Fond Memories: The Gates (And Raids) of Ahn'Qiraj
Posted by 
iTZKooPA on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 31 Comments Tags: C'thun, Isle of Quel'Danas, ahn'qiraj, aq20, aq40, columns, fond memories, lore, old world content, raiding, raiding old world, simple directions, twin emperors, war effort, world events, zombie invasion
iTZKooPA on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 31 Comments Tags: C'thun, Isle of Quel'Danas, ahn'qiraj, aq20, aq40, columns, fond memories, lore, old world content, raiding, raiding old world, simple directions, twin emperors, war effort, world events, zombie invasion 
One of the coolest things of vanilla WoW was the release of the first Old God's lair, Ahn'Qiraj. Blizzard made a huge deal of the event, going so far as to completely re-design an original zone (it was basically unused at release). The developers added lore, additional factions for rep grinds, more lore, not one, but two raids, and the most epic questline/launching event in the game. The line was completable by only the most dedicated of players, only with the support of the most skilled guilds. And if you think your Achievements mean something, try being one of a handful of people (usually only one or two) on the server with the Scarab Lord title and the super-duper incredibly rare, don't even bother asking where they got it if you don't know, Black Scarab Battletank.
It's quite hard to describe exactly how crazy The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj were, but I will try anyways. The opening of the Isle of Quel'Danas was a nerfed version of The War Effort. In it the Horde and the Alliance had to turn in separate supplies to their capital cities. The requirements covered everything, various fish, cloths, herbs, food, metal bars, animal hides, etc. If it was a collectible, often profession-based, several thousand of them were required for the war effort. Tens of thousands of gold "wasted."
Unlike the Isle's opening events, the event would not progress on a timer either. If the denizens of the server didn't contribute, then the content didn't become available. On Magtheridon (US) the largest Alliance and Horde guilds set up trading posts in the neutral auction house to quicken the pace. To foster additional faction support, the guild I was a part of offered free BWL and MC (best available at the time) loot to those that sent us items to hand in. It was a massive undertaking, far more than the Isle of Quel'Dans times four, and as far reaching as the infamous zombie invasion of Wrath of the Lich King.
When my guild decided to patch up our problems by running some old world content I pointed them in the direction of Ahn'Qiraj. They bit without a second thought. Most of the guild members wanted to run it for the achievements, which was fine by me since SolidSamm didn't have any C'Thun gear (anymore) to be retroactively awarded, but I suggested it mainly for the memories. The Gate opening was the first, and only, time that I woke up at 6:00 AM for a video game. AQ40 was what made me a min-maxer, it's when I first tried to compete with other members. The raid made me a hardcore player, rather than a member of a hardcore guild. I finally began to pull my weight, rather than being pulled.
To say I was excited to run across those sands again would be an understatement. With only one other raid member (of 10-13) having been to AQ40 before, I felt like a tour guide. Myself and my GM, who cleared most of AQ40 back in the day, touched upon the lore as we tore though AQ20, answering questions, elaborating on how hard this boss was, or how you could graveyard zerg General Rajaxx. After downing Ossirian we headed off to AQ40 which, thanks to Naxxramas moving, is still the most difficult level 60 raid in the game.
Off the bat we received not one, but two Red Crystals, both of which I lost. I also noticed a few changes, namely the uselessness of said crystals, now that all mounts are usable in the Temple, and a severe reduction in the amount of trash. Certainly didn't expect them to edit another old world instance.
We continued on with Solidsamm pretending to be a capable tank as we progressed to the Twin Emperors largely unfazed. Although we touched upon the boss strategies for every encounter, more to reminisce and inform rather than being worried, this was to be the only discussion that mattered. And matter it did.
To summarize the battle, the Twin Emps will heal each other if they are within 60 yards, so they must be tanked on opposite sides of the room. Easy right? Complicating things a little is the fact that one is immune to physical, and the other magical damage, so a caster tank must be employed. Oh, and there are bugs in the room that become mutated and must be killed, but they are trivial at level 80 (not everyone was 80), as should the entire encounter. It wasn't.
It turns out that the guildies and PUGs we brought couldn't follow simple directions. People ran around like headless chickens on every single transfer, which allowed the Emperors to constantly heal each other. After struggling with the 100% mobs for a few minutes I gave up DPSing in protest. A few wipes later and it was over, I sad my goodbye, thanks and ran for the hills. Without the Achievement.
I'll be going back to poke C'Thun's eye at some point, but perhaps ProjectLore needs to create an AQ40 video so my pampered guildmates can visually see how the tanking is supposed to occur to show the old content to new players. We tried the IBM approach, piling on more raids members, but that only added to the headless chicken effect. I don't regret the repair bill or the time spent. It was a wonderful experience to express my useless knowledge, pretend to tank and just relax during a raid. I believe the guildies who attended would agree.
Has your guild ever ran old content for soothing purposes? How about just to check out the old school content, to see what you missed? I think we all could use some more fun runs in this serious business.
Quote of the night: "How did you guys ever do this with 40 people?"
Reader Comments (31)
Beautiful :D
Haha. /Sigh, I wish I was around for vanilla WoW, to experience it in all its true glory.
oh the memories indeed. While I was not around for the opening or the release of AQ, I have been apart of groups going in there.
Ironically it was most recently to get the achievement. As you said those who knew where giving the lore, and a brief boss strat as we obliterated anything in our path. Bosses fell and the goup moved on. you would think with 10-15 of us lvl 80 and the rest between 70-79 it would be an achievement in the bag. As you also put so nicely you get to the twins and chickens run amuck. After 5 wipes (first 2 were kind of expected, but after number 4 I am not sure why we tried the 5th, but don't want to skew the numbers. Not sure when we will go back or when the achievement will ding for me, but I would like to know how that place was done at level with the full 40. Kudo's to you that did it.
Great post and thanks for all the fish, er I mean memorise.
doh, damn typing skills anyway. put end ) after numbers.)
*memories.
/fail for today's post for me.
Raiding AQ 40 is among the best WoW memories I have.
Too bad you didn't get to C'Thun though. I think that ranks very high as one of the craziest fights ever, especially at 60. I still have a screen shot of C'thun hitting me for 4.13 million nature damage.
He was still hard at 80, we puged a group of about 30 good players mostly 80s and people were dying left and right. So many mechanics to the fight it was difficult but after 4 wipes he was down.
Me and my guild ran all of the 60raids before lich king was realeased in one night. MC, BWL, onyxia, both AQ instances, ZG and some but not all of naxx. It was an awesome feeling when we were done :D
We ran the Twin Emperors encounter the other night. Seemed to go on forever, until I twigged what was going on with the healing (I was caster tanking as Affliction Lock). Then they switch.
The other caster tank couldn't handle it (wasn't level 80) or didn't "get it" so I found myself running across and tanking both sides in the end. It was a hugely enjoyable fight, but would I like to do it at 60? Part of me says "No way!" but another would like to relive the raids at the difficulty they would have been when they were launched.
Still have AQ20, ZG, MH, TK, BT and SWP to go for old school/tbc raid achievements.
Btw, I thought you may be interested. At level 80, if you don't apply physical or magical DoTs to either boss you don't need to perform the swaps. Have 1 physical tank and 1 magical tank either side and just split the raid in half. It was very easy this way.
Applying DoTs for some reason caused them to swap sides for my raid. The reasoning is aggro doesn't work on whoever is closest like it did at level 60. The damage from a DoT overwrites the aggro from closeness, and causes them to gain immediate and increased aggro on say, the warlock magical tank who may now be on the other side of the room when they port.
Surprisinly everytime I run Aq (quite often actually, almost every week) Our group has never fully wiped on the Twins... The first time ever I was there I died since I tried to perform as the caster tank (who the healers apparently thought would not need healing) and died, but the rest who were alive finished it up (to my shock)
And almost everytime I run there we always have headless chicken puggers, but still we always manage to down them on the first try, without any casualties too (most of the time)
I started playing WoW only after TBC released and so never got to experience this. I'd really love it if Project Lore could do a AQ run.
I remember when I came back to the game after not playing for like 18 months. One of my first thoughts was: "Wait, the max is 25 now? What happened to 40?" I originally left when BWL was just barely started, so it freaked me out a little.
i started playing like a month after AQ opened...i wish i had gotten into the game sooner so i could have had a chance to raid all of the 60 endgame stuff when it was new. there is a video of the openeing of AQ on youtube and it is epic.
this is the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-FeUv7HSzI
if they dont do an event like the openeing of AQ for icecrown citadel ill be upset....because honestly...the lich king is supposed to be this all powerful being and if we just walk right in with little to no resistance its gonna be BS....now im not asking for a full on gather x amount of x item on this scale but a server wide effort would be awesome....but people will probably complain like they always do if it turns out like that
actually the twin emps fight is a lot easier now, when you know that the mechanics have changed quite a bit since the old days - it used to be, that they reset their aggro table on the teleport and got about 3k dmg worth of aggro on the person closest to them after the teleport ... that required a lot of complication with the tanks, the rogues had to be extra careful etc etc ... nowadays, the aggro doesn't reset, so the emps will just run back to their original tank after 2-3 seconds. If you brought enough dps, you just stand and wait until the guy you can hit comes running back to you. (they will heal while running past each other, but not that much that you will not make it in time)
With this change, I don't think it is possible to do it with 40 60's in BWL gear... well maybe the new talents help, but the enrage timer used to be such, that one heal would kill you.
c-thun also was hit with the nerf bat pretty hard - all the timers seem to have been doubled or tripled, the eye is usually dead before the first small tentacles spawn, you will probably not see a dark glare or even a claw tentacle in phase 1. phase 2 is trivialized by the huge dps of today, you could actually see his health go down to 90 % without even weakening him, all we had to do was wait until finally someone was ported to the stomach to one-shot the tentacles down there.
ergo: still a very fun instance, but very very very far from the original experience.
Did with Vainilla raiding group (me level 80 DK and other 60+). It was fantastic. One shotted C'Thun :D
Our small guild wanted to get some raiding in and figured Old World content was best, considering we didn't even have 10 for the Lich King raids anymore. Went and did MC with minimal failures (was great to remember the fights I had done so long ago). But when we tried to move on to BWL, which I had never done before, we got wrecked. :( There were so many mechanics to each of the fights that had to be looked up it ended up being more frustrating than fun so we called it quits in there.
So now we're skipping BWL for now and going to AQ. After hearing how much fun it is, I'm excited. :D
i finnaly know the NPC infront of SW nank steps wants that has puzzled for years nice to finnaly have an answer now i woner why blizz havent removed them its been 3 years i hope taht the icecrown citadel event is atleast on the same skale i wasnt around for the AQ event nore the qual'danas but hope to be around for the IC citadel event if blizz makes one
Sadly, i never FULL cleared any pre BC raids with my guild.. i cleared to sulfuron in MC arlokk in ZG kurrinaxx in AQ20 (sigh) and TE in AQ40 Chromagg in BWL and never got ony, missed our raid on her :*(
The part I remember was the opening of the gates of AQ, after we completed the quests to donate items and the 733t guilds completed the quest line, when the giant cat bosses came out and stomped on the huge crowd of people who gathered to see it. It seems like every toon on the server was there, and we crashed the server a few times with the sheer number of people.
Once that calmed down a bit it got more controlled, but I remember the chaos fondly. Along with the "OMFG, what is that giant cat thing? Shoot it!"
Of course, I'm still wondering what's behind that giant wall in Silverpine.
wow i never noticed it but those cat things look allot like the alphats the egyptian pharows wore and cats were highly respected in ancient egypt thats cool blizzard incorporated some RL facts like that. first time i saw them was 2 years ago i was looking though WOW forums and i thought i might as well look though the patches i came on patch 1.9 i decided to look though it a found a trailer i saw those things running around they reminded of something but i couldent put my finger on it now i know what they looked like teh spinx should have gave it away when i did first a few months before WOTLK release
oh BTW Kazark gilneas is behind the giant wall in silverpine the king of golneas wished to isolate his kingdom from the rest of kalimdor all the wars all teh problems another RL refrence japan did something similar diffrent reasons though japan eventualy lifted thier isolation as whear gilneas as far we know is still isolated. any way so he built the stonewall to stop anyone from entering his kingdom kind of like teh great wall of china gilneas is currently not part of the lore wise gilneas is behind that wall but youse a hunters eagle eye youl see behind that wall is just fo as teh eye can see no one knows whats to happen with residents of gilneas who syas this game isnt eductational?
gilneas is currently not part of the game*
what i would like to know is wahts behind that gate in SW in canal district that allways bothered me
My guild was doing ZG back when TBC came out we were all 60 when we started and then TBC hit. So we were able to do it about 2 or 3 times before TBC hit. We were still doing it but gaining xp we did clear it a few times but desided that since we couldn't use the gear once we really started lvling we ended up stoping ZG but it was always fun.