56 Bosses in 12 hours. The Jane Doe Guild All-Night Raid.

25 men and women. 7 raid instances. 56 raid bosses. 12 hours. The Jane Doe Guild All Nighter.

The plan.

Take down 56 bosses in 12 hours from 6pm until 6am in one glorious night of raiding fun.

Black Temple

Sunwell Plateau

Naxxramas

Eye of Eternity

Obsidian Sanctum

Trial of the Crusader

Ulduar

The preparations.

Some choose Red Bull, some ProPlus, others stuck to coffee and some choose cider. Here's the fuel I choose to get through the night.

The final tally.

33 bosses. 18 achievements for Deme. Realm 4th for Poke in the Eye. Realm 4th for Must Deconstruct Faster. Realm 6th for The Keepers of Ulduar. I realise most people will have these ticked off for months (if not a year or more!) but our little realm was only created with Arthas and there was a stronger focus on 10 man in the beginning.

Maiev gets a bit depressed.

Personally, I had a few bumps along the way last night. My tanking wasn't up to par in my own opinion and having only ever done Ulduar in any progression sense, once (in 10 man and I've never seen Yogg), it was tough to take it all in. To get up to Yogg, before we decided we weren't going to get any further, was a great achievement in itself. I think that was about 2 or 3am.

Mimiron 25 man. /flex

We then went on to Sunwell Plateau where I had a loregeekgasm moment when I saw Kalecgos. ZOMGWTF he's bad?!! Oh no, he's not he's been possessed. Having not played the game in BC, I wasn't fully aware of Kalecgos's story, so I got a little bit over excited at the end of that raid when I realised I could click an orb and become a blue dragon. Not ride one, not talk to one. BE AN INTERNET DRAGON.

Deme has a quiet moment to herself.

Having seen the blues in Sunwell, we felt it only fitting to head over and see the Patriach himself, Malygos. Love him or hate him, this fight is a lot of fun in my book. I'm riding a dragon ffs!!

Dying is the only way to get a decent picture.

Finally with about an hour to go (I could be wrong my mind is a little fuzzy on this now) we headed over to Naxxramas. Sure it's old. Sure it's been cleared by every man and his dog and no one cares about it any more. But at 5am after 11 hours of raiding, with people now falling by the way side and 19 left fighting through the sleep deprivation, it's like a welcoming old friend who has a cozy mattress waiting for you. We cleared the Spider Wing, got Arachnophobia for those who hadn't got it and then someone mentioned the Plague quarter.

With something like 20 minutes left we headed in. Tiredness was clearly apparent as we died on trash. A quick run back and a dash through and we were good for Patchwerk. With Verde saying "10 minutes to go folks!" we dropped it like it was hot. And then some clever sod said "Let's do Grobbulus!". I cried inside and felt all the pain of last autumn coming back to me. Not him, please not him. I don't want to die to that stinky fucker at this time of night. Haven't we done enough? Aren't we happy now? Apparently no, we had not done enough. No we were not happy yet. I don't think he made it 1/2 way round the room. Take that bitch. Take that in your stupid injection arm. Take that in your ugly face.

All in all, 33 bosses went down. The rest are on notice. God dayum it was fun. Shoddy video below of our Dragon Parade high above Dragonblight at the end of the night.

Off to sleep,

Deme

Why Do You Raid?

As the title suggests I want to know why you raid. There was a rather heated debate on our guild chat channel the other day about people not wanting to raid Ulduar 25 man because they didn't need the loot. This was swiftly dismissed, with most people agreeing that the achievement and the pleasure of playing with 24 other like minded people was incentive enough. As often happens to my brain when I'm reading guild chat (on this occasion over my spousal unit's shoulder) I started wondering about people's motives to raid.

What makes you want to raid? Are you a phat lewt and purps demon? Do you lust for the thrill of the fight and the "whoosh ding" of the achievement? Do you just want to play with a like minded group of players, take out some more difficult bosses and have fun? Perhaps you are driven by seeing the inside of all those amazing instances and following the lore.

This may pique your interest into why I raid so here's my reasons.

I'm a wee bit ashamed to say that Deme is still effectively in Naxx. Sapp and KT are proving to be a bit of a bugger for us. We really should be facerolling it because we're overgeared for the instance so there's something wrong somewhere. Anyway, the point is, we're there because we want to do it. We want to say we pwned that stupid undead floating dress and his bony pet lizard. There is very little loot that would be of interest to most of us. Even as a relatively casual raid group, we spend most of our time enjoying other aspects of the game and so our gear is mainly from emblems, we certainly don't need stuff from Naxx particularly.

We also wanted to do it to bond as a group of 10 people before we moved onto the harder raids. We've had people come and go and had to replace a few members here and there so that hasn't helped. However I'd say we are now settled and have a great team who all know their roles. The raiding has helped us bond and learn to trust each other to do the role required.

I must confess though, for me, I am addicted to the "whoosh ding". I've even grown to like the little one you get when you complete a random dungeon. I adore the noise, the sense of pride, the shared sense of achievement with 9 other people and most of all, the cheers that go out on TS and the over guild chat. I also get a kick from downing bosses. My biggest geekgasm to date has been from downing the Twins in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. I'd spent a long time wiping on them a few months before and for some reason we never mastered them. This time we did and boy did it feel good! Better even than downing that horrid big green bag of pus Grobbulus. Loot? What loot?! I was level 80 and this was a level 60 instance! We did have a level 60 drood with us who loved it, but for me, I wasn't bothered at all. Not even if it was pretty. I just grinned from ear to ear for dropping those bitch slapping brothers.

Do tell what makes you go back again and again to those raid instances.

Deme the Under-Achiever

btw I know I'll never see that mace, but damn is it sweet.