The Greatest Catch Up of All Time...?

So let me get this right. The last time there was an update posted was April 20th, 2009. Well, it was actually posted in the beginning of June, but I began typing it on April 20th. One month to type it, and 6 months since the actual previous update. Granted there were not a lot of news worthy items when we were just trouncing through Naxxramas and collecting our drake mounts...
So seemingly, it has been 6 months if you believe the post date (and 4 months if you don't) since our last update. What a slacker. Veil is such a slacker, I can't even start to explain how disappointed I am of Veil for his feil at updating web pages.
However this got me thinking. Why does it take so long to get an update going?
It is mainly because we are so busy making progress in raiding content, that each week constitutes more progress, and more progress, and more progress. Our steady progress through content combined with my ADD when it comes to sitting down and typing something solid up, I find myself not finishing an update for progress that is already outdated as I finish it up. So I never "catch up" to our current content (*Another ADD moment. /starts up wow to do some dailies*).
So instead of catching "up", let's catch "down" this time, shall we?

Trial of the Grand Crusader

The Twin Val'kyrs

This fight was a tough one. We came up with elaborate double circle orb catching, orb dodging schemes to try and make the raid stable. But all the crazy strategies soon were abandoned to a method that required only a few individuals to be pros at the orb dodging and catching. These individuals took time off their real life responsibilities, and just stayed in a small room with a Xbox 360 (and a porta-potty), and trained orb catching by doing nothing but playing Ikaruga 24/7 for about a whole week (specifically the stage that comes shown around 8:25 in the video).

After their training hell, these individuals emerged out of their cramped (and now stunk up) gaming space as champions of Risen, catching their way to our victory over the Twin Val'kyrs. Thank you Arkeni, Avendesora, Bluepea and Scrazle for taking the abuse that is the role of orb catchers. We owe you guys a special thanks.

The Faction Champions

Have you tried 2v2? 3v3? How about 5v5? Well, you're gonna like this. Let's do a 10v25! Except let's give a 20 stack tenacity buff to the 10, expose them to a gamma bomb, and oh, did we mention they are from the planet Krypton? Well, maybe not, but I swear that ret pally has some sort of super power. Just ask our clothies who took his two hander to the face.
Once we got past Helcion casting penance on his shadow fiend and Bryant FoKing the sheeps, things came together with proper crowd control and a sensible kill order.

Lord Jaraxxus

I think every member of our raid are in two split camps regarding this guy. We either love him, or hate him. The reason? The killing of Grand Warlock Wilfred Fizzlebang. People like Elumumu and Aristaroh cheer on every week as Jaraxxus zaps the life out of the poor gnome, while people like Nahid and Arimonell gets infuriated increasing their dps/hps to over 9000 just on this fight.

In the end, we all wanted to move on and get to see the rest of the heroic raid zone, so we ended up taking him down. By the way, am I the only one who gets flashbacks of Karazhan when Jaraxxus says "You face Jaraxxus,..." and expect him to follow that with "...and the legion I command!"?

Northrend Beasts

This fight was the first exposure we had to what heroic mode has to offer for us in terms of challenge. With normal mode being quite a disappointment, this was a moment of excitement. I distinctly remember finishing up our first raiding weekend without having the Northrend Beasts heroic down, not disappointed about not getting them, but feeling very satisfied about the fact this was a challenge. Within reach with some max/min, refining of strategies, and another week or two of upgrades from normal mode Trial of the Crusader. "This is the level of challenge we wanted. This is hard, and I love it."
Then came the nerfs. We of course got them down the very next raiding day, but it was somewhat... unsatisfying. It felt like we had the chance, once again, to prove ourselves that we thrive in challenge and were going to have a tremendous amount of fun doing it, and it was taken away. It was just like the big 3.0 change with Kil'jaeden, but just not as dramatic. Either way, we definitely had a lot of the instance left to pit ourselves against in heroic mode, that we were not complaining about moving on.

Normal Trial of the Crusader

Is this even worth mentioning? Well, ok. I believe this is just one example of how the philosophy of "everyone should be able to experience end game raiding content" being implemented incorrectly and turning into a "everyone will have an easy time getting through end game raiding content." Very disappointing.

Ulduar

Ulduar after our server first kill of Mimiron was still pretty darn fun. Ulduar brought to us something much more challenging than Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, or Eye of Eternity did. And we're talking just the normal modes of some of the later encounters.
We had hit Yogg-saron hard, and was not quite able to get a server first, but we sure did capture some attention of certain guild leaders who sent me some random tells during the time to look for a DBM response on our status during a fight. Yogg-saron was somewhat reminiscent of C'thun and the wonderful busting ourselves to get to the next tentacle to kill raid wide motion. All we were missing were raid wiping chaining green beams. We had a lot of fun.

Then again, the nerf hit. Another example of Blizzard's newly adopted raiding philosophy adversely affected our satisfaction from challenges ahead of us to be overcome. It was nerf after nerf, week after week. But, anyways. Life goes on. We still had the hard modes to play with.
The hard modes were absolutely challenging and some of them took us a while to master. While raiding the same content in 10 man normal, 10 man hard mode, 25 man normal, and 25 man hard mode did take away from some of the rush factor of defeating a "new" boss fight, there still was a large sense of satisfaction of a job well done. Every hard mode brought a refreshing view of the farmed content.

If I was to name one single encounter that is the highlight of Ulduar, I'd obviously have to say it is Algalon.

Algalon was the only encounter we would not see easily taken down because of several factors. First being the 1 hour timer on attempts made per lockout. Second being the quest line necessary to be completed to access Algalon to being with, coupled with the difficulty of Freya and Mimiron hard modes (at the time). The first factor actually played to our strength as a casual schedule raiding guild. The second factor made it more difficult for us to get there to begin with, however. Regardless, we got there with blazing speed.

The encounter's visual design was also so awe-inspiring (though it made cosmic smashes hard to see at first), making this encounter even more of a treat. I really hope to see some more "hard mode only" raid encounters that are still accessible to the general population, but hard to defeat without being organized, so the encounter feels fresh (without having an easy mode 10 man, easy mode 25 man redundant feeling) and challenging.
And when it came down to it, Algalon can be reduced to two fight mechanics that everyone in the raid needs to be aware of and avoid dying from, as well as some well controlled star bursting and saving of tanks from the insane burst DPS Algalon himself puts out... and then we have a planet saved.

-Parn