Shades of Fury

Testing

Progress Update April 2012

The first half of 2012 is continuing to see Shades deliver steady progress and achievements on our server. At a time when the Balnazzar server population has fallen to levels which are worryingly low (both on Alliance side and Horde side), finding and keeping active and quality players is always going to be a challenge for Guilds. But Shades is still here and is still delivering a fun, well organised and social WoW experience to our players, and we have now survived 6 and a half years on Balnazzar, making us the longest standing raiding Guild on Balnazzar.

Raiding and PVP

We have not done 25man raiding for a good 18 months now due to the “raiding numbers game”, but our two 10man raid groups have worked out pretty well, allowing flexibility for players and ensuring raids run consistently. Both have similar progress and reliability at keeping raids going, and both have a good level of banter & fun!

Shades raiding is still subject to the issues that other guilds have. The numbers game is still there – for a non-hardcore 25man raid cadre, you need a cadre of 35-40 players to guarantee continuity of raids and we have not been able to sustain those numbers in Cataclysm; for 10mans you need 14 players per 10man raid group to ensure continuity. Loot systems seem to be easier to manage as well these days – both groups have adopted a “loot discussions / roll to win / sensible debate” approach to loot, meaning the arguments and potential unfairness of DKP / EPGP systems we have previously used has gone away. The only downside has been the fact that some tier pieces always seems to drop - Rawheadrex, with his warrior 5 set gear for main spec and 2 off specs (as we have no Hunters or Shammys in his raid cadre) likes this system; the rest of us do not!! There is also still no real incentive to go back to 25mans, given loot quality equalisation and the flexibility x2 10mans gives in comparison.

Both groups have raided Firelands and Dragonsoul pretty much as the cadres are presently, and have settled into a reliable raiding pattern. Both are at 5/8 heroic on Dragonsoul, and with the raid zone being nerfed slowly, groups should complete the heroic content by the time we see Pandas roaming across the lands. Server wise, we flit between 6th – 15th on progress lists for raiding and that is with a less stressful raid schedule than many guilds. We will continue to raid current content until people decide to go on a break before the expansion hits. Blizzard have confirmed there will not be any new raid content until Pandas, so we will not be ramping up raiding activity higher than it is at present.

We continue to do some limited individual, arena and RBG PvP activity and would welcome some additional people to bolster this area of the Guild, especially in getting the 10man RBGs we used to do on Tuesdays going again, and keeping us in the top 3 RBG Guilds on server.

Overall, our core raiding and PvP base is solid and thanks to everyone in the Guild for the consistent commitment to raiding and playing the game.

Guild Achievements

We have steadily been chipping away at Guild Achievements and, for the last year, we have held top spot on Balnazzar regarding Guild Achievement points. In the last 2 months, a similar guild to us, Wraiths, started pushing towards our total – we put some effort into some historic content and got that done to keep some distance, but over Easter, Balnazzar’s main hard core 25man raiding guild, Esoteric, caught up with us, and we now share the server top spot with them, with us both on 1915 achievement points.

We will continue to put effort into keeping Shades a top rated guild on the server and being one of the first (if not the first!) to push through the 2000 achievement point barrier. Thank you to all the players who have continued to put effort into Guild Achievements over the last 6 months, especially as we are now on the “grind” and “hard to get” ones.

We need a push on the following activities over the next few months:

• Everyone needs to be doing some Daily Quests every day they log in;

• Everyone needs to get to the rivers and seas with their fishing rods, and catch some fish from those pools;

• We need to get some RBGs with a minimum of 8 people from the Guild up and running, and get the wins going again;

• Everyone needs to do some PVP when they can, in BGs and Arenas (especially our rogues and hunters in 3v3 or 5v5 brackets!);

• We need to see if we can kill Raggy and/or Deathwing on 10man heroic modes!!

If we do all of the above, we will end Cataclysm as one of the best Guilds on server for achievements!

The Expansion and Pandas

The Mists of Pandaria expansion is now in Beta testing and we can expect more news on a release date in the coming months. Diablo 3 goes live in 3 weeks time so I guess we should expect the WoW expansion at least few months after that launch. Shades is committed to continuing to be a raiding guild into the next expansion, and we will keep our doors open to potential new socials and potential raiders on the run up to Pandas and when the expansion hits. Experience has shown that when it comes to levelling, new content, new dungeons and new raids, “the more the merrier” actually does apply. I am sure some people may choose to do other things when the expansion comes along but we want as many people in Shades to stay and continue to raid / PVP, and hopefully we will not lose many people in the transition and race to level 90.

When the expansion arrives, we will be committing to do the following:

• Maintaining our fun and friendly community we all value and like, and keeping it that way!

• Providing a levelling environment for mains and alts from 85 – 90;

• Continue to provide all Guild Perks at Guild Level 25 and unlock all available perks up to level 30;

• Provide Guild bank support to main characters for repair bills;

• Develop a 5 man dungeon community for mains and alts, and speed achievement groups;

• Run two raid groups for 10man raids, with the option to review and change if 25man becomes more appealing again or if 15man raid design becomes reality;

• Ensure Guild bank provides crafting support to guild members.

Our goals for the Pandas expansion will be:

• To be one of the first Guilds to achieve more than 2000 Guild Achievement Points

• To be one of the first Guilds to hit the Level 30 Guild Level Cap for the expansion

• To be a top 10 Raid Progress Guild on Balnazzar

• To be a top 10 Rated Battle Ground Guild on Balnazzar

• To be a top 3 Achievement Points Guild on Balnazzar

Overall

Over the last 6 and a half years, Shades has provided a great place for over 350 players to enjoy the game. We currently have 100 or so registered accounts, with about 50 players actively logging in and playing the game. We intend to keep the guild active and fun – let’s keep the energy and activity going, and keep enjoying the game!

Cheers

Hok

Guild Progress Update - September 2011

The last 2 months has been an interesting time for Shades. The “summer slack” always has an impact on people and raids, as guildies (quite rightly) enjoy the delights of July and August holiday activities. People have enjoyed the sun, the beaches, the family, the kids, the trips abroad and the long warm evenings where sitting in a bar is more appealing than sitting in front of a PC.

This has meant that raiding has been a bit more varied and turbulent than would be ideal. We were short on people to reliably do 25man raiding, and we also had a few core players decide to take a well earned break from the game. We have also had a bit of a “re-sizing” in Guild Officer numbers, to reflect the lower number of people needed to run a guild of our size over this period.

Despite all this turbulence, we are still doing pretty well on the Realm charts.

We are 18th on the 10man raiding progress list, and as long as we do Shannox heroic, we can say we are a solid 10man raiding guild. We are still first on the Guild Achievements rankings by a good margin. We are ranked as the 7th best Rated Battle Ground Guild on Balnazzar.

The desire to get old gear in advance of Patch 4.3 for Transmogrification has meant we have picked up a few more Legendaries and people have been doing old raid achievements by clearing the content in small groups. We need the bow to drop in SWP. Ideally, we need Castix to return to the game so we can complete his Ulduar mace. We need to keep Firelands raiding going for those grinding for the Legendary staff.

Blaki is now running a very effective 10man Rated BG evening on Tuesdays and we are now picking up PVP Guild achievements as well (which is good news for the achievement points total!). We are closing in on many of the hard to get grinding Guild Achievements and just goes to show what can be done if people stay active and within the guild.

With lower levels of activity and people, and a relatively low server population that makes finding quality raiding recruits a lot harder, we took the practical decision to raid 10man over the summer period. From the people that were left from the two 10man groups that operated through BWD/BoT/Tot4W, it was agreed we needed two viable raid groups rather than 1 very active, tighter raid group and a second follow on group. Out of this decision was born “Shadesway” and “Shadeswork” – two 10man raid cadres with about 16 people in each cadre (with IRL commitments, holidays and summer, 5-6 people were bound to be unavailable of the 16). The idea was that this would provide reliable 10man raiding opportunities for people over the summer.

Shadesway was up and running faster, with an excellent line up and very good progress to 6/7 bosses after 5 weeks of raiding. Shadeswork took a bit longer to get going (as this cadre had to recruit some new blood in to make it viable) but after 3-4 slow weeks, it became a stable raiding platform and suddenly went from 2 bosses down to 6/7 down within 2 weeks. What made this raiding happen was the excellent sharing of ideas, strategies and tactics / learning from one group to another. Shadeswork benefited from the learning Shadesway gained early on, and both groups started to learn Raggy 3 weeks ago. Both groups had a few raids which did not go due to holidays / low sign ups and changes in people’s lives, and it looked like Raggy could be a long learning process, given we were only getting 1 or 1.5 evenings of tries on him per week.

At the end of August, both groups were grappling with the Phase 2.5 transition and wiping at 40% (or 38% is a few made it into Phase 3). On 4th Sept, Shadeswork took probably its strongest line up of people (all had a lot of time clocked up in the learning tries) for a “big push” evening and after getting some clean transitions to Phase 3, killed Raggy on its third Phase 3 attempt (wiped on 18%, wiped on 11% then killed him). This was the 5th evening of learning tries - one evening to learn Phase 1 and fail on the Phase 1.5 transition, 1 evening to learn the Phase 1.5 transition and fail on Phase 2, one evening of nailing Phase 2 and wiping on Phase.25 transition (with a brief glimpse of Phase 3), one evening of failing at different points and getting frustrated, and the final evening of putting it all together, learning Phase 3 and killing him. This was similar to the time it took us to learn and kill LK10 in WotLK (which in many ways is an easier fight). Shadesway, if they had got the full sign ups needed for Sunday night, would probably also have killed him at the same time as Shadeswork.

Congratulations to all involved in the raids that helped build the learning and gear to clear Firelands, and we will now look forward to Shadesway killing Raggy very soon, Shadeswork doing repeat clears, with the possibility of doing a few bosses on heroic (Shannox to start with, possibly others to follow), and generally keeping the spirit going in the guild. We also have 2 raiders actively working on their Legendary staffs (Hustlethroat and TheTrickster) and we need to keep killing Firelands bosses to ensure they get their embers and shards.

Summer slack is now over and we need to get ourselves motivated, organised and ready for the challenges 4.3 will present. We need people to stay active. We need people to gear up and polish their main characters. We need people to help each other achieve results within the Guild.

A good summer and a lot to look forward to!

Cheers

Hok

Realm First for Shades!

Well, we did it.

About 2-3 months ago, it was clear that we were hitting the daily XP cap for guild leveling and were one of the guilds doing that on a daily basis. We kept this going and last week, we decided to go for it and put some plans in to focus us up as soon as we broke through the 24 barrier. There were 3 other guilds that looked active - Guild Perks, Athan and Wraiths. On Monday night, we were shocked to see that Athan and Guild Perks were ahead as it seemed they had hit more daily Guild XP than us so dinged 24 a day earlier.

Strikeforce, Elby, Cy, Hustle and others then did a night shift on turn ins and heroics to catch up as well as loads of people who pre-saved 25 dailies and logged in at 6am to hand in then go to work. Tuesday saw a huge amount of activity with people running heroics, we did TotC / Naxx / ICC 10man raids for fast boss kills and grinded quests and 5mans galore. We had several characters in Guild Perks and it was clear they were not organising or moving for the cap fast. Wraiths still had not dinged so they were not going for it. We were confident.

Then to our horror, Athan dinged 24 Tuesday evening about 2-3 hours before we were going to. This was a shock and we re-evaluated our options. The only way left to us was to grind normal 5mans fast so after some research, we opted for Halls of Origination. However, it was discovered Tol Vir was faster and a better yield, so we swapped to that. Wednesday saw loads of people give up their lives and grind Tol Vir 5man all day - boring, repetitive, and soul destroying. Big respect and thanks must go to Setz, Exx, Hustle, Ardoix and Strikeforce for keeping them organised and all of the players who committed their time to this. These guys made the big difference. But at 20:00, we pushed through the barrier and got the 25 realm first. The award, the mount and the honour was ours - a real achievement for Shades. Photos are here of both Ogrimmar and also a group photo at Tol Vir.

It was a close race with Athan - respect has got to go to those guys who were ahead of us for most of the way. Only their work commitments during Wednesday day time made it possible for us to over take them and end up winning this with some gap between us. Hats off to the officers and players at Athan.

Congratulations to all of us. Big thanks to all the officers that organised and ran instances, and all of our players for a huge effort and contribution for 2 days. We earnt this and deserve this.
Good job guys!!!

Hok

Shades progress in Cataclysm

Well, it has been 6 weeks since Cata hit the server. Xmas and New Year has come and gone, and we are into January 2011.

WotLK was quite odd for the last year as there was once instance that ran from Dec 2009 to Dec 2010 (with the small addition of Helion in July) and we got out of the routine of charting progress in the guild. Well, we will be putting more focus on that in 2011 and putting effort into keeping the community a social, raiding guild.

At the moment, we are in an odd position. We now have 15 or so well geared and active people that have started to push progress in 10mans. We also managed to get 25man Baradin Hold done last week, which was the first 25man raid in 2 months. Raiding is what guilds are set up for and we need everyone to contribute to this goal, be it via 5, 10 or 25 man activity.

We are now 6/12 and Strikeforce/Ardoix have done a great job in pushing forward progress in 10 mans. People are getting better at preparation now so lets keep this movement going!!

We have also got people looking at Guild Achievements and we have have seen some unexpected results there - currently, we are 2nd on server and 1st Horde side on Guild achievement points.

We can push this further as well, both on doing the retro instance runs (superb job at the weekend on Yogg 0 and Algy - was good to see that achievement and Kain / Hustle being so happy to finally have got this all done!!), crafting / farming stuff and progress on current content. Good job all on this!! (check out www.GuildOx.com for our standings - 18-21st overall on PVE progress but 2nd on Guild Achievement points!!).

In simple, lets keep up the good work and focus on the following:

1. Grind those heroics for rep and gear, craft, grind or make money for BoE/BoA gear, and max yourselves out in as much raid quality gear as possible.

2. We want to get 2 10man running each week and ideally get full 25mans up and going in February. This needs people to gear up and sign up and be active. We are deliberately swapping / rotating people about in the one 10man atm so more people get to see stuff and raid again - bear with us until we get to the point of a 2nd 10man group or 25mans.

3. If 4 of you are bored, please do:

- any TBC 5man

- any WotLK 5man

- fish in pools of water

- make flasks

These 4 activities are the focus for guild achievemnts at present.

So lets keep the 10man progress going, and start to generate even more momentum for 2011.

Cheers

Hok

Shades of Fury in Sweden - August 2010

From 20th to 22nd August 2010, Shades held its first European get together of players from the Guild.

Shades of Fury outside The Bishops Arms, Saturday 21.9.2010

Basing ourselves in that well known Swedish tourist hotspot Trollhattan, 29 people touched base over the long weekend. For some, it started a bit earlier as the guys from the Slovenian work camp arrived on Thursday and set the tone for the following few days by getting very drunk with Tharby, Mifune and Dotcha, staying out till 4am, and moving around very slowly at midday the following day.

Friday saw the arrival of most of the people from outside of Sweden – players from UK, Finland, and Norway (with the Netherlands guys arriving on Saturday). The general flow of the weekend was:

Friday Bars, food, bars and random events on the way back to the hotel;
Saturday Bars, food, bars and random events on the way back to the hotel;
Sunday Sight seeing, bar and food for those staying on a bit longer.

A big thank you to Tharby for being a great host and organising a things in his home town, with expert help and support from his local friends and family. We have also got to thank Hotel Oscar who were very good to us and let us enjoy the experience to the full (and not throwing us out into the street due to noise and disruption!!!).

ICC Progress 11/12

Well, we finally got Sindragosa down 25man. Is very odd that we spend a few evenings struggling and where we just fail and fail. Then we kill it 2nd try of the evening with no issues.

Very good job guys!!!

The challenge is LK 25man. This needs people to really understand tactics and what to do as RLs cannot call a lot of the stuff here. So read the guides, watch the videos and understand the fight.

Defile will be our downfall if people do not know how to handle it so you all need run speed on boots and fast reactions.

Anyways, onwards to a 25man LK kill!!

Hok

More Progress for Shades

Well, we have been pushing at things for a while and over the last few weeks, we have been getting things a bit more sorted.

10man has now seen real progress. Last night, after a few weeks of extending the raid lock out and 3 nights of learning, we killed the LK and got Kingslayer for a few people. This showed the importance of people willing to sign up and commit to evenings of wiping and learning - it is the only way to learn the encounters and each time we returned, we got better and better.

Screenshot is below of the 10 who got the kill. Sadly a few who helped on some of the evenigns were not around but this now means we can open up heroic tries on the easymode bosses in 10man icc10 which should help a load more people in guild :)

We also filled a gap last night as well by doing the 10man TotGC achievement with more or less the same group (some noob called Raistlin joined on his mage to make up the numbers) and we got the git down. Good job there as well.

25man has seen BQ down (see pic below) but sign ups for Thurs and Sundays have been poor to say the least. To progress to killing Singragosa and LK, we need people to sign up and commit to progress evenings. We will continue to recruit to fill up ranks but existing guild members need to look at their commitment to raiding and sign up for at last 50-75% as a minimum, reaching the 2/3 attendance we need to down all the 25man normal content.

So lets do it guys - we will push 10man hc modes and will push 25man to the limit.

Cheers

Hok

ICC - More Progress

Five weeks have passed since Hok wrote the article on ICC progress. Since then we have reached 11/12 on 10 man & 9/12 on 25 man. 8/12 is easily manageable in one raid night. Blood Queen is in our sights & will go down once the Easter break is over -sign up peeps to make it happen!

Lich King wont last long in 10 man - we have a group that will devote time to learning this fight - Below is picture of us posing before his throne - soon we will be Kingslayers!

ICC Progress Update

Well, we have set off on our ICC25 mission and progress is going. It is a bit stop and start, but we are now getting to grips with the harder and more technical fights, both in 10 and 25 modes.

Currently, we are 8/12 in 10mans (Blood Queen, Valithria Dreamwalker,
Sindragosa and Lich King still to do) and 7/12 in 25mans (samne as above apart from Putricide who is proving to be a git in 25man).

Pictures of the deaths are below:

Lord Marrowgar

Lady Deathwhisper

Optional Frost Giant Kill for weekly instance quest

No pictures of Gunship Battle but we did it!!

Deathbringer Saurfang

Festergut

Rotface

Blood Council

Overall, the kills are getting cleaner and faster - normally when focus is good and energy is excellent!!

Focus will be on getting Putricide down and build on the odd learning tries we have had on Blood Queen and the Dragon.

Keep it up guys!!

Hok