World 23rd, US 9th. A bit of an improvement from Putricide 101st

. I'd have taken a world top 50 kill in a heartbeat if you offered me it after we killed Putricide.
We got it on our 2nd attempt of the week, we really should have had it last week but could only manage 10.6% on a promising attempt that got ugly in our final spirit room. It was disappointing to discover later that the boss pushes over at 10.5%
This has been a really rough progression tier for us, with the server being unplayable for 3 1/2 out of our 5 scheduled raid hours per night all the way through progression until we got up to working on Lich King hard mode, meaning we couldn't even use many of our limited attempts. Pulling a boss only to encounter lag a minute or so into an attempt is so extremely frustrating, it had the effect of burning players out and causing everybody to become very demoralized. Not exactly the makings of a successful raiding environment.
The week after killing Putricide, we suffered a "major blow" losing some "key raiders" and had a major guild discussion about whether to continue going forward as a guild. I think we dramatically misunderstood the situation at that time, because the guild has gone from strength to strength ever since. I'll say no more about this, the results truly do speak for themselves.
I'm very proud of all the guys for sticking this out and pulling it off, I know everyone was very disappointed that we missed out at the end of the week, but instead of dwelling on it everybody lifted their games another level and got the job done quickly this week. The challenges we faced this progression tier went beyond the server, having a guild constantly trying to poach our top players by coming onto our vent server and with recruiting mail promising the world was a hassle I'd rather have done without. But throughout all that people showed their true colors, not being quitters and taking the easy way out but instead sticking out the tough times and enjoying the good times at the end. We truly worked ourselves out of a difficult situation and ended up with an extremely respectable world rank, you couldn't ask for much better given the situation we were in.
There is no way this is accomplished without our Officers putting the tremendous amount of time and effort in that they have in order for us just to have a raid in the first place, let alone sorting strategy and all the other roles that come with the territory. Just 10 out of the 25 people in our Lich King kill were present in our Tribute to Insanity kill on October 15, and 7 of the players present joined during our Lich King progression. To be where we are now given that shows the phenomenal effort everybody put in.
Top effort guys, now time for some nice short, laid back raid weeks and looking forward to Cataclym.
I would also like to congratulate Adept for their Oceanic first kill last week, you guys did a solid job steadily throughout the progression cycle. We did our best to reel you in at the end there but came up a little bit short.