Yes, we got hacked and it sucked, but brothers and sisters, it was I who told you that we would be OK. Yes...it sucked. But it wasn't the end of the world. Brothers and sisters, we had all lost something that fateful night. But the one thing that we didn't lose, was our faith in the Light. For we all had faith that order would be restored and, brothers and sisters, in an act of miraculous grace, a few days ago The Light restored our materials, and more importantly, Brother Bob's gear was returned to him. Praise the Light..I say Praise.... the Light. Ya gotta believe in the power of the Light, brothers and sisters. I know... I know...I can feeeeeeel that the Light is strong within each and every one of you, and I know that it was the faith in the Light, I'll say it again, the Faith in the Light, that returned Order to our World, and in doing so returned the gear and mats to our beloved guild bank. Can I get an AMEN... Praise the Light!

It did suck..but it was not the end of the world. Thanks to the good folks at Blizzard for all their help.

Grats Bag
Grats to Ravenhammer on his accent to level 80. Hammer, as his friends and loved ones call him, is the third toon to reach 80 from the Raven stable of toons, he also has Ravenstorm who is a captain in the guild and "hero" of last week's aforementioned hacking incident. Rave, also plays Nevarmore who was forced by work issues to move to another guild. He wasn't getting enough work with us.

Please give a warm Crew welcome to Cutoff a lvl 80 dwarf paladin. Cutoff may just be the oldest player in the guild..and in this guild that is saying something. Also welcome Healuall a level 80 priest from the Dniulife family of toons. I guess after denying life he felt a need the heal you all.

This week also saw the return, sort of, of Alenicia who was forced to take a break from the game for a while. We hope to have him back full time shortly.

Raid Schedule
We are gonna try to keep the same schedule for a few weeks.
All raid times are 9 p.m. server time

Tues: OS with Crew2
Wed: ULD with main raid group
Thurs: Heroics & Help a guild member.
Fri: Heroics
Sat: Free
Sun: Onyxia
Mon: Heroics

As most of you know one of our Officers, Bob, had his account hacked last night. At about, 7:20 p.m. server time Gofman, who was an Officer Alt, logged on, and immediately invited a toon named Fjkka and started kicking all the other toons that were on out of the guild. Luckily, Ravenstorm, a captain in the guild, was playing Nevarmore at the time and somebody whispered to him that something was going on. Rave was able to quickly demote Gofman to prevent further damage. Rave also kicked the Fjkka toon.

At this point the hackers logged into Golfman, who was also a captain in the guild with an almost unlimited access to the guild bank. The worst part was that Rave could not demote or remove Golfman from the guild because they were the same rank. It was at this point when 90 percent of the damage was done to the contents of the guild bank. Also Fjkka was re-invited to the guild by the hacker.

At about 7:35 p.m. Maxx called me to tell me to get online ASAP. I did, by this time the hackers were done with Golfman and had moved on to Waddajoke. I removed all of the Bob's toons from the guild. However the damage had already been done. In the mean time, the folks that were booted from the guild were re-invited and a ticket was opened with a Blizzard Game Master. Later, I also opened a ticket and spoke with the same game master who told me there was a good chance we'd be able to get some of the stolen stuff back but it would take three or four days.

Once Iceflare (Bob's brother) logged into vent I told him to get Bob on the phone and let him know what had happened. After a short while Bob logged on and spoke with a game master. While the guild bank was very well wiped out...Bob's toons had their gold, gear and banks completely wiped out. Each of his four 80s were left gearless with empty banks. Again...there is hope that much of his gear will be restored but you never know. It will take 3 to 5 days. Please cross your fingers, rub your rabbits foot, pray to your God, sacrifice a virgin, use what ever mystical force you might have to hope for a return of Bob's gear.

It seems the conversion to Battle.net is partly to blame. According to Bob, the GM thinks that somehow his computer got infected with a keystroke replicating program at some point in the last year or so. However, because he had his WOW Username saved and didn't have to type it in... the hackers never had his username. But with the conversion to Battle.net, he had to type in his new username and password, and at that point the hackers had both and they were able to go to work on our guild bank and Bob's toons.

The bad news is that much of the mats and goodies in the Guild Bank are gone, the worse news is we've lost one of our best tanks until they can get his gear back. And if they can't, I am not sure, he will ever be back. I know I would just walk away rather than try to reacquire all the gear I'd worked a year-and-half to get.

Sure, the guild bank was pretty well wiped clean of anything of any value. All the gems, all the gear, all the potions, all the ore, leather, cloth, herbs, chanting mats, abyss crystals, and orbs. They took anything of any value, leaving only meats and low level stuff. -- but we can restock that stuff. Luckily, they were only able to withdraw 150 gold.

Now is a good time for all of us to revisit our account security. The good folks over at WOW.com have put together this list of tips and hints to better secure your account. Please take a few minutes to read it.

This isn't the end of the world... its just sucks.

After a disappointing Wednesday raid, where real life issues prevented a bunch of us from getting online at the appointed time, we made up for it on Sunday by downing Onyxia. It took us a number of times just to let everyone fully understand the fight. But once we all got a grasp on where we needed to be when, it was pretty straight forward. Great job all, thanks to Light, Bytor (in Infidel form) and Xtrahealth for all their help in explaining the fight and offering suggestions. I think Onyxia will become a regular weekly Sunday raid for us, much like OS used to be.

Welcome Wagon
Please welcome Ferial, level 80 Druid to The Crew.
Also, grats to TheDrew who was able to easily heal heroic Nex last night with some low level gear...a testament to his healing skills.
Also, please give an Attaboy to Werdwarrior, who is learning the ways of the tank and doing a heck of a job, in an effort to get his skills up to tank for the second raiding group, or Crew2.

Crew2
Speaking of Crew2, we are still in the forming and planning stages. I have asked all the officers to remind players that might not be on all the time that we are trying to get this second group together, and that there was a spot for them. Here is where we stand so far:
(these are just projections and potential spots. I am keeping this list to toons that are under-geared and not part of our regular Wednesday night raid group. Nothing is set in stone, and not all of these folks have committed to the Crew2 yet. )

Tanks - Delininja and Werdwarrior
Heals - Defibulator, Ferial, Priestguy, Synoki, or TheDrew (once we get him so gear)
DPS - Tieghernan, McGuinness, Darkwanderer, Shadyjay, Iceflare, Gofman, Darthelmet, and other various sundry DPSers.

I would like to propose that The Crew 2 be our weekly Tuesday night Raid, starting at 9 p.m. server time. AGAIN --- ALL OF THIS CAN CHANGE to fit other folks schedules. I propose we go through OS with as many as under-geard folks as possible, and then break off into to two groups and run an easy heroic, i.e. UP or Nex for badges. Depending on how long OS takes. If we try to do this every Tuesday, eventually this group will form into a stable self-sufficient raiding group. Any questions, thoughts, complaints, suggestions? Please use the Comment button at the bottom of this post.

Schedule
All raid start at 9 p.m.
Tues: OS with Crew2
Wed: ULD
Thurs: Heroics
Fri: Heroics
Sat: Free
Sun: ONY
Mon: Heroics

Video Treat and a Dead On Funny Post on the Ruin of WOW
A couple of us have been enjoying watching the Web show, The Guild. Please enjoy Season 1. The episodes are only about 7 mins. each, but well worth the time.

This post is too funny not to share.

It was a great week for The Crew. Nothing momentous happened -- didn't down Yogg or get a server first, but we had fun. Thanks to Despina for organizing The Crew's first costume contest. Grats to Jack for his Beatlejuice costume. To see all the entries click here.

Grats Bag
Huge grats to Hypnotoad on reaching 80. Now, let's work toward getting Toad geared so he can join our raids. Good work, man.

Welcome Wagon
The Crew is pleased to welcome a bunch of new folks to our merry band. Please welcome Werdwarrior, an 80 Human warrior with eyes on being the 2nd tank for the secondary raid group. Also swelling our ranks is Lestari, a 73 NELF hunter, and her alt Daledruid, a lvl 72 NELF (you guessed it) Druid. We were also able to talk Shadyjay into bringing his alt, Axelay, an 80 Pally into the fold.

All of the new blood has gotten thinking about the game in an old/new way again. Maxx, Priestguy, Werdwarrior, Darkwanderer and my huntard were doing reg TOC yesterday and really struggling as a group, since my huntard's dps is in the crapper, and Priestguy's healing chops are not quite up to snuff quite yet, and Werdwarrior is undergeared and a bit inexperienced (at least in TOC). Eventually, Priestguy switched to supertank Waddajoke and I jumped to my shammy to get through the run and hopefully get Werd and Dark some gear.

But the experience got me thinking about the first time I did a hard instance. (cue the blurring flashback lines as we are transported back in time to when 70 was the pinnacle of WoW) When Hellfire Ramps was fresh and new and newly minted 70 hunter was asked by a veteran priest named Lumination to join her 5 man group in Heroic Hellfire Ramps. In this group was pally tank named Lightsaver, and Lumination was the healer. There were two other dps, but I don't remember exactly who they were but there is a good chance it was some incarnation of Bytor or Ltkickbutt, but really don't remember. However, this group opened my eyes to a whole new way to play this game. These folks had a strategy for each group...they would mark targets so we all knew where to shoot. This was organized, this was effective, this was good. I was shooting along on my 70 hunter, who's gear consisted of a bunch of spell power (which I would later learn did me no good.) I remember being in awe of this group and embarrassed at my own inability to play this game. But was put at ease when Lumination said, "Kev, don't worry we are all here for practice." Getting in that group made me want to be a better player. It changed the game for me.

So going forward, as we gain more folks and more low level, undergeared, or in my case, wrongly geared, inexperienced players, please try to remember that we all need some practice sometimes and we are here to help each other get better. What helps a guild member, helps the guild. What helps the guild, helps me.

Don't worry, we are all here for practice.

Raid Schedule
I am going to continue to schedule a Crew2 (secondary raid group) raid each week in hopes of one actually materializing.
All raids start at 9 p.m. server time, Midnight on the East Coast.

Tue: VOA
Wed: ULD
Thurs: OS (Crew2)
Fri: Heroics
Sat: Free
Sun: Ony 10-man
Mon: Heroics