I thought it was worth mentioning that Sindragosa was killed in our guild’s raid lockout this week.  That’s right.  Any of you who got saved on Saturday can currently walk up to The Lich King and sit on his lap.

However, I don’t consider this a true progression kill for the guild because only 5 of the raid members involved were Linguists.  As such, I’m withholding Autty’s “screenshot” until a later week when more of us actually show up to help kill that screeching bitch.  There…motivation.

Still, this is a nice accomplishment.  Plus, a few of the guildies now have some experience getting their asses kicked by Arthas.  It’s only a matter of time before we get a “real” Sindragosa kill, followed by our very own Kingslayer titles.

Last night while running the weekly as a guild, one of our puggies asked a question I hadn’t really thought about in awhile.  “How long has your guild been on the server?”  I guess we’ve maintained a low enough profile that the sight of 8 of us in one place was pretty mind-blowing.  He just kept on repeating that he had never heard of us.  It’s like we had appeared out of nowhere!

But it did get me thinking.  Exactly how long had we been around?  After doing a bit of searching, I finally remembered our old GuildPortal site and found the very first blog entry there, which was made on April 12th, 2009.  This was 17 days after I earned the Represent achievement, so it’s a pretty good assumption that the guild tabard was what earned me those 10 points.

So, then…it appears that March 26th, 2009, marked the forming of The Censored Linguists (known then as The Cunning Linguists), which makes us exactly 17 months old today.  So thanks to all our new members who have been helping to finally make our presence known on Bronzebeard and congratulations to all our old-timers who have stuck it out through thick and thin.

In honor of our first Wednesday raid, which happens to include the Obsidian Sanctum (among other things), I’ve decided to post one of our famous Linguist’s Guides for OS-10.  The guide includes both the regular fight, as well as strategies for fighting Sartharion with 1, 2 or all 3 drakes up.

As always, please inform me of any mistakes I may have included and enjoy!

A Linguist’s Guide to the Obsidian Sanctum!

Effective immediately, the times for our two scheduled raids each week have changed slightly.

• Saturday:  This raid has been pushed up by one hour.  It will now begin at 5:00 pm server each week instead of 6:00 pm server.  Guildies often have post-raid plans on Saturday nights, so this should help allow them to finish raiding earlier.
• Thursday:  This raid has actually changed days altogether.  We were not seeing a whole lot of attendance to these raids, so I can only assume Thursday was not a good day for most folks.  As such, we’re moving this day’s raids to Wednesday to see if more people are able to start showing up.  The time will still be at 6:oo pm server time, though.

Please leave your thoughts on the changes (for or against) in this post’s comment section so I can start getting some feedback on the general consensus of the guild.

Just so everyone is aware, we are indeed still looking for columnists or bloggers to help add content to our little section of the internet.  It’s not necessary to be an elected official in order to help with the site.  The only requirements are writing skills worthy of the Linguists-name and a desire to assist and entertain our 4* regular readers.

If you think your writing style and creativity would fit in well here, please send your column ideas or a sample blog entry to cutaia@thecunninglinguists.net so we can pass your work around and laugh behind your back review it for approval.

Currently, we are especially looking for class columnists as well as an all-around knowledgeable player (or group of players) to field a Dear Abbey style column where guildies can submit questions about how to improve their game.

We’re also looking for clever ideas that we haven’t thought of already, so go on:  Blow our minds with your brilliant bloggin’ ideas.

*maybe 3.

It seems that every few years some stupid dragon gets caught up with the wrong crowd and gets captured or forced to help the bad guys in some way.  Vaelastrasz, Keristrasza and now Valithria Dreamwalker.

Normally, we killing machines just handle these dragons the only way we know how…by destroying them as quickly as possible.  For once, though, we decided to take a more tactful approach.  Instead of sticking to our usual “kill ‘em all and let the old gods sort ‘em out” philosophy, we decided to buff that magic dragon and heal her into submission.

Thanks to some monster heals, we one-shot this encounter and are ready to take down the Frost Queen, Sindragosa.  Congratulations all and keep up the good work.

Hello, faithful readers. Galnadir here, with some very exciting news.

With the success of Alt Day behind us, it’s time to move on to bigger, better things. As I was voted in to the position of Book Club with -12.5% of the votes, one of my jobs is to plan “Just for Fun” events. So, without further ado, I give to you…

GALNADIR’S SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME

Yes. The name is meant to remind you of a Japanese game show.

The basic premise of these events, now and in the future, is to get the guild together, just for some fun. I know raids and emblems are important, but it’s nice to not have to be so serious every once in a while.

To kick off these events, we’ll be doing a run to down one of the most overlooked raids in Azeroth.

As most of you know, I started leveling AFTER the expansions came out. Heck, I didn’t make 21 until after WotLK was released. This means that I skipped over a bunch of really fun Classic End-Game instances, since I jumped straight to Outlands. Turns out, I’m not the only one, either. So, Tuesday we’ll be running Molten Core. This will give 2 major opportunities for everyone.

1.) Achievements – [Blackrock Depths] and [Molten Core], with progress for [Classic Raider], [Classic Dungeon Master], and [The Keymaster]
2.) Hydraxian Waterlords Rep

I will also personally do attunement runs for anyone who wants them, whenever they have free time, so we can start the raid right near 6:00 server time.

So sign up now, and we’ll see you there!

Hmm…I might have mispelled pacifist there.

Anyway…this Feat of Strength is being awarded to a fairly new guildie who’s already earned a place in our hearts.  Zerokills the Subtlety Rogue has now hit the ripe old level of 12.

Now, I’ve seen these types of characters before, but they always seem to kind of cheat their way through the pacifism, getting most of their XP by healing or throwing stunbombs in battlegrounds.  Noor is a perfect example of these violence-supporting shenanigans.  Look at his stats!  16,192 kills!  Pacifist my ass.

Zerokills, though, is the real deal.  Not only has he stayed true to his name by avoiding any kills…but he hasn’t even done a single hit point of damage.  A true hero, refusing to conform to this world full of warcraft.  He may very well start hitting some rough spots in the journey, but when all seems lost I hope he can occasionally rely on guildie help for some XP-loration.  And if all else fails…new old world quests are just around the corner in Cataclysm.

Well, congratulations Zerokills.  This is an ironic thing to say to a rogue, but we’re behind you, buddy.

Sometimes having an obsessive compulsive guild leader who loves making lists can pay off in some tiny way.  Today’s jackpot?  I went through and checked out the completion rates worldwide of all the various ICC-10 and RS-10 achievements.  What it left me with was a very unscientific ranking of which remaining achievements will be “easiest” for us to complete.

To be clear, this is more of an informational post than any kind of plan of action.  We’ll still be using guild input and informal polling to determine what challenges to take on each week.  I just thought the results here were kind of cool.  From easiest to hardest:

1. The Orb Whisperer
2. Frostwing Halls
3. I’m on a Boat
4. The Frozen Throne
5. Heroic: Storming the Citadel
6. The Twilight Destroyer
7. Heroic: The Crimson Halls
8. Portal Jockey
9. Flu Shot Shortage
10. Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion…
11. Dances with Oozes
12. Heroic: The Plagueworks
13. Full House
14. Heroic: The Frostwing Halls
15. Been Waiting a Long Time For This
16. All You Can Eat
17. Heroic: The Twilight Destroyer
18. Heroic: Bane of the Fallen King
19. Neck Deep in Vile

Once Bitten, Twice Shy isn’t ranked due to it being more of a personal achievement of sorts.  With only a couple exceptions, the fun achievement versions of fights are easier than the regular ol’ Heroic modes.  Also, it appears that people have had an easier time finishing off The Crimson Halls than they have with The Plagueworks.  I can only assume Heroic Putricide has played a big role in this.  Neck Deep in Vile, which is no longer needed for the Glory meta, appears to have been removed for a reason:  Apparently, it’s really fucking hard.

So there you have it.

So, since we’ve had a poll sitting at the right side of our main page for damn near months, I thought to myself that maybe it was about time to, oh, I dunno…do something with it?

So, in our first poll, I asked how people felt about the website redesign.  We learned two things from the results:

1. You folks seem to like the way the website looks, even if you pretty much never visit it.
2. One of you is a dick who wants to make me cry.

So, for the new poll, I thought I’d ask something that will serve more of a purpose than simply making me feel good about my web design skills.  Currently on the front page, you can vote on which Glory of the Icecrown Raider achievements we should attempt first.  Be sure to get the votes rolling in, because they’ll determine what we’ll be trying in raids to come.