It took two nights of attempts, but Hex Lord Malacrass and his court -- Slither, Alyson Antille, Fenstalker and Koragg -- died at first light this morning.

While all of our raids are team efforts, this one was especially so: one group cleared the avatars on Friday night, and a second took on -- and ultimately defeated -- Hex Lord Malacrass in the early hours of Sunday morning. Zul'jin's days are numbered ... and he knows it!

Oh, and for the record ... Firstade did not pull a Firstade, but Testybones did (leave it to the rogue!), and summoned the wrath of two dozen of Zul'jin's thankfully non-elite minions down upon us while we were celebrating our victory over the Hex Lord. I didn't manage to get a sceen shot of that, so let me just say that never before have I seen so many pretty yellow numbers explode across my screen at one time! I hope Neville had as much fun as I did with the epic AoE.

Finally, speaking of Neville -- and because a picture is worth, well, 140,000 pixels -- this is why Neville > Radmanwagen:

'Grats again, guys!

Today's raid was looking iffy for a while! Between the Superbowl and Carnaval vying with Gruul the Dragonkiller for our members' attention, we ended up having to PuG a over a fourth of our raid group. Nonetheless, we somehow managed to pull it together at the eleventh hour (well, technically, 25th) and downed Gruul in one not-so-clean shot.

This was in spite of:

1) Firstade pulling a ... well, Firstade ;) and aggro'ing Gruul;

2) Keaton's untimely demise (Somehow, he managed to climb back up the aggro table after a battle rezz and resume tanking! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the bear is a threat machine.); and

3) Multiple deaths, which caused hatefuls to ping-pong between Soandso, Smileyxxi, Daiko, Gimpooe and others.

Did I mention that, in the end, only our healers were left standing? Not a single tank or DPS class survived the battle unscathed.

Congratulations to Heartgrinder, Khanni, Kogen and Verisai on the spoils of war, and our sincerest thanks to all of the PuG's who came with us. The dice weren't as kind as they could have been, but we couldn't have done it without you.

Speaking of loot ...

As promised, we started awarding Effort Points (EP) with this weekend's Gruul's run. Everyone who attended the raid earned 575 EP, with the exception of those wgi signed up earlier in the week using either Group Calendar or the website. These individuals recieve my sincerest thanks for making it easy(er?), as well an additional 25 bonus points for a total of 600 EP. GP was also awarded to those who recieved loot, to seed the priority list for next week.

You can check your EP and GP in your officer note, where it is listed the following format: 0|EP|0|GP. (The 0's are placeholders, reserved by the mod's developers for future use.) These values will decay by 10% at the start of the next raid, and an additional 10% every week thereafter, so new members will be able to catch up to their more seasoned counterparts in just a few raids. Remember, your priority on future drops is is equal to the ratio of your EP to GP (PR=EP/GP). To see where you stand on the priority list, you can download and install the EPGP mod, or simply track me down in-game or on the forums and ask (Sarielle). Eventually, I'll export EPGP to the website and publish the standings here.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about the system, please don't hesitate to ask. I don't bite. (Unless you're a gnome mage, of course. A zombie does have to eat. ;)

With help of the wonderful support team at Guildomatic.com (Yes, that is a shameless plug for our hosting provider!), I was able to integrate our old stand-alone forum with the website, so you should now be able to access both using the same user name and password. If you have not yet registered an account, please do so using the name of your main character, including capitalization. This is especially important for those of you who raid with us or are planning to do so in the near future, as the Guild Roster, Raid Sign-up and DKP/Items tools all cross-reference your character name.

I also upgraded our hosting package to include a custom domain that many of you may find familiar: http://www.surreality-guild.com. It could take anywhere from 24-48 hours for the DNS to propogate (so I recommend waiting until then before updating your bookmarks), but you should still be able to access the site at http://surreality.guildomatic.com in the meantime.

If you have any questions, you know where to find me!

~Sari

Starting with next week's Gruul's raid, we will be implementing a new system of loot distribution called "Effort Points, Gear Points," or EPGP. Unlike the more traditional DKP models you may be familiar with, EPGP is ratio-based rather than currency-based. For a full explanation, I recommend visiting the developer's website. Otherwise, for an overview of the system as it applies to our guild, please see the following: An Introduction to EPGP.

As always, please feel free to contact me in-game if you have any questions or concerns. I definitely want to make sure everyone understands the system and is comfortable with how it works, since I expect it will become part of our shared vocabulary very soon.

On a side note: I'm a financial analyst by day, so I applied the model to a prior Gruul's run and crunched the numbers to prove that they're fair -- and they are. If anyone's interested, I'm happy to share the results of my mini-analysis through e-mail. (Yes, I'm a math geek. Are you really surprised? ;)

No, we didn't actually four-man him. Some people were just a little camera shy ...