Here I was today, trying to find a movie featuring the animal which was the main ingredient of the raid we had beaten last night (called "Masked invaders"). So I entered "movie, badger" into the search engine most beloved by the chinese government and see what I found:

That video summarizes pretty well what happens during the hours of boredom and annoyance one has to get through to win this event. The next quote is also a fitting summary:

Although the idea for a raid after a stupid song might sound funny, believe me it is not and my guild mates shared the feeling:

So the reason why we stayed on it until almost half past midnight to finish it off was only so that we wouldn't have to come back the next day. After somewhere around 3 hours (which felt like 30) we finally were at the big boss badger:

Normally after beating an event for the first time (OK, admittedly we had beaten it a week ago when it was in a totally gimped state, but that doesn't count) people cheer and are exhilirated - on the badgers though it was only a sigh of relief going through the GU that it was finally over. Did I mention I didn't like the raid? Guess so...Anyway, at least we got some loot for all the tedium:

4 events down, but a few more to come and although I might seem a bit annoyed with the last raid, all in all I do enjoy the current expansion from a purely raider's point of view - events are hard and challenging and need people with good attention and focus, with the skill to play their class and the will to work in a team to achieve something.

You think you do fit into that description? Good!You want to become a part of Raging Fury? Even better!You are among the following classes?

Pure awesomeness, as those are the classes we are mainly looking for, but we have a few limited spots open for other classes as well (especially another Beastlord or a Necro), so check our recruitment section for details.

Not among the classes we have currently open? No need to wimper "Badgers badgers badgers"! We do accept applications from exceptional players from most of the other classes as well, so speak to our recruiters Illandra, Nalelini or Zorland or talk to an officer.

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Tonight Raging Fury finished the latest EverQuest expansion as fifth guild serverwide, keeping up our streak of staying among the top five since GoD. As usual I would like to thank all our guild members for the work and effort they have put in, especially our raid leading team, the recruitment team for getting us some great additions to our guild and all the other people who do all those pesky little tasks which have to be done to run a guild smoothly.

I also want to congratulate the other 4 guilds who have already beaten the expansion, well done. I myself will not go into any details, why we were "only" number 5 this time after being on place 4 during UF, I think whining about being held back by bugs and events that can't even be triggered is unfitting for a high end raiding guild. We managed to overcome all the obstacles in the end and are still among the very best - that's good enough for me!

Let me just say that it seems the longer it takes to beat an expansion, the harder the events are, the better it is for RF.

Underfoot was such an expansion with hard events and challenging scripts. It had its bugs, as is the case with pretty much every expansion in every MMORPG, but it was far from being as bad as HoT (which is why I think the good old "Halls of Testing" would make a rightful translation of this acronym). The newest expansion was infested with bugs, wrong grades of difficulty for the intended tier and sadly enough simply annoying mechanisms which make this the expansion I myself have enjoyed the least in a long period of time (raidwise, the group game is actually not bad, although I still miss a challenging endzone).

Well, let's see what events did we beat since the last update?

In Tier 3:

• The raid in Upper HoT, which is a total joke, so I didn't even bother to take pictures of

• Al Kabor's Nightmare, which is actually not too bad, except for the small fact that the adds don't depop after a win.

• Miragul's Lair, which we couldn't do for 2 weeks, as during that time the trigger NPC was simply gone. After it was back we could go for it and it is one of the most challenging fights in the whole expansion, a real gate keeper:

  

• Cazic's Final Stand in Fear, which has been tuned down a ton in the last patches, so that now it is an easy going raid:

  

• The raid in Morell's castle, which imho is one of the best designed this expansion

After downing all of these events it was farming time to get the keys for T4 (only Fear and MC raid drop them), until we finally felt the thrill to enter Sanctus Somnium...

That thrill was taken away soon by the first event in SS! AE pushback makes a totally annoying mechanism, which simply prolongs a fight which is otherwise not really hard.

On we went to event 2, which has an AE mezz involved - still, it's not that bad.

Event 3 was underwater fight - yay, 3 events, 3 different annoying mechanisms, WTG devs to make raiding fun! Oh, you add some adds that repop even after the event is won and make looting another night mare (like on Al Kabor's)? Good job there... Mind you, none of the events is overly hard, they are simply not fun!

Event 4 was a complete joke and so easy that even all those guilds who were whining about the "overly hard Ritual of Terror raid" would be able to beat this.

Event 5 had some interesting ideas and riddles in it, so that was something new and innovative, deserving a screenshot:

Event 6 makes me want to hurt whoever designed it. Seriously, the idea itself is not bad at all, but the reset is so buggy, that in the end nothing matter, just keeping up.

The final event shows Morell Thule in all his might:

Once again the "annoyometer" reaches new high scores: how do you like a raid where people get ported outside the raid zone with no way of getting back in except via banner? You think it's crap? So did we... Want to add a ton of autoaggroing red-con adds with all sorts of particularly nasty AEs? Good, good, people are now really hating this event so much, that upon victory the usual cheering was more or less replaced by "thank god, it's over"

As icing on the cake you make the adds repop once you open the chest upon victory to make up for another fine wipe brought to you by SOE.

To sum it all up I quote one of our members:

But it wasn't all bad this expansion, we also had some incredible wonders happening:

Also, with skilled people like our members, we don't fear anything:

And in the end it's all about the members and the community, where else would you see people be so open?

Questions like the following show the deeper thoughts only the wisdom of age beings to mind:

So that's it for now folks, farming time starts, let's all hope for fast fixes on some of the most annoying bugs and maybe the addition of a real high end raid zone with hard raids, because of the difficulty to beat them not because of the number of bugs or the sheer attrition to annoying mechanisms.

I am proud of my guild and its long tradition of high end raiding. Even during rather bad expansions like the current one has been we still hold our place among those very few guilds at the top.

Imrahil

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