So over the past few months, Mystic Heroes has been struggling to put together enough members to form 25-person runs on Ulduar. Summer months come and folks just get busy, and who can blame them. When I think about the guild and how we run things, it makes me kind of proud that we have the stability within the guild to have Summer slow times. People know, when they are done with their vacations and leagues and activities out in the sun, that MH will still be here and ready for them.
Summer after summer it has been proven, and this year was no different.

Here’s the awesome part of it. We created a new signup on our forums for all members who wanted to re-commit to the raid group. Within a few days we had about 30 members sign up, ready to get back into the raid scene. Tonight as I type this, we have just completed our 4th day of raiding Uld-25. We have really only focused on Uld-10 and ToC-10 as a guild. We would ocassionally do a Friday night raid on Uld-25 with limited success. I think we only got up to Kologarn and he handed us our asses.

But since this reboot of MH:Raiders, the team is confident and steadfast. We cleared up to Aura and Freya our first solid week of 2 nights of raids, and this weekend we just cleared up to Yogg. Amazing progress in 4 days of raiding. This group is so talented, it was amazing to see us work through boss strategies, which can be very cumbersome because we have 3 groups of raiders involved in our 25-raider group. We all do the bosses different. In the end, Mimiron took 2 attempts, General took 2 attempts, amazing.

Great job Raiders, Yogg is next!

I ran a guild, Celestial Nexus, by popular vote. There were many things right with the guild; many good people, enough active players to do most dungeons, talkative and helpful. But there were things brewing behind the scenes I was not aware of. I spent a great deal of time chasing people down who would leave the guild due to some slight, imagined or otherwise, from another guild member.

I also spent way too much time in Battlegrounds, which was my interest at the time. Some members started to complain, so I began setting up times to do a low level or mid level dungeon. Then the high level players began to complain, so I set dates for high level dungeons for the level 60’s. I remember with a sharp sadness that no one ever showed up for any run. I would do this many times. There was no excuse since we had our own website and all they had to do was check the calendar we set up. I was very discouraged, but i thought at the time all was still hunky-dorie. I had a couple of members who were very good at giving me feedback and were a great help towards running the guild.

There were three to five members that I often ran with. One of them was an excellent rogue who was very knowledgeable about the game and taught me a lot about the game. We made a very good team and whenever we helped the guild with quests we always nailed it. But I was still spending a lot of time bringing back those who left. I began to wonder… “why are they leaving?” “What am I doing wrong?” I did not know it at the time, but there was one member who was fomenting a lot of trouble in the background.

This particular member, a warrior, seemed to want to always be with me and the rogue. So we did a lot of playing together.  We helped her level up to 60.  Lots of good times. One day I got an urgent whisper from my rogue friend. We picked a spot to meet.  She began telling me that this warrior was posing as a female so he could get closer to her. The warrior was actually a young male who had the hots for her. This really outraged the rogue and really humiliated her as she had thought she was confiding in a female friend, when in fact he deliberately deceived her.  It was a mess of a situation.  The deceiver left the guild and went to another server.  The rogue was so humiliated that she left for another server as well, although we stayed in touch for a long time. 

So that was one factor in the destruction of a guild. Things were not the same after that.  The rest of the guild wanted to know what happened but I could not tell them, which made it even more difficult.

A quick memory entry about the finishing of Thunderfury. Once the first binding dropped in Molten Core for Learn 2 Raid, it felt like a rush to get as many Arcane Crystals and Lava/Firey Cores gathered up. The materials needed for the Sword were:

Combine all of these together and find a smelter who can create the 10 Elementium bars needed for the quest. A panic set in, holy cow, Elementium ore, where do you get that from? Well, it’s a drop from the goblins inside of Blackwing Lair. Great. We had never even set foot inside of BWL at the time, I had to find another way to get my hands on that ore.

Enter in the infamous Tobyness. They guy with the most lurid reputation on the server. If it walked, even gnomes, he’d hit on it. I got word from that Tobyness and his guild at the time were selling 10 Elementium ore for 4500g. At the time, that kind of gold was unheard of. There were no dailies at the time. I pulled together gold from every alternate toon I had, and still came up about 2000g short. Tobyness, of course, put a deadline of the next day, or he was going to put it up on the AH. In the frenzy to get this deal done, I had a short whisper from a guild member, “I can spot you the 2000g”. Wow! I couldn’t believe it. Amazing guildmates, to say the least. I paid the man, and got the Elementium, and tucked it away into my bank.

The generosity of the guild and countless raid alliance members was overwhelming. Arcane crystals, which at the time were selling between 75g and 200g, were stacking up by the bag full. I was able to transmute the Gem and Thorium Bars into Arcanite Bars every seven days. Slowly, the process list was being ticked off.

About two months after that first binding dropped it was beginning to be pretty obvious that the frenzy that we all felt was not really necessary. The 4500g elementium investment I had made was sitting peacefully inside my bank, with the faintest trace of dust barely settling into it’s cracks. The Arcanite Bar production line began to dry up, and transmuting halted all together. Firey Cores began to fizzle a little, and were a bit less bright. All in all, the momentum of the sprint, turned into slow saunter. Inside me, I knew someday it would happen, but it would not be any time soon.

Months passed, and The Burning Crusade expansion pack was installed into the game. Full attention turned to the new instance of Karazhan. Oh what an exciting time of leveling and exploring a world that was long forgotten and crumbling beneath Heroes’ feet. Yet every time I opened my bank, there sat those items, reminding me, it was still waiting, unfinished. I resorted to running with PuGs (Pick up Groups) of Molten Core, just for a chance to get to roll on the second and final set of bracers. The PuGs were just awful, full of scum and villainy, much like the cantina in Star Wars. I ran with few of these groups then gave up and shelved my hope again.

Months transmuted into years, and yet another expansion was released. The Wrath of the Lich King helped push that hope of Thunderfury even further away, but the desire remained. My friend Denach, who could easily tank multiple mobs in Molten Core offered to run me down to Garr to attempt to find the last bracer. We went one time, no luck. The next week, my friend Dave, who used to be have a warrior main and had re-roled into a Death Knight, offered to run me down to Garr to attempt it again. The first time, no luck. We went again the next week and, OMG!

IT DROPPED! The second binding dropped! It had finally happened! 3 years in the making and FINALLY I had the missing piece of the legendary puzzle.

I wooted with joy, and the guild celebrated. My friends didn’t let my hope die, they pulled me back into the Molten Core, and we finished it.

I quickly ran to my bank, did some inventory checking and made a list of all the items I needed to finish the sword. Off to the AH and I dropped a few thousand gold (like I said, gold is much easier with dailies and such) on the remaining gems and metals. I had it all. But…wait…who could smelt it for me? No one in the guild been to BWL far enough to Mind Control the Goblin Enginner to learn the smelting process.

I took up mining and smelting as a profession on Lybow after I realized how expensive Arcane Crystals were. Two expansions later, it would pay off to have this skill! I would join a pug, and beg them to MC the goblin so I could learn it. I asked the raid leader as we approached the goblin pull. “Oh, he’s bugged, you can’t learn that anymore.”

…

I heard my heart crack. How could this be?! What kind of cruel online world was this? But wait, a small hope arose, as one of the pug raiders said, “Oh, I can smelt Elementium”. Saved! But then questions arose, could I trust him? Would he run away with my materials? Was the risk worth it?

It was, and Shivreal smelted the Elementium bars for me inside of Dalaran within the commerce area. I could not believe it, the items were all in hand. I could complete the sword, after three long years of waiting.

I invited the guild, former L2R members, and even those who were bitter about the initial binding drop 3 years ago. My guild, my heroes, showed up. We had about 40 members out in the Northwest corner of Silithus, all awaiting the summoning event to forge Thunderfury.

In it’s day, the Thunderaan fight was a massive undertaking in the form of a 40 man raid. We beat him at level 80 in about 30 seconds. But, honestly, it was no less sweet for me. The guild celebrated my completion of a long journey, and I will never forget that night, or the path that led me there.

Thank you heroes.

One night, long, long ago we had just downed Baron Geddon, a large fire elemental boss in Molten Core and Binding of the Windseeker dropped. The entire raid stopped just for a moment. A few /gasps were typed in raid chat (not sure if we used Teamspeak at that time, I don’t think we did). This legendary drop was something a few of us had dreamed about, but never thought it would happen. The drop rate was extremely low.

What was this strange item? Well, it could not be equipped, but simply would allow the owner to start a quest that would eventually lead to the legendary sword Thunderfury. Wait, you didn’t get to equip anything at that moment? Nope.

At that time L2R was using a DKP point system, where items had a value and the person with the most DKP who wanted the item would win the item. Some people horded their points, others spent freely and didn’t worry about their numbers as long as the upgrades were helping out their character.

So, there I sat, looking at this request for people to bid on the item. I, being a hunter, had to laugh, thinking man it’d be awesome to win this item and be the only hunter on the server with that cool sword. Ewww, but look at all the stuff you have to do to actually get the sword. It’ll be a while before I can even get it created, and I have to get the second binding from another boss, and god knows that’ll never happen. The drop rate is literally less than 0.5%. But, man that sword is cool and the warriors are typing that they are not really interested in an item that is not really worth anything now.

I bid. Ohshi…I won! I had the highest DKP, and no warrior/paladin wanted to take on the task of building this item. Well, no one that spoke up in Raid Chat that is. Later on we would find out that many, many individuals were quite ticked off that this item went to a lowly hunter. Some began to say that the raid leaders gave it to me out of favoritism, and that there was corruption in the leadership of L2R to have allowed this to happen.

Other raid members were very happy for me, both inside MH and the other guilds. They jumped at the chance to help me gather up the necessary items, which at the time were incredibly expensive. Within a month I had about 1/2 the number of Arcanite Bars that were needed. It was overwhelming to see those who supported my efforts to get this item created. Little did we know that it would take 2 years and 2 expansions to finalize the creation of Thunderfury. I’ll type up that story in the future.

Slowly, the cracks took hold into L2R and the foundation, having settled over the months of raiding, began to break apart. It was a slow decay, but I think this was drop was one of the reasons the raid alliance began to fragment. This silly item that literally collected dust inside of my bank for two years had left it’s mark.

L2R would move our efforts into Blackwing Lair, where we met our match with Razorgore and his room of eggs. We struggled, we tried every strategy we could think of, and finally we downed him! It was a great night for us all. Razorgore had been the hardest boss to date for us, and we had over come it. Next up was Vaelastrasz the Corrupt. This boss is a burn-fest. You can DPS your heart out and race to beat him before he beats the 40-man raid. After numerous attempts we downed the red dragon. We celebrated with each other, took screenshots and reveled in our success. Little did we know that it would be our last raid as L2R.

Shortly thereafter the Burning Crusade expansion was announced and the raid alliance guilds went their own separate ways. I look back at the raids that we accomplished within L2R and I am very proud of all those who participated. We defeated Molten Core before an nerfing happened, and I hold that achievement on a tall pedestal. We did it the L2R way, with laughter and a good attitude. I miss the laughs we had back in those early days, but even new adventures were on the horizon for MH with the expansion.

The last post described the motivation that we created Learn2Raid Raid Alliance, so I won’t go over that again. Needless to say we were really wanting to get our hands dirty inside of Molten Core. So many bosses, so many upgrades! We had no idea what we were in for.

When we formed L2R a majority of the 40-man raid consisted of Mystic Heroes. I’d say about 15-25 of the raid members were from our guild. The seconds largest showing was from Sovereign Saga, with Justintime at the helm. FOAM, Heroes of Eternity and Rogue Clan filled out the roster. Instantly we knew that MH could not run the show with all these guilds involved. We setup raid leaders in the form of Lybow, Iduna, Moby, Ontwig, and Justintime. All very strong leaders, all who understood we needed one another to get through this content.

I can’t remember the specifics of our very first run. I think I remember correctly that we didn’t down any bosses, we couldn’t figure out who needed to loot the corehound, we didn’t turn the core hounds in time, but we did all right killing the flame guys that keep splitting if you don’t kill them fast enough. All in all, we learned a lot. This was not ZG, that was for sure. 40 people, /naked dancing (Aley), buffing, eating food buffs and /joking at the entrance told us that this was a good mix of people and this L2R thing had potential!

Within a few weeks we were making headway into the depths of Black Rock Mountain. The teams were starting to gel together. We had setup chat channels for all the classes (L2RHunters, L2RHealers, L2RTanks). Inside those chat channels we found our teamwork. And from those teams we formed an even stronger raid group.

Molten Core put us to the test. Every bit of each team was pushed to their limit and in the end we did succeed in taking a rag tag bunch of players into one of the hardest instances any of us had every encountered. We had to form circles! Not very well. We had to form lines! Again, fail. But somehow, Ragnaros fell to our works, and that night will always be remembered as a glorious victory for all of our guilds.

Other nights that we won’t soon forget. The night we worked on killing Shazzrah (the mage-type boss with the blink-splode!). I think we worked on that boss for a good 3 hours straight one night, wipe after wipe, tension mounting, raiders losing hope, and finally we downed him! Funny thing was, we would continue to have trouble with that boss even after we had learned all the subsequent bosses that came after him. It’s a good feeling to go in there and destroy him at level 80.

While we worked out way through MC, we also got our first Onyxia kill as a group. We proudly hung her head up in Stormwind, as a team, as L2R. After MC was beginning to get easier and easier, we began to mix Blackwing Lair into the schedule. One fateful night, a legendary item dropped inside of MC, one that I believe was the beginning of the end of L2R. More on that next time.

In loving memory of a great tank and a great friend, Krase of Sovereign Saga

So, long ago when I was around level 45, I took a walk that helped change my outlook on this game. A young druid in the guild was looking for help getting to Ironforge. This was a very big deal at the time. Mounts were 60% speed and you needed to be level 40 to get that mount. So, I became a taxi service of sort due to my hunter having Aspect of the Pack. I would help lower level toon run from Menethil Harbor through all of Wetlands, up the mountains and into Ironforge for the first time.

Kemetari, the druid, was an officer in the original Mythic Heroes, and he was just an outstanding individual. He had an outlook on life that was fresh and helped me find a perspective that would revive my joy in helping people and working as a team.

We spent about 45 minutes on that adventure to Ironforge. We talked about my frustrations with the guild and he listened. He advised, he gave me council that adapted my leadership. This young man of about 20 years old, taught me more in that trip to Ironforge on foot, than my months prior as a ruling guild leader.

We talked about life, jobs, dreams of the future and the game. As we turned the corner to make the steady climb up to the gate of Ironforge we paused and looked around, admiring the “beauty” of the game. The details that we overlook when we take the game too fast. Kinda of like life. We want to go go go, but once we get there, then what, and look at all the details you missed along the way.

Kem left the game about 3 years ago. But, we kept in contact. We emailed as he headed off to college. We emailed when I got my first job as a 4th grade teacher, and just recently he emailed me from Chile. Indeed, Kementari is taking in all of the details of life, and I am proud to have gotten to know him in game before he departed.

What I learned from this memory. Well, some of the lesson is inside the story, but the biggest thing is when you recruit new members, look for the person behind the toon, rather than just look for a class to fill a role. The person, the individual who drives the avatar on the screen is what really matters. They all have feelings and emotions, dreams and heartaches, and a good guild leader will have a pulse on the guild, knowing what’s going on, most of the time.

So, this summer I’ve really been working on my BBQ skills. In May I was out there grilling up Salmon, Pork Tenderloin, tossing on some vegetables, and of course hotdogs and hamburgers. Nothing says a cool summer night like the smell of burgers wafting over to the jealous next door neighbors. Take that Capt. America! (My nic-name for our neighbor, more on that another day).

Well, I had watched enough Food Network Challenge: BBQ Grilling to finally get my nerve up to try to use a dry rub on my next steak attempt. So, I went out and bought this little jar of orange spiced mix that I gingerly applied to the steak. Tossed it on the grill and presto, the steak went from good to delicious! Of course, me being who I am, I had to think about it all, I read the ingredients on the $9.00 jar of bbq dry rub. “Wait, I have most of this stuff…you know, I’m just gonna make my own.” I did a few google searches to find if I had maybe missed anything. There are a bazillion dry rub recipes out there, it was actually very overwhelming, but what I saw were some of the same ingredients popping up over and over.

So, I found a jar with a nice lid, and jumped in both hands and created my own rub. I have yet to use any measurements, but individual tastes can vary the amount of each item. Here’s what I’m using lately for my dry rub on a Tri-tip steak.

We’ll say…1 Cup of Brown Sugar (this is key, it doesn’t really taste “sweet” once grilled, but it caramelizes into this nice layer of YUM on the outside.
- Garlic powder/salt (vary depending on how much you like the garlic)
- Smoked Paprika (sometimes hard to find at a grocery store. This adds a smokey woodsy flavor.)
- Cayenne pepper (ooohwee! I’ve actually added a lot of this, but the heat didn’t really come through like I hoped)
- Black pepper (just an overall great taste that’s a standard)
- Mustard Powder (a great taste that adds character to the recipe)
- Chili Powder (more smokey flavor with a kick)

Toss all of this into a jar, give it a good shake. The tighter the lid, the better, otherwise it’ll clump up and lose it’s flavor to oxidation.

Apply it liberally all over the meat and let it sit for about 5-6 minutes. You’ll see it turn from that dry consistency into a “wet” darker color. Always try to give your meat time to rest outside of the fridge before grilling. Crank the heat up to high when you’re pre-heating, and toss them on for about 5 minutes per side to sear the meat and lock in the juices. Then turn down your heat and cook till you get the right temperature. Remember it’ll keep cooking a little after you pull it off the grill. And as Alton Brown has told me time and again, let the meat rest after cooking otherwise when you cut it open early all the flavors escape instead of getting locked in.

So, with all the drama I’ve posted about, how the heck does Mystic Heroes still exist? Well, the drama that was involved in those posts only lasted a few days at a time, in between those times, we had phenomenal times working and playing together. Here is a gallery of screen shots from the early days. There will be more coming from the old archive I’ve gathered. Click to enlarge.

Gnomeregan

Read more

When we started the guild we started as Mystwalkers, then we became Mythic Heroes. Here’s the story behind why we became Mystic Heroes. It’s nothing too terribly dramatic, just the typical guild drama.

We’d been running Zul’Gurub for a few weeks/months and the itch started. The little itch that starts with a casual /inspect on a toon in Ironforge, that turns you to a web site looking for “where did that guy get that?”. It grows when you see another toon of your class walking around in a full tier set. “Dammit, that is so cool looking!” Then you look at your own gear and realize your Tier 0 from Scholomance and Stratholme just isn’t cutting it anymore.

Molten Core! The be all, end all of end game content (at the time) was the new destination for all guilds to shoot for. The problem? It’s a 40 man raid! 40 o.O FOURTY? Where would we find 40 people to fill a raid group? We could barely fill our ZG groups and that was 15 people. Molten Core seemed like a long way away. In fact, I remember thinking, “We will never get there.” Never said it out loud, but I was very discouraged. I remember in desperation I ran a MC group of about 20 and we promptly got shoved out the door by two huge giants.

Then one night, we had an officer meeting and came to an agreement that we *needed* to get Mythic Heroes into Molten Core. Without progressing to this instance, we all began to fear another exodus would occur. There’s only so many times you can run ZG, and that time was coming to a close. So the decision was made, let’s form a raid alliance with other guilds. It had become the thing to do on Silvermoon, allow players to stay in their guilds while raiding the 40 man content with other guilds. We created Learn2Raid. It was a coalition between, Mythic Heroes, Sovereign Saga, Heroes of Eternity, FOAM, and Rogue Clan.

Wait wait wait….there were suddenly voices within guild chat saying, “wtf, you can’t run with other guilds?! you have members here who want to raid!”. These folks wanted dedicated raid slots when they hit level 60. Meaning we would have to boot anyone who was not in Mythic Heroes from the raid. Every officer said, “that’s not going to happen, not in a raid alliance.” We felt that those who started the raid alliance would remain on the raid roster even after new level 60s wanted to join in. It would simply be unacceptable to look at the other L2R guilds and say, “oh sorry, we have another level 60 paladin, so your spot is now gone”. No, wasn’t happening.

The cry from this group became, “we’re turning into a raiding guild!” That always seems to be the battle cry when raiding is involved in conversations. We would certainly put new people on the roster, but there was no way we would damage current raid members by taking their spot away.

The amount of drama in gchat those days was astronomical. Groups stopped forming, as a clique of people adamant that MH members get preference in L2R started to put roots down within the guild. Finally, instead of booting this group of people, the officers made the decision, we’re done, we’re moving to Mystic Heroes. We announced it in GChat, in our forums, and in whispers. We had had enough of the drama, we were tired and found this to be the best solution.

Thankfully a vast majority of guild members came with us without a blink of an eye. The guild remained intact and the population that did not move with us simply dwindled and left for other guilds. This move, I don’t regret. The people who had stayed behind and who were dedicated to pushing against anything the officers decided were not helpful to the guild. They were nice people, but they didn’t help continue the progression of MH.

Thus, we moved from Mythic Heroes to Mystic Heroes, and we never looked back.