Villains: Get Stormraged.

In WoW’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade, it became obvious that Illidan was the main baddie.

This fact became self-evident at the release of patch 2.1.0 – the opening of Black Temple, where the self-proclaimed Lord of Outland made his debut. He celebrated this event by mercilessly extinguishing all hardcore raiders for weeks to come.

Illidan was the perfect villain. In the extradimensional realm of Outland, this angry elf demon was often seen wielding the wicked Warglaives of Azzinoth, legendary items sought by Rogues and Fury Warriors alike. He appeared to revere cruelty, as indicated by his vicious, shadowy wingspan and demonic horns.

With respect to Warcraft Lore, it’s important to know what made Illidan such a convincing villain. The first thing to know is that his actions in WoW pale in comparison to his former exploits. Essentially, his meddling with the Well of Eternity, Queen Azshara, and the likes of Deathwing serve to better enforce his status as Über-villain.

Addicted to magic, power, and stricken with jealousy (with regard to his love interest, Tyrande), Illidan was banished to prison by his brother for creating a second Well of Eternity atop Mount Hyjal – an act of extreme danger that resulted in the exile of the Highborne after they tried to blow things up with a magical storm!

While in prison for ten thousand years, Illidan had plenty of time to contemplate the finer parts of life;

Isolation can do that to the mind. Now, after all the long centuries you kept me chained in darkness, it is only fitting that I bury you in turn. –Illidan

Upon being released from prison, courtesy of Tyrande, Illidan went off to cause more problems. He allied with the demons, turned into a demi-demon himself (after obtaining the powerful and corrupting Skull of Gul-dan), and escaped to Outland, where he sought to establish dominance. While in Outland, Illidan was once again lead to do evil things in the name of untold powers of magic, a temptations made worse by his demonic connections (Kil’jaeden). He also made friends with Lady Vashj and Kael’thas Sunstrider: reputed to not be the nicest kids on the block.

Now, players who worked their way through The Black Temple may recall Illidan’s distinct omnipresence. Unlike other bosses, Illidan seemed to possess this aura that authenticated his evil villain status. He was not just after unlimited power and glory, he wanted to spread wholesale death and destruction without provocation. When you got to Illidan, it was truly a feeling of epic accomplishment (usually preceded by extreme frustration, courtesy of the Council fight). When his chamber doors became unlocked, the raid would race up dual stair-cases, and fight a few trash mobs. Then, through the final doors (assisted by the Shade of Akama, and some epic cut-scenes), you were in, and there was no going back. The presentation of the encounter was flawless, and the delivery spot-on. When you got to Illidan, you knew that s*** was going to hit the fan, because this was a half-demon that simply needed to be slain. No compromises were to be made. You thought to yourself, Illidan, the one who’s taunted me since the beginning of The Burning Crusade, is about to bite the dust!
This was motivation enough to endure the countless wipes that were to follow.

As far as WoW boss fights go, the Illidan fight was technically impressive to say the least. Raid awareness, reaction time, positioning, and communication skills were all put to the test here, and it took no small amount of elbow grease and Redbull to stay focused. As some might remember of Ensidia’s (then Nihilum) world-first Illidan kill video, their main tank Kungen enjoyed brief internet acclaim for his liberal use of his custom ‘MAX FOCUS’ raidsay macro.

When the fight started, all types of rocket-ships and pain-trains assailed the main tank. Illidan’s leaping shred attack was almost always accompanied by a 1/3rd or more hp cut of even the sturdiest tanks, and this was the easy part. The annoying part of phase one came when he spewed out shadowy elementals that rushed your raid group, exploded, and caused confusion. After what seemed like an hour of this nonsense, Illidan went airborne, and left two parting gifts in the form of ridiculous fire elementals. These elementals were no easier to tank than Illidan himself, and they had to be positioned near firewalls that would instagib if touched. To make matters worse, he blasted the scared, crying raiders with laser beams that only Chain-Heal and Circle-of-Healing spam could remedy. As a healing priest, this had to have been my least favorite part of the fight! From there, with the fire elementals slain, you needed a pro warlock tank to take shadow-bolt hits for a while, and avoid dying to AoE volley attacks that pummeled the raid.

With the warlock tanking phase complete, you bore witness to an epic moment in video game history, that of Maiev Shadowsong finally hunting her long-sought prey. Even now, I don’t want to ruin it for those who haven’t seen this cinematic, so I’ll end it on a suspenseful note. All in all, if you haven’t killed Illidan, and have an active WoW sub, I recommend you do so asap. If not, then go play My Little Pony the MMO, or Hello Kitty Online. I’m sure those games have excellent villains to contend with.

Worst Video Game Moment - 1 Week of Pain

At the dawn of the release of a brand new TBC raid dungeon, excitement ripped through the clandestine waves of Zangarmarsh...


Hydross the Unstable is the worst boss I’ve ever encountered in a video game. This gigantic water elemental lived in the watery dump of Serpentshrine Cavern, located in the deep tangled mess of Coilfang Reservior. As I recall, he was always angry, and treated all raids with such callous disregard as to mop the floor with 25 dead bodies. He did this while laughing at under-geared tanks and other fools who'd stand in clumped groups to get AoE bombed by Ice-tomb. This was the state of things before the nerf bat, at least.


What seemed like a basic tank-swap/positioning/dps-race fight turned into an over-tuned cluster-F of confusion and chaos. Every night for a week, the brave raiders of <Eclipsed>, including myself, would burn through 2 flasks (4 hours) of attempts without feeling any sense of progression. As many died to the mysterious elevator boss and over-tuned trash packs, frustration occurred even before the encounter began. After about the first hour of these shenanigans, the raid would be in no mood for fighting Hydross the Bloated, which simply made matters worse.


Now, the Duke of Currents, Hydross, was no more than an angry sack of water who generously spewed forth deadly bolts nature and frost junk. Upon engaging this boss, he would start out in the nature phase, and you’d need a maxed out nature resist tank to handle him during this phase. Then he’d switch to the frost phase, where you’d need a frost resist tank to take control. This delicate swapping had to be perfectly timed, as improper timing resulted in deaths. No less than 6 healers (preferable 7-8), were needed for this fight, because not only did Hydross hit your tanks for pain-trains and rocket-ships, his ample supply of raid-based AoE damage was substantial, and it became worse as the fight progressed.


The initial pull of the fight led to more wipes than I care to mention, despite the skill of the hunter who initiated; if he wasn’t positioned perfectly, Hydross would simply do his own thing by one-shotting raiders at random (usually me, Hydross didn’t seem to care about my priestly Fade ability). This had something to do with the boss’s tendency to ignore the invisible barrier that accounted for his current damage affiliation (nature or frost). To add insult to injury, a curious raider would occasionally stray too far ahead of the main group, hit a pack of nearby water elementals, and aggro the boss without warning. More frustration and repair bills that could have easily so been prevented! Yay!


A short time into the fight, a ‘water-tomb’ mechanic offered substantial raid damage. This random-target ability affected all players within 8 yards, stunned them for 4 seconds, and caused 4500 frost damage to all affected players over 5 sec. In addition, a raid-wide debuff (Mark of Hydross) stacked up to 6 times, for a max of 500% increased frost damage received for all. As a healer, this was my worst nightmare, as every attempt resulted in the unnecessary deaths of dps and healers, who were simply too lost in tunnel-vision to stay properly spread out. However, to their credit, it was difficult to stay fully spread out, as the platform where the fight took place was far too small and ridiculously shaped for everyone to be safe.


In fact, the entire fight was ridiculous, inasmuch many an ambitious raid group chose to skip Hydross in order to kill The Lurker Below, and forget Hydross altogether. Unfortunately, rather than wait for the inevitable nerf bat, we were far more concerned with maintaining the sense of elitism and pride that came with being a server first guild, so we merrily trucked along in the face of adversity. This outright lack of common sense resulted in a mountain of broken keyboards, a slew of mental breakdowns, and a server-first kill. Only after several <5% wipes!


After all was said and done, we were left with a garbage pair of epic warlock boots, which were soon converted into enchanting materials.


And if you’re the type of person who might attribute this fail to poor raid leadership or lack of skill, consider that we’d cleared all Vanilla content (excluding the final bosses of Naxx 40-man), prior to Hydross, and had maintained top 3 server progression throughout (we were neck-and-neck with our rival guild at all times). Admittedly, we weren’t the best of the best, but we knew how to crush content nonetheless. Or so we thought!