The online MMORPG “World of Warcraft” is currently in it’s 12th expansion “Midnight”, and it’s 2nd “Race for World First” for their raid “The Venomous Abyss”. As of this writing the top 3 Guilds are all 6/8 of the Mythic Difficulty at the second week, with the penultimate boss causing them the intended difficulty with their paid-for gear and 317 item levels.
“Back in the days”, meaning between 2013 and 2014 I participated in WoW’s 5th expansions “Mists of Pandaria”s final raid “Siege of Orgrimmar”. As a guild we had cleared many raids, and a majority of raiders decided to continue to the hardest content that was available at the time: Heroic. Unlike current hardcore guilds that take them weeks our journey took almost a year of pain, money, and more pain.
Intent-Ravenholdt
Intent was a guild that we began raiding with at the end of the previous expansion “Cataclysm”, and learning who the usual suspects were. After Deathwing was defeated, and the new expansion was released, leveling to 85 and rolling through the first couple raids we learned who stayed, who went, and who we made friends with on the way. The initial crew revolved around Eddie (paladin/priest), Louis (rogue), Matthew (warrior), Jack (shaman), Lee (mage), Philip (death knight), Casey (hunter), and Benton (warlock).
Stepping into the “Siege of Orgrimmar” we had kept most of our migrated personnel from the previous raid, picked up a couple new faces, and completed Normal around November 6, 2013. As a guild we tried the some Heroic bosses: Immerseus (20 November) and Norushen (22 November), and then not everyone was okay with continuing on Heroic. A poll was taken, and a group of 4 splintered off to get some Heroic experience.
Heresiarch-Drenden
February 2014 Myself, Nancy (hunter), Scott (priest), and Mike (shaman), being the most geared and hungry, decided to put our names out there for guilds that were recruiting for progression. Before paying the money for the transfer we were trialed, and found that some of us we could be useful. With this guild we had cleared an additional 5 Heroic bosses (7/14) but were being piecemealed between bosses. They were preferring Nancy and Scott, and wanting to hold me and Mike back on the bench more often. We had stated that we came as a package and can’t be divided. After some back-and-forth they had “discovered” we were running Normal raids with the old guild and considered that an issue with us raiding Heroic with them, so April 2014 they signed our pink slips and we were again without a path.
The Red Panda Elites-Emerald Dream
With a bit of flair and pizzazz Scott transferred an guild from Ravenholdt to Emerald Dream and we packed it with everything necessary to raid with. The transfer was necessary as Guilds were represented by both Level and Achievements so it gave an air of legitimacy when recruiting. We were also able to get some more from Intent to transfer over, and recruit more faces. May 12th we went ahead and were 8/14, 15th 9/14, 29th 10/14, and then we hit a wall.
July 7, 2014 we downed Thok the Bloodthirsty.
August 21, 2014 we defeated Siegecrafter Blackfuse. Progression was horrible for raid nights as “Lizard Squad” was DDOSing Blizzard, Sony, Microsoft, and many other gaming services during the summer/fall months.
September 4, 2014 We strategized and took down the Paragons of the Klaxxi.
September 16, 2014 we finally stood on top of the hill with other Giants. https://youtu.be/IIQQKhXdELw. The mount dropped, the rolls happened, and the rolls did their decision.
Epilogue
Mists of Pandaria lasted 779 days, from September 25, 2012 to November 13, 2014. For almost 1 year a small, headstrong group of individuals set a goal and achieved it, and are forever bonded by it. Not only did some of us become good friends with Persistence (the son of Orctalray) but keeping with it definitely paid off.
The last 2 months of the expansion Blizzard decided to create a third difficulty of raid called “Mythic”, which ended up being Heroic and Heroic was what Normal used to be, and it has been that list of three difficulties to this very day.
The last time I attempted to do hardcore raiding was during the 6.2.0 expansion “Warlords of Draenor” with the Hellfire Citadel raid between September 8, 2015 and October 22, 2015. I had grinded through depression from December 9, 2014 all the way through the expansion, and learned that I missed the person I was and ended up rediscovering the person I used to like before.