Project Lore

That didn't take long.

Blood Legion, a Horde guild on U.S. Illidan server, has earned the world-first 10-man Arthas kill, scoring The Fall of the Lich King and The Frozen Throne achievements as well as a Kingslayer title. And, from the looks of a screenshot they posted, the group also earned a little something extra... what looks like a giant, floating statue of Tirion Fordring. Ok.

So what does one normal-mode Lich King kill on the first night of its release mean? Well, I doubt that the fight is a walk in the park, or we would have seen more thrilled guilds announcing their success. There's still plenty of potential for other top-notch guilds to get their own realm-first 10-man kills, and then there's also the 25-man version, not to mention hard modes. And it won't be long, I'm sure, until we see more and more guilds making it to the Frost Wing.

So while many of us (including myself) aren't nearly to that point yet, let's dream a little. The WoW Armory now lists the Lich King's drool-worthy loot table for all four incarnations of the fight. And there's a little something for everyone:

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Anub'Rekhan dead before the raid even started.

The spending spree that I went on wasn't just to make me feel good, I wanted my DPS to perform in raids. Despite being Mutilate, which is the butt of all Rogue PvE DPS jokes, I wanted to be able to lay waste to Naxxramas as much as the next guy.  Some 2000+ gold later and I felt that I was more than prepared.  Believe it or not, I was actually correct for once! My new guild has been running Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and tons of heroics for a few weeks before I joined.  Their combined ambitions caused my spending spree to keep me in the range of acceptable DPS, rather than the realm of "ponzor."  Of course, I didn't expect to dominate the charts with only a few heroics under my belt, but some of the DPSers emasculated me.  They made me feel that I should have spent far more gold.  Personal failures aside, it was good to be raiding again. Naxxramas has certainly changed since the 40-man days.  We are only doing the 10-man thus far, but there are far fewer trash mobs in the instance than before.  If you triple the mob count for some of the corridors then perhaps you'll be back in the realm of the old school Naxx.  Yesterday's raid started at 8:00 PM, by 7:50 PM we had already downed Anub'Rekhan.  Yea, we had a boss down before the raid started. As a side note, I dunno how likely it is that we hit the heroic side of Naxx.  Unless we begin recruiting I doubt we will see the 25-man edition without a good collection of PUGs.  That'll make it pretty difficult to upgrade my Mutilate build with the Omen of Ruin/Murder and Webbed Death.  But enough about the future, let us get back to the excursion. Things went fairly smoothly through the Spider Wing, although we did wipe to Maexxna.  She eventually dropped her Femur, which was offered to me, but I love my daggers.  Still it hurts to see Rogue loot getting DEed.  The Military Wing, well that was a different story.  We didn't hit a wall on the content or anything like that.  No, no.  You could say that the Military Wing was a different story on a personal level.  You see, my face was repeatedly smashed by the mobs with Whirlwind.  Being the only non-plate wearing melee DPSer in the raid meant that my deaths stuck out like a sore thumb...that had been cut off.  I heard quite a few quips about it. "Oh look, that gnome is dead again." "The rogue needs buffs, again." "That midget owes me a stack of Symbol of Kings." "Holy crap, I lived through one!" The jokes didn't stop until a pack of mobs decided to desecrate every part of my body.  On the second leg of the upper level towards Instructor Razuvious, a triple pack of whirlwinding mobs came at the raid.  Letting my bravado get the best of me, I charged in to DPS the skull with reckless abandon.  My head was found 30 feet away, separated from my torso which was remained connected to my legs by what was left of my intestines.  I was whirlwinded by three mobs at the same time.  Uncontrollable laughter was all that could be heard on Ventrilo.  At least my failures lightened the mood. After Razuvious dropped nothing of interest - actually no one did, we have tons of Abyss Crystals now - we continued on until reaching the Four Horsemen .  These bastards troubled my pre-TBC guild till no end, stopping us from proceeding to the Frost Wing.  It was relieving to see them go down, but it wasn't much of a fight in 10-man.  After clearing two wings in a few hours time we called Naxxramas for the evening and cleaned up Obsidian Sanctum before closing the raid.  My next challenge is to convince the GM to run the other two wings next Tuesday rather than Thursday so I can finish them, then the Frost Wing, and Malygos.  I am coming for you slowly but surely Bastosa! We still haven't managed to take down Sartharion with any of his buddies alive, but we did have a pretty productive and efficient night.  Only nine more badges to go before I can get a much needed trinket upgrade.  Now if we could just stop getting Hunter/Shaman loot...

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