What a start into the new year: today Raging Fury defeated the The Return of King Xorbb, the final event in Rain of Fear, the latest expansion of EverQuest.

Before I come to anything else, here is the traditional picture of the victorious Raging Fury force:

This is another shot, including the Evil Eye King Xorbb himself - not so evil anymore:

And here is the loot we got from Xorbb (sadly no Bag of Sewn Evil-Eye, that would have rocked!):

So this was the final event, beaten one month after the release of the expansion, including a time of reduced raiding for the holidays? Well, at least this is the status of that event for now, but there are strong hints towards some additional content before the next expansion comes out (you may have noticed the additional three portals getting raised in Shard's Landing if you play the game) and most certainly we in Raging Fury are looking forward to additional content, more specifically raid content, because otherwise this will have been the shortest expansion raidwise since LoY...

Seriously, the first guild (Realm of Insanity) finished the last event one week after the release of RoF with the second (Machin Shin) only a week behind, followed by 4 other guilds before christmas - kudos to all of them.

And what about Raging Fury? As usual RF started a bit slower than other high end guilds, but got into gear pretty well in the end. Sadly, given the fact that this expansion was more a sprint than anything else, we couldn't make up for that slow start and thus finished it only after our small christmas break as the seventh guild serverwide, still quite a respectable result I would say. Nonetheless I hope for additional raid tiers so that maybe in the end we can still maintain our spot among the top #5 once RoF is really finished...

As the expansion was so short, I didn't post any news before, so I will give a few pictures of other raid events for you to enjoy:

This is from The Madness of King Tormax (and yes, that's Yelinak, I know)

Danella's Stand:

Zeixshi-Kar's Shard:

The Queen's Decree:

A Feast for Zalikor:

Guardian of the Gate:

That last event (also known as Xorbb #1) was actually the hardest in the expansion, not so much because of the complexity itself, but due to the fact that it is extremely poorly tuned and as such can only be beaten other than the obviously intended way.

Or to put it in other words:

Aren't we all a bit like Rambo sometimes?

Well, I guess you can't be afraid of dieing when you do events like that, even when you try to avoid certain dangers:

The event brought evil ideas into people's minds (totally un-RF-like!)

Normally the members of Raging Fury are well known and respected across the server!

But also some of the other events had surprises, especially for our RLs. I remember Insaneox asking Queen Grelleth happily to be sacrificed for her dinner table (sorry, I laughed so hard I forgot to take a screenshot), and also Odysias had an accident:

Nonetheless I am very proud of my guild, because during the last few events I have once again seen the drive and passion which seemed a bit lost after such a long farming time (the fact that the first events were beaten that fast didn't help either, I guess).

I want to thank especially our raid leaders who have done a really great job together with our whole strategy team.

I also want to express my gratitude towards our recruiters for the excellent work they have done during the long months of farming to keep the guild in a healthy state, well done, Ladies!

Thanks also to the rest of the officer team as well as to all those trailblazers who got through the quests fast so we could request the raids - especially in such a short expansion people like you are a tremendous asset to any guild!

Last but not least I want to thank every member of Raging Fury for making this guild the way it is: a hardcore raiding guild with a generally relaxed and friendly atmosphere.

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On Monday the 26th of March Raging Fury managed to defeat The Triune God, making us the fifth guild serverwide to finish Veil of Alaris, the 18th expansion of EverQuest. So our streak of staying among the top 5 in every expansion since Gates of Discord has continued once again, which I find quite an achievement. This success is even more remarkable considering the fact that Raging Fury has lost its main raid leader 2 times during the process of learning the final event, but with the help of our raid team we managed to overcome all obstacles while generally still keeping to our 5 raid days per week. I heard there was a guild on Drinal who raided 60 days out of 61 in a row without having beaten VoA yet - I give them an A for effort though.

While I am speaking about other guilds I would like to congratulate Realm of Insanity, Machin Shin, Shadows of Doom and Crimson Tempest for beating VoA before us. Also congrats to Triton who have finished the expansion only a few hours after us, very close race indeed.

Anyway, let's return to our own victory. The event is undoubtedly the most complex in all of EverQuest's history. I don't want to belittle events like Tunat Muram, OMM or Mayong Mistmoore, but the number of phases and mechanisms you have to learn to control is simply incredible. Imho every guild having to learn this event will at one point or another say "OMG, wasn't this already complex enough??"

On the other hand it most definitely was a challenge and beating it felt awesome (followed by a feeling of relieve not having to go here again for another week).

Let's come to some screenshots!

Here you can see a picture of our formidable adversary in his power:

And here he/she/it isn't as powerful anymore:

Of course we also have a picture of the victorious force inside the raid:

As always upon such victories there are people who haven't been online/inside the raid when it finally happened, but who have played an important part during the learning phase of the event. This is especially true on an event like The Triune God which has taken us more than a month from the first attempts till finally beating it, so I would like to congratulate ALL members of Raging Fury upon this success, you guys have done a great job!

Of course it wouldn't have been possible without skilled players like our warrior class leader Xack, the ancient lizard (he has been in RF longer than anyone else who still plays) and his wisdom:

Anyway, as customary whenever I write news about the finish of an expansion I will add a few comments about the expansion itself. First of all the total number of raids is too low, there is no denying that 14 raids is pitiful considering the fact that when EQ moved to annually releasing expansions we were promised more developer time for content. With the current paradigm of "nothing matters, but the current expansion" every previous raid is more or less obsolete, especially since the decision to let spell foci decay, even from the endzone of the previous expansion. I still think this was a VERY bad move as it leaves the mid-tier guilds with only 4 raids (Argath, Sarith, Lunanyn, Beast's Domain) until they run into a brick wall (Rubak and Resplendent Temple).

On the other hand we have 8 tier 4 raids, so at least something to do for those few guilds who actually manage to beat the expansion. Is it arrogant and premature from my side to assume that there won't be more than a dozen guilds able to beat VoA in its current state, if that? Maybe, but I doubt it. There are simply not enough hardcore guilds left who will overcome the obstacles laid in their way. The complexity and unforgiving mechanisms of events like Pillars, Sepulcher #3 or Sepulcher #5 are simply too much for more than just a handful of guilds. I doubt there are many guilds left in this old game who just take it that they can have a maximum of 2 tries per evening on one event, because the really interesting part begins after 90 minutes. Nonetheless you can't just go on "automode" during the first 2 phases, because playing just a bit sloppy can mean a wipe or a huge disadvantage later on, so the pressure is kept up for almost 2 hours constantly. This is different to former long events and I don't think it is good design at all. Considering that the loot on this event is the same number of drops as on the other (much shorter) raids it is no wonder that many think that time investment vs. reward is not balanced at all.

I really hope that we will get a retuning of many raids in the very near future otherwise I foresee an exodus of players, which would be sad, because on the other hand we have seen quite a few new faces since EQ became "free to play" (F2P). Some of those faces are actually rather familiar, for example one of my predecessors as guild leader of RF is back (with a small namechange) and Dalrek already feels the strong lure of EverQuest again:

Qujam feels that lure too, but of course there are opposing interests to decide upon - Insaneox made his choice as you can see:

A final quote so you all know how much respect officers in RF get from their members:

That's it for now, Veil of Alaris is beaten, the farming starts, and I can only salute my guild for a tremendous job they have done.

Members of Raging Fury you made me proud once again!

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Yesterday evening Raging Fury was finally able to beat the third event in Sepulcher called Fumerak the Quintessence.

It took us quite some time and many deaths to down this raid, with some people losing more than a level worth of experience in the process. Adds quadding for up to 40 K damage versus tanks with over 9000 AC, a named who in certain states hits for over 55 K and some funny AE effects with pushback, blind etc. – pure joy!

Still the raid wouldn’t be so bad (I mean, we have all asked for challenging content here in RF, so there we go), if it took a bit shorter until you finally get to the stage where it really matters. It is really frustrating when you focus for ninety minutes, just to wipe in the last percents. I doubt that in its current incarnation this raid will be beaten by more than a dozen guilds serverwide and this has nothing to do with arrogance from my part. I simply don’t think that there are many guilds left in EQ who can field the constant force willing to die endlessly for days (or even weeks).

Anyway, I am glad we managed to overcome this challenge and hope we can get the next two events beaten soon as well to finish the expansion - stay tuned!

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Just a short flash update: Today Raging Fury has downed its first Tier 4 raid in the current expansion, making us the fifth guild serverwide to beat this indeed very challenging event.

As it's late I will just put in one picture of the "big bad boss":

And here are the usual cheers and some lore:

Once again a really great performance by everyone!

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