What will we do now!?

What's going on with Risen now?

Something happened this weekend, that we all deserve a good amount of recognition for. Here's something that may hint to what it was

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time, there was a guild. A guild formed upon the goal of raiding end-game content while only committing to a casual raid schedule. A guild committed to mature, focused, professinal raids, while maintaining a family-like atmosphere filled with gnome and dwarf hate (as any family rightfully would be) and awful puns. Where am I going with this? I just needed to start typing something to get me going.

The Road to Illidan

With Archimonde down, the road to Illidan became our main focus. As soon as the progression path was narrowed down to one path, our momentum took us straight through.

We definitely over-prepared for RoS, having enough Cauldrons of Major Nature Protection to last us almost a year of RoS kills.

Where an ordinary guild may have been satisfied with one new boss kill on a raid night, Risen kept going. Two hours later (including trash clear and explanation session), Mother Shahraz was taken down.

There are not many guilds who can claim they have taken down Mother Shahraz with just 5 pulls. We ended this weekend with another dual first kill. As we were leaving the Black Temple for the week, questions filled our mind. "Who is Mother Shahraz, and why is she in the Black Temple?" We may never know...

When the Going Gets Tough...

With our hearts set on getting to Illidan the next raiding weekend, Risen members prepared for our impending triumph over Illidan. There was much farming of fire protection cauldron mats, fine tuning of FR gear, researching of the encounter, and of course, our mid-week fun with Hydross.

The only thing that stood between us and Illidan, was the Illidari Council. Or so we thought... There were actually a few more things that kept us from spending the amount of time we wanted to spend on Illidan.

A weekend of low availability forced us to go in with many people who hadn't had a chance to befriend Teron Gorefiend and master the ghost phase, or have their anti-stress kits ready to keep their blood from boiling (and those who did bring it needed it) while fighting Bloodboil. The stress drove Roshambeau nuts:

Rosh is actually a very good singer. Whenever I hear "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi, I actually hear Rosh singing it from the one time I heard him sing it over vent. We're just glad he didn't try the Gorefiend parody over vent.

We also tried heroic Archimonde. We didn't win.

When the going gets tough, Risen gets going. We had a perfectly executed triumph over the Illidari Council the same weekend.

What Makes Risen Tick?

So what exactly makes Risen tick?

Is it how the officers carefully distribute items, carefully plan our raids, come pumped to raids, and make very tough decisions such as this one?

Nope.

Then is it the way we efficiently communicate through ventrilo , not let anything interrupt our focus in raiding , keep from losing composure each wipe, and let the fear of the Hand of Sorran keep us from having 1% wipes?