Pierre de Coubertin, founder of modern Olympic Games said “The most important thing…is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”

Our guild has just moved on to AQ40, and we are trying to develop tactics for the first bosses; last night, we met Battleguard Sartura. We wiped, and wiped, and wiped. And you know what? It was wonderful. There’s a huge difference between instances that a guild has on farm status, and new encounters. I am relatively new to raiding at this level; when I reached level 60 and started raiding, all bosses up to Nef were well-choreographed, and everyone knew what to do. All I had to do is watch, learn, and not make any stupid mistakes. This is different.

We’re all on an even footing now, discussing tactics and trying different plans; people are going afk to read various guides, and coming back to discuss what they’ve read. It’s hard, and quite expensive (after the purple sheen wears off those brand-new epixx, you realise how expensive they are to repair), but the sense of team spirit was amazing. This isn’t a group that forgives people leaving raid groups after a few wipes; everyone that was there was determined to beat the winged bitch, and no one was wimping out. This is why I love raiding. I feel amazed when I see a group of 40 people who meet on a regular basis, who work as a team to meet challenges and still have fun.

As a warlock, I learned several things: DoTs in this fight generally lead to Certain Death™. The tactic of having all locks around the boss, spamming her with CoA and Searing Pain in order to “ping-pong” her back and forth between us was…interesting. Not sure if that would have been successful, as the loose adds generally took us out fairly quickly, again leading to Certain Death™. All the other classes had their own version, their own learning experiences, mostly all leading to (again) Certain Death™. it was worth it. We could see at least three other guilds on the ghost run back to the instance, and I would bet that they felt the same way.

But we had fun. No ultimate success yet, but a lot of great work in tandem with friends. And that, for me, is what end-game raiding is all about.