'Twas two nights before Christmas, when all through Rubak,

The RF force was stirring, ready to attack;

The raiders were placed at the fightspots with care,

In hopes that the victory soon would be there;

The clerics where nestled all snug at safe spots,

While necros and shamans were loading their dots;

And Meemers in his monk gear and I in steel wear,

Had just settled down for the final prepare,

When out in the guild there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my seat to see what was the matter.

Into the chat window I looked without stop,

Read the evil message "this zone will repop".

With only half of an hour left till respawn,

We said "oh whatever" and stifled a yawn

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a focused attempt with no whirlwinds too near,

With good DPS, without making a mess,

I knew in a moment it can be success.

More rapid than eagles, the emoted guys came,

And all officers shouted and called them by name;

"Now, Illa! now Jole! now, Songsa and Lana!

On, Koyo! on Alive! on, Thunder and Cana!

To the top of the pool! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the ramp-top the emoted they ran,

With the whirl on their heels, according to plan.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard in the chat

"All zealots are dieing", now how about that?

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the last of the high priests went to the ground

He was finally vanquished, because no one had tripped,

And he blabbered on with his lore in this script;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

Our eyes -- how they twinkled! our shoutings how merry!

Our cheers were like thunder, how much loot could we carry?

Our time nearly done, only five minutes left,

And the loot bids had to be fast as a theft;

The loot officer Vmas went on like a flash,

And Jarasil gave out the spells on a dash,

And Kikthin and I helped to get all items sorted,

While Meem probably thought how often we had aborted;

We sold armor pieces to Pulv and Ismel;

Though I cannot remember who all got a spell,

I do know that Thunder got Tidecaster Mooncharm,

And Noitora with Spinedriller will do much more harm

To the mobs against which ourselves in future we hurl;

I just hope that Pulvarien will get his Watering Wave Pearl.

It poofed when finally the zone was repopped,

And all the looting was so suddenly stopped;

Raging Fury was happy all nonetheless,

Cause finally a victory felt like a success

But you heard me exclaim, ere I went off at midnight,

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."

Original text can be found HERE

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After more than 9 months of farming the same old content again and again finally the 18th expansion of EverQuest called Veil of Alaris has come out – oh, the bliss of moving to only one expansion per year!

Was the long farm time boring? You can bet it was!

Did it make me slack even worse on guild news updates? Err... I guess so.

Was it relaxing? In a way, yes.

I myself have found that there are other pastimes besides sitting in front of a PC playing a game with prehistoric character models and bugs which aren’t corrected after being acknowledged more than half a year ago. Seriously: the models I can cope with (heck, EQ is old, it has other virtues), certain handicaps because of old coding I can cope with too, NP. Not removing pesky annoying bugs like the repopping sharks in SS#3 (or the adds in Al Kabor’s Nightmare), the stupid exit-mechanisms in SS (some port you outside the raid zone STILL) and event 7 door STILL shutting once events starts - all this just screams “I don’t care”. It gets even more irritating when you see that on the other hand changes inside scripts are made to make them even MORE annoying (note: not really hard), like the super spin-stun in SS#2. So you guys do have the time to change scripts, but not those parts that have been posted a gazillion times and acknowledged as bugs? WTG, devs, WTG… ah well, rant over (for now).

While I am speaking about annoyances here is another thing which has come up a LOT lately: the insane push, especially when a raid is fighting a mob. Quite often they don't get pushed slowly like in former times, but they simply warp to next position and our rogues especially are cursing all the time. Here is a quote about our best success in controlling the push:

Anyway, was I looking forward to something new to do in EQ although I had found distractions? Hey, I am addicted, one summer with surrogates like “Beergarden 2011”, “Barbecue Master 3” or even the two parts of “Nottingham Visitor” (see previous news) can’t cure me...

Also I was looking forward to new raid targets together with an awesome guild which shows so much <3 towards each other and especially to me:

Jolene would go even further:

So yes, I was awaiting Veil of Alaris (VoA) impatiently, hoping for new levels and AA to get, new quests to do and new raid mobs to kill.

Will VoA fulfill all those hopes? Two and a half weeks after release final judgment is certainly too early, but a few things can be said nonetheless:

First of all the invention of resizable hotbuttons which make clickies work from inside bags (if the item itself needn’t be worn) is awesome. Combine this with the huge bags invented in HoT and you have so much more flexibility than you used to have two years ago – very well done!

Second, the new guild halls look really nice and our decoration aficionados have already spent much time into making ours a great place – thanks for the effort guys, you rock!

Third, the group progression via language skill was less painful than expected after Beta, because some of the pressure was removed by adding a second zone in which one could get the needed skills for the higher tiers or by adding a faster respawn on quest mobs. Nonetheless I am still dubious about the requirements for everyone of 90 Alaran to be able to make armor. While it might make sense for a grouper, I think this is a burden not every raiders will like.

Last, but definitely not least (we are a raid guild after all): raids!

How can I say something about raids only 2 weeks after the launch?

Well, we have downed all encounters of the two lower tiers (although that’s only 3 raids), so at least a certain “first look” at the way raids are done seems possible.

All 3 raids share the concept, that they are simply bigger versions of one of the group missions in their respective zone. This is a new concept and from my point of view it is simply horrible!

Where are the days, when you went into an encounter knowing absolutely nothing about what would happen? Where is the surprise when everything that goes on in a raid script has already been seen by most of the raid members during some group task? Where is the challenge in finding out the mechanics of a raid if they are only a blown up version of said group task with exactly the same scripting? This new concept is one of the worst decisions in the last years as it robs a raider everything that makes raiding interesting. It is particularly sad, because the raid scripts wouldn’t be too bad if they were not already known. Sincerely: if anyone over at SOE reads this, please don’t do that ever again! It is no wonder, that all the raids which could be attempted flagwise were downed the first day they were available (ya we downed Valley raid 1 day later, as usual RF starts a bit slower, it’s tradition!).

I only pray that the higher tiers provide us with a bit more challenge otherwise this expansion will be even shorter than the last one. While I had the impression that T1 was supposed to be of similar difficulty to SS (in fact it’s easier than at least some events in there) I had really hoped for a bit more challenge in tier 2. The raid in Sarith though is sadly underpowered and the biggest challenge in Valley of Lunanyn is getting the placement of the NPCs sorted (I share Xack's thoughts that this can be a bit confusing, although I might have worded it differently):

Sorry, but I somehow doubt this will be raided more often than absolutely needed for flags, as it is rather annoying to do. As everyone can see the same scripts via grouping I wasn't even bothering to take screenshots of the raids, instead I present some more quotes:

Let’s hope for something a bit more interesting in the next tiers. Sepulcher will have some raids without an equivalent group version, so I am looking forward to that. We are farming "flags" now for the next tier and we will keep you informed once T3 events are getting beaten.

Stay tuned!

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As most of the readers will know, SOE has been the victim of a hacker attack and as a result all its services were shut down while they were working frantically to reach a secure state again. Finally the servers have been brought back online on Saturday, so the normal raiding business can continue as usual and everyone can rejoice.

While we were waiting for that to happen though it meant 2 weeks without EverQuest for all the addicts in Raging Fury and so we had to look for some other targets to raid outside in another game - the REAL WORLD.

So it was the second weekend in May when this fearless force of RF members assembled in the raid zone Nottingham in the United Kingdom expansion under the raid leadership of Illandra to have some fun and phat lewt:

I will add the names this time, as I forgot to put /shownames ON: From left to right: Spiritbane, Snufty, Mrs. Snufty (honorary RF), Illandra, Imrahil, Kryill, Kikthin, Klorch, Pippi.

We encountered a few dangerous boss mobs, for example the Piper of Nottingham:

Xack was stuck in another raid zone called Lanzarote, but his spirit was with us nonetheless, protecting us against rats:

So we had to bring Klorch back into EQ by making him tank The Ferocious Beast (TFB):

As we were less people than on a normal raid (not everyone could afford to buy the United Kingdom expansion yet) we got ourselves some outside help from the most famous Ranger of all times (sorry Vmas):

Also our wizard Snufty had to change into a shaman as we had no slower with us:

Obviously as a trained force we didn’t fall to those enemies or low numbers, but instead got us some nice rewards:

Altogether the new zone Nottingham looked really nice, the encounters were refreshingly new and everyone had a great time.

Thanks to all who were there and especially Illandra for the great organization – I think we are all looking forward to the next Nottingham raid!

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Hello everyone out there!

I want to take this opportunity to wish every visitor of our website a pleasant easter time.

To celebrate this event, we at Raging Fury have brought to you two pictures with lots of fluffy easter bunnies (courtesy of Ismel):

The hunter quest is a nice idea and among others of our members we had at least 1 enchanter to bunnify us all. Speaking of that: on April first the devs played a new prankster on us, making random NPCs and players into bunnies. I myself found the idea hilarious, but sadly enough there was some mess-up with the starting of quests and raids, so what was supposed to be a very nice and funny joke became a nuisance for some.

This simple example shows, how by making a small mistake or miscalculation an otherwise solid idea with good intentions can be ruined. This was also the case with this year's Legacy event, the raiding on the Mechanic Guardian in Dragonscale Hills. The idea of attacking this homungous structure with the combined forces of guilds was nice, but the lag produced by letting the event take place in an open zone simply ruined the fun for everyone. Our own guild lizard had this to say about the event:

Combined with the hassle to get a specific drop which could only come from one sort of mobs this left many people with more frustration than joy.

Still in total we had some new content and the mission inside the guardian was actually fun and brought some good loot, so it was a distraction during this otherwise rather solemn time of farming. Also the little egg collection quest for easter was a nice idea, so kudos whoever brought it in - sometimes even small little things can be fun!

NonethelesslLet us all hope that we will get some more content soon, otherwise we will probably have to cut down our raid days even further from the already only 3 raid days which are currently left.

One good thing about the little current content: I don't have to have a bad conscience about giving the guild raid free over the complete easter time, so everything has its advantages I guess.

A final word before I close this news update: We have very few open spots at the moment, as we have full raids every evening, but certain classes still have an opening. At the moment we are mainly looking for wizards and rogues, but we may have some spots for other classes too, so speak to our recruiters Illandra, Nalelini, or Schalimar 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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