News Archive
From Game Theory
Only relatively recent news items are kept on the main page. The rest are moved here. For a more detailed list of our raiding kills, please see the Raiding Progression page.
Old News from 2009
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[edit] 2009-09-01 Trial of the Crusader: Anub'arak down! |  |
| He is one mean bug. At least on normal difficulty, the fight is chaotic enough to be very engaging without overwhelming. Of course, now that we have unlocked the heroic difficulty, I'm sure that we'll find the heroic versions of everything in the coliseum are a fair bit more difficult. But that's why they call it heroic, right? Looking forward to Heroic Ferocious Butt!
--Fatima | |
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[edit] 2009-08-20 Ulduar: I Choose You, Steelbreaker! |  |
| When you choose Steelbreaker, it either goes swimmingly well or it implodes in a hurry. And in this Priest's opinion, it is very, very wrong for a Warlock to Soulstone a Death Knight.
Oh, we also beat up a bunch of Horde NPCs in some crazy coliseum somewhere. Chugga chugga assist train toot toot! --Fatima | |
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[edit] 2009-08-12 Ulduar: Heartbreaker! |  |
| We are bad toys. Very bad. Now Mimiron is totally justified in saying that we made a mess with XT-002.
--Fatima | |
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[edit] 2009-07-21 Ulduar: Orbit-uary! | |
| That's "Flame Leviathan Plus Four" in more colloquial terms. Our first of hopefully many hardest-mode kills of Ulduar bosses. Pro tip: don't die, especially if you're in a Salvaged Demolisher. XT-002, you're on notice.
--Fatima | |
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[edit] 2009-07-12 Ulduar: Yogg-Saron Down! Calamari Anyone? |
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| A long time coming, this one, and once we got it, we got it almost comfortably. Well, as comfortably as you can make it when your existence is threatened by tentacles of questionable intention. (Ew!) Many thanks to those who endured the many wipes to get us here, and another measure of kudos to our crack 10-raider research team for providing additional perspective on how we could, um, kill a death god. (You'd think he'd be able to do it himself. Slacker.)
Most amusing wipe of the night: Yogg-Saron casting "Extinguish All Life" twice because Hodir saved the entire raid the first time. Undoubtedly the future holds hard modes for us -- the hard modes that actually matter. --Fatima | |
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[edit] 2009-05-17 Ulduar: General Vezax Demoted! |
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| If not dishonorably discharged. One of our quicker progression kills, if memory serves.
Next up: Snoop-Yoggy-Saron and his tentacizzles. --Fatima | |
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[edit] 2009-05-06 Ulduar: Hodir Burned Down! |
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Probably best if I start off with a quote from Lelenia:
This WOULD have been a picture of Hodir standing by the prison, but Tantryst had to go and talk to him, causing him to despawn. Dumbass. Can you find the Tantryst of mini-rabbit shame? Hint: he's on the right side, near Oryian. However! My screenshot nubbery aside... This kill puts us at #7 on the server (for the time being - it's really only fair to look at the rankings Tuesday night, at reset). Great job, all! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2009-05-04 Ulduar: Mimiron Lit Up! |
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At last, a gnome boss above level 35. Why, tho, are the only two gnome bosses in the game both homicidal maniacs? Anyway, if Millhouse Manastorm was in Ulduar with us last night, he'd have wondered, "Who ordered up an extra large can of whoop-ass? Who's bad? Who's bad? That's right: we bad!" --Night | |
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[edit] 2009-05-03 Ulduar: Thorim down! |
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Finally got a reasonable balance between the gauntlet group and the arena group and got Thorim down. Took a few fish feasts but we did it. --Night | |
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[edit] 2009-04-27 Ulduar: Iron Council and Freya down! |
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| This night rounded out the antechamber - 8 or 9 pulls total on the Assembly of Iron, total. About the same on Freya, IIRC - certainly one of those "oh, that's how that's supposed to go" fights (not helped by having one of your MTs having his mic on mute for the majority of the attempts >.< ).
It's interesting, GT is, for the first time, in a position where we're just ahead of the nerf curve. Almost every boss in Ulduar that we'd already killed (and one or two that we hadn't yet) got nerfed the next server reset. They changed the enrage timer (so I hear) on XT-002 to ten minutes. If you're in a guild that learned it when it was six the tuning difference is really surprising. Horrible, sloppy attempts that feel like they're going to be wipes (and rightly so) turn into one-shots. Score! However, it really feels like there's a lot of headroom to this - as a guild that's put in some serious work in FL+2 and less serious work on Disarmed, I'm looking forward to how progression plays out once all of the bosses are done for, and it's hard modes that begin to distinguish guilds from one another. It will still be a bit until we get our Iron-Bound Protodrakes, but I'm happy with how we've been progressing, and look forward to more hard modes in the future. I've also been enjoying the instance on a personal level - it's a fun place, and it doesn't feel like there are any spots (so far) that are just "oh god, we have to do this again?" Maybe the trash gauntlet before FL, but hey - you're in a tank, amirite? Anyway, the bosses are interesting, the trash is varied, non-trivial, but not overbearing (I'm looking at you, SSC), the environment is cool to look at. Good job, Blizzard. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2009-04-23 Ulduar: Kologarn and Auriaya |
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| Poor Kologarn, all alone in his pit with his grabby right hand. We paid him a friendly visit, danced over his body as a bridge, and pow-wowed on his head. Right (and left) hands are out of commission, but as you can see, he's getting lots of head.
After Kologarn, we went to visit Auriaya. Her kittens pounced, we died horrible deaths at their paws/maws of cuteness, and then we slew them all. And took a nap. Next up, Iron Council! --Blue | |
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[edit] 2009-04-19 Ulduar: The Siege Cleared! |
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Been a while, eh? We spent the time twiddling our thumbs in Nax, but now...
This one was a little frustrating - this was the only boss we got to see on the PTR, so we wanted to start off Ulduar with FL+2, but they changed how the towers are activated since the test realm. Doh! We ended up one-shotting FL, the server crashing, and having to submit tickets to get any of the loot. We didn't even get a decent killshot - the body was gone after the server crash. Ahh, the joys of patch day raiding!
We'd gotten Razor down to 15% on night 1, but it took some positioning tweaks in order for us to really get on top of the p1 adds. After that a few attempts to get a feel for p2, and Razor went down.
We kept consistently hitting 8% at the enrage, wondering what on earth we were doing wrong. Everything felt right, but we just kept running up against the timer. Once again, some positioning changes and everything fell into place (blob in the middle; it's not fancy, but it gets the job done).
One of the dangers of early-patch raiding is that things will get tweaked while you're still working on a boss (Razorscale actually got nerfed about an hour after we killed her); the second time we saw Ignis he'd been both nerfed (yeah, 30k hits on MT plate is a bit much) and fixed (no, you can't do that 30k hit on the clothie you just put in the slag pot). Not certain (we'll need to give the progression sites a few days to catch up), but I think we're the 3rd guild on the server to complete the siege area (of course, many of them skipped Ignis to go ahead and work on the Iron Council / Kologarn / etc.). A great week! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2009-01-26 The Obsidian Sanctum Crumbles: Twilight Zone! |  |
| Wow. What a fight... Personally, while there is a certain level of the random number generator just deciding that you die now, I think that a large portion of that is actually controllable, in the sense that if everyone's topped off, it takes a relatively rare pathological case to have the fight go south. Basically, not exposing any weak points for the RNG to capitalize on.
Easier said than done, of course. We came in last week with 5 healers, and while we were making progress, it was apparent that raid healing was suffering. 6 tonight seemed to be more on top of things. Tonight was different. I felt a definite sense of possibility - not certainty, just the possibility - that we'd have a kill tonight. Everyone knew what it was they needed to do, it was just a matter of clean (flawless, really) execution. Great work! And grats to Oryian on the sexy new mount - hover in Krasus' Landing with pride! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2009-01-08 The Eye of Eternity: Malygos Down! |  |
| Smells like burnt blue dragon in here. It helps that we had a couple crack squads defeat his non-heroic cousin in the days prior. Best-in-slot epix notwithstanding, I'd like to get Alexstrasza's hat on a Gnome; it would look absolutely adorable.
Next on our menu: Sartharion tartare with three side dishes. -- Fatima |
Old News from 2008
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[edit] 2008-12-14 The Dread Citadel Naxxramas Clear! |  |
| We're still waiting on the Sapphiron killvid (youtube is blocking Lelenia's choice in music, which is very lame), but we actually killed Sapphiron last reset, 2008-12-08, on the third or fourth pull. We got KT under 20% that night too, but a void zone did us in early (beetles make them hard to see).
So we decided to fix that this week - we got Heroic: The Hundred Club tonight, a first kill on KT, and we killed Sartharion with one drake up. Mix in some Malygos attempts, and you have a solid night of raiding. Nice work, all. -- Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-12-02 The Obsidian Sanctum: Sartharion Down! |  |
| A bit sloppy ("Oh, the lava comes from over there..."), but a one-shot nonetheless. This is going to be really interesting to do with more of the drakes up; portals and adds and lava... Should be a good time. We'll try one drake on for size next week, and see how we go from there.
Grats to those who got the awesome bags! -- Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-12-01 Wrath of the Lich King / Naxxramas / Tier 7 Roundup |
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| So there's been a lot of goings-on in the past few weeks. Instead of a million individual news posts, we're going to have a single big roundup post that calls out the highlights.
Grats to Tinmor, Gt's first 80!
5-man party contest still going strong! http://www.gtguild.net/raid/party Blue has the lead at the moment, but a number of people are close behind! With the onsent of heroic raids coming a bit earlier than expected, we're going to let the contest run a bit longer than originally stated (and interest in the heroic 5-mans remains high, so it works out). There's still time for an upset! Back in the saddle for Nax-25! As you may have heard, the tier 7 raid instances aren't tuned like they were in TBC. We took our first raid into Nax-25 and one-shot both the Spider and Plague wings, and clearing to the Four Horsemen. Aran/Magtheridon it ain't. It's kind of sad how first kills just mean that you leveled quickly. It was a good time, though, and I look forward into digging into the achievements. So, a quick update as to where we are ATM:
Starting 2008-12-02 we'll probably go back to individual first kill posts (one per night, anyway), but I'll be damned if I have to find enough quotes for all of the above. -- Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-11-13 GT Sets Sail to Northrend! |  |
| GT heads to Northrend and puts Malygos and Arthas on notice. See you all in the snow.
-- Anirul | |
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[edit] 2008-10-28 Black Temple: Warglaive. |  |
| Game Theory has a legendary weapon. Need more be said?
-- Fatima | |
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[edit] 2008-10-19 Sunwell Plateau: Felmyst Re-Deaded! |  |
| Nightbane on steroids, she is. Yet she is so much more. Or, rather, was. Who will be first to 8T6? And will we defeat the Dreaded Ledge Boss, neighbor of the lovely Eredar Twins? Stay tuned!
-- Fatima | |
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[edit] 2008-10-18 Dustwallow Marsh: Onyxia Down! |  |
| Fourteen raiders, two minutes and nine seconds. Waaaaay too slow. Too bad the realm decided to get unplayable before we could move on to the main course of Molten Core. Many thanks to everyone's favorite surly dwarf Stein for organizing these retro raiding nights. Hopefully the next one won't be interrupted early. Ahn'Qiraj anyone?
-- Fatima | |
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[edit] 2008-10-16 Sunwell Plateau: Kalecgos Emancipated, Brutallus Slain! |  |
| FOR SCIENCE! How far can we go before we all shuffle off to Northrend? Watch this space to find out. My picture of Sathrovarr's hollow shell really stinks, and if someone could provide a better one, that would be nifty. P.S. officers == slack kthxbai.
-- Fatima | |
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[edit] 2008-08-24 Black Temple: Illidan Stormrage Down! |  |
| 586 days later, Illidan Stormrage died. The end.
You have reached the end of the Internet, please turn around. The original goal of Game Theory has been met now - thanks to all of our members, both active and away from the game. As usual, we had a great turnout, and it pains me to tell people that they're sitting out, but at the end of the day, I can only bring 25. Thanks to everyone who has been working on this fight with us! It was a hard-fought fight - Illidan has a lot of gears to fit together, and they've all got teeth. We spent a lot of time figuring out what strategic errors we were making by examining the tactical problems we were having, but once we sorted things out, it seemed to make a noticeable difference (well, obviously!). Great work, one and all. It's a good day to be in GT. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2008-08-06 GT Gets a Bear |  |
| Wow. We cleared the last of the four bosses with mere seconds on the timer, but we finally got ourselves a bear mount! Unbelievably, there were three 100s rolled! Grats Rakoff! I'm sure Stein will eventually get over it...but not before he moons you a few more times. We'll keep trying to get some more. Good work.
--Aetty | |
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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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[edit] 2008-01-10 Late Night with GT |  |
| What started as a handful of post-raid Game Theory members completing the PvP daily has grown by leap and bounds; we're now regularly dominating all of the smaller BGs. Most nights we can be found 5-capping in AB, running EotS shutouts, etc. Those are nice, but when you've got Druids capping in tree form, you know you're doing something right. And some things very, very wrong - but it's all in the name of fun and games. Interested parties should send a tell to any of the Late Night regulars that might be running BGs after midnight - we're always happy to pick up more people if the group isn't already full.
More details can be found on the LateNight wiki page - check there for info and updates. Good hunting! --The Late Night Crew |
Old News from 2007
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[edit] 2007-12-07 Serpentshrine Cavern: Fathom-Lord Karathress and Morogrim Tidewalker Down! |   |
Game Theory is crazy. Crazy Awesome. This is the second time in less than a month that we've killed two progression bosses in a single night (and that's not counting ZA!). I was floored by our performance at Leo; we couldn't possibly top that. But we did! Oh yes, yes we did. But! But what could the future possibly hold? Well, I got a fortune cookie here, and it says:
She's a cold-hearted snake Look into her eyes Oh oh oh She's been tellin' lies She's a lover girl at play She don't play by the rules Oh oh oh GT don't play the fool--no Movie to follow shortly; look here soon! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-12-02 Serpentshrine Cavern: Leotheras the Blind Down! |  |
| So Tantred was all like, "Guys, guys, I have super mega awesome FR gear now, let's spend 5 hours learning Leo on Sunday!" And the rest of us were like "K."
Already having cleared Matt Damon and Lurker previously this week, we waded into unknown territory, preparing for the worst that the evil Lady Vashj could throw at us. Only to discover it was mostly just more Naga and a few Broken Ones that could lawl-shield really well. Then after 3.5 attempts on (yeah, I'm still confused about the half attempt too), and in large part due to our platoon of Druids, we had one dead blood elf demon thingie on our hands. And in less time than it took for his trash to respawn. Half of SSC officially cleared! --Stein | |
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[edit] 2007-11-26 Zul'Aman: Dragonhawk Avatar Down! |  |
| This is a fun fight - pure chaos. Two types of adds, AoE bombs, teleports and an interesting DPS mechanic (hold DPS at 40% unless you really like dragonhawks). We'd been working on the fight and been making progress, but bringing two AoE classes and a paladin OT is almost like cheating. Almost.
After that, we got to go play with Hex Lord Malacrass. What a jerk. Seriously. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-11-18 Zul'Aman: Bear, Eagle and Lynx Avatars Down! |  |
| Our handful of forays into ZA on the PTR were successful; GT was able to down both the Bear and Eagle bosses with two separate groups our first night into the instance on live (this was actually the 16th). Followup nights had the Lynx boss down, and Dragonhawk to 9% (on the 18th). Great work.
It seems that the greatest challenge is finding time to run all of the interesting content! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-11-14 Tempest Keep: Al'ar and Astromancer Solarian Down! |  |
| We were actually supposed to go to Magtheridon tonight for a little bit of loot farming, but when raid time came, we only had one warlock online, so instead we decided to go back to the Keep. What a good idea! We tweaked our Ember strat a little - kill them until about 50% phase 1, then keep some DPS on them in phase 2 (a mage to soften them up with blizzard, and a 'lock to finish them off after they were off-tanked), and we were able to sustain the fight long enough to finish the job. It wasn't exactly a clean kill, but sometimes the dirty ones are the best. ;)
We'd pulled Solarian one other night a few weeks ago, but decided that the trash was enough of a pain to justify killing Al'ar first before we spent any more time working on her. Sure enough, a few tries to get the kinks worked out and we hit the magical 20% line. Nice. Key item about the adds - they have wonky aggro, so it's not worth waiting to open up AoE on them (and if there's one thing our AoErs are good at, it's not waiting to open up). Tomorrow we're going to cancel our first official ZA run so that we can mop up Void Reaver... And go say "hi!" to Kael. Woot! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-10-15 Serpentshrine Cavern: Hydross Down! (Matt Damon!) |  |
| Forms FORM-79827285-32
Raid Assessment Report This was a triumph But there's no sense hiding, holding up in our homes (With apologies to Jonathan Coulton) --Lelenia | |
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[edit] 2007-09-21 Magtheridon's Lair: Magtheridon Down! |  |
| Two days of solid work on Mags sees him eating floor. Nice work. Our tank loadout was Lelenia, Foker, Loaffy (also on Mags himself), Dreamspirit, Mekkatorque; nice to see a little switchup of our normal roster. Everyone did really well - our starting DPS on the channelers was a bit low to start, but we tightened that up within a few attempts. We'd gotten him to 26% the evening before, and once we worked out the timing of the transition to phase 3, everything clicked into place.
Worst part of the whole evening? Having to DE a first kill drop. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-08-29 Serpentshrine Cavern: Lurker Down! |   |
| A scene from the screenplay of our upcoming major motion picture:
SCENE: Int. Coilfang VIP Lounge - Night CRYSTALCORE MECHANIC and PURE SPAWN OF HYDROSS recline on two of the many couches lining the dripping walls of the Coilfang VIP Lounge. Sporebats flit back and forth with drink orders. Vashj's private table is roped off and empty. A poisoned HYDROSS THE UNSTABLE stands in the entryway, looking around. Nearby, a TAINTED SPAWN OF HYDROSS is licking the wall.
PURE SPAWN OF HYDROSS: "Their persistence is most troublesome. One can hardly get any work done! I've barely sat down with my manuscript, when suddenly I'm up to my bracers in Hellfire!"
"Yah, deys be likin' to bust heads. We fixes robots, dey wrecks 'em again. Boss not happy."
"Quite. Did you hear what happened to Lurker?"
COILFANG AMBUSHER: "A ssheep! They turned me into a ssheep the entire time! I will sstink of wet wool for a week! Thiss iss an outrage! Ssomething musst be done!"
--Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-07-29 Karazhan: Single Day Clear |  |
| 9.8 raiders. 4.5 hours. 11.1 bosses. 4 Void Crystals. Zero wipes.
Hard to find fault with a run like that. The Prince fight was pretty crazy - Neverwind hopped on venty and said "Wait, have you guys one-shot every boss so far?" just before the pull. Argh! Phase two was kind of messy - we're pulling the Prince through overlapping infernals to find safety, using the Shadow Nova to move the tank around, etc. We crammed ourselves into a corner for phase three, and were able to just DPS him down without more interference from the infernals. Most of the loot taken was of the "I guess that's an upgrade..." variety, but that's still better than sharding everything. A great run! (Math check: we 9-manned the first two bosses, so 9.8 raiders, and chess only really counts as 1/10th of a boss.) --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-07-17 Tempest Keep: Void Reaver Down! |  |
| Ahh, progression! We've spent the last few months building the guild, and tonight (Tantred's birthday, of all things!) it paid off - our first back-on-the-progression-list kill! Special thanks to our three guests for the evening - great to have you along!
We had gone into Tempest Keep the week before, and gotten a few attempts in after learning the trash (Crystalcore Mechanics can go die in a fire, seriously), and we came back with a little more rogue arcane resist and a slightly better strat. Everything clicked on our third attempt. We had a very smooth kill - zero deaths. Honestly, it's one of those fights where once you know how to kill him, assuming non-stupid class balance, it should be pretty easy. Too bad there's so much trash to clear before getting to the boss. Nice work all around. "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball." I love this guild - awesome birthday present! Better screenshot this time too! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-07-06 Gruul's Lair: All GT Clear! |  |
| We rolled in with our first all-GT raid and tore down the house. Maulgar in 2 tries, and Gruul on the first attempt. About 1/3 of the raid hadn't even been inside the instance yet, and we're one-shotting Gruul...
I love this guild. Too bad I framed the screenshot so poorly. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-06-16 Serpenshrine Cavern: Durability Down! |  |
| We entered the Caverns in force; a SWAT team, a squad of commandos, a delta force stocked with raiders locked, cocked, and ready to rock. After a whirl-wind tour of Hydross, Tidewalker, Blind Leo and Karathress, we summoned our stealthed druids and rogues back, and promptly turned our wrath upon a nearby Sporebat, shredding his health down to 99% before getting charged, silenced, knocked down, and blasted with arcane damage. We declared the battle a technical victory, and proceeded to experiment with rezzing on the elevator (science says: rezzing when you're on the elevator just means you die again), Paladin bubble (science says: you'll fall longer than the shield lasts), blessing of protection (science says: you can't click it fast enough; they still die), and general all-around wonkery.
A good time was had by all: Serpentshrine Antics In other news, this was our first week of running two parallel Karazhan raid IDs. Nice work everyone! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-05-19 Gruul's Lair: Gruul Down! |  |
| It was a long time coming, but it was inevitable. After an 11% attempt last week, GT and Has Aggro brought in Surfacing as well to round out the raid balance, and Gruul promptly went down on the third try. Special thanks to Aud for swapping out for Chachi, as she recognized that too many melee dps might be more of a liability.
Next stop on the GT Progression Train: Magtheridon! --Lelenia | |
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[edit] 2007-04-26 Karazhan: Nightbane Down, Karazhan Clear! |  |
| We killed Nightbane on our third attempt, and thus locked in our position on the Karazhan progression list (13th on the server, not bad for a little upstart guild ;). It's a pretty standard dragon fight while he's on the ground; the hard part is while he's in the air (hrm, sound familiar?). Stance dance, round up the skellies and turn up spell effects so that you can see Charred Earth. Simple.
It's kind of weird to be here; we've been pushing to get every Karazhan boss down for the past 57 days (not too shabby!), and now we'll shift gears a bit and really work on growing the guild up to 25-man levels. I want to also give thanks for the support of the entire guild; it's great to see the guild turn out in droves for learning/progression nights. Slumlord, Thejubi and Xandria all deserve recognition for being team players, even though they didn't make the run. Thanks, guys! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-04-23 Karazhan: Netherspite Down! |  |
| A rough night; lots of wipes (only two healers will do that). But, in the end, we prevailed. We've read so many different, conflicting descriptions of The Way It's Supposed To Be Done that we basically came to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter how you tank the beams (within reason), so long as you have a consistent, non-stupid plan that everyone can follow. For details on what we did, see the Raiding Progression page. Once this fight clicks... It's over.
I'm really proud of this guild right now; in the past 7 days we've killed 3 progression bosses. Simply amazing. Thank you, everyone. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-04-19 Karazhan: Illhoof and the Prince Down! |  |
| A hot night in the tower. We had gotten Illhoof to 5% the week before (but it was getting late and we were getting sloppy), so we knew that he was going to bite it this week. After we worked over Aran we sauntered down and one-shot him. Nice. At this point, Lavalia is our MT while Anderek is off-tanking as fury. So we clear to the Prince, and the first attempt goes alright until 60%, at which point the druid tank bites it almost immediately. Great. However, we did a good job of moving the boss around, avoiding infernals. We give it another shot, Lavalia pops Moroes' Lucky Pocketwatch at 60%... And lives. And lives. I don't know how the healers did it, but they kept up a druid tank all the way down (awesome: Cion, Lelenia, Thejubi). Even through my "Move him clockwise! I meant counter-clockwise!" and an infernal landing on the tank (it was so cramped at the end - we were totally hemmed in).
According to the progression thread, this puts us 19th on Proudmoore in terms of Karazhan progression (both Alliance and Horde!) and 13th on overall Alliance progression. Rock on. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-04-07 Gruul's Lair: High King Maulgar Down! |  |
| Has Aggro and Game Theory joined forces to enter into Gruul's Lair; it was HA's second week in there, and GT's first, and both our first kills. With your powers combined, etc. etc. Point is, we've got a dead ogre and a gronn at 42%. Gruul is totally doable; we just need to be able to avoid shatters and keep the MT up at the same time. Tricky!
Check back next week for the exciting conclusion! Or another cliffhanger! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-04-05 Karazhan: the R&J Opera, and the Shade of Aran Down! |  |
| This was a great kill. He went down before the elementals went away, much less poly/drank! Very well done! Also, a huge thanks to all the GT guildmates who came out for the run, even though there wasn't room: Foker, Neverwind, Pinski and Saberoy.
We also got R&J down the night before; the killshot is on the Raiding Progression page. A great week, and it's only half over! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-03-23 Karazhan: the Oz Opera Down! |  |
| The Opera event continues to please. The Oz event is just crazy; five mobs running around, some feared, some kited, some tanked. We also had a really good night in general - we cleared 4 bosses in 3 hours (Attumen, Moroes, Opera, Curator). A very smooth run. Well done!
--Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-03-12 Karazhan: the Curator and Chess Event Down! |  |
| The Curator was an interesting fight. Tantred rolled in with a heap of arcane resist (273), but wasn't wearing any of it on the attempt that lead to the kill. Next time we might try putting Fatima front and center in more resist gear, but maybe just brute force is the way to go.
We also cleared up to the chess event, which was just a ton of fun. Seriously. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-03-10 Karazhan: the Big Bad Wolf Down! |  |
| I gotta say, this is simply an awesome fight. Aernon was right - watching your biggest, brawliest, banana-helm-iest warriors getting turned into wee Gnome lasses who then scamper around the stage is an experience forged from molten win, and tempered in a barrel of "lawlz u ded"... Until it's your turn.
I really like this fight; it is very well balanced. It's not so difficult that losing a few people means that it's an instant wipe, but you have to be able to soldier on after you've lost a key healer or the like. Bravo, Blizzard. Of course, once everyone learns the nuances of being 'hood, it's going to be trivial, but hey, ya can't win 'em all. In other news, the Curator is fricken' awesome. ;) --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-03-04 Karazhan: the Maiden of Virtue Down! |  |
| Another night up in the tower, and another boss down. A good showing by all - after experimenting with melee positioning (thanks for keeping those uppity-on-the-damage-meters rogues properly nerfed, Blizzard! ;), our combo SmPS / GT raid was able to put the Maiden on ice. We then moved to the opera house to cross a pair of star-lovers. Or something. They seemed cross with us, in any case... I think we were a bit healing-light for the encounter. We'll see what Monday brings!
--Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-03-02 Karazhan: Attumen the Huntsman and Moroes Down! |  |
| Big thanks to <Show me Potato Salad> for running a joint Karazhan raid with us! We started off with a 5/5 split, with a few SmPS waiting outside. We one-shot Attumen on an oops pull, and then took down Moroes after a few attempts. A few people stepped out and we picked up a few more SmPS DPS, and we cleared through the Maiden. Having lost a priest and picked up a rogue in the shuffle, I think our class balance was a bit off for the fight, so we called it a night after two attempts. The only wrinkle was that 3/4 of the epic drops went to GT members - an even split would have been nice (don't worry, there will be many more to come).
Great run all! We'll be back in there tomorrow night. --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-03-01 Pinski Kicks The Tires And Lights The Fires |  |
Grats to Pinski for dinging 70 while on the way to buy his epic mount. For those at home thinking "My, what a stoic young man! Such dedication! Such devotion! He must be a really nice guy!" Allow me to quote from guild chat:
[Guild][Pinski]: Do you know what sucks about having your epic mount, though? [Guild][Pinski]: Nothing. /sigh /covet --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-01-31 Baloril Dings 70 |  |
| Grats to Baloril for being the first guild member to reach level 70! We expect pics of your mount to be posted post-haste.
Heroics and Kharazan await! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-01-16 The Burning Crusade |  |
| The Burning Crusade saw certain members of GT locked in the frozen grip of an ice storm so severe that they called in the National Guard. Luckily power and internet service was restored by the weekend for most of those affected. Meanwhile, Tantred, Neverwind and Lavalia braved the chilly California evening to stand outside the local Fry's Electronics for their midnight release. Aud and Lelenia somehow managed to brave the chilly California evening by standing inside EBgames.
Oh, the hardships we will face to play this game! --Tantred | |
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[edit] 2007-01-13 First Guild Event |  |
| There happened to be a world dragon up the afternoon of our first scheduled guild event, so we got an invite into a Ruined PUG, along with people from Lost Boys and a number of other guilds, and proceeded to spank Taerar. Nothing of interest dropped for us, but it was a fun fight, and pretty well executed. After that was wrapped up, we hit Warsong Gultch, but without a full team we weren't as effective as we could have been. We still did well, even with starting the match at half strength.
All in all, it was a good time! --Tantred |
