The pink bunny and Naxxramas met again this week, as we decided to take a swing at the surprisingly human looking second boss in the Spider Wing. Spider cultists. Okay then. After some enjoyable trash pulls that turned out to be a lot less dangerous when moved into an open space, we got to the Widow herself. In an obvious attempt to bring back MC and AQ40 memories we got a bunch of adds, fire rain and poison spit. We've seen much worse! As always, the raid was extremely well-planned and prepared. So well in fact, that barely anyone had brought resistance pots. After some scraping in everyone's backpacks we located a few fire prots from easier MC days and finally took on the Widow.

After downing Razu, we were again faced with too many options for a simple slacker guild like Quartz. In order to actually be able to make any tier 3, we decided to spend some time finishing the quest first (and quickly learned the Abomination wing trash ranks right up there with LBRS alt-pugs in annoyance factor). The choice then, was between Noth, Patchwerk and Anub. Despite a continuous stream of whispers from Trixster telling me to do Patchwerk so I could share in his pain, we figured Anub might prove to be a little easier. Besides, tier 3 bracers are clearly the most desired part of the set.

After downing the Emps we've been kind of debating what to do. The Burning Crusade is coming and we had the choice between venturing deeper into the recesses of Ahn Qiraj and poking C'Thun in his eye, or exploring Naxxramas in all its glory. We decided to do both last week, after downing the Emps, spending one night of repairs on C'Thun and one night of repairs on Razuvious. Our encounter with the great eye was painful in more ways than one, but Razuvious immediately showed promise.

There are times in the life of the so-called 'relaxed raiding guild' that you feel there simply isn't enough time in the week to farm known content and explore the new in the few raiding nights you've set for yourselves. Even the slightest setback or a couple of 'wtf they all ported to the same platform'-Skeram fights and you'll be pressed for time when you get to the good stuff. AQ40 is all about the random. Sure, a raid can deal with the random, can react on the spot. But when only one thing has to go wrong to gimp your time on a new boss, it can be frustrating. That's why I think everyone was happy when we finally got to the emps at 7.30 at night instead of after 10 when everyone is exhausted.

After defeating Fankriss a while back the glorious Quartz collective has been banging its head against the resistance horror that is Huhuran. Having spent all our bloodvine on shard bags and alt gear, getting everyone 'ressed up' turned out to be quite a pain, and though our first full night on Huhu left us with promising results (below 10%) we quickly realised we needed to shape up or not bother. A week later, our second full night gave us two 1% wipes, leaving the sour taste of endless Vael wipes in my mouth. Nothing says 'haw haw', Nelson style, like a boss with 5000 health left. It was at that point that all our shamans and druids decided to take a vacation so we figured we might as well go take a look inside Naxx for a week and die horribly there. It's good to have something new to look at while you are writhing in pain, my mother always used to say.

Due to heat and vacations we've spent last week just farming known content, and even though there was some time left after Sartura the thought of showering ourselves in icecubes seemed much more pleasant than working ourselves through a tunnel full of bugs. This week, however, was supposed to be Fankriss week, with some actual serious tries. So the collective slapped the usual bosses last night and worked its way to Fankriss. I enjoy these token mage-encounters in every instance - we all know mage is the chosen class, but it doesn't hurt to have the developers confirm it now and then in case the healers and tanks get strange ideas about their own worth.Â

Our glorious adventures in AQ40 continued last Tuesday. Due to the weather, we only spend one night a week on AQ40 so so far progress has been smooth. Skeram and the Trio died again, I ninja-pulled a couple of patrols, Shi got himself knocked into more adds than I've seen since the Leeroy movie, but like I said before, you can afford to dork around in AQ40, which is what makes it so enjoyable. Obviously we're just getting through the warm-up bosses, but everything so far has been fun fun fun - and we didn't even dis that much loot this week.

After the family's sad demise, we went on to say hi to Sartura. Last week we took a couple of pokes and got it halfway down, so we finished the job without too much hassle, despite being somewhat confused on tactics. "Run to the tank, no run away from it, dot, no dots, stun it, RUN, oh wait it's dead." Killed in true Quartz style, I suppose.

With the summer and the World Cup upon us, I had a strong feeling there'd be little interest in doing raids this week, especially since we decided to spend the night in Bug Town. Amazingly, 40 people showed up to once more down Skeram and we headed to the Bug Trio. Since these bosses are supposed to perfectly learnable in one night we assigned tanks, told the hunters where to pull the things and initiated combat.

Since Nefarian now sleeps with the fishes, the glorious Quartz collective decided to try their hands at the 'Majordomo level bosses' in AQ40. I still say the loot tables for AQ40 are absolutely horrid, but new content is new content, so we downed a few Anubisath thingies, got some bug mounts and killed the Prophet. Interesting encounter, but anything that's tauntable is ez-mode, I say. We killed some bugs on the way down, admired the scenery and waved at Sartura and 'The Family' who are left for future exploration/wipe fests.The trash mobs are a lot of fun, and feel a lot more 'free' than in MC and BWL - there's room for dorking around and Quartz loves to dork! Any instance that allows Mongol to kite a bunch of bugs deserves some attention, even though Naxx will probably cut most guilds' ventures into AQ40 short.

I remember our first venture into MC. Back then, CTraid was something 2 or 3 people were trying out because you could get 'everyone on your screen'. I remember sitting down with Lodura, our MC-partner at the time, and discussing how many fire prots I had stashed away because 'you need fire protection for MC'. I think we used them on everything from fire lords to giants. I'm new to MMORPGs, for me the whole 40 man raiding thing was insanely hard to wrap my mind around, especially since I ended up being the raid leader. When we downed Domo and took a break to gather some fire res, and Oops (and shortly after DC) shot ahead, that annoying sense of competition I could feel creeping up from time to time slowly faded away and was replaced the knowledge that this group, these guys, would get there, would get anywhere, our own way. And we have.