Vlaming

I think when I left off last Whip and I were trying to decide whether we wanted to take part in the resurrection of our first raiding guild, . The ex-guild leader of that guild had actually invited us to join him back on his original server. We turned down both options and followed Whip's brother to the Hakkar server. Meet my next character, Forklift, the gnome warrior.



And another screenshot of Fork checking out the creepy kids in Goldshire.



Yep, another warrior. Whip rolled a Dwarf Priest. She wanted her some fear warding abilities. Also around this time I found that I really enjoyed rolling characters on brand new servers, and there were a shit ton of new servers rolling out on a regular basis. So I was leveling Forklift, but also rolling a fuck ton of alts on new servers. When I was around level 20 I got my first "Hey, join my guild" whisper. I accepted.... why not? The guild was called Midnight Vanguard. I wasn't overly involved in it, but I got Whip invited into it also. She leveled her priest while I made about 10 different alts which ranged from level 20 to level 40.

I found my way back to Hakkar and rolled a human mage and named her Trampoline. By this time I had flown through all the beginning quests rather quickly and leveled up fairly fast. A young Trampoline greets you warmly.



This was occurring around the scourge invasion and the first release of Naxxramas. I think this server was also working on opening the AQ gates at the time. The top guild on our server was pretty much a guild full of dicks and they decided that 3am was the ideal time to open the gates, so most of the server ended up missing it. Whip was on though so we got to check it all out. Anywho, Tramp flies out of Stormwind and see a dreaded necropolis!



Around this time Whip hit 60 and got right into raiding with MV. What are the odds that the two guilds we'd join via whispers at level 25 would end up being full on raiding guilds? The caliber of MV was much higher then anything we had ever seen before though. I think when Whip began raiding with them she was there for their first Chromaggus kill. Since I had been playing characters on other servers Fork kind of went inactive and got the boot. Trampoline got to 60 fairly quickly and Whip worked her magic to get me back in the guild. Who wouldn't want this amazing mage in their guild anyways?



After a few weeks this guild got their first Nef kill and was working to gear up to push into AQ40 and Naxx. They found themselves lacking some people and Whip and another priest in the guild (Bigbones!) pushed to get me into an MC run. The following mayham ensued.

My first Ragnaros encounter! Note all the T1 I was wearing. I think I was 4/8 T1 by the end of my first ever MC full clear. I also ended up with a new staff. I was specced frost (as all mage in MC and BWL had to be because of boss immunities) but that didn't stop me from keybinding Fireball, Fireblast and Scorch onto my toolbars, mingling in with my frost spells.



The guild leader, Gerbs, also ended up getting the final bracer he needed to complete his Thunderfury.



So in my first raid with Midnight Vanguard I got to see a full clear of MC and the creation of a Thunderfury. The TF was later worshipped in Ironforge. I eventually worked my way into a full time raid spot, something that didn't happen right away while Whip got into every raid since she was a pro dwarf priest. This guild is where I really learned a shit ton about end game raiding and maximizing your character. The guild had a handful of amazing mages who pretty much took me under their wing and taught me everything I should know. I enjoyed the challenge of finally catching my dps up to theirs. Whip was enjoying her dwarf priest role. Over time she became the reliable fear ward and was also called upon to make up healing assignments. She had leet healing assignment macros.

The guild progressed into AQ40 and into Naxx while clearing MC and BWL weekly (until they got dropped from the schedule so we could focus on new content). We were also in a race for being the most progressed guild on the server! The problem we ran into though was that patch 2.0 and The Burning Crusade came fairly quickly on the heels of the Naxx patch. A lot of people disappeared because they didn't feel that it was worth raiding when pvp was a lot easier to obtain and the new TBC items would make the current raid gear obsolete. Fuck those people imo. Around this time the guild leaders had a decision to make. There was no way we'd be able to see all the content the game had to offer before we were trying to hit level 70. Should we try to knock out Naxx bosses (We were currently 3 bosses in, Anub, Raz and Noth) or should we focus on trying to be one of the rare guilds that got C'thun down. We had put some time into the fight, but hadn't made a whole lot of progress on it.

The guild was split about 50/50 between C'thun or trying to see more Naxx bosses. The guild leader was in favor of Naxx, but bowed to one of his the officers and pushed the guild into AQ40. This turned out to be the downfall of Midnight Vanguard in vanilla content. The grind proved to be too much and people started dropping at an even faster rate. We joked about running AQ30, because we would only get that many people to show up for a given raid night. The guild that we were tied with for progress continued to push Naxx content and got up to Horsemen I think. MV pushed C'thun into phase 2 once. Weeks of work for one phase 2. If you visit the MV website today, the guild motto is still "We almost killed C'thun". lewlz. The Burning Crusade launched and Whip and I leveled our priest/mage combo to 70 and pushed our way into new content.

Preparing for 25 man content was a bit of a struggle for us. We made a couple of Kara groups to gear up for Gruul, Mag, SSC and TK (and heroic instances, which where still somewhat challenging as a fresh 70). A few weeks into raiding for the new content though our guild leader, Gerbs, called it quits to focus on school full time. Our #2 guy, who played a rogue through the entire vanilla progression, had a level 70 warrior waiting (because he knew the gleader was leaving) and stepped up to take over as guild leader and main tank. Gerbs was really the driving force behind MV, I can only compare his leaving to what would happen if Mhose decided to leave Demoted. The guild continued on, but was missing that presence at the top.

So we had a new MT, someone who hadn't tanked in the past. We moved some stoner 15 year old kid up to be our offtank. We pushed our way through a few bosses in SSC and Void Reaver in TK when our offtank decided that he wanted to heal. This was quite a pickle. Well, guess who just hit level 70? That's right, Forklift! Longing to tank in raids I offered to switch as well. Nothing says good times like a female gnome warrior tanking shit. But as I geared up Fork for tanking, the quality of the guild was falling apart. Drama was seeping in. Quality players were leaving as TBC wasn't new and exciting anymore. MV would die finishing up at 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK.

However the members that were left didn't go away. The other top guild on the server was also struggling with keeping quality people in their raids. It was decided that these two guilds would merge and form into . Whip and I weren't overly thrilled with the idea tbh. The move shit on a lot of people, some of whom we considered to be our friends. We made the move to Synergy. I think we were told that only one of us could be an officer and Whip passed that "honor" to me.

Synergy enjoyed some initial success.

In our first week we took out Lady Vashj:



Our next raid week saw us take down Kael: IIRC we had an arms warrior tank him in the final phase lewlz!



The new guild moved into Hyjal and BT, but it was never the same for Whip and I. We found ourselves annoyed at most people in there. After a few months of being in the guild we said "You know what? Fuck this." and announced our retirement from Midnight Vanguard. We were positive that we were done with the raiding scene. We didn't even play the game for 2-3 weeks after we left this guild. WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO REKINDLE WHIP AND VLAMING'S LOVE FOR THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT?

Last cliffhanger - Concluded in Part 4

MV update: MV reformed at the start of WotLK. Gerbs came out of retirement to finally conquer Naxx, but quit shortly after that. Many of the old members returned to try and revive MV to it's previous glory, but Whip and I did not partake. They are still going today, and it appears they are 9/12 H ICC 25 man.

Bonus Screenshot: Whip calls some guy a fucker. That's what we get for greeding amirite?