Fires of Heaven - The good, the bad, and the whatever else.

I was over in the WoD thread and got to thinking about my past with FoH. I ended up thinking there might be some interest in anecdotes from myself and other former members. I know back way too many years ago I lived vicariously through the front page updates of EQ era FoH. If nothing else I think I have a few stories that might be interesting. I know there are a number of folks like Kruegan around that might have their own memories to add and hopefully they will if folks are interested.

The first time FoH downed Gluth was because he bugged out. Gluth gave us a bit of trouble for a while. Our strategy was all worked out and it was just down to execution and zombie chow co-operating with the retardedly Benny Hill Earthbind race track I assume most horde guilds concocted. So we would have got him that week if not that night anyways but there was a bug where if Gluth tried to eat a chow but that zombie was killed in the half second or so it took him to get to it he would become unresponsive and just sit there stationary. So he bugs out and we proceed to kill him. I'm not 100% sure but I think I said we should wipe and do it legit before he died, I know I pissed and moaned about how it didn't feel like the accomplishment it should have and blah blah blah for which I was rightly ridiculed. The next week I believe we one shot him but I had sour grapes for weeks because we were dirty dirty cheaters and didn't reset him when he bugged like the saintly little boy scouts I wanted us to be ;_;.

Viscidious was a soul crushing retard check. I don't recall why exactly but Visc was much harder for horde guilds and not many downed him during the AQ era. I was new at the time, I'm not sure if i was a full member yet or still an applicant but we wiped and wiped and wiped. Part of that problem was most groups were taking waaay too much poison damage which was the one aspect of the fight that was super easy due to shaman. My group was taking little to no damage due to the fact that the poison stacks applied at the exact same rate poison cleansing totem pulsed. So as soon as the debuff hit you drop a totem and if you placed it right you cleanse your entire group before it even ticks and continue to do so for the entire two minute duration. Some of the groups with shaman are being eaten alive by the poison so Rav asks me to share what I'm doing with the other shaman, some of whom have 10 years with the guild. I get some of the most offensive replies I have ever read in my life back in response to those messages. Being the new guy wasn't super fun! The issue never got sorted out and we ended up winning despite the fact that most of the shaman groups were eating metric fuck tons of poison damage they didn't have to take. Go us! I still don't understand why but to be fair 90% of the raid had engineering but Ravv only trusted about five people to use goblin landmines correctly.

The night I ruined Naxx and stopped being the golden child was my first real taste of drama in FoH. I had taken a night off and missed spider wing the week prior. That week our clear pattern changed and we skipped a pack by hugging the left wall to save a couple minutes. Well no one remembered to let me know so I herp derp my way around the corner and aggro the pack that was left up. Our raid leader (a priest, Delkhaan if memory serves) absolutely loses his god damn mind over vent. Screaming cursing calling me names the whole nine yards. I'm drinking and playing at a friends house and had just come back from an AFK due to dropping and breaking a glass when it happened so I get pretty salty about it especially when a new shaman app HAS THE GAL to send me a whisper explaining how to hug the corner(how soon we forget!). Yelling at folks wasn't exactly rare but losing ones shit and calling out a single person by name was and had certainly never happened to me at that point other than the exasperated sighs when my always strafing left habit caused me to faceplant on the first eye beam from Cthun (Who always fired a good bit left of his initial target). So anyhow we pick up and move along. I tell that uppity fucker I'm well aware of how to corner hug it just would have been good to give me a heads up on the fact I needed to since I missed the last week. I bitch in group chat about how uncalled for and over the top screaming at me was and since I'm in a group with four officers someone tells Delk I'm shit talking him I guess. We clear to Anub and just sit there for a minute or so and I'm just beginning to wonder what we're waiting for when Delk begins to make the earlier reaming sound like a friendly heads up and removes me from the raid. At that point a couple folks step up in my defense and I'm immediately invited back and flooded with tells from folks telling me this is crazy your good don't worry about it he's just stressed out etc etc. But I am beyond done with it at that point so I hearthstone out, tell him to get fucked, and log off to get shitfaced with my friends sooner than planned. That ended up being one of the last, if not the last raid lead by Delkhaan for a while. Guy was just beyond stressed and needed the break which I certainly understand now. Being a raid leader contending for world firsts is not the easiest task in the world. Honestly thought I would be guildless after that night but I just ended up losing my golden boy status as up to that point I was kind of the teachers pet with a good portion of the officers and damn near loot bukkaked as a result. It was the beginning of the end of my vanilla career as well. I was bitter about it and couldn't get past it so I just had less and less desire to put in the crazy hours I needed to. I became somewhat of a pariah to the rank and file as well since loot was officer awarded you didn't want to be the person who's friends with the guy half the officers hate. A shaman who was an app before me and approved a few weeks after me ended up being the new "me" after that. Our rivalry and loathing for one another went on for years and has it's own stories.

I've got a bunch of other stories and anecdotes but these were just on my mind today. Once again if you have your own stories I would love to read them and if you thought these were interesting let me know and I'll post more!

Gavinmad_sl said:

Well, he's talking about back in Vanilla. But FoH was still a hardcore raiding guild through WotLK, it wasn't until Cataclysm that the guild went mostly dead.

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Correct. I googled around for it but couldn't find horde only kill ranks for Naxx. I know for a fact we had a few top 5's and remember racing for Horde world 1sts on a few bosses. In most cases 8-10 of the first ten guilds to down a boss in Naxx were Alliance due to how incredibly fine tuned most of those encounters were. Blessing of Kings alone was so far beyond anything Shaman brought to the table it wasn't even funny. Our highest impact ability was windfury totem and that was good for absolutely fuck all in the context of world first due to melee dps being threat capped 99% of the time.

I was a flaky piece of shit during TBC raiding when I felt like it and quitting when I got sick of it or no longer had the time. We weren't anywhere near the top 10 to down Muru but we beat him pretty damn early if I recall. The night we downed him was the last night I raided as a member of FoH though so I have no clue about WotLK. When I came back for Sunwell it was partly because we were hurting so bad that a semi-retired member of the old guard was having to play my Shaman while he leveled his own in his spare time we needed them so badly.

Naxx broke the guilds back for certain. If TBC had 40 man raids FoH would have been over and done with right then and there. I wasn't present for this but the reason FoH never finished Naxx was a large portion of our cross server recruits threatened to quit if Sean got the first BP from 4H. For a large part of Naxx Sean wasn't around due to his internet situation so they didn't feel he deserved it and the "leader" of these folks was a druid who was kind of the person next in line for it. They gave an ultimatum. FoH doesn't negotiate with terrorists so Sean got the BP and they /gquit. It was too late in the game to replace them, gear the new folks, and then teach them. The majority of the guild was in TBC beta and a good portion had been in since F+F alpha so there wasn't enough give a fuck to power through after it happened. 4H ended countless guilds in a number of ways.

The guild was entirely different from that point forward. Sunwell finished what Naxx started as far as I knew. I was pretty much an outsider at that point but there was obvious frustration from some folks contrasted by Ravven's circlejerk of butt buddies fucking around without a care in the world because they were above the law.

Generol_sl said:

As a member of FoH since 1999, I fully agree we were an EQ guild. The WoW group had few members from the original and wasn't nearly as focused in terms of world first kills, etc.

It's interesting this topic pops up as I was looking through my old computer files and found the front page announcement of when we "Made History" by killing Lady Vox. I had totally forgotten about rubicite armor and how we all (basically) had it. I also found a file called "Hasta La Bye Bye" in which we killed the Priest of Discord and one other about the whole Zamtil & Herzog debacles.

I know that wasn't the point of this thread but, regardless, it was a good trip down memory lane reading a few of these comments.

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Actually that's exactly the point of the thread. My stories are just from my era. A pretty good portion of the guild was from the EQ era during vanilla though. A good 50% I would say minimum at the start of Naxx. I came in as the last of the people to make the switch but not stick around left. Taurina was the last I think. I'll refrain from comment on that though as I never dealt with it first hand and the comments I did see about those players could seem shitty outside the conversations they were made in.

Also holy fuck littles. Glad to see you. I actually just refreshed the page before submitting a comment to check context with posts made while I typed it and had mentioned you and Neafy. Towards the end of things I don't think you thought too much of me as a person. I'm not sure what if anything I may have said but I was bitter for a bunch of reasons and I know I at least had the impression there was bad blood between us. I was a piece of shit child back then and I apologize for being one if I didn't imagine the animosity. You were a great player and a good guy. If you still talk to Neafy let her know I miss her and I'm sorry for driving her crazy with my dumbass jokes

Gavinmad_sl said:

There were a fair amount of awful players that were dragging down heroic progress in Wrath, and then there were some really skilled players with just unbelievably toxic attitudes that were honestly almost worse than the bad players. Ulduar hardmodes were a constant clusterfuck.

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Sounds like the same kind of stuff drove me away my friend. I killed Muru for me and me alone. Well maybe for Abraxes the guy who had been playing my Shaman. That man was by far the best person I have ever had the pleasure to game with. He was the recruitment officer when I joined and I told him one night at the end of my first week as an app I was broke and gonna have to take a week off till I got some money. He told me I was being guilded in the next couple days and that there was no way I could just leave for a week so he paid for my account for six months until I could afford to pick it back up(jobless student). As an aside if any of the old timers have any way to contact him I would love to pay him back for that. The day he retired during Naxx was the day quitting was a certainty. Hell he was the reason I didn't cut ties the night of my third story. He was the biggest reason I came back during Sunwell if I'm honest. If everyone to ever be a member of FoH was in a burning building and I could only save two people I'd save Abraxes and go back for his stuff(Neafy and Littles don't count because I forgot them until I typed that. She was awesome and I hope she's doing well and there is obviously no God if someone like her had to go through that kind of shit. Littles was a kickass guy too.). Obviously that's a bit of hyperbole as there were a whole bunch of good folks but seriously Abraxes was just an absolutely stellar guy.