This is my very first blog, so it may have a tendancy to be incoherent ramblings of a madman.  Today ( Monday april 7th) I find my self somewhat out of place.  I am interested  in interacting with WoW, but i don't really feel like being in game on my toon, or my alt.  In situations like these I often find myself looking at outside WoW sources of information, websites and the like.  Today I was on bosskillers to privy up on some Rage Winterchill, and Anetheron strats for LF1M's upcomming Hyjal progression.  After reading strats and watching vids, I trolled around and looked up other bosses from Archimond, to Akama, to Illidan, and man did I watch Illidan, 4 vids to be exact.  After much strat learning, I now know 1 thing, I am going to die alot on him.  Well after looking at illidan strats I noticed off to the side a list of top guilds in the world to down him, and then recent downings followed by a dropbar of all the servers in the game, so I decided to check at Gorg and see whats what.  I looked up Eternity, Oblivion, and for ego's sake us.  I was expecting us to be ranked 14-15 or so on the server with the combination of other alliance and horde guilds who are where we are.  I was pleasantly suprised to see that we are ranked 5 on the whole server, and 4 for the alliance.  This may be old news already, and to some it may be "big deal I know we are great", which is cool, but to me I think its really outstanding because I remember the Beginning.

 The Beginning for me is different than for most.  I have some knowledge of were downfall originated.  I know alot of guilds are branches of off <Old Guard> when they were a powerhouse.  My friend Scot (you all know him as Arimy) was a member with some other RL friends of mine.  He pushed me to server hop to gorg so we can play together.  I eventually did and he automatically got me into what i call a "training guild".  You know the guilds that have decent players but for some reason can't break out of the Small raid settings. the 10 mans of BC and the old 20 mans of OG WoW.  The guild I started in was known as Knights of Avalon, and they were decent people, I ran alot of the high end dungions with them, and some ZG, though they never could down all the bosses.  One day I remember Arimy psting to get some shit ready cause I was going to Molten core.  Now may I backtrack a bit and say I had minimal MC experience with a combined raid of milked and KOA..but this was different this was a raid with TFO (the forsaken order) and vexed and some other PUGS (such as me).  When I hopped in either Jadrax or Garreth gave me the vent info and when i logged in and heard the make up and organizing going on i knew this was going to be some kick ass raiding, and indeed it was.  I think that night we got to 4th/5th boss ( I am sorry I don't remember the order and the names of the bosses other than Rag).  At that point i sucked, I mean totally completely sucked at raiding, i was a newb.  I was old sub spec and really just new how to stealth around shit really well.  What I remember is night 1 with these guys, one of the top damage dealing rogues private messages me, and mentions how i am not doing so good, but not in an asshole way by any means.  Between pulls he would actually give me suggestions on how to better perform at a raid setting, plus also said that when i gear up it will show as well, thus making me feel welcomed, and not like such a noob.  (btw that rogue was Darkspeed, Dorkspeed, Clos)...we have a love hate relationship now, we hate to love each other, but don't let him fool you, he likes it when we spoon.  :P  Anyway, after a few more fill ins I found myself a more perminant raider in what was known as "Raid Awesome".  I want to say it was either somewhere mid BWL or early AQ40 something happened within TFO and they reformed under the name <Downfall> so Garreth traded off one depressing name for another  jk G.  Though I don't believe downfall became downfall untill the bc, but i will explain later.  So anyhoo, after much MC, I found my self getting invited to more and more raids, and I remember rushing home from work so I could be apart of this awesome process known as raiding.  I did many Za's with Garreths group, which benifted me, because I think my success in ZA with the big cheese helped build my "resume".  Well eventually I flew under the banner of vexed with other fine playes such as Dorkspeed/casecold/and the woman theif Josalin.  Even though I was in 1 of the 2 main guilds that made up raid awesome, i still didn't really feel like a "core" until AQ40, since I was actually one of the first in there with RA.  To me AQ40 was my raid, it was the 1 raid where i got 1 of the first rogue invites, and i been there from boss 1 all the way to the twin emps.  And within that time of wiping and progression, I really saw and learned first hand how to think and act like a raider, I changed my from sub, to combat daggers (back when that was OP) and started reading strats, bringing pots, and going through that whole thing called "being prepared".  Actually a fond moment I had was one night we were on the 2nd to last boss of BWL (my first time at him) and i missed a ready check, and Garreth said in a semi-angry rushed Garreth tone "Barqs why didn't you click the ready check?!!) and which i replied with "Double checking the strat on this guy"..I got kudos for doing that..which was pretty cool.  Eventually I am amongst the Top 40 (haha) in the raid to enter naxx and do battle in what was the most difficult most rewarding raid in the game, and I believe also the first raid to feature a warcraft "Hero" character as the final boss.  I think at that point downfall was starting to become less of name change from TFO and really gaining an Identity of its own.

Then It came, The Burning Crusade, which changed everything.  We lost members, and gained new ones, the raid was split up into small ten and 25 mans. and Vexed ultimately melded into Downfall, and so did most of Straight Twisted, thus completing downfall to a stand alone entity seperate from TFO and Raid awesome.

Raid 1 emerged quickly, known as Hamfist, which was 25 of us original 40 from AQ and Naxx days, and they seemed to power through everything with a relentless furry.  Then came along raid 2, formed by a newer member known as Ataraxia, I quickly joined in with him and "Happy Pants" which was his 10 man kara raid, which suited me perfectly for my time constraints due to life altering situations (becoming a Dad).  

 Today Ataraxia's 25 LF1M (name taken from the fact that early on we had to often call raid due to being short just 1 healer/tank) is looking at Mount Hyjal, the first half of the End Game raid in TBC. and soon will be peaking in the Black Temple itself.

So in short because of Downfall I went from that lvl 12 rogue inspecting the t1/t2 gear of my lvl 60 class counterpart thinking "wow that would be awesome if i could ever get that gear" to being that guy who has it.  I have seen every raid In the game minus BC and SWP (which is still "underworks").  These things I would have never drempt of seeing without the help of Downfall, and its just awesome to know that We as a whole came from a joint guild raid that was behind in progression, to the number 5 powerhouse on the server is just simply fucking awesome.  I cannot put it any other way.  So Congrats on being a "Raid Awesome" in all sence DF, and thank you for including me in your continuing progression and growth.