We have in addition whacked SOA in Eternity vault hard mode. Now we only have nightmare mode in EV left. The new operation Explosive Conflict added in patch 1.2 has also had a few visits and we have now killed the first boss. Thunder in SWTOR has also been active recruiting a few new raiders which makes it easier to get more raids out during the week. That said, we are still looking for more raiders, so don’t hesitate if you are looking for a late night raiding guild.

HUGE congratulations to Zollan, after he this week picked up the final pieces he needed to gather for his legendary daggers:

Golad, Twilight of Aspects

Tiriosh, Nightmare of Ages

As a result, the guild earned the Fangs of the Father achievement!

Massive congratulations to Zollan once again, for all his hard work and commitment to both his quest and the guild. A great player and a lovely guy to boot, which just goes to show you don’t have to be “l33t” to get the best things this game has to offer!

Well done mate

It has been over a month since Bxe proudly announced the success of our first trip to Karagga’s Palace and since much has changed. Over the weeks of March the guild has made steady progress, not least from enjoying the cantina theme which blasts through the place to detesting it, but also through the bosses!

Screenshot from our first kill of the Fabricator in Karagga's Palace on 3rd March 2012

We were consistently able to get through the first three, but found the Fabricator to be a rare and enjoyable challenge. Sticking to our unguided tour it took quite some time to defeat all of the Fabricator’s little tricks. We persevered and got our first Fabricator kill on the 3^rd March, cue family photo.

Screenshot from our first kill of Karagga in Karagga's Palace on the 25th March 2012

In the weeks that followed we refined our strategy, taught a number of guildmembers to work the Fabricator puzzle and placed the Fabricator firmly on farm. You can imagine our relief when we got to Karagga on the 25^th March and killed him in just 4 attempts! A resounding success for our guide-free approach to raiding!

A special mention has to go to M’ystique from our friends at The Old Guard who filled a gap in our Karagga raid at short notice.

Now we’re looking onwards and upwards to Karagga’s Palace Hard Mode.  Soon, very soon, Karagga’s hat shall be mine! Wahahaha!!!

Cataclysm is nearing its end, the final raid tier has been out a good 4 months now and most of everybody has completed their goals not just for this tier, but for the expansion as a whole.  Starting off in those first days in Mount Hyjal or Vash right through to the final climax in the Maelstrom facing off against Deathwing himself, we’ve battled and fought our way through quest after quest, boss after boss and we finally find ourselves here. Right back where we started. Ok, maybe a little explanation would be in order there…

Back at the start of the expansion I deliberately held back our raiding for a few weeks, as we took our time, got ourselves decently geared in 346 level blues (lols) before pushing into Tier 11 for the first time. This strategy worked. I was our raid leader then and raid led Thunder through success after success, polishing off 11 out of 12 normal mode bosses, with Topside raid leading in the Cho’gall victory. After having come off the back of T10 which also had 12 bosses contained in it, Cataclysm’s raiding endeavours got off to a pretty good start. We were relaxed, having fun and taking out new bosses week after week. Somewhere towards the back end of T11 we had a few more progression focussed raiders return to Thunder raiding and we started then, shortly after getting 12/12 to dip our feet into heroic raiding.

Tier 11 Complete!

Shortly after that T12 dropped, which came at a personal low point for me coinciding as it did with the death of my father. As a result of my absence during those first few weeks of T12, Temulun (aka Certainty) took over the raid leading reins for a while, and again we progressed week upon week downing new bosses at a nice pace. However this raid tier had a relative shortage of bosses and content to complete – 7 bosses in total. After coming off raiding the previous two tiers which had 12 bosses each (13 in T11 if you did it on Heroic) this relative lack of content showed, and in about 8 weeks we had completed the content on normal, and so looked to heroic to keep us clearing new content week after week. Which it did, with us eventually polishing off all the heroic content bar what is probably the hardest heroic mode boss the game has ever had in Ragnaros.

Tier 12 complete!

It was at about this point that heroic raiding seemed to take focus above normal mode raiding, and with the launch of T13, Dragon Soul, things shifted up another notch. The fact that both the normal mode was in my own opinion horribly under-tuned (both groups we had out that first night of T13 one shot Morchok for example), and the fact that yet again, for a second raid tier in a row we were faced with a short tier (8 bosses – well 7 if you consider Morchok as large trash like I do ), meant that we had to start looking beyond normal mode for content. Especially as this was the final raid tier of the expansion, and thus content we would be facing for at least 6 months all told, probably a lot longer.

The under-tuning of the entire first half of the tier saw us clear that within a couple of nights of raiding, and it wasn’t until Warmaster Blackhorn that we were actually presented with a challenge of sorts. But needless to say that within a week of the content being released we were sitting at 6/7 normal mode bosses complete. I think that’s more telling of Blizzards under-tuning of the content more than my words can possibly state. Yes, we had good players completing the content, but in all reality there’s no way we should have nearly completed the entire tier in normal mode inside the first week with the new content. As it happened we polished off the final encounter, Madness, the following week, meaning that within 2 weeks, we had finished the normal mode content for the expansions final tier. Again, seriously under-tuned.

Tier 13 complete!

So off we went into heroic mode raiding again in order to keep us actively raiding. So we again had Tem at the helm, and we started ploughing our way through the bosses yet again. Morchok went down on night one (he will never be considered difficult in any difficulty), Yorsahj went down a few weeks later (this is getting more like it), with Ultraxion following him the week after. 4 weeks later Hagara finally went down, with Zonozz following a couple of nights after that. Our most recent hard mode boss kill was Warmaster Blackhorn, who took a couple of weeks work.

Heroic Blackhorn complete!

All this progress took us to the dizzy heights of 5th on the Kilrogg raiding progression charts and everything was looking great.

However, behind the scenes tensions were building to a breaking point, and as always seems to happen with Thunder at the end of an expansion, we give painful birth to another guild. Say hello to Definitely Maybe, the majority of whom came from our progression focussed raid team (Red). This type of split happens within Thunder seemingly every expansion, with us having given birth to multiple guilds over WoW’s lifetime (Dogwatch, Emerald Myth, the majority of Haribo‘s raid team at the end of Wrath). So all the very best of luck to the guys in DM, I wish them all well and hope they look back on their days of Thunder with fondness and pride. You accomplished a hell of a lot while you were here, and I hope you can continue to do the same now you’ve been set free (fly my pretties, fly!).

As for Thunder?

We’re down, but not out!

Thunder has always stood the test of time, and we’ve been around for 6 years in WoW and we’re not going anywhere just yet. We’re going to return the guild to its original ethos, one that reflects the attitudes of the majority of its members. Members who have families, commitments, lives outside of Azeroth, and who won’t or can’t gel into the lifestyle of progression focussed guilds. Will we still raid? Of course we will! Our more relaxed raid team (Blue) were themselves sitting at 3/8 heroic mode bosses and that will only continue until MoP is released.

So we’ve gone full circle, back to where we were at the expansion’s release. I’m back to being our raid leader now, with Topside also doing RL duties. We’re looking forward to MoP a lot, and looking to recruit like-minded people who want to relax, play to have fun and a laugh, and raid in the latest tiers of content without any of the associated hardcore drama.

If you’re interested in joining us for the remainder of Cata and into MoP, then feel free to drop by the Join Thunder forum and say hi, introduce yourself and let us know a bit more about you!

Another week another boss falls before us!

This time it was Blackhorn, and after a couple of nights of practice we got him on the deck.

Only a certain Mr D. Wing left to tackle in both his encounters, and we are now on 6/8 heroic and up to 5th best guild on the server overall!

Massive grats to everyone involved!

Well in complete contrast to Hagara, Zonozz was a complete and utter pushover.

3 pulls and he was dead!

So that puts us at 5/8 and 3 bosses left in all of Cataclysm! Great job all, and next up, Blackhorn!

And finally she falls!

After what seemed like weeks of hard work (er, well it was really), we finally managed to topple another boss in Hard Mode – This time it’s Hagara!

Weeks of different tactics, strategies, different tanks and healers and finally we managed to crack it. So with her demise that now puts us exactly halfway through Heroic content for T13, with Zonozz, Blackhorn and the two Deathwing encounters left.

Big grats to all concerned, and to all those who’ve contributed over the past couple of weeks whilst we worked her out.

Well done guys!

Hagara Unbound

Thunder visited Karagga’s Palace for the first time yesterday. Our approach has been “no reading of tactics” on beforehand. We have wanted to try and figure out things on our own. EV is cleared and now we only miss two bosses in Karaggas Palace before we go into Hard Mode’s. Fun fights, but as most members  are getting gear upgrades, some fights has been on the easy side after a short learning curve. We are having a blast and the Mumble chat is fun, relaxed but focused. We hope to recruit a few more people as some days signups are scarce. So if you are wondering on joining, don’t, just apply!

After a single night working on heroic Ultraxion, we polished him off in typical Thunder style: Last Pull of the Night!

A fairly easy fight, and not that much changed from normal mode, heroic merely has shorter timers, a requirement for more Hour of Twilight soakers, and steeper DPS & HPS requirements. But after heroic Yorsahj it was a lot lot easier.

Likely Hagara next, who we’ve already put a bit of work in on, failing that Zonozz or Blackhorn are looking like a good targets for being the next victims of the Thunder Might!

3/8 down, 5 to go

Ultraxion Heroic: Dead!

The corpse of Hard Mode Yorsahj was discovered last night in a pit in the Dragonblight. All signs point to him being another victim of the murderous rampage currently being perpetrated by a group of serial boss killers known as “THUNDER”.

Azeroth police forces report that they expect another victim of this killing spree soon, and bosses across Azeroth, particularly those in the Dragon Soul vicinity should make sure to lock their doors at night, remain vigilant, and lock any valuables, particularly purples, out of sight of any open windows.

The THUNDER group showed amazing confidence in their ability to remain at large, even going so far to pose with the corpse of their most recent victim. Prominent socialite Lord Prestor was said to be disgusted by this behaviour. A recent victim of harrassment himself, he has reported attacks by a second THUNDER group whilst bathing in his whirlpool. It is unknown at this time if the second group are a group of copycat attackers or part of the same group.

Heroic Yorsahj