Classic Raider: AQ40

What a busy weekend! I will confess my game time has been pretty low due to an excess of spring sunshine but that hasn't stopped a me cranking up a few bits and bobs. Thanks to a very friendly guild on EU-Steamwheedle Cartel called <Sixty>, Aeia had a fun friday night in the generally forgotten Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ40). More after the break.

<Sixty> are a friendly bunch who are followers of the "Old World" or Vanilla WoW as it's known. They cap their xp gain at level 60 and raid through all the (remaining) old world instances. I'm not going to discuss the relative merits/cons of doing this here - they're having fun - good for them. Nor am I going to discuss the fact that their open invites every weekend for anyone over level 60 to join their raids usually means a bunch of level 80's making mincemeat of the instance in very short order. The guys leading the raids are pleasant, really know the instance and alway explain fights before enguaging. It's still possible to die in there - take C'Thun - his pewpew lAz0rbeemz (ahem) are still deadly - you still have to run in circles!

One of the fun parts of AQ40 has to be collecting the mounts. I only managed to pick up the Blue Qiraji Resonating Crystal for my mad chittering insectoid mount... just a shame you can only use it inside the instance.

The Twin Emporers provided the usual confusion and we ended up with them being way too close for quite a while - with superior dps though we could pretty much grind through the heals.

C'Thun is still an amazingly fun fight even when your top dps is averaging about 7k. I was lucky enough to end up in his stomach during phase 2 along with 2 others, sad to relate I was so busy blasting the hell out of the tendrils I failed to take any pics so here's one of the old god after the "NUKE" command was given.

So what did Aeia gain from the night's entertainment - a lot of fun! I love old world raids (MC is a little dull it's got to be said) and with the Cataclysm approaching it's probably sensible to check them all out - they may not be around much longer. So I walked away happy with 2 Nexus Crystals, a new mount I can't use anywhere except back inside the instance, satisfaction of seeing another part of the game I'd missed so far and of course 1 step closer to the Classic Raider meta-achievement. Only AQ20 and Blackwing Lair left to go now.