Afternoon, folks... With the influx of freshly-rolled deathknights, I've seen a TON of DKs with non-standard high-ASCII characters in their names. If you're a member or prospective member of Natural Order, I implore you to please, please reconsider making an alt or a deathknight with a high-ASCII-based name. It makes it a chore to invite, send tells to, /who, etc. I don't have an international keyboard and I'm not gonna bring up the trusty character map to see how to type an umlaut over an uppercase I, no matter how badly your mechanical squirrel is begging me.

If you've already made your character, please consider changing. If you're trying to think of a name, please steer clear of high-ASCII. It may (and probably will) affect your ability to participate in guild activities.

Thanks,

ßüh

So as many of you know, the Wrath of the Lich King opening event began today with the appearance of several crates of mysterious grain appearing on the Booty Bay docks.  Since Azeroth apparently has the memory capacity of your average hamster, instead of being pyroblasted into ash this tainted grain has quickly produced plagues of zombies throughout the land.  The plague has even reached as far as capital cities.  The facts are these:

All right kids, this is it.  It's confirmed that Champion of the Naaru will be leaving us (snif) when 3.0.2 hits servers, and that's expected for the Tuesday after next, October 14th.  Tonight we had a good Mags run, after a false start we whooped his big demon ass, but we didn't quite have the personnel for Gruul's.  So we've got some people still waiting on their titles.  A few people did get T4 chests, and I got to carry Magtheridon's big stinky head back to Thrallmar for giggles and a new ring. 

So, LAST WEEK guys, get those heroics in if you haven't already.  If you haven't killed Nightbane yet, get in on Kara as if your life depended on it.  Jaleika's put up Gruul's for Saturday night (along with another Mags, but Gruul's is going to be the priority) and this is the last shot.  Get on board.

Just think, in two weeks you guys won't have to listen to me cheerlead for Gruul's and Mags runs anymore.  I miss it already.

(And if you're wondering, I didn't have to heal today.  But I got all my gear gemmed and enchanted to hell and back, so you still might get to see me rollin' lifeblooms all tree-style and such.)

Official word from Blizzard is that the Arena season ends in two weeks, and we can assume patch 3.0.2 drops on the same day - October 14th.  So that gives us two more shots at titles, this weekend and next.  So get your heroics in, get those quests done, the train is leaving the station.

 Ok, upon request I've added a couple new links to the left navigation. Most people it seems use the 'Recent posts' link to see the most recent action on the site, and with the addition of Warhammer, people have gotten confused a few times about what post is what, which is refereing to which game, etc. So responding to Claera's actual request to do something...

We now have 3 Recent Posts links in the left navigation under 'Our Forums'.

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Recent Posts, is exactly the same as before. No changes. Shows all new activity on the website.

Recent posts (Wow) shows all the activity on the site, forums, polls, blogs, etc....but excludes any posts in the specific Warhammer forums.

Recent posts (War) shows all the activity on the site, forums, polls, blogs, etc....but excludes any posts in the specific World of Warcraft forums.

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With 3.0.2 rapidly approaching (my client finally finished the download this morning), we have to assume the window on the Champion of the Naaru titles is rapidly closing.  So we've decided to have one last push to get as many of these done as we can.  Here's the plan.

This coming Saturday, we're shifting gears.  A few of our raiders are itching to get into some new content, so this weekend we're looking at doing some T5 content, Void Reaver, maybe poking around in SSC.  We might do Mags/Gruul's as well, but nothing's guaranteed.  The Saturday following, we're doing what might very well be our last M/G run for titles.  In an effort to show our appreciation for those who always step in on whatever character is needed and not necessarily the one they want to be playing, we're going to try to lock down some major-league healers to cover those bases so that people can get the honors on their other characters as well.  So we might have to play with raid composition somewhat, and if you've already got the title or don't want it, please don't be offended if you get squeezed out.  We want to make this one last run to get as many Champions as we can before the opportunity vanishes.

So - if you have a character that you want to get the title on, you have two weeks (well, twelve days or so at this point) to get the quests and dungeons in.  And just to show you how serious I am about giving our healers a break...

Okay, so Brewfest is a little bit different this year.  First of all, if you kept tickets, you need to change them for tokens at the vendor.  Everything from last year is still there - almost.  The mounts are now a drop off the event's special boss, which will be explained later.  (In their place is the Beer of the Month club.)

Doesn't look like Pink Elekks On Parade or the quest to catch the Wolpertinger are still there - but you can buy the Wolpertinger off the vendor, and the Elekks are still there at the other cities' beer gardens.  The ran racing is the same as last year, and the brewery barking is exactly the same.  (For those who don't know, you click the reins in your inventory faster to speed up or slower to slow down, and the faster you go, the faster your mount gets tired.  Hit 100 fatigue and you lose speed drastically.  Ride past apple barrels or drop to slow speeds to regain fatigue.)  After you've done the keg delivery quest, talk to him again for extra token opportunities.

Two great tastes that taste great together.  Or rather the taste of bloody vengeance as we sent them into whatever afterlife awaits raid bosses in the week it takes them to reset.  Two-shot on Mags, thanks to a hiccup with the cubes; one shot on Gruul.  Got a few more people some titles, got some others some gear, and Claera cleaned up on the last fight of the night, taking home not only her first piece of T4 (the pants) but the legendary Dragonspine Trophy.

The order stands: get your asses to Shadowmoon Valley, get the quests done, get your heroics in.  When the rest of the server is waving their feeble "of the I Bought This Title for 1000g" or the new WOTLK "Grand High Poobah Fudge Chef" titles, you'll get to show off "Champion of the Motherfucking Naaru".  Sev did a man's job (sir) pulling in some capable players from other guilds, and I think we can keep this up on a weekly basis straight through to WOTLK.  Hopefully we can even let some of our long-suffering healers and the odd tank sub in their alts for a shot at the goodies if we have a chance. 

Excelsior!

Okay, we've had a lot of issues lately with people being kind of apathetic in the lull before WOTLK.  So we're putting the guild on a mission (a mission from God), and that's to get as many of us "Champion of the Naaru" titles as possible.  I understand Nin's frustration in missing out the one successful Mags kill we had, so we're going to do that big fat bastard over again.  Nin's called us out for Saturday, September 13th.  Clear your schedules, chat up competent non-guildies in game, whatever the fuck we have to do to get 25, we're doing this.  T4 gear vendors, epic drops shard...  but chicks dig scars, and titles last forever. 

In the meantime, anyone who wants the title, it's on you to get the prereqs done.  You need a Heroic Slave Pens to pick up a quest to kill Gruul and Nightbane.  You need to go to SMV to that altar by the lava to start on the Cipher of Damnation questline - there are two group quests at the end of that, and I, for one, will gladly help out each and every person who wants to complete those two.  Then, you need to do four heroics, each of the top-tier dungeons, and for that you really, really seriously want to butter up Vel.  Vel tanking anything these days is complete and total easymode.  It's terrifying.