The Garrison has been busy. With a new raid instance being launched our roster got to new highs finally breaking the mythical (get it? right...) number of 20. And so after gates of Nighthold opened we rushed in to see what was the whole fuss about. In the first night we managed to clear 6 bosses on normal with only Star Augur giving any kind of trouble and the second night got us at 9/10 bosses down with some solid tries on Gul'dan. As always with such long instances, time was the biggest obstacle.

 With a new lockout first night was a very well executed farm night, getting the team to Gul'dan again (with a lovely one shot of a bit problematic Grand Magistrix). Second night was all about Gul'dan. He did however died within an hour and on the 5th pull of the evening. So with some time to spare we turned our sights to heroic modes with Skorpyron going down fast. Last hour was spend on Anaomaly with boss hitting the enrage timer and raiders confident enough it will die fast enough next time. All in all very nice two weeks of raiding.

 Oh right, and we cleared Trial of Valor heroic before that, so that's nice...

 The Garrison. Who said we were old?

It's been a while since I mused on the website, and I thought it was about time to remind everyone about The Garrison.

I cast my mind back to just over two years ago.  I was quietly levelling my Night Elf Hunter, wondering what this "Guild" nonsense was all about when I decided to check out our unofficial realm forums and I happened upon this post.

At the time, I considered myself to be of "the older generation" and decided that these guys would be worth a shot, so I made an application, got accepted, and thus started my life proper in World of Warcraft.

It's now two years later.  I took on the mantle of Guild Leader in February 2006, and handed said mantle over to Cauthon in April 2007.  In that time, we've seen people join us and people leave us, and the list of accomplishments that The Garrison have undertaken is still growing.

I can still remember the cheers on Teamspeak when we finally got that dastardly Lucifron down.  Although our progress was (and still is not) the fastest on the server, we still managed to clear Molten Core and Blackwing Lair.  We got to peek at C'Thun in Ahn'Qiraj, and checked out several bosses in Naxxramas.

Post TBC, we have made great progress through Karazhan, where we now regularly clear the entire instance with two teams every week.  Gruul drops his epics at the door every time we visit.  Our current focus is Magtheridon who will almost certainly die at our hands very soon.

A lot of our members have met, too.  We had an official Guild Meeting in September 06, where nearly 40 guild members descended on a poor and unsuspecting hotel in London for a weekend of talking about DPS, healing strategy and roster rotations. Hang on, who am I trying to fool??  We got blindingly drunk and raced around London having a good time ;).

Our next official guild meeting is in August in Copenhagen.  I'm hoping that we will be able to get lots of us together to have a great time, in "The Garrison Way".

I've played online games for over 13 years now, and I can truly say that The Garrison is the best online community that I have ever had the extraordinary pleasure of being associated with.  We are truly a Pan-European guild who tries (and in most cases succeeds) to cater for every single member.  I have made several close friends, and met even more people who share my outlook on life.  Quite simply, I'm honoured to be a part of The Garrison.

Pharazon, Captain, The Garrison.