And the pre-patch is finally live!

Took a while to get there, but it looks like Shadowlands is definitively on the horizon for this year.

Reflection on BfA
I didn’t particularly feel like writing up a list of our accomplishments this time around. But I do want to pick out one of them that really stands out to me in the context of what BfA was like. BfA will go down with a bittersweetness for me like no other expansion in the history of WoW. Bittersweet because IE thrived during BfA and sailed through it with an ease that we have never seen before.

In previous expansions we have proven that we can weather any storm; whether it be the black smudge on WoW’s history known as Cataclysm, the 14-month content drought of Pandaria, the absolute shitshow that was WoD - and now BfA, where seemingly all of the above came together to provide us with the ultimate and unequivocally bad expansion. And unlike those other expansions where we were forced to make concessions (quit raiding earlier than we would have liked, switched to 10-man, put bad people in leadership positions (yeah, that’s right, I’m blaming that on the expansion, fuck you). We didn't have to make any concessions to our values in BfA.

While the expansion was going on, on many occasions I felt like things really couldn’t be worse. But especially looking back at the highlight that is raiding in IE (which is a lot easier to do with Naasty’s wonderful videos), it really wasn’t bad. And I haven’t even talked about the fantastic, record-breaking meetups that we’ve had in the last two years – which all seem so far away now because of current global circumstances.

Looking ahead:
I’m not going to pretend that I’m optimistic about Shadowlands. It doesn’t look like Blizzard is backing down from their strategy of planned obsolescence and artificial time-gating, but I am optimistic about Iron Edge. On the upside; It really can’t get any worse than BfA. And besides, we also had some really big reservations about the systems they were putting in Legion and that turned out great. So, who knows!
Once again thank you all very much for the great times we’ve had together – and much more to be had in the future.

Welcome to Battle for Azeroth!
Another relatively smooth expansion launch, well done Blizzard! It’s been quite the celebration for Iron Edge as well. We’ve had LAN party’s in the UK, Holland and Denmark, as well as various other friends coming together and playing on launch. I’m also definitely not gonna be a sore loser and take the opportunity to congratulate the Danes on reaching level 120 first, a mere 10 hours after launch. One day I’ll find out exactly how you cheated, but for the foreseeable future you have my respect and my salty Dane hatred.

About BfA
It’s certainly been an interesting new expansion. What many people believed to be just Legion 2.0, turns out to be pretty accurate. World quests, Garrisons, Artifact Power, it’s all back in full force.  We’ve seen everything except the raiding content and War Fronts, which I’m told not to expect too much of. Now that’s not to say it’s all bad. Legion was one of the, if not the best expansion they’ve ever made *cough random legendaries cough*, so many of these things are plenty of reasons to keep playing for a while. We’ll definitely have to see where Blizzard is going to take WoW and raiding, though. The changes to looting and the significant balance issues still plaguing us are not a good sign going into it. But if we use Legion as a benchmark, I’m optimistic. On a more positive note, world PvP seems to be a lot more fun this time around, so there’s that. Who would have thought that a simple “War Mode toggle” would take all the bad feelings out of ganking #morallygrey.

About Iron Edge
So many changes! We’re seeing quite a bit of development inside the guild going into BfA, which is something I’m very happy to see. We’re rapidly approaching our 14th birthday and we’re still capable of adapting to whatever shitshow Blizzard throws at us. I’ve been very sad to see some of our most trusted veteran members and leaders take a step back from WoW. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work over the years. But their absence makes room for new members to step up and take the lead. So I’m happy to announce the following new leaders in Iron Edge:

Quickzor: Mythic+ Officer
Mythic+ has become a big part of WoW. We needed someone who is passionate about it to take the lead on this and form a community within Iron Edge that is much like our existing raid teams. Quickzor has been active in the Mythic+ scene from the very beginning and has worked very hard to build a community of players around himself. Mythic+ presents many complications that are typical of short-term, small-group gameplay. We want to wish Quickzor the best of luck building this brand new branch of Iron Edge, which will serve as an important part of mixing our more elitist raiders with our casual social members. Remember, if you want anything related to Mythic+, Quickzor is the guy to talk to. Let’s let this help us to get to know each other a little better.

Shimmar: Melee officer
This should come as no surprise to anyone. Sam has been one of the most stable and reliable members of Iron Edge and has effectively been an officer since the day he joined in late MoP. I’m very happy to be able to say that we have such a capable leader available to take Phoenix’ place, now that he has finally moved on to a better place, where all the dead dogs (allegedly) are. In addition to tanking bosses, he’ll be taking care of the melee camp and helping us make decisions related to the guild and the raid.

Mortos: Banker
I know what you’re thinking, you filthy racist. Get your mind out of the gutter. You know I would have never even dreamed of having an actual Jew run the guild bank. It’s just an unbelievably funny coincidence, okay? I couldn’t be happier to announce that there is someone willing to pick up the task of running our Guild Bank right where Tutan(pbuh) left off. Mortos will be in charge of managing the guild funds and making attempts to get a little more cash in there to keep it afloat. A daunting task indeed, but one he is surely up for.

In conclusion
As usual, these posts go on for way too long. We’ve got so many new members join IE in the last few months that we’re, once again, at risk of reaching the player cap. Welcome to you all. I hope you’ve noticed that we’re not some sort of random group of nationality-based anonymous characters that play a video game together for a few months every two years. Even in tough circumstances, we’re here, we’re stronger than ever, and we’re not going anywhere.

See you online, on WoW, on our forums, on Discord or in real life!

- Rash

The End of Legion!



When I made this overly optimistic forum post two years ago, I really hoped Blizzard learned from the mistakes they had made in recent expansions, but particularly in WoD. Well, as it turns out, they did! Legion was the most content-rich expansion since WotLK and it brought World of Warcraft back to where it was many years ago in terms of game quality. The legendary system sucked, but we knew that going into it. And let's be honest; if the legendary system was the worst thing in Legion, it sure as hell beats a 14-month content drought.

A rising tide raises all ships - and the Iron Edge spaceship was no exception to that. Legion was a great expansion for IE. Let's look back on some of our accomplishments:

• For the entire expansion we've had three independent raiding teams running simultaneously.
• The ToT Raid made its debut and exceeded everyone's expectations (including their own!)
• The Weekend Porkchop Warriors broke the barrier and started clearing mythic bosses
• The Main Raid was able to kill all but one final boss before the end of its content cycle
• We've invited so many characters to the guild, we've had to have an old-fashioned purge. We currently have 276 unique accounts in the guild!
• We've organised over half a dozen guild related RL events and meetups all over Europe
• Sadly we've lost a few friends along the way as you always do. But fortunately, we've made far more new ones
• We've seen Dane-hatred reach levels never seen before in the history of the guild
• We've conclusively figured out the answer to the deepest question in life. It is indeed much better to eat a cake than it is to sit on it.
• Despite my best efforts, Mythic+ has invaded every part of the WoW experience. God help us in BfA
• And lastly, maybe the achievement I'm most proud of: We've had no major drama incidents throughout Legion. I still have no idea how we managed it. Maybe we're just getting old?

And now on to BfA. If Legion was any indication of the progress the WoW development team has made under their new leader Ion, I'm looking forward to whatever BfA will bring. I realize now that much of the hype I felt when Legion launched was because WoD was so deeply disappointing. In this case, BfA's got a tough act to follow. The officer team is busy planning some changes that we're going to make in BfA so keep an eye out for these announcements on the forum in the coming weeks.

Thank you to everyone who was here for Legion and the years before it. Without IE and the people that make up IE, many of us would have quit this game years ago. Enjoy your summer holiday and I will leave you with our kill video of Argus Mythic, by far the most difficult boss we've ever faced in WoW.

"Small" Gathering in the Netherlands 2017!



Well, it didn't exactly end up being a very small gathering. But fortunately my apartment was able to give everyone a (hopefully) comfortable place to sleep. It was a meet up that had everything: a lot of stoned neckbeards watching children's cartoons in my living room, good food, savage Eastern Europeans mixing with Norwegian weirdos, and of course, a trip to the emergency room.

Thanks to everyone for coming out to Holland. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. You can find the photo album here.

See you next time!

Edgefest 2017: Prague



It's kind of hard to believe but after a fairly short period of planning time the Prague Meet Up came together and it finally happened. The anticipated bunch of 17 people eventually ended up being cut down to 14 proud Iron Edgers from all different "raiding generations" to come hang out and drink beer. I, as usual, have a few highlights of the event I want to share for those of you who weren't there:

• Prague, being one of the very few European cities that hasn't been bombed last century, was absolutely beautiful.
• I'm sure everyone was told just as much as I was before going there that you should take a look around and do some sightseeing, and I'm very glad we did.
• Prague nightlife, however, was not a very big thing as I would have expected. Many terraces and regular pubs closed around midnight, which was an interesting experience in and of itself, considering many of us had never seen that before in a city of that size.
• Speaking of "city of that size", the city center of Prague was relatively small and everything was within walking distance, which was fantastic.
• The beers in Prague were about as cheap as we expected, at all the places we'd been to, half a litre of beer would cost you about 29 Czech Crowns
• We finally got a chance to meet some of the more elusive members of IE such as Steve and Munjica, and as expected they were both wonderful to meet.
• I'm going to have Vietnam flashbacks every time I smell the disgusting toilet-cleaner smelling Congo Cream again.
• I've never shied away from hugging a fellow Iron Edger, but with the Scottish I might settle for a handshake from now on. Sorry Tutan!
• Shiftey was a great tour guide, photographer and translator for medical staff.
• Unfortunately we had a few people flake out at the last minute, but we got very fortunate that Munjica's sister and her boyfriend needed a place to stay. We were able to give them an entirely separate apartment unit for them to stay in.
• Hugman survived the weekend without having a heart attack, at least I think.

Thanks to everyone for coming to yet another very special and successful EdgeFest. I'm already looking forward to whatever we decide to do in 2018. You can find all the pictures of the weekend in this post.

Thank you all and see you next year!

He was a good boy, he dindu nuffin



After invading her home and brutally slaughtering Elisande and her helpless allies, which included a harmless botanist and an innocent astronomer, for the crime of making a rational decision in an attempt to save what was left of their people, we decided to continue our murderous campaign by putting an old man with a troubled childhood and some questionable life-choices out of his misery. We did this because we were promised shiny items and creatures to drive on by a shifty mage because we needed to go to Sargeras' place to actually hold the people accountable that are responsible for this mess in the first place. Don't worry, it makes total sense, don't think about it.
Oh, and Illidan's helping us, too. Don't worry about that either. It's not like that fucking guy screwed over god-knows-how-many Night Elves, he's a good boy.

Once again Iron Edge has proven capable of killing a final boss on the hardest difficulty before the end of a content cycle, and just in time, too! Congratulations to everyone in the main raid, and especially to Fieryfero, Elfrighteous, Kensan, Romeo, Vejeta, Amstrup and Mortos. They may not have been there when we finally killed him, but they fought just as hard and will get their kill and Cutting Edge achievement soon.

Thanks Everyone! See you in Tomb of Sargeras and/or in Prague in less than two weeks. HYPE!

Iron Edge Meetup 2017: Prague!

I’m very happy and proud to announce Iron Edge will be having its biggest meetup yet, and it’s not even in England! At least 20 people have signed up and are confirmed to be attending our Prague meetup over the weekend on the 16th, 17th and 18th of June. If you’ve been under a rock for the last two months, or if you were interested but not sure yet, you can still attend! All the information you might be looking for can be found here.



In World of Warcraft
Our raiding teams are still fighting their way through The Nighthold. Xormn’s Weekend Porkchop Warriors, Abyiss’ Mighty ToT raiders and of course the main raid are going strong with a variety of progress. Recruitment is also open for all raids, so check out our WoWprogress page if you know somebody interested in raiding with us.

We’ve also made a change to our officer team. The main raid has been going without an official healing leader since WoD, so I’m very happy to announce our new dedicated healing officer: Lethys!

I’m very much looking forward to seeing all those familiar and new faces at the meetup this year.
See you in Prague, HYPE!

Happy 2017!



I needed a couple of days to recover from the sustained 5-day IRL-cyberbullying I experienced in our Norway meet up before I could make a front page post wishing you all a happy new year. Despite all the naysayers complaining about how bad 2016 was, 2016 was a great year for Iron Edge, and I’d argue, World of Warcraft and gaming in general.

The Norway Meet Up
Even though we had already had a huge meet up this year in Manchester, somewhat spontaneously it was decided to have another meet up in Norway for new year’s. With the help of Stian (Glacio) we were able to book the master suite of a fancy 4-star hotel in downtown Stavanger, which turned out to be a great place to get wasted and do a whole bunch of sexually questionable shit with each other. I will once again attempt to keep Palmar’s tradition going by summing up these events to a few bullet points filled with dank memes and sneaky insults.

• The week started off slowly with me, quietly sobbing on a Norwegian toilet near the Noodle Noodle, slowly coming to terms with the fact that Norway is still the most expensive place in the world and that this was going to leave us all financially devastated for months to come.
• The hotel room lived up to most of its expectations, with the biggest lie being the “fast wifi” as advertised on the website. 3 mbps might be fast in the suburbs of Berlin but for a spoiled Dutch man it was quite the struggle.
• Valkyrie’s cat is much better behaved than I thought he would be, turns out Bendie was just being an asshole to it and totally deserved to be clawed.
• Front facing cameras on phones turn your phone’s screen white on maximum brightness as a flash, who would have thought?
• “Turtleneck and Chains” were never gone, they just needed someone awesome enough to remind everyone how cool it looks.
• Norwegians don’t fuck around with fireworks on New Year’s. We got up to a higher point in the city and enjoyed a professional fireworks show.
• We asked our tour guide and tank Oxcit to take us to “the one where we could get up closest” so that’s exactly what we did. This was probably the last year you could get up as close as we did, because a Norwegian girl behind us got hit in the face by some of the professional fireworks. Hope she’s okay!
• Our bear tank has magical, but useless eyes. He’s actually completely blind.
• Lethys’ lips do not taste like a healthy, mutually consenting interaction. I’ll let your imaginations figure out what that means.
• We never got to wish Bendie a happy new year, because he decided to make a very clever decision by leaving shortly before midnight. Valkyrie was not held responsible for the misunderstanding but did admit he done goofed.
• Be careful with who you let Stian bring into your hotel room. Whether they be drunk middle-aged men, drunk younger men that look like Wildlings who destroy your toilet and cause noise complaints, or cute Polish girls who seduce you into taking very, very long walks with them.
• One of the Polish girls took a special interest in everyone’s favorite German, but that interaction can be best summed up with this picture.

World of Warcraft
Back on the WoW side of things I’m extremely proud to say that Iron Edge once again has three sustained raiding teams running simultaneously with varying degrees of casualness, thanks to the efforts of the brand new Too Old for This raiding team and the Weekend Porkchop Warriors. Legion has brought us a lot of new content and there is no indication that this is going to be slowing down any time soon, with The Nighthold opening up in just two weeks of my writing this. It looks like Helya was a little too difficult for us (and everyone else) to kill within the time, but since it doesn't have a "Cutting Edge achievement" attached to it, I guess it was never meant to be that way anyway. Next month will also be Iron Edge’s 12th birthday, so I’m looking forward to celebrating that with you all as well.

Anyway this post has been going on for way too long. Thank you all for a great 2016 and may we have an even greater 2017!

LEGION HYPE!
Normally I would start my rants about upcoming WoW features with "Call me a cynic, but..". But there is honestly not a whole lot to complain about this time around. *cough* random legendaries *cough*

I'm still recovering from the Gamescom reveal of patch 7.1 called Return to Karazhan, but much of the announcements and information that we have so far is giving Legion the impression of becoming the best expansion to World of Warcraft by a fucking landslide. Not only will we be guaranteed to have a whopping 18+10 raid encounters at the start, we will also be given another small raid that is supposed to be in between those two raid instances. Also, everyone that has had access to the Legion Beta knows that there will be plenty of shit to do as soon as the game launches.

I'd also like to take a moment to reflect on these quotes from Gamescom this week:

• There was a period where the team focused on faster expansions, sacrificing things that they shouldn't have. This made the experience worse.
• The team is never going to rush an expansion, they will be released when they are done.
• Raid tiers should last around 4 to 5 months.
• This time around there won't be a content drought - "Don't worry, we got you!"

Sauce

Am I in the fucking twilight zone right now? I already know this level of optimism is almost certainly going to leave me disappointed, so please control your shitposting. But fuck me, this is as promising as it's ever going to get.

This is also going to be the most exciting expansion launch for Iron Edge. We already know that at least 4 separate LAN-parties are going to be held (Scotland counts, too!). Let's hope our new Discord server can hold us all, but it's probably more convenient to go on TS when we have that many people .

I'm looking forward to celebrating this launch with you all. See you on the 29th!