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| Strength and Valor || http://www.strengthandvalor.com || || |
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| − | | The Pandion Knights || http://www. |
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| The Round Table || http://www.trtguild.com|| Adversary || |
| The Round Table || http://www.trtguild.com|| Adversary || |
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Revision as of 12:12, 22 August 2007
Template:Server
Al'Akir the Windlord
Template:Infobox BattlegroupN
Al'Akir (PvP, Europe)
Al'Akir is a Player versus Player server for Blizzard's MMORPG, World of Warcraft. The Al'Akir server was one of the original servers included with the release of World of Warcraft. It is named after one of the Old Gods's lieutenants, Al'Akir the Windlord. It's more commonly referred to as Lag'Akir by its playerbase though, because of its history of being very prone to lag and long queues.
Al'Akir has a very active community -which contains some of the most recognizable names in World of Warcraft-, a wide variety of guilds ranging from casual to hardcore and a history filled with incidents, events and drama.
The early days
Raid Progress
Al'Akir has, and always had, a strong raiding community. Outdoor raid bosses have always been heavily contested and competition for serverwide first kills shines every time a new instance is added to the game. The longstanding superpowers that emerged on both factions are DarkStorm (DS)] for the Horde and Stature of the Gods (SotG) for the Alliance. Currently, other notable raiding guilds include Kalevlased (Kale), Explicit Content (EC) (both Horde), East Dragon (ED), Midnight Reveries (MR), Defenders of Valor (DoV) and Pure (all Alliance).
The Molten Core
As Horde players leveled significantly faster on Al'Akir, they were able to form the first raids to explore the depths of the Molten Core. The two dominant Horde guilds, DarkStorm and The Forgotten Few (TFF), collaborated and raided together tackling encounter after encounter with no notable competition, whilst The Void followed closely behind snapping up all of the guild-only kills. The combined guild raid force, using noggenfogger pot spam, killed Ragnaros on May 18, 2005 (Movie). It wouldn't be until 2 months later on July 22nd that their kill was followed by Stature of the Gods, closely followed by Midnight Reveries and The Void.
Blackwing Lair
Hungry for new content, Blackwing Lair was eagerly anticipated by both factions. A bugged Razorgore fell to The Void early on with a proper kill coming later on from DS, who had merged with TFF by this time. The first Alliance kill tells a more interesting story.
The Razorgore incident
MR, still bitter being beaten by SotG on Ragnaros by less then 24 hours, made it their mission to beat SotG on this occassion and they succeeded, but not without the use of the commonly known 
[Divine Intervention] paladin exploit. Their initial claims of the kill were received with sceptism and when definite word spread they exploited the encounter, the community was quick to burn down any MR member that had shown arrogance after the kill or denied what had happened. Not all MR members had supported the 'approach' to the encounter and this lead to internal guild troubles which resulted in many of their core members leaving to form Edge of Eternity (EoE). On top of that, many members rerolled on another server or quit the game following the community's reaction, leaving MR severely crippled, but alive.
A turning point
Eventually, the first legit Alliance Razorgore kill came from SotG. Both DS and SotG were hammering on the next boss, Vaelastrasz, night after night (for an hour tops, as that was how the Vaelastrasz fight worked in those days). This eventually resulted in a turning point in server history: the first time an alliance guild achieved a server first, as it was SotG that killed Vaelastrasz on August 29, 2005 (Movie). DS was quick to follow though and killed Vaelastrasz soon after, followed by a server-first on Broodlord Lashlayer that same night. It would be their last achievement in Blackwing Lair, since SotG killed Firemaw, then steamrolled over Ebonroc, Flamegor and Chromaggus in one night and eventually downed the final boss Nefarian. It would take considerable time, due to various internal issues, for DS to follow.
SotG's kill on Nefarian put them among the 10 best guilds in Europe. Their achievement was criticised though by, most notably, DS who accused SotG of using guides (which were unavailable at the time, but stemmed from the friendly relation SotG maintained with another EU top guild: Inner Sanctum (IS)).
Ahn'Qiraj
The opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj was a well coordinated serverwide event on Al'Akir. The dedicated pages to view progress on the war supplies gathering and cross faction trading of materials resulted in Al'Akir being the 7th server in Europe to open the gates on February 17, 2006.
Restoring the Scepter
Lylz (shaman, DS) completed the quest for the Scepter of the Shifting Sands first and was the player who triggered the world event. Other players that finished the scepter quest are: Astaren (DoV).
War supplies
Horde gathered the bulk of the supplies, including a notable portion of the Alliance supplies. This had several reasons. Besides being the bigger faction, in numbers, on Al'Akir, certain Horde guilds (DS amongst others) and Alliance guild Solution put considerable effort into the farming process through supplies 'lotteries' that proved to be very popular. Also, a considerable amount of farming time was wasted because two guilds (DS and DoV) were completing the time-consuming scepter quest.
Temple of Ahn'Qiraj
When the gates eventually opened it was SotG that rushed in first and cleared up to Princess Huhuran that same night, claiming server-firsts on The Prophet Skeram, Three Bugs, Battleguard Sartura and Fankriss the Unyielding. Princess Huhuran died to them the next day. DS progressed quickly as well and both guilds were working on the Twin Emperors for 3 days before DS took it down first, followed by SotG just over an hour later. Both guilds were now stuck on a bugged C'Thun and a bugged Ouro.
Being stuck on bugged encounters, DS killed the optional boss Viscidus, as did SotG (albeit the encounter was severely bugged for them at the time). The C'Thun and Ouro hotfixes provided two server-firsts for SotG, with a top 10 position for Europe once more on C'Thun.
At the time of writing 5 guilds cleared Ahn'Qiraj (DS, SotG, EC, Gifu and DoV) and 12 guilds killed C'Thun.
Naxxramas
Every guild knew that Naxxramas was the last new raid content to be released before The Burning Crusade and thus many were eager to perform well. With 4 different wings available guilds had a lot of possibilities for progression.
SotG took a headstart by killing Anub'Rekhan, Instructor Razuvious, Noth The Plaguebringer, Grand Widow Faerlina and Maexxna. Meanwhile DS had worked on Patchwerk for days, with no success. After clearing the Spider Wing, SotG continued their streak by killing Patchwerk and Grobbulus, leaving DS stumped until they finally killed Patchwerk some days later. While DS and SotG worked on Gluth, Kale and DoV were fighting for a server first on Heigan the Unclean in the Plague Wing. In the end, both Gluth and Heigan went to the Horde faction. Later it would become clear those 2 kills was all that Horde would get.
Thaddius being the logical next step in progression posed severe problems. Known to be an incredibly lag sensitive and prone to disconnects encounter, it was deemed impossible on Al'Akir in its state at the time. Not having received any hardware upgrades since the game's original release, Thaddius of Al'Akir was undoable. Hope was on the horizon though, as hardware upgrades were announced and nearly there. After the arrival of the hardware upgrades the lag on Al'Akir was significantly decreased and playability increased. SotG could now continue their strong performance and did so by killing Thaddius, Loatheb and Gothik the Harvester within a week.
DS slowly caught up to SotG by killing Thaddius, Loatheb and Gothik, while SotG was unable to form a raid with the proper setup for the The Four Horsemen (4HM). When SotG eventually did kill them, DS approached so close that they were able to kill 4HM the day after. With just Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad alive, the race for the first Naxxramas clear was on.
SotG killed Sapphiron first, on Sunday October 22, and proved to be more then ready to face Kel'Thuzad, as they downed the chief lieutenant of the powerful Lich King just 2 days later on Tuesday October 24 as the 15th guild in Europe. DS followed their footsteps by killing Sapphiron 1 week after SotG and killing Kel'Thuzad 3 weeks after SotG as the 25th guild in Europe.
With Christmas time (anno 2006) constantly getting closer both MR and DoV realised they couldn't gather the strengh anymore to kill Kel'Thuzad alone. The leadership of both guilds therefor agreed to create a raid alliance with the aim to kill Kel'Thuzad before The Burning Crusades arrival. Within the first week they managed to down The Four Horsemen, Friday December 22, and just 4 days later Sapphiron shared the same faith, Tuesday December 26th. Happy about the impressive progression they kept the raid alliance going and suceeded their aim by killing Kel'Thuzad late night, Sunday January 7th (Even thou some think it was Monday January 8th).
At the time of writing 4 guilds cleared Naxxramas (SotG, DS, DoV and MR).
Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian
The following players have assembled the legendary caster staff [Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian] (in order):
- Leezah (Mage, SotG)
- Vahu (Mage, DS)
- Rapidload (Priest, DS)
- Amoeba (Druid, EC)
- Dynis (Mage, MR)
- Scarebe (Warlock, DoV)
- Goldnspirit (Druid, DoV)
As Explicit Content have not killed Kel'Thuzad, Amoeba joined DarkStorm on one of their Kel'Thuzad kills to loot the headpiece, thus enabling him to finish his staff.
The Burning Crusade
During the first week of after The Burning Crusade went live on the servers Al'akir routinely went down during peak hours as the servers couldnt handle the 3 continents of Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms and Outland at the same time without severe lag or crashes.
Player versus Player
The PvP History in Al'Akir is rather colourful. During the virgin months of Al'Akir, when it already displayed foreboding signs of instability, unwary players experienced frequent moments of (Alliance) terror courtesy of SotG rogue Bladespinner, the once sinister <East Dragon> and the dubiously named <dragonkiller from forest>. At one point, one of the leading Horde guilds in the early days, Karma, hosted an in-guild skirmish on the Gurubashi Arena, eventually more or less unexpectedly featuring a bonusfight of sorts between Karma's Heimdal (undead priest) and the unflagging Bladespinner. The epic matchup resulted in victory, nay utterly crushing and humiliating domination by Heimdal who caused more than one eyebrow to rise with his nifty use of the underrated Cannibalize and furious wanding. With that fight, Bladespinner's heyday had come to a bitter end and he soon disappeared to realms unknown.
Later outdoor pvp bloomed at Tarren Mill. With the introduction of Alterac Valley, Hillsbrad Foothills became nigh impossible for levelling due to intense outdoor facemelting.
Upon the introduction of the honor system the first to gain the then much coveted fourteenth rank were Lylz of DarkStorm on Horde side and Lora of East Dragon (Rogue) representing Alliance, both achieving the feat on the same week.
On the release of crossrealm battlegrounds Al'Akir teams quickly made a name for themselves for being specialized in graveyard camping. Amongst the early teams the most notable was the Bad Karma team, followed by the twink league of <e peen> - both of which never received any losses during their one month existence.
Al'Akir is also notable in housing some of the most famous PvP movie makers in WoW. Notable: Azgaz, Grim, Jungle, Marukoer, Mastatrigga, Zalgradis.
- Azgaz
- Class: Druid
- Faction: Horde
- Movies:
- Grim
- Class: Rogue
- Faction: Horde
- Movies:
- Marukoer
- Class: Mage
- Faction: Horde
- Movies:
- Zalgradis
- Class: Paladin
- Faction: Alliance
- Movies:
