Hi Kungen! Lets break the ice with a brief introduction of you. Hey, like you said I'm Kungen. I play a warrior and I'm the guild leader of Nihilum. I am also the raid leader, main tank and I handle most of the recruitment, among other things I do for the guild.     Patch 2.4 has been released and Sunwell Plateau is open for raiding. As Illidan would say; YOU ARE NOT PREPARED! - Or are you?

I'd say that we are very prepared. Most of our members have swapped to leatherworking and we have enough consumables to last us a lifetime. We could have been more prepared when it comes to PTR testing though; I guess we'll come to that in a bit.

 

 

Before we talk about the present let's rewind a little and talk about the Public Test Realm. You guys had quite a bit of trouble getting onto the PTR, tell us a little about that.

We sure did. Personally I dislike the PTR. I believe that Blizzard should test everything themselves so we can have a fair PvE race, not a race that favours those who tested the bosses the most and who get their servers up first. Back to our PTR experience, it was more than frustrating; it took us around two or three weeks to even have enough people on the PTR, since the European sign-up system didn't work at all. We went through all kinds of problems, we had people getting alliance characters on their accounts or people not even getting their own character or class. To sum it up, I went from disliking the PTR to hating it more than my worst enemy. I'm sure you wanna know who my worst enemy is, but we'll approach that subject another time.

 

 

 

 

 

The bosses tried on the PTR - how do you rank them in terms of difficulty versus older bosses from for example Black Temple?

It is hard to say since we only got to try one version of all the bosses, while other guilds tried several. I liked Kalecgos though, it's a great entry boss, one of the best so far in WoW I'd say. A lot of previous entry bosses were either overtuned or too easy. I can't really comment on the other bosses though, since we didn't kill them and we didn't even try them enough to get the final strategy.

 

 

There's been a lot of talk about PTR world firsts and that Nihilum didn't manage to get any. What do you think about the whole "PTR World First" deal, is it legit and fair to claim a world first kill from a test realm server?

It's just a big PR move, the guilds that kill them know that it's not a real world first and they know they are fighting a version that won't go live. They are just trying to get their name out there, since they aren't "famous" and never got any real world first. However, I don't blame them for that, everyone wants their glory and I'm sure a lot of other guilds would've done the same. Obviously the real race starts on live realms.

Despite that, with the blocking mechanics Blizzard is using in Sunwell there won't ever be a real race in this particular instance, another reason for that is the extensive PTR testing that has gone on for Sunwell. Blizzard basically ruined the whole race in all possible ways they could by blocking bosses and letting guilds get a full strategy on boss fights before they are live. It is basically like doing farm raids for the guilds that did a lot of PTR testing. There is still a tiny grain of hope though; M'uru and Kil'Jaeden never got killed on the PTR so there is still a race for them. Kil'Jaeden wasn't even tested, so that's gonna be a whole lot of fun! Hopefully we'll get that amazing feeling on Kil'Jaeden that we had on the previous end bosses, it might even be better since you'll have another 20 guilds fighting over the same boss at the same time. I just hope he has a lot of phases and is extremely hard, so the US advantage and server issues don't ruin the race.

Personally I don't know why they didn't test Sunwell the way they did BT/Hyjal, guilds got an hour at best or just a couple of tries on each boss before they get death touched. On the PTR we didn't even get a single boss to under 80% except Naj'entus and Supremus, which made it a lot of fun to raid the instances live. Once again, less PTR and more live raiding. Please, Blizzard.

 

  

Controversy has always been high regarding world first kills, a lot of guilds claim to do world firsts on version X of a boss, some claim world first kills without using flasks etc. How do you define a proper world first? A world first is when you kill a boss first in the world on live servers. I don't really give a flying **** how they do it as long as the boss dies. Then it's obviously a world first kill, isn't it? I mean, like Death and Taxes's world first Viscidus, there were lots of non-legit things going on there, which is the reason they posted that no one would redo their kill in several weeks. But hey, we did a few days after (since we had shamans, yes, it made the fight easier, world first fight where horde had an advantage). But they killed it first so they got both the world first kill and the fame for it.

  

You recently announced recruitment of an enhancement shaman for Sunwell raiding, usually Nihilum has frowned upon hybrids (given your members' statements on various forums) - are you mixing things up, or what's going on?

Personally I don't think that statement is true. Sure we did not use any hybrids apart from feral druids and shadow priests during the TBC race, but enhancement shamans and retribution paladins weren't that impressive in lesser gear. You know, when we killed Illidan, most of our members only had a few parts of T4 and T5, only one or two people even had a full set. With gear like that I personally don't believe that enhancement shamans and retribution paladins would've been viable if you wanted a good raid. But once they get a full Hyjal and Black Temple set then I believe that they are totally viable and we've been using retribution paladins and enhancement shamans now and then for the last few months. So we're not really mixing things up, we're just using what we believe is the best setup from what we can scrape together with our current members.

 

 

		So has Nihilum been going in with guns blazing & racing for those world first kills in Sunwell? Or are you taking it slower this time with fewer expectations due to all the PTR issues? We're not gonna rush the first four bosses since we don't really feel there is a fair race or even a real race for them due to the extensive PTR testing, like I said before. The guilds that killed them on PTR will do it again (and has) in a try or two; once you kill a boss the encounter becomes a joke. Also there is no reason for us to race for the first bosses since we can't reach M'uru and Kil'jaeden either way with the new blocking system. But trust me, we'll go all out on M'uru and especially Kil'Jaeden, and I expect us to at least get wor-
ld first on Kil'Jaeden. We have to keep our tradition, killing every single end boss first for the last two years.

 

That's true. We aren't rushing the content for several reasons, the main one being that we never believed we would stand a chance at killing the three starter bosses first in the world anyway, given our low PTR training versus other guilds' training. Also, the gate that leads the fourth boss is blocked, so we have all the time in the world to kill the first three bosses anyway. The only important thing is to get them down each week for loot purposes. Once they open the gate that leads to M'uru and Kil'Jaeden we'll start raiding like we usually do, since that's the two bosses we really care about, mainly Kil'Jaeden though. Anyway, there is nothing special going on, there's just no reason to rush things because it wouldn't have changed the outcome anyway.

 

 

 

It's not that we don't care or try in general of course, but you still have to realise that the race for the first bosses in any instance that has been tested on the PTR is basically flawed, it's like a bike race where a bunch of the teams started hours earlier than the rest of the contestants. 

  

If you think back, what sets us apart from all other guilds is that we've had every single important world first for two years. Remember Naxxramas? We were like number 39 or something on the first boss Anub'Rekhan, but we eventually caught up to the other guilds and managed to down the end boss Kel'thuzad first, a boss that we did go all out on (verrryyyyyy late night raiding). Thats a very good example of what we care the most about as a guild. Sure we started raiding early when patch 2.4 came out (Magtheridon was very delayed as always, but enough whine) but that was mainly because we were eager to check the patch out, we've been starving for new content for ages. We ended that raid early though, arou-
nd 23:00 CET, and we actually did the same last night. When we push for important world first we'll most likely end it around 5 AM if needed.

Regarding not getting the server first, we aim for world first and nothing else, if we can't get that then it can be server #59 kill for all I care. We actually had a bunch of tries in the 5% range and a 1% wipe (tradition), if we had pushed a little harder and raided some more we could have had that server first, but like I stated above there's no reason to push for something like that for us. Obviously that won't be the case when we progress on content that actually matters and hasn't been farmed/killed on PTR - such as M'uru and Kil'Jaeden.

 

Let's change the subject back into something more friendly. What can we expect from Nihilum in terms of PvE-content on www.Nihilum.eu now that Sunwell is out?

You can expect a lot of videos, as always! We plan on doing a lot of other cool stuff as well, but I don't want to spoil it yet. I can say though that if we get everything up and running in time, we would try and live stream some raids from the Sunwell Plateau, but that depends on a lot of technical babble. I'm also hoping that some of the guys will do diaries/blogs about our progression as soon as the first gate go down. But we'll have a lot of cool stuff for all the visitors, that's for sure!


Before we wrap it up, could you give any quick tips for (casual) guilds that want to take on Sunwell Plateau?

I only have one piece of advice, which I believe is a really important one for all guilds out there if they are aiming to become better. Stop reading strategies or watching videos. Try to learn the bosses all by yourselves and your guild will become a lot stronger for the future, which I believe is the goal for all guilds (on top of having fun, of course!) You want to improve, right, not just get free epics - or maybe I'm wrong. But if you are looking for improvement, then I believe that is what you should do.

 

 

 

 

 

Be sure to stick around, we'll be adding a lot of cool content throughout Sunwell.

 

Next week, Monday, you'll get the DPS perspective of raiding Sunwell:

Interview with Nihilum Rogue Class Leader Cloze.