I was digging through some old images that I had cut up in anticipation of a post into this blog, but which for some reason hadn't made it into the blog at all.
I found some images from when I was around level 66 and got invited into a raid of the Temple of Ahn'qirag (AQ), and thought to post them up, as it was quite a fun time.
Raid Leader - Guildless Then, Guild Leader Now
This raid took place in October or early November 2007, on some evening where the Raid Leader decided to do his very best to fill an AQ40 raid of players over level 60. I was whispered based off of my presence on the /who list, shortly after I logged in, and was able to bring a couple of guildmates along to help fill the numbers for a while.
At the time, the raid leader was guildless, and I remember seeing him advertising AQ raids a couple more times after this one that I attended, as well. Now I can see that this guy is a guild leader of a guild consisting of 36 members and only one under 70! I cannot, however, find them on www.world of warcraftjutsu.com on our realm for a progression record, but that doesn't mean a whole lot.
I have seen other guilds doing similar things - running Stratholme PUGs to help people get reputation to be able to take on Naxx and to find new potentials for their Outland raiding nights, Molten Core runs for those already attuned, and more attempts on Ahn'Qirag as well. It's kind of fun to join in, although it is chaotic and I'm not sure how many people actually get recruited that way.
Follow The Leader - Attempting AQ40 with 20
So, the invites go out, the raid group begins to form, the leader shuffles us around in groups and people begin to congregate in Silithus at the stone. Summons begin (through the stone worked just fine, and I'm sure we had some 70s that were being summoned).
Not everyone is here, but the Raid Leader mounts up and heads towards the instance, hoping others will follow. I seem to be the only one who paid enough attention to who, in amongst all the mess of people, was the leader and when to move out, but it made for a great picture.
The leader quickly figured out that if he put a Raid Icon over his own head, he'd be seen better by the rest of the group. So, he had a star over his head for the rest of the raid, and the chant was "follow the star".
My First Sighting Of Something Insanely Huge
I never made it into any of the Raiding dungeons before the expansion pack came out - certainly never saw the inside of the Temple of Ahn'Qirag 40-man version.
And thus, I simply did not know how HUUUUUUUGE the Sentinels just inside the Instance door were. Seeing the Raid Icon symbols hovering above them was quite intimidating!
Since then I've seen more bosses and Raid Instance bosses who are big like that, and it's no longer as surprising. In fact, it makes sense that something to be downed by 25-40 people at one time should be pretty massive compared to the ones being taken down solo, or by a 5-person dungeon team.
Mounts Only Available For Use In Ahn'Qirag
We took down the Sentinels and as continued throughout the evening, a special mount dropped which the winner could use immediately, but could only use while in the instance. The first guy who won a mount won it when we were in AQ40, but it wasn't long before we realized it was too tough for our chaotic, undernumbered PUG and retreated into AQ20, rendering his mount useless once again.
Ah well, those things dropped quite regularly and I could see how, if you went a couple of times, you'd have no problem picking up a few different colors of the mount types.
Careful Where You Jump!
In AQ20, we did much better than our pitiful attempts in AQ40. AQ40 had people being knocked out of the instance, but AQ20 let us get a little bit inside before having the really nasty fights.
One of the most challenging things was getting back to the group after dying in an inconvenient place and needing to release and run back - part of the run involved us jumping into a narrow strip of water after a long fall, and the trick to it lay less in hitting the water as one would expect, and more in NOT JUMPING off of the edge and instead just running off and letting the fall happen naturally.
Many people jumped off and died and hoped for a rez that never came, making them have to run back again and hopefully get it right this time. I completely forgot about Slow Fall although it might have fallen me into aggro ;)
It's amazing how much more damage a player takes by jumping off of an edge rather than running off - you'd think being prepared for the launch off the end would be better than just going like it didn't exist in the first place?
Temple of Ahn'Qirag = Oversized Everything
To close this silly entry with its few pictures of my Adventures in an Ahn'Qirag weekend PUG, check out the corpse of this slime we downed as a "trash mob" in this place. When I took the picture, all I could think of was "Sorry, I wasn't feeling very well".
