Ainx, Part 5

In April of 2007 I joined a guild called Still Life. They were a new crew of up-and-comers, mostly composed of members of a casual raiding guild called Adrenaline who split off and several transfers from other servers. The guild was led by Mun and there were no officers, class leaders or any of that nonsense that most guilds model themselves after. Mun took care of everything, but he also relied on people to come prepared and knowledgeable about encounters. There was no DKP, EPGP or any other means of measuring player attendance, but there was no reason to have it. Each and every player in Still Life was there to kill bosses. While the roster was only around 30 people, you could expect all 30 to be online and in front of the entrance to the raid zone before the raid started, each with their own flasks, food and potions.

When I joined SL, they were still working on Gruul and had just gotten keyed for Magtheridon. I was already keyed to these thanks to running many dungeon instances with a crew in Abandon, my previous guild. I do recall dominating Maulgar and Gruul DPS meters again, resulting in my acquiring a permanent raider spot pretty fast. Still Life's raiding schedule was 5 nights a week (tue, wed, thu, sun, mon), 4 hours a night. At 20 hours a week we were able to not only learn and beat encounters quickly, but also catch up to and ultimately beat Conquest who at the time was the leading king of progression on the Kilrogg server.

Throughout the Burning Crusade up until Sunwell there were three guilds on Kilrogg which battled for dominance of the top crop. Itzlegend's Conquest, the de-facto leader in PVE content was one. The other was Temporary Insanity, which was a Horde guild led by Gilora. The newcomer was Still Life. We devoured content quickly enough to catch up to CQ and TI, eventually overtake TI and go toe to toe with CQ for the claim to server-first kills in Hyjal and Black Temple. Though the exact dates escape me, at one point both Mun and Itzlegend had to make a choice. Conquest had cleared 4/5 Hyjal through Azgalor and took down the Illidari Council in Black Temple putting them at 8/9. Still Life also cleared 4/5 in Hyjal, but we were stuck on Mother Shahraz in BT due to lack of a complete set of shadow resist gear required to beat her. Both Itz and Mun had to make a call on which content to tackle. Fortunately, that same week, Blizzard nerfed the amount of shadow damage dealt out by Mother Shahraz which gave us a free hand at continuing through Black Temple.

Kael'Thas dead. Huge landmark kill.	On our way to Illidan.

Hypotheticals aside, Itzlegend took Conquest through Black Temple and decided to work on Illidan while leaving Archimonde in Hyjal alone. Mun, then, opted to go for Archimonde. The end result was Still Life's first server-first kill - Archimonde. Conquest got the first Illidan kill, but not until Still Life, for a brief moment, dominated the Wowjutsu rankings (old school wowprogress) for Kilrogg. Unfortunately, Illidan proved to be Still Life's weak point due to a faulty tank unable to kite Flames of Azzinoth on the encounter. We were effectively set back an entire week and ended up killing Illidan two weeks after Conquest with two druid tanks in full fire resist gear (Fredi and Yumari iirc). As if the earlier setback wasn't enough, Fredi had a real-life issue come up which prevented him from continuing playing. This left us with the faulty tank of the past to try and kill Illidan with. But wait... there was an alternative!

At this point, my alternate character named Ainx had already been raiding. Given Still Life's superb progression, its members gained prestige on the server and that included me. Having had the benefit of Conquest experience and a long history on the server, I was able to put together pickup raids which went into Gruul's Lair, Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern. Since I couldn't do those with Itada, I opted to level Ainx as my alt which I then took to those raids. Ainx got geared up pretty quickly and eventually proceeded to...

This is approximately the time where Itada the Priest got phased out and Ainx the Warrior took the wheel.

End, Part 5