Game Theory
From Game Theory
Game Theory is a World of Warcraft guild on the Proudmoore server, Alliance. We are focused on end-game Raiding Progression in the WoW expansion pack, The Burning Crusade. Our primary goal is to progress through all of the content that Blizzard can throw at us before it becomes outdated (those of you who were unable to complete Nax before TBC shipped know what we mean).
Application Information
Potential applicants might be interested in:
Please read and understand the guidelines before posting an application. Currently Game Theory is accepting applications for certain classes and roles. Please see our application forum for details. We are currently recruiting players to round out the roster for a third and fourth 25-man raid each week. Please see our Raid Calendar for details.
News and Events
| What's shakin' in Game-Town. | |
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[edit] PREPARE YOURSELVES! |  |
| We had a play date with the Betrayer. He pretty much knocked us around for 4 hours, but we learned a lot and will be back soon for some more.|
--Aetty | |
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[edit] 2008-07-20 Black Temple: Illidari Council disbanded! |  |
| So, we had an hour or so to see the Council and get a first peek after our Mother kill last week. This week, we had a great BT night 1 (5 bosses down) which let us really sink our teeth into the Council after a quick Gorefiend and a not so quick Mother. All in all, we had about 2 hours left on the Council. About a thrid of the raid had not been (including the not so illustrious leader-of-the-evening), so the first hour or so we spent mucking around getting everyone used to the fight. Then it just clicked. Move the rogue over with the priest, this allows for some extra dps from the rogues, and an extra raid healer. Announce what mage is next on the Counterspell rotation after breaks. These two little things seemed to be the trick. On the last pull of the evening we officially disbanded the Illidari Council. Total time: 3 hours.
--Aetty | |
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[edit] 2008-07-13 Black Temple: Mother Shahraz down! |  |
| Preparation prevents perspiration in an almost anti-climactic progression kill. We had our resist gear ready. The tanks laughed at everyone else's ugly hats and pants. We made everyone get the Easy Mother addon (no, really). We formulated a plan, and we executed it. And Mother Shahraz was summarily dispatched on the second attempt of the night. At which point many people promptly switched back into their much better-looking regular gear for this lovely portrait. (Any of my guildies have better?)
Insert obligatory crude jokes about your mom here. --Fatima | |
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[edit] 2008-06-08 Black Temple: Reliquary of Souls down! |  |
| After a couple days of failing to get the Deadened addon working for our rogues, Knewt stepped up and wrote his own addon to help deal with kicking Spirit Shocks and not Deadens. After that, it was pretty much cake. Well, maybe except for the bit where I died about 5 seconds or so before Reliquary did, but that's neither here nor there. Awesome work, everyone!
Now it's time to go home to Mother. Sorry about the much belated post about this. --Lelenia | |
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[edit] 2008-05-15 Hyjal Summit: Archimonde Down, Hyjal Clear! |  |
| An amazing turnout tonight, a big thanks to everyone who came out but I couldn't squeeze into the raid tonight. The past few months have been really great from a raid leading perspective. Solid, well-rounded rosters every night, and ten progression kills in the last two months. Fantastic.
This fight took us four full nights to down. In one sense, the fight is similar to Teron Gorefiend - intense personal responsibility, where a lapse in execution will wipe the raid - except that it does a much better job of spreading that responsibility across the entire raid. Grats to everyone with a T6 hat! I don't think we picked up any 2pc bonuses yet, but soon. :) --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-05-09 Black Temple: Gurtogg Bloodboil Down! |  |
| This is one of those fights where the first few attempts are "wait, why is everyone dead? When did that happen?" Very intense, and very demanding on the healers. They're not kidding when they say to bring 8 or 9 - we brought 7 (thanks to everyone who respeced for the fight), and had a shadow priest put on heal gear, and it was rough. Excellent job from the healing team on this one. Once you get over that hump, the fight actually settles into a nice rhythm (at least for DPS, I'm not sure if the tanks would call it "nice" exactly). On the kill, Knewt actually ended up getting two rages back to back ("Gogo evasion tank!" ... "OK, we actually need to heal this one"), and managed to put out some insane damage. Very nice.
--Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-04-26 Molten Core: Ragnaros Down! |  |
| It's amazing how quickly these old bosses die - we used to dash ourselves upon them back in the day, and now they simply melt under the withering gaze of our TBC epics. Stein organized a retro night, and we actually had pretty high turnout. Some people showed up in full T2, while others brought alts that they never thought would be getting any Hydraxian rep (much less T1 - good lord that stuff was itemized poorly). All in all, a fun night of antics and wankery. Don't ask about the Core Hound packs.
Looking forward to BWL! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-04-18 Hyjal Summit: Azgalor Down! |  |
| Yet another smooth kill. Almost too smooth, actually - kind of anticlimactic, really. To the point where this notice is going up three weeks late. >.<
Grats to those getting the first pieces of T6! :) --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-04-13 Black Temple: Teron Gorefiend Down! |  |
| This is a fight that is highly dependent on a subset of the individuals in the raid - it's one extreme end of the "personal responsibility" style of raid encounter. On top of that, the tasks that the ghosted people have to perform are very twichy - lag, confusion and bad tab order can turn the situation Oopsey Bear fairly quickly. The farther that your interface setup is from stock, the less the simulator is a good way of trying to learn. Lord knows I was having problems, even with a lot of time on the simulator.
However, once you get a run with no back-to-back loose adds, then you have people able to assist with the next round and things flow much more smoothly. "Easy to learn, hard to master." Glad to see that we're keeping up with our "pull a boss once, then kill them the next time" pattern! Can't wait to get some quality time with Bloodboil (though Hyjal next week should prove equally entertaining). --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-04-02 Hyjal Summit: Kaz'rogal Down! |  |
| It's really striking the difference that being post-T5 makes on the caliber of your raiding team. There are things that get thrown at you that would have put GT-six-months-ago into the panicked throes of a wipe-in-progress. Now, it's a different story. Double pulls of BT trash? No problem. Wonky Hyjal trash waves? Sure.
I can't overstate how satisfied it makes me to see this level of cohesion and capability in the guild - learning and mastering the Vashj and Kael fights tempers a guild, and I can tell that we've been through that. That's not to say we're perfect - there's always room to better one's self. But we're able to keep up, and it's a fun ride. Kaz is a bit of a wonky fight (we need to spread out more), but the real difficulty are the first 8 phases to the fight and that a mistake in phase 9 means you have to start over. Of course, that just encourages people to not wipe, so I think it's a net wash. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-03-31 Black Temple: Supremus and the Shade of Akama Down! |  |
| Say what you will about the Shade of Akama fight, but it's a fun encounter... Let's just say that Shade found the marble in the oatmeal. Maybe more like an interactive cutscene, really. In any case, it was fun.
Supremus was a good fight too - a little bit of running around, a little bit of pew-pew. Protip: he charges if you're outside of 40 yards, not the other way around. Dunno why we thought it was the reverse. The real treat of the night was getting Gorefiend to 37% on the first pull (though he's got a ton of trash beforehand; not sure how much time we can squeeze out of that clear). Time for some more fun with the simulator! (Note: sound warning) --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-03-27 Black Temple: High Lord Naj'entus Down! |  |
| Our second peek into the sewers under The Black Temple came much more prepared than our first. Complete with a full load of healers and a strategy in mind we took a couple attempts to familiarize those who were not around for the first night. After a couple tweaks in positioning and an emphasis on keeping people +8500 hp just before the shield went up, we slaughtered ourself one more (please let it be the last) Naga!
Zero deaths (1 hunter who got Brez'd doesn't count right?) and a nasty pull of elementals later we were looking around inside the gate and were out of the muck. We had fun playing with flying mobs that can only sometimes be tanked by tanks and got some great experience on Supremus. I'm sure there'll be a picture of a big dead rock here soon! --Aetty | |
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[edit] 2008-03-24 Mount Hyjal: Anetheron Down! |  |
| We started the evening with another Kael kill (more vials: check), and then changed things up so that we had attuned people for Hyjal (as it turned out, the last time this would matter ;). Our pattern in Hyjal seems to be one trash wipe, one boss wipe, and then a kill.
In this case, getting everyone spread out properly around the boss seemed to be key - the positioning doesn't feel natural, because the space you have available is a bit cramped, so you end up with healers jammed in odd spots. Once that gets sorted out, things fall into place though. The night ended with us forgetting about the mining nodes and having most of the raid leave... So we had to jump through some hoops to get the right people summoned back so that we could mine up some Blood Spinels. Seriously? Green gems? Five nodes though, that's not too bad. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-03-16 Mount Hyjal: Rage Winterchill Down! |  |
| What a great week. Full clears of TK, SSC, (second kills of both Kael and Vashj in the same week? Yes, please) and a chance to poke our heads into Hyjal for the first time, all in about 12 hours of raiding. Excellent work by everyone, and a big thanks to everyone shuffled around as we rearranged the roster to get additional people vialed.
While we generally try to avoid running over our raid times, people were rabid about finally seeing some new content (we first saw Vashj and Kael over three months ago). After the first wave of abominations (and the subsequent wipe, not to mention having an epic despawn on us), there was a collective "Oh, so it's going to be like that, then." Another round of trash later, we're looking at Ras...ge Fostwhisperchill (that joke's never going to get old), and a few "tank transitions" later he's dead and only some of us are. As I've said before, sometimes you want clean kills, and sometimes you want 'em dirty. Jaina would be Proud. Update: Video here, thanks Lelenia. No, really. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-03-10 Tempest Keep: Kael'Thas Down, TK Clear! |  |
| This post feels damn good.
First kills are an interesting beast, especially of bosses that we have been putting weeks upon weeks of work into. Getting to where we are right now has been a whole-guild effort. From the people who helped drop Attumen for the first time to our recent arrivals to the raiders there for the kill, it's been a team effort all the way. Building that team over the past 14 months has been amazing; I'm really looking forward to what's up next (T6, anyone?). And we won't even have to go to Kite School. Sweet. Update: Video here, thanks Lelenia. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-03-06 Zul'Aman: Hexlord and Zul'Jin Down, ZA Clear! |  |
| A great run the night before (Hexlord died on the 5th, technically) left ZA with only Zul'Jin standing, and bloodied at that. On the second night, the team reformed and went to work. Several hard-fought attempts later (16%! Argh!) ZJ finally toppled, leaving everyone to bask in the adulation of the Amani.
Beer and fireworks were on-hand to mark the occasion. Very nice work! A big thanks to everyone who's put in effort into getting ZA clear. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-02-24 Serpentshrine Cavern: Lady Vashj Down, SSC Clear! |  |
This post feels good.
Sometimes I feel like I can't Run away I just can't Get away From the naga spawning right on top of me That strider there Is running everywhere Now I just can't kite I can only turn Can't move left or right Once I ran to you Now I run from you This Tainted Core you've thrown me I click on all the lamps up near me Strider fears and that's not nearly all Tainted Core Tainted Core --Lelenia | |
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[edit] 2008-01-13 Game Theory celebrates its first birthday! |  |
| How far we have come! What started off as an experiment among friends has grown into full-blown success (and yet, still among friends :). A year back we couldn't have fielded a Karazhan run on our own, and here we are a year later with Lady Vashj at 37% and counting. Thanks to everyone who's helped make this happen!
Happy birthday, Game Theory! Here's looking to an amazing year coming. --Tantred |
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