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.

We started BWL and despite endless complaints about paladin EZ mode, people showed up for razor wipes, for vael wipes, for Stormvejr blinking into Broodlord and so on. This tiny group managed to fill raid after raid, without promise of reward. We learned, we grew, and I find myself spending more time moving people into groups that still have healers during Vael than actually dpsing. Things change, and the casual ease displayed when we have the strategy down amazes me. When our first Chromaggus was TL and we killed him anyway, I knew Nefarian wouldn't be far off. And late monday night, when I whispered Trixster with 'black/green' and got the usual 'down tomorrow then, gratz' back, I wasn't sure we were there yet. We fiddled with the strat, wondered if we should just save up for 20 flasks of supreme power and come back next week, leeched the Hakkar buff from DC (thanks for that guys), which of course ran out just as things were clicking, but I could see phase 1 was down, under control. Class calls we were insanely worried about (warlock, shaman) turned out to be jokes, where other class calls (druid) turned out to be a lot more hassle than I figured. My heart was pounding but his health flew down, and you know you got him when Lvazquez says he's going reckless. When he finally dropped, all I could think was: see, you don't need an MT that uses all his talent points - when Soheil actually spends his last 5 he can solo Nef! Now we are part of that fine group of people that disenchanted Nefarian drops.

What I'm trying to say in this convoluted report is that I am truly grateful to all of you for making my life as a GM easy. On to Craploot40 and Naxx!