Kishi Kaisei
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The Rearview

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Post by Azadar Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:59 am

I wasn't around when Akyra moved his toons to the new server. I had been without WoW for quite some time due to a nasty computer virus - until i caved in to my need and dragged my old computer out of the basement. After dusting it off and making the proper connections, i was able to get back online to WoW. Having fallen in love with the Death Knight, i didn't bother logging on to my shaman, but instead went back to my DK and did the best i could to be productive by skilling up professions while i waited for my real computer to get repaired. Because the capital cities lagged me horrendously, as my bags filled with random stuff, i used my shaman as a bank, mailing him stuff periodically.

I mention this because it wasn't until i got my computer back and logged onto my shaman to mail back all the random stuff that i found a letter from Akyra. He sent it to me when he made his mind up to leave the server. For those of you that knew him, today he was on his DK - one of the few toons that he hadn't moved off the server. He was cleaning out his bank and mailing his gold and items to friends before deleting his toons and cancelling his account. Needless to say, it was a sad day for me. - and perhaps it was or will be for some of you as well.

I'm older than i look, younger than i feel, and i've lost a few friends over the years. It was always a consensus among the mourners in my little group to remember the bright moments - the warm and fuzzy moments, the moments that you couldn't stop laughing so hard that you couldn't breathe - in order to get past the pain of the loss.

My brain works like a ricochet... it starts off heading one way, impacts with a thought, and that thought skews it off in another direction completely - ad infinitum. Remembering some of the good times with Akyra got me thinking back to some of the others who have departed over the years, and that got me thinking back in a very general way to some of the best times i've had as a member of this guild, and make no mistake, there have been many. One of the ultimate in my mind happened on a friday night. Actually, many of them were friday nights, as it was not uncommon to have half or more of the online members enjoying some tasty libations as we looked for mischief - usually in a group of 5-10 (sometimes even more).

This particular evening started off slowly. With nothing really to do, i decided to kill some time with PvP. Generally speaking, i am not a fan of PvP and prefer to spend my time instancing, but after having ground out enough honor for a killer resto mace when i hit 70, i found that i somewhat enjoyed Alterac Valley. I entered the queue with Drakemus (and maybe Eljosh, i'm not entirely certain because things got rather hectic) having no clue what i was in for. It was easily the most amazing and epic battle i have ever been in. It was the stuff of legends.

One of the coolest things about AV is that as the battle progresses and you begin burning the opposing faction's resources, the battlefield seems to grow darker, hazy with the smoke of buildings flaming. The general plan is to speed rush each objective in succession, the faction with the best coordination and dps generally wins, and it usually takes no more than a few minutes to be over.

Long live the "Turtle"....

For those not familiar, a turtle is when one faction or both factions decide to play strong defense instead of rushing forward. To capture an objective, you have to kill a boss, and each boss is roughly equivalent to a raid boss, requiring at minimum 10 players to take them down. When you add another 10-20 geared-out 70's to that, it becomes quite an obsticle to overcome. Well, this particular battleground, the horde turtled us. On the bright side, we didn't have much need to play defense. On the down side, we were essentially throwing ourselves against a brick wall.

There is a certain magic to the design of AV in that there are multiple ways to win. There are NPCs that drop items when slain. Gather enough of these drops and you can summon reinforcements for your faction. There are neutral resources which can be seized, and in seizing these, you gather reinforcements for your faction. Lastly, each player that dies causes the loss of one of these reinforcements, so by killing enough of the opposing faction, you can consume all their reinforcements and win.

This was clearly going to be one of those nights. The center of AV was filled with smoke, as both horde and alliance had captured and set fire to their first objective. But the horde had done it with fewer players - "the hard way" - and so as they rushed the next objective and filtered through a small pass toward a bridge, they were repelled by the few alliance players that decided to play defense. At that point, the alliance strategy depended so heavily on offense that we rarely bothered to capture graveyards along the way because capturing them ate up precious time. Well that meant that when you died, you found yourself close to the far end of the map from where you had gone down. Rather than run back, most chose to hang back and play defense instead. As more and more of the offense ground itself to death against the teeth of the horde turtle, the game devolved into one where BOTH sides were playing defense. Aggrivating.

A horde offense sallied forth to try and take the alliance bunkers by force, but by that time, more than half of the 40-player force was holding a narrow pass and a bridge - and doing it with a brutal efficiency bordering on the psychotic. As we pushed the horde back and slew them repeatedly, the group advanced closer and closer to the middle of the map. Because we were behind on reinforcements, we sent a couple small teams to capture the mines and gain some back for us.

It was as we passed the burning shell of an alliance stronghold and approached the true midfield of Alterac that i learned something amazing. There was a group of people standing around a mound, summoning..... *something*. I got a whisper to come over and add my click so we could summon it. The next thing i knew, there was a monstrous figure on the battlefield. It promptly began storming around, stomping and laying waste to any horde that came within range. Shortly thereafter, a company of armored Alliance cavalry stormed past us. Apparently, as you continue to turn in the items for reinforcements, you can also activate such craziness as cavalry and flying cavalry!! Shocked

I'll be honest, i don't remember the *exact* course the battle took that night, but it was most certainly a battle. What should have been a ten minute win or loss stretched into at least 45 minutes of back and forth. And yet, it was so dynamic, so amazing, that it hardly seemed like it. As the final horde reinforcements clicked slowly away and an alliance win became sure, i began excitedly recounting our win in guild chat.

By now it was getting a bit late, and a lot of our guildies had enjoyed more than one or two of their aforementioned tasty beverages. They were spurred by the idea of beating back waves of horde, and we spent the next several hours gleefully wading through masses of horde, slaying indiscriminately. We (as a guild) won something like 16 or 17 of the next 20 or 21 BGs we entered, including AB and EotS.

The penultimate moment in this glorious run was an EotS battle in which we had one or two players that were not from Kishi. They were told something along the lines of 'sit down, shut up, and enjoy the win'...

By this point, our little team of marauders had even gathered in the players in the guild that almost never PvP'd. Yet that night, they... we... were collectively spectacular. One finely tuned force of alliance vengeance. We 4-capped EotS in less than five minutes, no doubt leaving the horde wondering who the hell Kishi Kaisei was and why they were so amazingly brutal. It wasn't a BG as much as it was a festival devoted to the utter stompage of horde.

Anyway, i'm sorry for the wall of text, but the point of this was... Since we have a 'random screenshots' section, i've been wondering about all of your happiest/best/most amazing WoW memories. You don't necessarily need to run aimlessly on like i did, though you are free to if you'd like. What WoW memories will you carry with you if you ever stop playing?

Thanks.

Azadar


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The Rearview Empty Re: The Rearview

Post by Hafgrim Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:06 pm

Holy living fuck, thats badass
Hafgrim
Hafgrim


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