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:

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:

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:

Members of Raging Fury you made me proud once again!

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!

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!

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

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!

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):

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!

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.

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:

The final event shows Morell Thule in all his might:

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:

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

After our usual few days off at the start of HoT to level up, get some AA and the needed flagging tasks we have started right away with raiding. The first raid we ran into was called "Tick Tock" and the end boss was indeed a giant clock:

The biggest issue on this raid was in one part of the pre-events, where some nasty unDead dogs were permanently leashed, so they reset aggro constantly - our DPS just LOVED this event! As this part has now been changed, the event has lost pretty much every challenge and even before that it was far easier than the second event on tier 1, called "The Ritual of Terror". In this event lots of lizardmen try to open a portal for the denizens of the Plane of Fear to Norrath, for example this giant toad:

Needless to say we stopped the invasion and by doing so, acquired access to the second tier raids.

After having struggled for a bit with the mechanisms of "Ritual of Fear" (it was bugged for a time too), we expected an increase in difficulty in the next tier. The first 2 raids though were shocking everyone - with their total and utter gimpness. Rarely have I seen the members of RF going "WTH?", "Loool", "This is a joke right?" after a victory, but it happened like that, not only on "Terror in the Dark" but also on "Roots of Evil". Both raids are easier than at least 1 of the tier 1 raids, probably than both.

Anyway, we collected our (almost) free loot and moved on to the next target - "The Torches of Truth". This raid provided a bit more of a challenge, but in the end Terris Thule herself had to admit she couldn't stand against our forces:

The fourth and definitely hardest raid on the second tier is called "The Librarian's Nightmare" and a nightmare it was - for our raid leaders mainly though, because the raid is extremely chaotic and involves lots of things to learn, always combined with a complete restart of the script. Now it paid off that most of us had assembled a safety margin into the level, because otherwise we might have had some low levels in the raid. After a few days of constantly testing and refining our strategy we finally got successful and managed to beat the event and unravel the sad story about the love between the butler and the chief librarian.

OK, so after the first month of HoT, what is my own totally subjective verdict on it?

Raidwise I have to say that the total disparity between raids on one tier is shocking. How in Marr's name could anyone actually approve the raids in the Well or the Grounds when you have got a raid like the one in library on the same tier? I don't mind certain raids being harder (there have always been gate keeping events, which were harder than others on the same tier), but this difference is grotesque.
Also it seems that the focus on beating an event in HoT is more on the discovery of the mechanism behind it, not on the execution itself, giving guilds who beta-tested quite an advantage, because most of the time there are no real clues, what is actually happening. We will see how this turns out in the next tiers.

Groupwise I am a bit disappointed, because the content seems a bit meager for a one year expansion without an addition in April (as we had last year with Convorteum). People can solo named in the endzone Sanctus Somnium, that is blatantly wrong! Imho this early in expansion the endzone should either not even be accessed or if so, only a balanced group with skilled players decked in either group gear from the highest tier before endzone or in raid gear should be able to kill a named. Where has the challenge in the grouping game gone?

Last but not least HoT brought us a few novelties, which newer games have long since had: housing, bags with more than 10 slots and an improvement in the light engine. While the latter isn't that big an impact, it still has one thing in common with the others: it shows that EverQuest still evolves and improves, something not many would expect from a game which is more than 10 years old. The change regarding bags has long since been asked for and always declined because "the code doesn't allow this". Well, as we can see, somehow they made it work anyway and for that I have to say "Good job". Another pat on the back goes to whoever designed the rewards for this year's halloween tasks: an unDead rabbit bunny and a vampire bat for the house are well in the mood for the spooky celebration and the quests weren't very hard or time consuming. Just a nice little quest for a fun reward - thumbs up!

So much for my own first impressions of "House of Thule", I will delay my final judgment until we have beaten the expansion (let's hope not too soon, no one wants another 10 month farming snorefest like SoD).

As usual, no news would be complete without mentioning the (very) few open spots we have. We have full raids every evening, but certain classes still have an opening. At the moment we are mainly looking for shamans and rogues, but we have some spots for other classes too, so speak to our recruiters Illandra, or Nalelini or talk to an officer.

Expect more news after the first events in tier 3 have been beaten, in the next days we have to grab a few more flags to have a sufficient raid force inside, but I promise it won't take us too long, so stay tuned!

So without any further comment I have the great honor and the privilege to present to you the victorious team standing next to the body of the vanquished enemy:

The end of an expansion calls for some reflection about the expansion itself and the circumstances, under which progression through it happened. Let me just say that the last weeks I have felt a drive and a motivation in the guild which I hadn't sensed for quite some time. After being behind Shadows of Doom on the first events catching up with them during the end of Tier 7 gave a new motivation and focus to everyone in RF. We started to add an additional raid day and raid evenings became longer and longer, just because everyone knew we were close to the end. It felt like a race and that feeling gave invigoration to all our members and made it possible for people to raid till midnight, although many of us had to work the next day. The effort paid off in the end,: we were able to take back the number one spot on Antonius Bayle!

Let me congratulate those guilds who have finished the expansion before us in a legitimate way, I leave it upon everyone for himself to decide what guild to count among those. Let me also thank Shadows of Doom for giving us such a close race, you pushed us to give 100 percent, I am sure you guys will get it down soon too.

Let me also say "thanks" to our raid leaders, who have worked very hard to develop and improve our strategies and tactics and to our recruiters who got us the quality people we needed to fill our ranks. But most of all, I thank all the members of RF for showing the will and strength to overcome one of the hardest expansions in all the history of EverQuest.

Almost 10 months after its release only 4 guilds on all servers have beaten it and I doubt that this number will be more than doubled before the next expansion and level 90 will help more guilds to finally push through.

After the playing field got leveled during the all-to-easy SoD, now was the time to show what a guild is capable of: some new guilds rose to high peaks, some old high end guilds fell deep. Let me take this moment to salute a final time to Tide, it is always sad to see a once strong and proud guild like that collapse - may the former members find new homes in other guilds

.Some of those members have already joined our guild and have helped us to once again claim our place among the top 5 guilds on all the servers in EQ for the tenth time in a row! Yes, Raging Fury has been among those front runners since GoD and I think that is an achievement shared by no other guild in this game. I consider it an honor to be leading a guild which has left its footprints in the history of EverQuest for such a long period of time. I am sure we will be leaving our marks in House of Thuleto.

Until then enjoy the rest as I will enjoy not having to write news until 1:30 in the morning!

Before we were able to enter there though we had to hit some sense into Brell Serilis. Now, what is more fun than hitting fat dwarves or pesky gnomes? Hitting their creator himself for all the ugliness he has brought into the world! I have to admit though that Brell does have some nasty tricks which can make a raid wipe almost instantly. Anyone else thinks that events like bonus experience weekends are mainly invented to give raiders a chance to win back their loss from deaths over the last week? Just kidding of course, I know everyone loves those weekends, it is just the fact that Underfoot has been rather unforgiving and I haven't had to click "yes" to a rezz request so often in one expansion for quite some time (actually I doubt even GoD killed me that often). I am not complaining, I like hard expansions, it's just an observation from a tank class in Underfoot, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, after a week of banging our heads against the walls in Brell's Temple we managed to turn the table and bang his head against the wall until he finally gave in:

By defeating this event we had also cleared the last obstacle on the way to the end zone of this expansion called Convorteum. As has been the case in all the recent expansions the zone itself is identical to the group version and it even has some trash, but so far nowhere nearly as annoying as in previous zones like Tower Of Discord or MMM - thanks for that!

After we had cleared the first trash, we were staring at the big golem who is called "The Gatekeeper":

This first encounter in Convorteum can only be described as a "reward mob" for entering the final zone of this really challenging expansion. If you don't play like muppets (and noone able to enter here would play like that, right? Right!) you can't lose this fight. So after a bit of whacking the golem fell to the ground and we had our first Convorteum loot.

With the success from sunday everyone could see that RF was gaining momentum towards the final goal to beat the expansion while it is still current, so on Monday we continued our march through Convorteum. Neither the Stonewarden nor the Unstable Creation could withstand our relentless assault for long and I am pretty confident that we will be able to overcome more enemies in the next days. Don't expect a long news post every day though, I might limit this to the final victory message if we continue with this speed!

A last word for this posting: we have entered the end zone and are in the middle of the final rush to complete Underfoot before the next expansion House of Thule is out. If we keep up the focus and dedication shown in the last weeks then I am sure that we will be through Convorteum by then. So if you want to be among the very few able to say they have beaten one of the most challenging expansions ever while it was current now is the last chance to join our ranks before we are done with it. At the moment we are mainly looking for shamans and clerics, but we have some spots for other classes too, so speak to our recruiters Brilhasti, Illandra, or Nalelini or talk to an officer.

Expect more news with further victories soon - you know we make good on our promises!

So, I will make this short: after weeks of fine-tuning and learning we have finally been able to beat the second trial in Brell's Temple - The Trial of Creation! Our corpse-to-be had his own description of this raid:

Well, the pain at least brought us also some new toys:

That's it for now, only 1 event left to beat for the access to converteum, stay tuned, it won't be long till next update!

With the help of that powerful tool and our usual merry band of raiders we managed to vanquish this mighty insect as fifth guild serverwide :

So, what did we get for our trouble? Apart from the usual 2 armor pieces we got us these nice new treasure pieces:

Sadly enough our anti-bug spray does not work when it comes to technical bugs and be assured: there are quite a few in this script. From the idea itself (kill lots of mushrooms to make a giant beetle appear - did the dev maybe smoke some of those shrooms?!) over the more or less random reactions later on ("does he spawn? we did everything right!" -"Maybe!") to the fun fact that the script doesn't reset properly (anyone wants a 60 K quad-hitter after reset?) the whole thing is so far the buggiest encounter we have seen in this expansion.

On the other hand this is nothing compared to good old Rallos Returns in SoD, so I guess overall most bugs in the current expansion are indeed part of the story and can be overcome by guilds willing to put in the effort. Granted, the effort needed in Underfoot is higher than in SoD, but that was desperately needed, because EverQuest has always been about challenges and I certainly hope that the next expansion House of Thule will be offering enough hard content to keep us occupied. During several talks with different devs at the Fan Faire in Las Vegas (yay, baby!) it sounded like they were aiming for the expansion to be a bit easier than Underfoot, but still closer to that level of challenge than to the snorefest that was called SoD - phew!

Mentioning the Fan Faire: it has become a good tradition in the last 3 years that a few members of Raging Fury attend this event and this year we had a total count of 8 Raging Furies in smoking hot Vegas - not a bad number for a Euro guild! As always it was a blast meeting old friends and new faces (and some interesting bodies too!) and the atmosphere among players from around the world across quite a number of different games is something truly unique. Just see how friendly we are to our guild mates:

Of course there were quite a few opportunities to talk to the current devs, and although they might make a few mistakes (who doesn't?) their dedication and enthusiasm for the game is clearly visible. Apart from game mechanic debates and questions about issues like class balance the next expansion was obviously the HoT topic (ya, they made lots of puns about the acronym). Apart from the stuff like new 5 new levels, player housing and bigger bags (rejoice Vmas, you can finally start collecting more illusions, mounts, shields and weapons again!), the date of its planned release was what really surprised me: the 14th of October is about a month earlier than anticipated, making it less than 11 months since the release of Underfoot. One can speculate about the reasons for this early release (some say, it is because most guilds still struggle with the already nerfed down events in T6 and 5 additional level will make it far easier), the bottom line is that there are only 7 weeks left to beat Underfoot before it is "old content". For us in Raging Fury this means we have to focus even more on beating the last missing events in T7 so that we can see for ourselves if indeed Converteum itself is comparatively easy to beat as some folks suggested when they saw that all 3 guilds who have entered it, also have finished the expansion shortly afterwards.

If you want to be part of this team and beat expansions while they are current, then check our recruitment. We are filling open spots pretty well at the moment, so don't wait too long to apply! We are mainly looking for

We do accept applications from some of the other classes as well, so speak to our recruiters Brilhasti, Illandra, or Nalelini or talk to an officer.

Disclaimer: All rights reserved to their specific owners.

As usual I suck with pictures of the event itself, since we don't have any corpses after victories anymore, so instead I give you a shot of the happy crew that downed the Taskmaster Yeorick and his legions of minions, keyholders and miners and spoiled the "Cunning Plan":

How did we manage to get our members online every raid day in times like these? Let me show you in this awesome movie:

OK, I admit it, I stumbled across this little gem when I was looking for a movie scene about a taskmaster and his vicious whip, because that is precisely, what made "A Cunning Plan" a challenge. The Taskmaster Yeorick with his nasty bullwhip, who was responsible for the loss of much XP during the last weeks for many a Raging Fury member. Nonetheless we stayed focused on this event while still downing all the farm targets until we managed to get all the pieces into place to overcome the Taskmaster and his whip - where there's a whip, there's a way after all!

So in the end we could finally say "Alas, poor Yeorick! We knew him well." (some Shakespeare FTW for all those illiterates out there - I promised Qujam I would quote this, after all he IS a teacher IRL)

So, what did we get for our work? Apart from the usual 2 armor pieces we got us these nice new shinies:

We also have shown once again that as usual RF starts slower than some others, but once we roll, we are hard to stop - so expect some more news soon! Finally a little quote which shows that RF has some strange people in the guild (as if you hadn't noticed before):

So, if you aren't easily embarassed, we might be the right guild for you! We are filling open spots pretty well at the moment, so don't wait too long to apply! We are still looking for

We do accept applications from exceptional players from most of the other classes as well, so speak to our recruiters Brilhasti, Illandra, or Nalelini or talk to an officer.

Disclaimer: All rights reserved to their specific owners.

See your favorite characters in a spectacular feature, which has everything the EverQuest fan can only dream of!

Action: See RF fight giant robots and ants!

Suspense: Feel the thrill while officers ask themselves: "how many people will die because they can't react fast enough to emotes?"

Drama: Witness Meemers in his Oscar-nominated role as "Mad Raidleader" crying and pulling out his hair while trying to explain to our warrior team, who is responsible for what mob

Mysterious story-twists: Try to follow Kikthin on his path to discover the riddles of the temple - but don't follow too closely or you might end up in the wrong place:

Mass-scenes: Watch the biggest exodus since the "10 commandments", when the melees frantically try to scramble away from a gigantic Robocopter!

Watch treasures beyond any imagination, some of them never seen before around the world:

Get YOUR ticket now and join the dozens of enthusiasts around the world in "Raging Fury and the Temple of Brells - Part I: The Trial of Deconstruction" today!

Ask for our special tickets for Shamans, Clerics, Rogues and Wizards at our box-office or contact one of our lovely sales representatives Illandra or Nalelini. There are seats in almost every class left, but hurry up or the show will be sold out!

Be ready for the stunning second part of the "Temple of Brells"-double feature: "The Trial of Creation" which is about to be released this summer - and stay tuned for other adventures of your favorite heroes: Raging Fury!

Disclaimer: All rights reserved to their specific owners.

This raid was even harder than the previous events, we were overwhelmed by the brutal hits of the Queen and her minions quite often, so indeed this picture showing Cerberus (ya it's a female toon) tanking the Queen is fitting:

Anyway, after dozens of tries and countless deaths we managed to refine our strategy more and more and finally tonight we got the Queen down!

I was so excited that I didn't get a good screenshot of the Queen with low HP and even forgot to make shots of the loot, but here it is: Gleaming Cliknar Pincer, Sacred Engraved Hoop, Queen's Prime Minion Saddle and 2 armor pieces.

To make up for my slackness in good screenshots (I might add one or two of some of my guild mates later), I am adding an adaption of an old song by Queen (sic!:

Cliknar Queen

She keeps aphits and young ants
in her pretty cavern hive
"Let them eat dirt" she says
just like every other night
A built in remedy
for mana and level expi
At anytime an invitation
You can't decline.
AEs and rampage spanks
well versed in raping tanks
Extraordinarily fierce

(chorus)
She's the Cliknar Queen
biggest ant you've ever seen
Dynamite with a laser beam
Guaranteed to blow your raid (anytime).

Recommended at the price
insatiable appetite
Wanna try?

All you guilds out there who haven't had a look at her yet: Feel free to try her, but be prepared for a long and harsh learning process. This can be said for almost any raid in UF so far (well at least in their first incarnations), this expansion is defintiely giving us the challenge we (and most of the other bleeding edge guilds) have been asking for.

I find it rather pathetic though, when one of the most prominent US guilds had to use exploits for their first wins and continued to use other exploits to give them an advantage on fast loot and flags. The same guild which bragged that 4 groups of her members could outtank, outheal and out-DPS any full raid of every other guild, now had to whine when they were finally punished after years of exploiting, manipulating lockouts and using graphic bugs for their advantage. I won't even comment on their obvious attempt to throw dirt at other high end raid guilds to make themselves seem less shabby, because "everyone did this". I will only say that I myself would feel totally lame if I had resorted to buff-blocking or geometry tanking to beat an event first time.

So, if you want to join a high end raid guild which is still among the top after so many years without sacrificing its dignity on the altar of progression then don't look any further, just check out our recruitment section for details or talk to a recruiter or an officer.

We had had Brath at 45 percent on Tuesday and on 4 percent on Thursday, so we were quite optimistic that today he would fall. Being the leet minimum-DPS-guild we have been known as for ages (5 pallies in the raid FTW!) we managed to wipe at 0 percent on the first go today, but on the second run we did better and he finally fell on his face.

Feeling brave after this victory we thought "why not visit those pesky insects and exterminate them?" so we moved to Arthicrex and after some fine tuning on the execution we managed to make it two first kills on one day - a real Sunday afternoon double feature!

Afterwards we went for a fast look at the Cliknar Queen herself, but she was a bit annoyed about the havoc we brought to her underlings and gave us a royal spanking. Well, 3 in a row would have been too much I guess, although it would have saved me the trouble of having to write another news update soon.

PS: We have filled some of the open spots lately with some nice and skilled new folks, but there are still some slots open, especially for

We do accept applications from exceptional players from most of the other classes as well, so speak to our recruiters Illandra, or Nalelini or talk to an officer.

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.

Daring as our guild was, it attacked the fierce beast with all its might, learning by pain and suffering, that for some victories you have to labor hard and long. During the fight the guild found out many details about its fearsome foe, not the smallest of it being about the female gender of the giant creature:

Many an attempt was made to strike down the gargantuan enemy, until on a glorious night the valiant guild didn't succumb to the claws of the Beast, its mate or their hungry children. They stood strong and finally stroke down the last of their foes, so that a mighty cheer of victory arose:

'The harder the foe, the bigger the triumph' can be said, and truly, a formidable foe the Beast had been! So all assembled on the spot, where once the Beast had had its lair to see which treasures it might hold:

There was much rejoicing when Raging Fury could behold what was hidden inside the creature's lair apart from two sets of gauntlets: a precious ring and a mighty sword

So much for this week's 'Fairie Tale Hour', in a historical context I can just say that this raid was the hardest I had to work on for quite some time, so keep up the good work on those raids in Underfoot, SOE!

And now a final word from our research department:

That's all for now folks, next update when we got enough flags for the next tier raids!

OK, I don't want to disappoint you, here we go:
Shortly before our annual christmas break (a few people in RF actually DO have a life outside of EQ!) we went to that overgrown puppy in Brell's Rest and sent it home with its tail between its legs. Fippy never was an adversary worth mentioning, but this incarnation at least provided some resistance looks at the bite marks in his armor. Slack as I am, I haven't made any screenshots, so no more information there..

Of course you would! So the next adversary was a bug army and it had some nasty surprises ready:

So after we blasted through the millions (so it seemed) of smaller bugs, finally also the big one woke up:

As we had some of his nastier underlings also plowing through our ranks, I took it upon myself to deal with this mighty adversary! Look at this picture and you see what I am about to do:

But as we finally turned all of our attention to Mr. Big Ugly Bug himself, we exterminated him easily, thus ending the Cliknar Invasion

So, 2 down, 1 to go in T6, stay tuned for the next news!

PS: We are still looking for a few players to fill the gaps, but hurry, they won't stay open forever.

are the classes we are mainly looking for, but we have single spots open for some other classes as well, so check our recruitment section for details.

Not among the classes we have currently open? Don't despair yet! We do accept applications of exceptional players from many of the other classes as well, so speak to our recruiters Illandra, Nalelini or Zorland or talk to an officer if you would like to know more ;)

We have been among the top 5 for nine expansions in a row and we most certainly want to continue that streak, so we are trying to fill our ranks for the tasks ahead.

are the classes we are mainly looking for, but we have a few limited spots open for other classes as well, so check our recruitment section for details. Not among the classes we have currently open? Don't despair yet! We do accept applications of exceptional players from many of the other classes as well, so speak to our recruiters Illandra, Nalelini or Abadonn or talk to an officer officer if you want to know more.

So much for the EQ-adaption of an old Mungo Jerry song, which more or less shows what we are doing in the game during this season.

It is farm time and noone can deny it, so apart from the freshly implemented event Giants, Giants, Giants nothing really new out there, so people are enjoying the nice weather, drinks and relaxation outside of EQ. Of course we keep up our schedule to kill everything worthwhile, but we all are looking forward to new challenges in the next expansion Underfoot.

Speaking of the upcoming 16th expansion of EverQuest: if you want to become part of one of the leading guilds in this game, a guild that has managed to stay among the top 5 serverwide for 9 expansions in a row, now is the time! We are looking especially for Wizards, Rogues, Berzerkers and Clerics, but do accept applications of exceptional players from many of the other classes also, so speak to our recruiters Illandra, Nalelini, Abadonn or talk to an officer. if you want to know more.

That's it for today, only a short update, gotta get out into the sun!

*goes out humming "Da da da da da"

Imrahil

10 years later tens of thousands of players all around the globe are still wandering the lands of Norrath, so a celebration was indeed appropriate

10 years of EverQuest - this means almost 10 years of raids, from those first feeble attempts on Naggy and Vox over the really massive raids during PoP (sometimes 100+ players) till today.

For me (as for most members of raid guilds probably) raids (and of course my friends) are what keeps me playing this game after all these years, a game which certainly doesn't look as good as some of the newer rivals or attract the mass media - when did you last read an article about EQ in a games magazine, even when a new expansion has come out? Seriously, SOE, you guys need to make some advertising for this game, some hot girls are always good for ads, and we in RF have some ladies who would probably be suited very well:

Well, anyway, coming back to raids: What raids do stick out in your memory? Those that were attempted and won on the first or second go, or those that made you swear and scream in front of your PC, because you wiped again, until you finally were able to win after numerous tries? For me certainly the second part is what raiding is about - that exhilaration when everything falls into places, when on that one evening after endless tries you just reap the reward for all the hard work and your 'brothers in arms' cheer together with you in joy over a well-deserved victory.

Raids that brought that feeling to me were numerous over all those years, but some will always stick to my mind: bringing down the Rathe Council in PoP, finishing Uqua in GoD, beating the performer (pre-nerf) in DoDH or Aprosis in TBS. For other people certainly OMM in OoW will stand out, a mob Raging Fury had over 70 tries on until it finally went down.I can only imagine the great feeling of accomplishment at that moment, as I wasn't in a bleeding edge guild at that time and we struggled with the Jelvan-script. All those raids had one thing in common: they were hard and challenging and needed a full and focused raid force to finally see the loot chest:

Fast forward to the current expansion: all the raids in SoD were simply too easy, the only mildly challenging event being the Zek brothers in the Earth Theme - and the trains of our leet puller team. Listen to Yakha teaching a new app the secrets of the trade:

The Devs have admitted at the Fan Fair that raids in SoD were undertuned, and promised us that the next expansion would see more of a challenge to raid guilds. How much this is needed can be easily seen by the 'solution' they provided for the lack of content and challenge in SoD: they simply took those all-to-easy raids, cut the maximum number of players by one third and VOILA: SoD raids in 'Hard Mode' were created. How 'hard' those raids even with only 36 people are, can easily be seen when you look at the fact that the same day they were patched in, Raging Fury went ahead and cleared the complete tower as 'First guild serverwide' (yay us and the time zone advantage!) and grab the fat loot:

And here are the stats of the charm:

While it was nice to link those first new items and get tells from people from other guilds from numerous servers, nonetheless I myself wasn't overjoyed. This had mainly two reasons: first it didn't feel like such an achievement, as it just showed that the Tower of Discord with 54 people was indeed the Special Olympics of endzone raiding (after being handicapped by 1/3 it was still comfortably doable), second and much more important: I felt with those people who had to sit outside on the bench. Those people had brought us to that point where we were actually in the endzone, they had worked as hard (or farmed as long) as those who were inside on that evening. Our guild (as most successful guilds) has full or close to full raids most of the time, even in the summer period and after 6 months of farming the same content.

All those who were now only cheering from the side would have had a much better chance to be inside the raid, participating actively and working towards the common goal, if instead of an arbitrary cut of participants the difficulty of the raids themselves would have been raised.

The Devs assured us during the Fan Fair that this change of the raid size was merely a fast patch for the obvious lack of challenge and content and that raids in the next expansion 'Underfoot' would still have the size of 54 (and would be tuned more appropriately). Let's hope they stick to their words, the big raids are what makes EverQuest unique among all those MMORPGs on the market. Speaking of the new expansion (the 16th since the release of EQ back in 1999): during Fan Fair a few very early zones were shown, as the name suggests it will be set in the realm of Brell Serilis, so I certainly hope we get the chance to kill some dorfs (maybe even unDead dorfs? A paladin's dream!). It is supposed to have 13 new zones and one entrance will be through 'The Hole'.

I have been mentioning the Fan Fair a few times in this posting, this has a fairly simple reason: Raging Fury attended it this year in even bigger number than in 2008: eight Furies assembled in hot Las Vegas this June, six of them from Europe!.

OK, one of the persons on the picture is actually not from RF (Vilianna had to leave early), but nonethelss I think this shows the enthusiasm and passion for this old game which many of us share, being able to pay for such a trip or not. It also shows the friendship one can achieve across borders and time zones with fellow players from around the globe, a friendship people who call it 'only a game' can hardly understand. This is why people like us take this game so seriously, debate with passion and criticize changes we dislike so harshly.

So let's hope that indeed the chant celebrating the tenth anniversary of EQ from this year's Fan Fair will become true: '10 more years!'

Let me also congratulate those 4 guilds who have finished this expansion a few days before us and I give over to this fellow for a comment on the expansion:

So, what are your thoughts about this expansion raidwise, Lord Brekt?

OK, enough of the rambling, here is the traditional picture of the RF-crew that was in the raid upon the victory:

For those interested in the lore, this is what our good old friend Zebuxoruk has to say about our restoration of the timeline and the defeat of the invading Discordians:

So, what was the best stuff in the last months from my personal point of view? Probably this:

Come on, what guy can not feel flattered when an army of rather hot looking girls is chasing him? Really, I have said it when TBS was the new expansion, whoever did those sirens should be making the new character models, you are my hero!

Not every army consists of such lovely creatures though, here is a picture to proof that you can also get a ton of nasty looking things when you don't focus on a raid:

Of course it might also have had something to do with Pippi's (see her in the front on the picture above?) rather... open mind for weapons:

Whatever it was, it sure brought Imothep and Meph closer to each other (that's what you get for being the master of AE agro - lots of deaths and necro love):

Judging from his musical taste (not to mention running around half naked in leather all the time), Meemers would probably like to join in:

Vmas though is into some other sort of fetish - has anyone called 0800-illusion? Of course there are some limitations even to his collection:

So, SOE, if you want to make sure at least one person buys the next expansion: new bankslots FTW!

Sounds like a fun bunch of people we have here in RF? Maybe you think about joining us? There is a good chance for some classes at the moment, one of them certainly rogues:

A slight exaggeration of course, but rogues are on our wishlist at this time, along with berserkers, wizards, clerics and shamans.

We do accept applications of exceptional players from many of the other classes also, so speak to our recruiters Illandra or Abadonn or talk to an officer if you want to know more.

That's it for now, folks, farming months incoming!

Enjoy the time with family and friends, be it in EverQuest, another MMORPG or even gasp that strange game called "real life". If you want to spend some time in EQ during the holidays, you might want to have a look at Zatozia's Frostfell Overview to see what specials await you in the world of Norrath.

If you are a Rogue, Berzerker, Wizard or Cleric and think RF might be the right guild for you, then be sure to visit our recruitment section for details or talk to Illandra. Even if you are not among the needed classes we still offer the chance to become a member of the team to exceptional players from other classes, so don't be shy to ask :)