enjoyed several growth spurts. The latest spurt has put us to the point where we can now run two Karazhan groups (and a third if we took alts). It’s good to see us enjoying ourselves with new friends and more opportunities. We even have people we’ve never grouped with asking how to get into the guild.

I would like to take one moment and let everyone reflect on the transitive nature of guilds within WoW. I have seen many guilds grow and fall while playing. I’ve even taken time to join some of the end-game raiding guilds and had the pleasure of being in the raid for several Dragonmaw first kills. Despite their overwhelming ability to complete end-game material, many of them faltered and eventually failed. Stormwardens has always been there for me, full of people I enjoy playing with, even if it means we had a tough time filling a five man with only guildies. Okay, enough emo.

Watch out Dragonmaw, an almost three year old guild may yet come to be a decent raiding guild!

This instance week a lot of new members to Stormwardens attended the raid and went all the way through Opera before calling it for the night. On Thursday night only a couple raid members were replaced and the group whipped through Curator, Shade of Aran, and Chess (yeah, it’s not exactly difficult) before deciding to do Illhoof. After a “Microsoft 5 minutes” from Sophira, we swapped in Exorest. We didn’t fare so well the first attempt, but the second attempt proved very fruitful. The squid on a stick didn’t drop, but others were quite happy.

Even though it was late we made a couple attempts on Prince since the trash was clear. Both attempts were met with horrible placement of infernals and led to wipes. I think many people are looking forward to Monday night and a dead Prince.

It seems amazing to those of us that started out in Stormwardens about 3 years ago, but on another Karazhan note, it looks like we are almost to the “farm” status so many other guilds have. We’re also almost able to run a second Karazhan with the number of other players and alts we have.
Keep it up guys!

…and Illhoof is still a bastard.

On Saturday we attempted Nightbane and died horrible, fiery deaths.  He hurt.  We’ll get back to him later.  We also tried Prince Malchezaar and got him to 34%, then called it a night.  Both great attempts, and thanks to everyone who attended our special weekend raid.

For our Monday raid, we went and attempted Prince.  First try got him through to the third phase, and we wiped at 17%.  The second try was the charm, and we killed his sorry demon butt.  A special thanks to Magicrolla for coming along to help with the kill!

• Helm of the Fallen Hero went to Bubbaray to get the Voidheart Crown.
• Ruby Drape of the Mysticant went to Sophira.
• Malchazeen went to Spinebreaker.

We also attempted Illhoof again after killing Prince and got him down to 10%, but it was late and we were done for the night.  Bastard!