Kil'Jaeden, The Deceiver - 6.7.2008

The final boss of The Burning Crusade (probably) has been defeated. Rejoice young ones; go forth into the streets and make merry with vast quantities of mead. Or alternatively, read my article! Either is good.

I was looking for a single phrase I could use to sum up this fight, and indeed the whole Sunwell instance, and whilst I came across many excellent choices; I think I will have to settle upon 'Short and Sweet'. It has a fairly nice ring to it, for starters, but it also expresses my feelings about Sunwell, and Kil'Jaeden, rather nicely.

Allow me to explain; the 'Short' obviously refers to the small number of bosses within the Sunwell, only 6 encounters are actually available to raid. In comparison to the last raid instance of Vanilla WoW, Naxxramas, which had a lovely 15 encounters, this is somewhat annoying. Top guilds can potentially clear the place in a few hours; hardly a fitting end to a superb expansion. Which leads me to believe there is more in store for the TBC raider, regardless of what Blizzard suggests. Secondly, it is a somewhat opinionated description of the Kil'Jaeden fight itself - I won't go into specifics, but i was hoping for a +15 minute epic encounter the likes of which raiders had never seen. Whilst there's no denying the encounter itself is very challenging, it can easily be done in under 11 minutes. I'm sure that sounds fairly long for many of you, but personally, I was hoping for something a bit more strenuous.

'Sweet' of course can be used to describe all the encounters within the Sunwell. All of them are particularly demanding for what they require from the raid group; unlike say, Shade of Akama in Black Temple, which you can pretty much AFK on these days. This demand for skilled play from the whole group is definitely what raiders have been looking for, and a special mention must go to M'uru and Kil'Jaeden, both very difficult boss fights. Kil'Jaeden specifically requires that special combination of spatial awareness and skill that separates the truly exceptional player from the good one. And for that I am glad; it is a testament to each guild that has downed him thus far.

Speaking of, the 'Epic Battle' between Nihilum and SK-Gaming was brought to a close on the 25th of May, with SK-Gaming clinching the world 1st with ease. A well deserved kill, SK has been following in the shadow of Nihilum (back when they were Curse/MyM) for a long while now, and it's refreshing to see them take pole position for once. Nihilum is still a force to be reckoned with of course, taking the world 3rd, after Method.

Will direct your attention to WoWProgress again for the most accurate Sunwell leading guild list, and also this nifty new feature - Detective, which basically tracks server transfers to and from your server. No more hiding behind another name!

I'd also like to take this opportunity to say goodbye to Blogcraft. I've decided to stop writing as I'm not planning to be raiding in the next expansion, and therefore wouldn't have much to write about! Would like to say thank you to Matt for letting me blog with him, and I hope Blogcraft lives on for many years to come. Best wishes to all readers, Joe.

-Joe Zara [Phoee]