And so, it begins...

Hi everyone, my name is Garnaph, and I tank in a pink dress. And I like it.

OK, so let me explain. Between pulls, while afk, or just any time we want to screw around, I equip a pink dress and bunny ears for my guild's amusement. Thanks to gear not appearing when you shift into druid forms, I didn't realise I hadn't switched back to my tanking gear on one occasion, and I proceeded to get oneshot by Blood Queen Lanathel. I'll never live it down.

PNV days

So, a bit of background. I started playing wow probably about 3 years ago, through the encouragement of a friend named Apathaia (PvP mage). My wife and I both started in Twilight's Hammer EU, quickly joining Pap en Vleis, the resident South African social guild on the server.

Soon enough, we both picked our mains, and hit max level (70 at the time, as we started late in TBC). We discovered a little thing called raiding, and wanted in. BAD. As the guild only had a single 10 man at the time, we started our own with some friends we'd made while lvling, and we soon overtook the original 10 man, which I guess is where everything started for me.

One thing led to another, and I ended up running the guild. We merged the 2 10 mans into a single 25 for Magtheridon and Gruul. We took a look at SSC and TK before the massive raid nerf hit pre WOTLK, and at that point we took a quick look at MH and BT before the new expansion hit.

Since we'd started so late in TBC, we were ok with missing most of the content, but we didn't want it to happen again. We took our existing 25 man, and tore apart Naxx and Malygos. Unfortunately, being a social guild, there was a lot of pressure in PnV to include more players, and since 25 isn't a number I can change, this became an issue. A second 25 man started up, and everything was going OK, until Ulduar hit.

With patch 3.1 and ulduar, we had a new problem. You had to have naxx gear to get into ulduar, but the second raid team, that was still working on naxx, wasn't willing to give up their best players so we could proceed. I get their point of view, but it meant that no one wins. Ultimately we ran out of players due to the normal wear-and-tear of losing raiders to RL issues, work, moving guilds, etc, and eventually the whole group dissolved. The Mrs and I left, and joined Unforgiven II, a guild where I had some friends, and I heard they had a more serious approach to raiding, something I was very much looking for.

UFII days

I raided the whole way through Ulduar with UF2, ultimately taking down yogg, which was one of the most epic raiding experiences of my wow career to date. Ultimately my time in UF2 came to an end due to older players competing with me for raid spots, and the powers that be made the call I would have also made in their position : go with the founding raiders rather than the new guy.

The Exodus

At that point I started raiding 10 man ICC with some friends, some of whom were in UF2, some of whom were old PnV friends of mine. when UF2 decided to port off the server, I took the opportunity to start my own guild, and thus The Exodus was born.

Now, first up, we weren't named after the world top guild. I knew they existed, but I picked the name for a deliberate reason. I was leaving a guild where I felt I didn't fit in, and so were a lot of my PnV friends. We were all leaving situations that were not ideal for us, and looking for the "promised land" of raiding. I realised in UF2 that if the founders ran the show, then I wanted to be a founder.

We've had some ups and downs since then, but the guild is mostly held it together. Friends from all over have ported servers to join us, and we have a thriving social community, on top of 2 very successful raiding teams. I still run my own raids as "Team Hellscream", and the other raids are under "Team Ghostbusters". The two groups have a very different feel, but both work, which is what's so great about it.

Right now team GB is 7/12, and HS is 11/12, working on Nefarian (or being farmed by him, depending on who you ask).

So anyway, the purpose of this blog is to post my thoughts on raiding, our guild, wow as a whole. I'll also share some of the funny stories of things that happen in our guild, as that's part of what makes this game fun. If it was all serious raiding, I think we all would have lost interest a while ago.