I've mentioned about how awesome my guild (Darkened) is numerous times before; it's a common sentiment among bloggers that the guilds to which they belong are awesome and do, in fact, inspire them to write so that the guild's adventures are shared with a wider community.  However, I really do think my guild is the most awesome guild in existence, everyone is amazing and we have such a bond that goes far beyond just raiding together for loot.  As I type this I know many guild members from all over Europe have descended on North England to celebrate our Guild Leader's birthday (I would be too if I wasn't working away still).  This just really demonstrates the level of friendship and comraderie that's been built up in Darkened, this no small feat has been achieved by the tireless work of our Guild Leader, Exclusivia, and the guild's senior officers.

I shall give you an example of the kind of effort Exclusivia puts in (and thus make the thrust of this article); last weekend was the guild fun night and it was possibly the best fun a group of people could have whilst not actually being at the same physical location.  The evening was split up into a series of different events done for fun but with the opportunity for winning some truly awesome prizes just to sweeten the deal including your choice of Mechano-Hog or the 3 person Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, your choice of the Darkmoon Cards Volcano, Tsunami or Hurricane (or AH gold value equivalent), 1,000 gold in cash plus full stacks of current tier potions, two illusionary bags, an enchanted lantern and a whole host of other goodies.  Seriously, the amount of prior preparation Exclusivia had to put in just to get the prizes together was phenomenal and possibly unnecessary because everyone still would have joined in the fun anyway, but that just demonstrates the amount of care and effort displayed by the guild leadership, they didn't have to offer prizes at all, never mind truly amazing prizes, but they did anyway.

I'm going to give you a run down of the events that occurred and hopefully explain them in a manner that will allow you to have a go in your own guild if this idea floats your boat so click the title or the Read More button to join me after the jump:

It's been aggggeeeesssss since I last posted because, for those of you not on my twitter feed, I am back home again and squeezing in two months worth of being a dad and husband into a mere four weeks.  Mrs Runz has set me an epic quest chain called 'House Renovation' which consists of a lot of painting dailies, replacing the carpet with a wood floor and of course the nappy changing dailies.  I'm also dying from possibly THE most serious bout of man-flu.  For those of you who aren't parents, this is what happens when your children go to playgroup - they pick up all the colds and flus of the day and bring them home as little presents for you, they then run off and play merrily whilst you and your significant other take it in turns to die in bed.  On top of that, 4.1 dropped and I've been taking the opportunity to play whilst I've not had well over 1k ms lag.  And what a wonderful time this lag free gaming has been...

Last night was the guild Alt/Friend & Family raid.  Since I started my new job a year ago I've been off the raid team and I'm down as Friend and Family because I can't guarantee a stable internet connection and of course my ongoing lag issues whilst I'm away.  So this was my first proper attempt at raiding in Cataclysm (Baradin Hold doesn't count) and honestly I couldn't have asked for a better evening.  Off we trundled to Blackwing Descent and I'll admit I was pretty nervous about what my performance was going to be like but things went without a hitch pretty much.  Magmaw went down on our 3rd attempt, we struggled a little on Omnomnomnomnomnom Defence System and I ended up tanking the floor when it went down (I actually really really liked that boss), Atramedes was one shotted and Maloriak went down on our second go.  Rather than go on to Chimaeron (our healers weren't confident) we finished up with Halfus in Twilight Bastion and one shotted him.  All of this was done in a mere 2 1/2 hours!

BAM, how you like them apples Deathwing?

Although I was in a very good group (it was mostly Alts from our core raiders) I was still chuffed with doing so well on my first go, I was in Fire Spec - yes I actually made the effort to properly learn fire spec so I could raid while I was home - and everyone's Alts were wildly different from their mains so although everyone knew the tactics people were well out of their comfort zones for raiding.  For my part, I was fortunate enough to have downloaded the iPWN Deluxe App for my iPhone which had all the tactics laid out for me and includes a handy video.  Well worth the 59p I spent for it, especially when you need tactics on the fly! The best part for me though was probably having Maldo's Sword Cane drop and being the only one who could use it, now that was an EXTREMELY lucky drop for me and I was absolutely chuffed to bits.  I also picked up enough Valour Points to finally get the Firelord's Robes - whilst most mages probably already had these from the daily dungeons, my continued lag issues had restricted dungeon play so these took a long time for me to get.  It was kind of a shame to give up the Robes of Dissention that I'd only recently picked up, particularly because of their unique Troll aesthetics, but meh there's no place for sentimentality in the hard and fast world of progression raiding (besides I keep them for off duty activities lol).