Back in 2006, I found myself without a stable raiding situation. After having cleared all of MC and BWL, and TAQ up through the Twin Emps, I found myself going casual amongst friends in Black Wolf Mercenaries. I didn't want to go casual, but the options I had on Proudmoore were limited. I had my choice in Aussie guilds, but I had already burnt out raiding until 5 and 7AM once before. I had my choice in American guilds, but they either raided weekends (which I didn't want to do), or they simply weren't for me.

I had to give some serious thought about what I wanted to do. And after attempting to build a raid during the TBC beta test and failing, I decided I needed to create my own guild somewhere on a live server. The release of TBC would be the best time for me to really attempt that, considering the transition from 40- to 25-man raiding would leave a lot of people homeless.

Originally, I had planned to transfer off Proudmoore to build the guild. I was admittedly unhappy with Proudmoore's failure to clear the entirety of Naxxramas. But I talked to my good friend Silverstreak (aka Whiteknight), and he convinced me to stay on Proudmoore by offering to help me co-found and co-GM a new raid.

And so, Lunacy as a hardcore raiding guild was born.

Founding Lunacy

The guild was established as a progression guild in January of 2007. While that is relatively young by WoW's standards, I had been playing WoW since the original beta, and Silver had been playing since release. So we were by no means inexperienced when it came to WoW, nor when it came to leadership.

Silver had seen his share of different guilds and had leadership experience in both Black Wolf Mercenaries and Project Mayhem. He also saw the hardcore side of things with Renaissance during Naxxramas.

While I hadn't been a full-time leader in WoW, I did have experience leading the top clan in a game called Nox for a year. I was merely 17 at the time of leading that clan, so I wasn't exactly mature when I started, but I learned a lot in that year and changed rather quickly. On top of this, I had also been playing MMO's for seven years at the time of founding the raid, so I was very familiar with roll systems, DKP, loot council, guild structures, etc.

I felt our different and sometimes shared experiences would give us the tools we needed to develop sound policies and succeed. I even felt we could bring a real challenge to the existing guilds on Proudmoore. Admittedly, I didn't expect to do so with any immediacy, but people really bought into our selling points and we built a guild that was quickly successful.

We started out mostly with people we either knew or those who came highly recommended. But only four people were really committed to raiding before the release of TBC. Soon after, we added some people we'd known from Project Mayhem, BWM, and our various encounters over the years.

To generate publicity, I powered my way to becoming the first level 70 on the server. This attracted some attention to the Lunacy name, and while leading the race I'd often get questions from random people asking me "Who is Lunacy?" I didn't think it would generate as much attention as it actually did, however.

By leveling quickly, I could begin pushing to recruit people as fast as possible. It did mean, however, that I had to tank for a while because there were no tanks at level 70 for probably a good week. But, hey, it challenged some of our first healer trials.

Once Silver hit 70, and helped me trial more people in some heroics, we had enough to begin doing Karazhan.

It was by late January that we began raiding Karazhan. And after merely twelve days, we were already 8 out of 11 (on only four days of raiding each week). By early March, we had our first 25-man boss kill. By mid-March, we were getting a pre-nerfed Gruul to 5% legitimately, the best non-bugged attempt on the server. By mid-April, we began scoring realm firsts (starting with Hydross), and from that point (SSC and TK) on, during TBC, we got the server first on everything except Lurker and Illidan.

We went from a fresh-faced guild, to number one on the server in a matter of three months. Much quicker than I ever thought possible. It was a result of the sweat and blood paid by Silver, me, and all of our members in evaluating applicants, trialing people in heroics and Karazhan, attuning the shit out of our new members night and day, and pushing hard during our raids. Our meteoric rise was the result of the efforts and decisions we all put in towards becoming a great guild.

Our Strengths Through Raiding

We've arguably had several peaks over the course of raiding for 33 months. And it's these general successes that bring us many fond memories.

The first long peak we had was from about Nightbane on through the middle of BT. We went from a new guild, to getting the server second on Nightbane, the best legitimate attempt on Gruul pre-nerf (5%), and the server firsts on everything except Lurker and Illidan. We won the races on Vashj, Kael'thas and Archimonde by comfortable margins. By the end of BT, however, we had undergone a lot of attrition and this really put a dent on our tanking crew.

Admittedly, losing Illidan to Renaissance by 30 minutes humbled us. But, even then, we managed to kill him with a protection paladin tanking him. So despite a drop in momentum, we had things to be proud about. But then we had to farm BT for six months before SWP, and there wasn't really anything to celebrate other than keeping the raid happy and together until SWP hit the PTR.

With SWP, we had a few more peaks. Our Brutallus kill was 40th in the U.S., and our strong start is really what allowed us to keep ahead of everyone else on the server. Admittedly, we faltered during Felmyst and dropped back a lot of places in the U.S., but we bounced back on the Eredar Twins to regain some ground.

Our first M'uru kill was really when we shined. In order to have even been capable of killing Entropius, you had to have a crazy raid comp (shamans in pretty much every group, good spriest/lock synergy on DPSing sentinels, the adds, and M'uru, etc.), as well as some fucking awesome players in every role. If people weren't putting out competitive DPS, you weren't going to kill it pre-nerf. And, yet, that's exactly what we did. And we placed 40th in the U.S. doing it, despite the fact that we had fallen behind considerably since our Brutallus kill. And despite the fact that we only raided four days a week (save the first week, when we raided five). I counted a total of three guilds in the U.S. ahead of us that either raided the same amount of time or less than us. This was really when I think the guild was at its very best. To have been capable of killing M'uru before the first nerf really said a lot about the strength of our raid during that time. And to jump up something like 30 places in rank at the same time was incredible. The attitude of everyone in the guild was also amazing at this point. People were upbeat and positive; inner turmoil was negligible.

On Kil'jaeden, admittedly, we faltered a little. This was because of attrition. We lost a few of our shamans, so repeating M'uru before his various nerfs was an arduous task and wasted a lot of our time. I even had to play one of our casual shamans just for us to be successful at times (learning the class pretty much from scratch). But we still managed to win that race and achieved the server first clear of SWP and all of TBC's raiding content. Placing 64th in the U.S. on clearing the hardest instance Blizzard has produced so far is something to be proud of.

After that, we hit another peak, when we were regularly clearing SWP and BT fully (before 3.0) in just over a raid night's worth of work. In order to get to that point, your raid needed to run like a well-oiled machine and have great players and people. I will say I think during this period we were almost as strong as we were during our first M'uru kill. But it's hard to say with farm content, even though it was SWP.

From there, the guild changed a lot. We lost a lot of people between expansions. And the general atmosphere the guild slowly changed from that point forward. Our roster constantly felt short. People were generally a little more stressed. And a few people become unfocused. But I can't say we didn't have our strengths and streaks during WotLK.

When it came to early WotLK, we started off poorly. We were only the second to clear Naxx, and never got Immortal. But Immortal is partially RNG and based on whether or not everyone is focused. If you were trialing someone, that put you at risk of failing Immortal. And if someone wasn't focused, when normally they play awesome, that could contribute to failing the achievement, as well. So it felt rather off, even though we shouldn't have cared about what is, in my opinion, a stupid achievement.

But then I consider the fact that we were the only guild to do the speed Malygos kill before they changed it from five to six minutes. That really said a lot about our ability to coordinate strategy and DPS well. And we did get the server firsts on both the 10- and 25-man versions of Sarth+3. So we were rather strong, even though we had made mistakes elsewhere.

Certainly, our best performances in WotLK was during Ulduar. Despite a couple other guilds putting tons of extra time into their schedules, we still managed to get the server first on Yogg-Saron. And then we proceeded to get server firsts on every single hard mode, including ultimately Yogg0. But this isn't indicative of a long streak, but rather a series of short-running peaks that managed to help us stay ahead.

For example, we placed 53rd in the U.S. on Lose Your Illusion, 46th on Steelbreaker, 59th on Heartbreaker (pre-nerf), and 63rd on Vezax hard. And then while ToGC provided a huge distraction to us, we still managed to place 86th in the U.S. on Yogg0, getting the server first. And, as of writing this (November 4th, 2009), we are still the only guild on Proudmoore with a claim to that achievement. But we were only 150th on Firefighter. This was largely because of the fact that we had zero decent healing priests throughout all our attempts, and no DPS warriors for some of them. So Ulduar wasn't a breeze throughout all of our time there.

Unfortunately, it was our very limited roster that hurt us on both the Twin Valks and Anub, as well. And while we didn't lose Anub by more than a day, it certainly stung a bit. Vanquisher definitely deserved the server first.

But at the end of this experience, I can sit back and know that, while we lost ToGC25, we walked away with a ton of server firsts. I'm not going to say we ended on top, but we were certainly number one throughout the majority of WotLK.

Competition

One of the things I really liked to see was competition on Proudmoore. And, fortunately, we had some good competition for a while.

At the beginning of TBC, it seemed like the server was going about its business as usual. Pushing through content at a measured pace without really challenging each other as much as they should have. It wasn't until we surprised Ruined with a Hydross kill that we really started putting the pressure on people.

Not to speak poorly of Ruined, however, because I know they had been going through a lot of things that transcend this game. At the time, I didn't really know what they were going through, and I was just trying to push them to compete. But I now realize why they didn't venture into SSC sooner. But we certainly woke them up and they gave it a shot, despite their hardships.

Ultimately, it was Renaissance who rose to the challenge in the long-term. I'm pretty sure they learned from their experiences as they looked to catch up to us. And catch us they did, stealing the server first on Illidan. And while they may not have beat us in SWP, they certainly provided us with a great competition on Kil'jaeden. Their success in beating us on Illidan is really what made us elevate our game for SWP.

For WotLK, the competition was admittedly sparse for a long while. Risen occasionally gave us a run for our money. A couple guilds also scared us on YS, momentarily. And I think I can say Vanquisher would have either passed us or began to match us for ICC. It's unfortunate the competition wasn't as fierce in Wrath overall as it was in TBC, however, and I honestly missed looking behind our shoulders constantly like we did with Ren. It was refreshing to compete with Vanq these past few weeks and they deserve all of the success they've had in ToGC25.

Unfortunately, however, it's our time for us to step back from the competition.

Recent Events and the Raid's Demise

Six months ago, I realized my time leading the raid wouldn't last forever. I was working two jobs and taking classes, all while trying to lead the guild because I felt it really needed my presence to survive. So I had to plan for the future and my departure from raiding. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to recruit to a level I desired before stepping back. It was something I tried doing for months and months. Our success in WotLK was always hindered by the fact that we didn't always have the perfect raid comp, and sometimes we didn't even have enough people to raid what we wanted. And that I couldn't fix that situation before leaving really hurt things.

The raid certainly had the tools necessary to succeed at some level, however. And I passed it on to someone who had the skills to at least try. But the pressures of real life on various people, and I think also the waning interest in some of the content, really took over people's outlook as they considered how difficult such a transition would be. I'm not going to speak for all of those who are stepping back, but I know two of those issues factored into my decision to step away from hardcore raiding. And I was also getting burnt out trying to continue leading when I knew it wasn't healthy for me and I didn't have the resources to fix our raiding roster and address our problems.

With the departure of the person who was supposed to take over leading the raid, and the attrition based on people realizing life comes before the game, the guild was about to find itself with at most 18 raiders. And some of those raiders were relatively new and weren't guaranteed to stick around through a rebuilding process. And that simply wasn't going to fly. The opportunity was there for it to continue, but it didn't work out like I had planned.

It was with this that Lunacy's hardcore raid met its demise.

No Regrets; We'll Still Be Around as a Guild

I have no regrets about the 33 months we've spent raiding hardcore as a guild. While I've certainly made my mistakes. While we've certainly had our problems. While people have come and gone. We've built some great friendships. We've had great successes. And we've seen this game as only a small percentage have. And though a lot of us now desire to step back and take a more casual approach, it's the experiences and history of the guild that will keep many of us together in some form or another for the foreseeable future. And for that I am grateful.

I very much plan to be someone who can keep us together as a social and casual entity. That's the very least I can do for people I care about.

I may blame myself for some of the problems we've endured at times. But I gave it my best. Everyone did. We tried to make it work, but it is time we move on to a new chapter.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has ever raided with us. Your efforts are what gave us some great moments. Your efforts and presence are what built this guild.

Thank you to anyone who has given us competition at any point in time. I wanted to raise the level of the server's success and some of you guys rose to that challenge.

There are so many individuals I want to thank, but I'm afraid of leaving anyone out. For sake of the probability that I'd forget someone, I'll simply say you guys already know how grateful I am.

To all of Lunacy, thank you. To all of Proudmoore, thank you. And to all of the friends I've found during my time leading and raiding with Lunacy, thank you so much.

It was an awesome experience.

In Conclusion

All things said. All thanks given. All retrospection done. Lunacy is not going anywhere. The guild may be losing some mains, but a lot of us are sticking around for friendship, casual raiding, PvP and other games, on our mains, alts, or both. Someone may even step up to create a new version of Lunacy's raid, though I cannot say whether it would be casual or hardcore. That's entirely up to what people in the guild want to do.

But know we will still have a presence. This is merely a memorial to our first hardcore raiding run. All 33 months of it. And the guild itself will hopefully never need a memorial. =)

I'll see you in WoW,
--Steve, aka Lilume