World of Warcraft · 2006 · Ysera
How a Dwarf Priest named Aireen ended up in a guild that split off to raid harder, and what September through November 2006 looked like from inside it.
01 Darkspear
My friend kklown (Mist), my buddy from Diablo 1 on Battle.net all the way through SWTOR, is the reason I ever logged in. By the time I rolled a character he was already level 60, and his guild was already established on Darkspear: Cadia, a roster with players like Swifty in it.
I made a female Dwarf Priest named Aireen and started catching up.
02 Summer 2006
Somewhere over the summer, a group of Cadia players, kklown among them, decided the guild wasn't pushing Naxxramas 40 hard enough. They split off, picked me up on the way out, and we all moved to Ysera under a new name: Malice.
03 Recruitment
We poached a top-tier Restoration Druid out of another guild that was already progressing through Naxx 40. The pitch was a promise: come with us, and we'd get you the Splinters of Atiesh you need to finish crafting Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian.
Some of the names I'll always remember
04 September onward
Look at September. Thunderfury on the 14th, then Grand Widow Faerlina, Noth, C'Thun and Maexxna on four straight nights, then Patchwerk and Grobbulus on the same night six days later.
A brand-new roster clearing at that pace doesn't stay a group of strangers for long. It forced everyone to get to know each other and actually play together. By November 20th we were standing on the Four Horsemen's steps.
Autumn 2006
Every lit square is a kill (or a legendary). Look at how dense mid-September is.
September
October
November
Progression log
The guild's own screenshots, dates as stamped on each one. Not every kill got a poster, so a few entries are just the date. Click any shot to see it full size.
The guild site is still on the Wayback Machine: malice.cc as it looked on November 27, 2006, a week after the Horsemen died.
September 2006
Legendary
Built, two days before the Naxx kills started landing.
Arachnid Quarter
Plague Quarter
6 days later
Construct Quarter
I went so hard on this one that I walked straight out for a cigarette the second he died. They left me standing alone in the far left corner of the shot for a laugh.
7 days later
October 2006
Construct Quarter
9 days later
21 days later
November 2006
Plague Quarter
6 days later
5 days later
Military Quarter
8 days later
Military Quarter
<Malice>
Every nameplate I could still read in the kill shots, twenty years later.
