Riftwarriors: THE YEAR THAT WAS FOR RIFTWARRIORS

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Riftwarriors. I thought I'd write about the year that was for us. It was a big year. We've really had some fun on Warcraft in our guild this year. The highlights have been so many I've had a bit of a tough time trying to pick out the top moments. If you can think of any more add them to the comments below.

We decided to form a raiding team and eventually got our core group going. My right hand man in this was Ephi who worked out the maths. I dragged my pvping real life sons along with us through most of the SoO content. We formed some great friendships and our team work was outstanding. We certainly got the raiding dances down pat.

I delved into the world of pvp and was carried by my son's to get the arena mount. I discovered pvp wasn't so bad and the boys discovered being a "care bear" could be fun. Inspiration to form a PvP arm of Rifties in the expansion.

We got three girls into the raid team Vonds, Gaatos and I. Gaatos found out that having low ping is a good thing and the raid heard all about it because her boyfriend left his vent on voice activated. We all had a glimpse into the private conversations of a WoW couple. To much embarrassment for Gaatos and of course the amusement of the whole raid team.

Vonds started talking on vent and teasing the boys relentlessly to everyone's delight. She got promoted to officer so I wasn't alone in the officers chat with a heap of young guys also because she's a great player and an awesome asset to the guild. The witty banter in guild and officer chat is so great because of Vonds and of course Madril.

Holyfyre got the nickname "Sirdiesalot" and spent the whole rest of the MoP raiding experience trying not to die a lot. We invited cross-realm Potter on his Pally and he died a lot more which took the pressure off "Sirdiesalot".

Madril and Who/Ninja formed the tanking team for SoO and what a lot of fun they had running into tank the bosses on their various mounts and rolling off for starting the boss fights. They worked like a smoothly oiled machine together.

We eventually formed a healing team which consisted of Alysith, Nuthegera (occassionally), Smokin' and Thundersquid. Smokin' transmorg set inspired lots of guildies to go out looking for "Summer Outfits". Bainmar, Madril and I went full on into the summer outfits. Maddy and Bainmar went that little bit further trying to get a summer indian outfit, construction worker outfit, cowboy outfit and of course we all loved Bainmar's summer pirate outfit (No Homo).

Who/Ninja invited Gladstone to the guild. He started with Thundersquid who jumped into the healing role and has come to nearly every raid. Squid, started helping who with the recruitment of Gladstone. We got Potter on his pally in Siege, who leveled a rouge in the guild through the expansion. That was after persistent nagging from me, I do believe.

We got the BoA weapon for nearly all our members and their alts and half the people on my Real ID list. We got our lovely Sarior addicted to the Riftwarrior fun times. He has now become our unofficial guildy, despite him being in one of the top raiding guilds, he's always keen to come with us.

We went into the expansion. Ephi was first to 100 and Who/Ninja a close second. In the expansion our guild, all of a sudden, expanded dramatically, old players came back, friends of current guildies came back to WoW. We picked up the "Boys from Perth" who felt like a group of four puppies bounding around the guild getting into all kinds of mischief. Fraeric, Jez, Serdos and Aly 2.0. We expanded with literally hundreds of other players joining us. Good thing I'd been to puppy training school with my real life puppies Leeroy and Airial.

In the first week of raiding we were up there with the leading raiding teams being, one of the first raiding teams to down the first boss. It was our tenacity, not allowing the constant server issues to stop us that led us to beating Sariors guild in the downing of Kargath. Our team of 10 players was dramatically expanded to 24 players on that night with 21 being there for the final kill. We did it after I think it was 3 or 4 attempts. Naturally I forgot to take a picture.

We got stuck on a few bosses and got left behind. We lost a lot of fly by night guildies. We kept our core raid team. We lost most of the Puppies from Perth, the bonus was we kept the best one from the bunch and now have Aly 2.0 joining the ranks of core raiders. He's an officer now, working with Ephi and Who on strats for the last boss in Highmaul. I think he likes spreadsheets and graphs as much as I do.

We also gained Alyina whom I sucessfully poached while out questing one day. I glided down from a mountain to find a mage killing stacks of mobs. I helped him out. He added me to his party and I asked the big leading poaching questions "Are you interested in raiding? Are you happy in your guild?". I knew he would fit right in to our guild :). The rest is history; top dps and frequent raider. We also got Andy, Oak and Rentail back playing more regularly

So, the New Year begins. We have our smaller raiding team, we've gained a few great players into the bargain. Vius, Rawpower, Jubilation and schmeedqt to name just a few. Our New Raiding Year begins with our Officer Meeting in January. I'm looking forward to what we might achieve. The sky's the limit. I just want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone and huge cyber GROUP HUG for making RIFTWARRIORS such a great place to be.