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In early May 2005, Balance was created by Gorby on the realm of Burning Blade with the ethos of defeating raid bosses, albeit on a more relaxed level to where we are today. During the guild's first days Nalcarya took over as Guild Master and as part of this first year Balance grew steadily in numbers, dedication and experience.
Due to the unstable nature of Burning Blade, progression was at times difficult. Not only fighting bosses, but also hefty queues and lag spikes which caused us to struggle. In order to make progress Balance formed merged guild runs with Ex Vi Termini to push through the early content of Molten Core. This guild cooperation continued until Majordomo whereby the guilds separated and began raiding alone, thus beginning a new era for Balance. On the 7th of October 2005, Balance downed Ragnaros for the guild's first clear of Molten Core. The next stage of the guild's progress was found within the halls of Lord Victor Nefarius, the dungeon of Blackwing Lair. Progress within BWL was of a faster pace than that of Molten Core and on the 15th of December 2005 Balance became the fourth guild on the server to take down Nefarian. |
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At the start of 2006, Temple of Ahn'Qiraj was released and Balance swiftly moved through the dungeon at a furious pace, taking out three new bosses on the very first day of raiding. While other guilds managed to overtake Balance in terms of progression we came through at the end, taking C'thun realm first on the 2nd of May 2006.
Following on from the slaying of C'thun it was decided that due to the poor performance of the server, the guild would migrate to a new realm as part of a free transfer. Many other guilds from Burning Blade followed, such as Royal Blood, Gief Epix and Refusion. From the 15th of May 2006 the realm of Grim Batol became our new home. Blizzard's next raid content was the floating citadel of Naxxramas and now on a stable realm, we were able to show what could be achieved given the right raiding environment. Towards the end of the instance, which had seen Balance in the lead in terms of progression early on, the server's performance started to go downhill and some members of the guild were hacked in an unsuccessful attempt to stop our progress. This did not stop Balance from achieving the realm first kill of Kel'Thuzad on the 15th of November 2006. The raid was stacked with a soulstone on every member as well as every flask, potion, elixir, Zul'Gurub, Onyxia's Head and Dire Maul world buffs - fun if logistically difficult raids, getting every buff needed to defeat an at the time extremely difficult Kel'Thuzad. |
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2007 began well with a second Atiesh on our last Naxxramas raid, and then things became turbulent for Balance. From a malicious hacker attack on our website to losing some veteran players the guild was starting to hurt badly. The added pressure of levelling and gearing and leaving such a successful era behind really took its toll. However, a steadfast core of players and good recruitment launched the guild back to the top, taking Nightbane, Gruul and Doomlord Kazzak all within a week.
Our next raiding challenge was to be found in the underwater lair of Lady Vashj in the Serpentine Cavern. With Balance, now the established number one guild on Grim Batol due to the good work of officers and members alike, we ploughed through SSC and defeated Lady Vashj on the 28th of May 2007, taking the realm first. The next challenge was located in Tempest Keep and despite clearing the early bosses in good time, Kael'thas Sunstrider turned into four weeks of constant wiping before we finally got him down on the 11th of June 2007 with what was becoming the norm now, another realm first. After the Tempest Keep attunement was complete we immediately went to Mount Hyjal, in the Caverns of Time, defeating Ras Frostwhisper on the early hours of that morning. Hyjal was not though everybody's favourite instance with wave after wave of trash. Archimonde was defeated on the 7th of August 2007 leaving us to prepare for Black Temple, the stronghold of Illidan Stormrage. After the buffs to Black Temple, caused by Nihilum's killing spree of bosses in the first two weeks of release, the instance actually became quite a slog to clear. Nonetheless Balance was able to achieve realm firsts on every boss in BT and by the 4th of September 2007 Illidan was no more. Though despite all his defeats at our hand, Illidan turned out to be a boss that never wanted to drop many legendaries for Balance... |
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At this point in the game Sunwell was introduced, which was a very challenging raiding instance in terms of overall content. The bosses here were all tough to begin with but they all fell in a steady pace, the pain came when we reached M'uru, which became another boss that held us up for over a month. The slaying of M'uru which we managed to do pre-nerfed was a respectable world ranked kill, after which we were able to focus on Kil'Jaeden and the very entertaining encounter that was the finale of the Burning Crusade. Kil'Jaeden was defeated and sent back through the Sunwell on 7th of August 2008, realm first!
Next came Wrath of the Lich King and with that a host of initial instances. During this time Balance secured the realm firsts in all of Naxxramas and the Sartharion encounter, sadly losing out to the server first on Malygos by the space of some twenty minutes. Spurred on by this defeat the present officers set about rebuilding the guild ready for Ulduar which was to be the next instance. |
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At the release of Ulduar the server was quite unstable but by raiding late we still managed to defeat nearly all of the boss's realm first both on normal and hard modes culminating in the notable realm firsts achievements of Algalon on the 2nd of August 2009 and Yogg-Saron, Alone in the Darkness, on the 11th of August 2009.
Shortly after Ulduar, Blizzard launched the Trial of the Crusader introducing 5 new bosses of a questionably low difficulty, with the hard mode encountered being locked to a separate instance and allowing only fifty attempts per week in order to complete it. By the time we reached the hard mode version of Anub'Arak we had already secured the other realm firsts but then through a stroke of bad luck with not having the required rogues for Tricks of the Trade and so did not secure the realm first which was a huge disappointment for the guild. Despite this setback we defeated Anub'Arak with the help of some old players returning and thus the realm first ranking was reclaimed. Killing Anub'Arak at that point made us reach a notable World 30th in terms of progress. Balance was also the fourth guild in the world and first EU alliance guild to achieve the Tribute to Immortality achievement. |
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We favoured well during the progression through Icecrown Citadel normal, unlocking the heroics and ultimately defeating Arthas normal on 9th February 2010. We went on to secure every realm first on Grim Batol during the heroic versions of all bosses leading to the Lich King, which did involve us putting in some pretty long hours during the first week after the heroics were unlocked.
The situation on Grim Batol did improve somewhat after multiple free migrations with many of the other prominent guilds opting to leave but even with the improvements and queue reduction, our attempts on Sindragosa and Putricide heroic were often disrupted by latency issues. It was for this reason that after we defeated Putricide heroic, we decided to take the free migration to Executus so that we could conclude the Wrath of the Lich King expansion without the issues presented to us on Grim Batol / the Misery Battle-Group. Arthas in his heroic form, was finally defeated, realm first on 9th June 2010 bringing with it the end of Icecrown Citadel for Balance. The encounter turned into quite a slog with a great many attempts used before the Lich King went down and there were many a scream of relief on Ventrilo at that time! With Icecrown Citadel on farm, we decided to migrate back to the now more stable Grim Batol server. All there was to do at this point was farm ICC until Blizzard released the Ruby Sanctum and with it Halion and his lieutenants. While not being on the same level as the Lich King without the stacking Strength of Wynn buff, Halion still required good coordination from those inside the portal realm and those on the outside. The purple dragon went down realm first on 12th July 2010 leaving the Wrath of the Lich King expansion finished and us awaiting Cataclysm. |
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At the start of Cataclysm we thought we had a good core to go into the next tier and progress and we did until so many veterans decided they had had enough of WoW. We got through the normal modes of Black Wing Decent, Bastion of Twilight and Throne of the Four Winds very quickly but then when the heroics came and the player base started to shrink so the progress slowed down.
Tier 11 was probably our least competitive tier in all our years raiding, we actually went through some 90 players / trials in the guild during this time although surprisingly still were able to take some server firsts including Cho'gall and almost got the Sinestra realm first on a very low percentage try, however the guild just wasn't good enough at this point so the officers set about making changes to ensure this didn't happen to Balance again. Towards the end of the tier with the guild being properly reshaped with some good new recruits, we cleared off the last heroic encounters and started to focus on the next tier, Firelands. Tier 12 turned out to be a much better place for us, having rebuilt the guild in the last tier we stormed through the normal mode encounters in Firelands in the first day and followed this up with fast kills on Shannox and pre-nerfed Lord Rhyolith in the first week of heroics leading to Alysrazor and Beth'tilac over the following week. Baleroc was actually quite hard before Blizzard decided to nerf him but we were able to defeat him before that. It took us a couple of weeks of tries, getting everything perfect but we had some great players on certain classes which really helped bring Baleroc down fast. Majordomo Staghelm was the penultimate boss of Firelands but he certainly wasn't any harder than Baleroc, he was in fact quite disappointing and just too easy for his position in the instance. It was good to get him down fast though and begin the progress on heroic Ragnaros. Ragnaros himself was killed on heroic realm first on 8th September 2011 and it felt good to have some realm first server spam again after the last tier. All that was left to do was gear up the core raiders for Deathwing. Coming off the back of a long summer period farming Firelands, it's fair to say everyone was looking forward to the release of Tier 13 - Dragon Soul. The addition of "Looking for Raid" allowed Balance to gear up even faster, with certain tier items, weapons and trinkets, as most of the top guilds were doing. The first week of patch release saw many guilds be penalised for exploiting the Looking for Raid mechanic by trading gear. Fortunately the leadership at Balance decided not to go down this route and instead we made raids where there was one player per class tier item drop with the rest filled as alts. At first this seemed like a good way of getting various upgrades in preparation for later heroic bosses, it did though turn out to be a bit tedious and anyone who has also been part of a high ranked guild will no doubt shudder at the ominous LFR phrase as well! As with most guilds, Morchock heroic was killed relatively fast pretty much as soon as the servers came up and with the help of a few former raiders, First instance bosses do not tend to feel as hard as they used to in the Burning Crusade but perhaps that is just because players have in general gotten better and mechanics are picked up faster. With the calendar now going into the twilight stages of 2011, we wanted to get as many heroic bosses down as possible to offset the inevitable Christmas break period where raids become impossible. Warlord Zon'ozz came down a day later then he probably should have, it did take our healers and dps longer than perhaps it should have to coordinate themselves with the encounter although to be fair the step up in difficulty from Morchock to Warlord Zon'ozz was quite significant. Balance's next encounter was to be Hagara the Stormbinder, quite a simple boss with an extra "dance phase" moving away from icicles and / or linking chain lighting to remove her barrier as per the phases. Overall, Hagara is probably easier than Zon'ozz, probably shown by the less time we had to spend on her. Yor'sahj, the Unsleeping was the next boss to fall in Dragon Soul, in terms of layout, the encounter room is very similar to that of Zon'ozz, that is an empty pit with the boss in the middle and the phases controlled by Yor'sahj spawning adds of various colours of which one of the three needs to be killed before they reach him. We had multiple low percentage wipes on this although to the guild's credit nobody wanted to sleep until it was dead and so they stayed until it was! |
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It is fair to say the Christmas and New Years break definitely pushed our progress back somewhat. This wasn't helped by the slew of 10 man guilds showing how easy Dragon Soul was on certain encounters as a smaller raid group. Eventually we got him down though and moved onto Warmaster Blackhorn. Both Ultraxion and Warmaster should have been faster kills, especially as neither are particularly difficult bosses to master but once they were down it was at least starting to feel like we were coming to the end of the (heroic) instance after all these weeks.
With only two bosses left to go for the completion of Dragon Soul we (quite literally) fell upon the Spine of Deathwing for this penultimate encounter. This boss certainly managed to kill off quite a few 25 man established guilds, mainly because of the design. The fight was not a DPS check or overly complicated mechanics, it simply involved removing 3 of Deathwing's armoured plates by killing multiple adds that spawned from his corrupt blood and then nuking down the tendons holding the plates on, in a certain time before the plates reset. Sure sounds like a DPS fight doesn't it, well in a way it was but it only really worked by utilising many mages and rogues at the expense of other classes. We had six mages being used on this encounter, the majority being alts and former raiders and whenever you read about setups like this it always brings back that timeless Blizzard quote "bring the player not the class". In any case, we battled through, learned the mechanics as best we could and defeated Spine after Blizzard made the fight slightly more manageable with not such a stringent raid composition requirement. So to the end of the tier, it is pleasing to say we achieved the Realm First for Madness of Deathwing as well as every other 25 man server first, baring Warmaster Blackhorn due to Christmas breaks. Overall, Madness was somewhat easier than Spine, though more to do with composition than the actual difficulty of the encounter, but the guild deserved the realm first spam considering how 10 man guilds had an extra two days on Madness than us, but that in itself seemed to spur Balance on to finish the tier in the way we felt we had to. Despite changes, Balance continues to be the guild at the top of Grim Batol as well as maintaining a decent European rank, a position we intend to keep and hopefully improve upon going into Mists of Pandaria. If there are not any other mini bosses added before the end of Cataclysm we shall see you in Pandaland! As the Cataclysm expansion drew to a close, Balance maintained its place as the top guild of Grim Batol as well as holding a decent European rank. The end of 2012 brought with it the next expansion: Mists of Pandaria (MoP). As a guild, we started off Mists of Pandaria with a decent and dedicated core of players who hoped to build on the many previous server firsts and glories of past expansions. As always with new expansions, MoP attracted back a number of veterans who along with the raiders, helped us achieve server firsts for the two new world bosses, Sha of Anger and Salysis's Warband, the only disappointment being no server spam for these outdoor bosses. The first new raid instance available in MoP was Mogu'shan Vaults, with the only slightly difficult fight on normal mode being Elegon which was something of a throwback to Alagon the Observer from Ulduar. The rest of the encounters were pretty simple on normal mode though and we soon cleared these to unlock the heroic modes. The new expansion had also introduced realm firsts for Challenge Modes which were harder versions of the heroic dungeons which had to be completed in certain times to achieve gold, silver or bronze medals. Completing the gold medals was linked to skill and technique in the instances as the level of your gear was capped to the respective instance, although copious amounts of invisibility potions certainly helped! And so after a lot of potions and quite a few screwed up huntsman's dog pulls, Balance was able to achieve the realm first for the Gold Challenge Mode. With the Challenge Modes complete it was now back to heroic raiding. Having tested some of the heroics during the MoP Beta, the first encounters were pretty well known to us. We progressed through the Stoneguard fight pretty fast, only to spend a bit too long on Feng but made up time getting Gara'jal down fast. If there was to be a boss in Mogu'shan Vaults that held us up it would definitely be the Spirit Kings. For what was a quite simple boss in terms of knowing when mechanics happened we definitely took too long mastering it. We finally got it down just before clearing normal mode of the next instance, the Heart of Fear. We wanted to finish off Mogu'shan Vaults before progressing too much into the next instance so worked on defeating the last two heroic bosses, Elegon and Will of the Emperor before we had more success taking down the next few heroic encounters in the Heart of Fear. We skipped the first boss, Imperial Vizier Zor'lok, in the first week to get Blade Lord Ta'yak and Wind Lord Mel'jarak down fast. By the time we had killed Imperial Vizier Zor'lok in the subsequent week, we had managed to wiped at so many low percentages including less than one percent. The guild managed to also take down Garalon, Ambershaper and clear the Terrace of Endless Springs before the guild's leaders decided to step back from 25 man raiding. Having ran the guild for the best part of four years, the then leaders, decided to stop recruiting for 25 man raiding and instead try 10 man. One of the main reasons for this was that at the time, 25 and 10 man achievements including server firsts were linked and Grim Batol had a number of successful and competitive 10 man guilds. Some fights obviously favour 10 man and some 25 and so it is not fair to say one is always easier than the other but 25 man does invariably take a lot more time from guild leaders to make work. It was decided that the guild should remain with raiding done as 10m man groups or casually with veterans. However, as with most things that have lasted for so long, with friendships built up over many years, players started to return and now after a hiatus of some five months, Balance has begun 25 man raiding again. Out history would not be complete without a mention to our former Site Administrator, Lan, who played with Balance during the vanilla times and then continued to help the Balance community via the forums and website, who sadly passed away on 23rd December 2012. Lan obviously meant a lot to many people in Balance, you only need to look at the memorial posts to him to realise this. The most fitting memorial to Lan we feel, is to keep the community of Balance going in hopefully a way he would have been proud of. |
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With the guild having been reformed for Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO) the plan was to prepare a new core of raiders focussed on getting through the current heroic content. Balance managed to clear the majority of heroic SoO, stopping only at the last couple of bosses as fractures appeared in the then raid leaders. After which it was decided that the guild would operate on a casual basis until the start of the next expansion. |
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Now with Warlords of Draenor released, Balance has been revived with a core of its former players along some new members with the intention of completing mythic content. There will be no doubt more updates on this history page as time marches on. |
Imperator Mar'gok
Ko'ragh
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