My days as a Mage in World of Warcraft-Starting to Raid

I'll tell you, after questing from 1-57, the first raid I went on was really exciting. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know what my role was other than DPSing. Hell, I didn't even know how to get there. My friends of course, "just follow us, drop off this ledge", right to my death. Afterward it was revealed there are tiny ledges to catch onto as you drop down.

After you enter the Molten Core, you're immediately met with two huge Molten Giant guards. I was terrified of pulling aggro on these huge enemies, I hadn't seen anything quite as large as Molten Giants before, maybe once or twice in the Blackrock dungeons. My first raid I can't be going out like a chump by getting myself killed over and over, after much experience I purposely tried to steal aggro just to Iceblock it off and give the tank hell, at that time I was an officer just having fun with the monotony =)

Eventually it came time to cross a bridge that could lead to aggroing some monsters near it. I was the last to cross and all eyes watched me as the level 57 crossed the bridge, likely aggroing these monster purely with my level range. Didn't happen, we just moved on clearing to Lucifron. Ours was the first Horde guild to kill Lucifron on the Ner'Zhul server, possibly server-wide but I'm not sure.

What I am sure of, when you're raiding with 40 people, things can blow up quick. We had one officer that was complaining about some loot or maybe the unfairness of the loot system in general, I'm not sure if we used DKP back then, I was still a newbie. Basically that officer didn't like a few of our members and started acting a fool, one of our other officer kicked him from the guild. He started another guild and took quite a few of our people that we just geared up, they did ok for awhile, I'm not sure how far they went. That's how it goes, piss off 1 person, they bring all their friends somewhere else, then people leave simply because of the huge loss of players.

Once many people left the guild, we attempted to fill the spots, and succeeded a little bit, but we were falling behind in progression. Many of my friends in the guild were the core of the guild, the leader and all officers. We actually met from playing Everquest years ago and they bought World of Warcraft much earlier than me. They decided to transfer to a different server, at this time I wasn't playing much due to moving into a place without a stable internet connection.

Eventually I got the internet fixed and started playing again, now we were on the Crushridge server. We started on the server by running Warsong Gulch non-stop and it was a blast. When battlegrounds were released, if you had an actual group you pretty much dominated the games. We also came over with decent gear I guess, MC epics weren't anything to brag about. Eventually we ran into another guild-group and that's when the fun of the challenge began.

Back then, battlegrounds weren't cross-server, so you would recognize names from every team you play. Once battlegrounds went cross-server it lost so much of it's allure, there was nothing like joining a battleground and seeing the team you dread. I'll admit, sometimes we had the honor farmers with us, 1 person joins to scout the team, then quits because it'd be a pain in the ass, or we might not have our best guys to take on their best guys. At least I can say I was never wanted to scout, but I'm still a poop-butt rookie cause I didn't join without my team. I think that was only for Arathi Basin though as I remember being in Arathi Highlands while this went on.

We started recruiting under our new server and guild name, and eventually were back to raiding as new competition. After the transfer we got things handled very well, our officers were us from the Everquest days, nobody was there to screw around, nobody wanted to feed the distractions in general chat. In fact, our guild leader had a strict "stay out of general chat" policy, if you act a 'tard, we'd simply kick you from the raid, we have stuff to do.

Soon we had most of Molten Core on farm status, and once again were attempting to kill Ragnaros. It definitely took some time, and a lot of hate towards following directions, eventually we scored either Crushridge's first server, or Horde kill of Ragnaros, I'm not sure of which.

We continued with all Crushridge-first, or Server-first kills in Blackwing lair. We had the first people on the server to exploit Broodlord Lashlayer by pulling him into Vael's room. We secured the server first Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, and actually had 2 before another guild finally got one.

Blackwing Lair was a blast, although downing Vaelastrasz took quite a few attempts and was very frustrating. With the exception of Nefarian, I can't think of too many bosses that were too difficult to take down. Broodlord and Chromaggus were difficult, but once we got the attempts in, it wasn't too long before they were loot-fodder.

It wasn't long before I was decked out in full Netherwind Regalia, which I still consider to have the best full-set bonus of any class and any tier in the game. Once I had full Netherwind, PVP and duels were so much more fun, I pretty much had cheat-mode activated. Once pvp gear started to surface though, hit points and resiliance dominated the game, Netherwind wouldn't even had stood a chance, if it was updated.

On Crushridge, we started the opening of the Ahn'Qiraj gates, drove the quest-line progression, and had the scepter. I was one of the best enchanters on the server and used any profits I had to support the "war effort", even putting up Alliance-only turn-in items for really cheap on the neutral Auction House in Gadgetzan. Additionally, we had the other 2 best enchanters in guild who did the same. When the gates were finally unlocking, there was a huge event in Silithus that brought on some guild vs. guild world PVP, which is always a blast.

AQ40 started with pulls that came in multiples. Each mob with their own unique ability, if I recall correctly, damage shields, spell reflect, perhaps some AOE, and they inherited each others' abilities when one of them died. There were only a few packs, and then finally the first boss, Prophet Skeram. This fight was fairly easy, however the boss Mind-Controlled which could always turn your raid into corpses if the wrong people get MC'd at the same time. At certain &'s of health, he would also split into 3 forms and the raid would DPS 2 of them down and then back to the "real" boss.

We progressed normally through the rest of the bosses until Princess Huhuran, she gave us a tough time due to the whirlwind she would do. Twin Emperors was a tough time for a while as well, and a very fun fight. You need the classic main tank on one of the emperors, but also a spell-caster to tank the other emperor due to him only being affected by magic and the other only by physical damage. They also had to be kept very far apart from each other or they would very quickly heal each other to full health, as well as blowing up the bugs that were scattered around the room.

Overall the zone was huge most of the time spent in the zone was probably running back to wipe points, even with the bug mounts allowed inside. Eventually we reached C'thun, what I like to call a huge pain in the a**. I still consider it one of the most difficult encounters in the game, eventually it was decreased in difficulty, aka "nerfed". It took us a few months to kill him if I recall correctly, and afterwards we didn't have much trouble keeping him on farm status. It was a tremendous relief to finally defeat the encounter, watching the video below, the fight is still something I hate thinking about.

Naxxramas was our first major hit to the new guild. Why Blizzard released that piece of crap without the servers being able to handle it, I have no idea. We must have wiped on Anub'Rekhan 50 times simply because of 1-2 seconds of lag. I think we eventually got him down, but our morale was pretty much destroyed. Raid nights turned into wipe-nights simply due to lag only. We were eventually able to kill Instructor Razuvious as well and taking stabs at Noth the Plaguebringer. To this day, I still haven't done a full clear of original Naxxramas. Our main tanks quit playing, several healers, as soon as the zone was lag-free, we no longer had many of the strong players we had before.

Everyone pretty much gave up, we weren't making much headway after losing some quality players. Raiding the next tiered zone becomes a hell of a time when you have people that don't have much experience as well as lower-tiered gear.

Edits and additions to come! I've left out a lot of side-stories including leveling on a PVP server, and how World of Warcraft's current PVP developed to what it is today, when I started, PVP was world-only with no rewards other than destroying your opponent =)