For The Horde! is not a quest. It's an Achievement. Achievements can be laughably easy to get, or nearly impossible. Many can be done alone, while others require dozens of players to succeed. Each achievement carries a score, and for those who like earning achievements, the game is to get as many done as possible and get that score as high as possible. Very few achievements offer tangible rewards; most players are only after a sense of accomplishment. For The Horde! however, does have a tangible reward, a good one, and it would follow that completing it might be a bit challenging.
The challenge? Invade the four largest cities of the Alliance, and kill the alliance leader in each of those cities.
On Saturday morning, Philly made a fateful decision to ask for an invite to a For The Horde! raid. It was 11:10am. Philly was in Dalaran, having just finished her dailies. The next Wintergrasp battle was over an hour away, and Philly figured that trying to get the achievement would be a good way to while away the time, in between doing around the house real life honey-do's.
None of the Wild family had ever even attempted, much less completed the achievement. I know that DER has been in on some alliance city raids, although I'm not sure if he completed the achievement or not. Anyway, I didn't really know what to expect or how the thing was done.
I do know that as we approached noon we only had 12 raiders signed up. This small force was asked by the raid leader to assemble at what I understood to be the "secret" hide out for the horde on the outskirts of of the alliance city of Ironforge in Dun Morogh on the Eastern Continent. An advance party had a warlock there and Philly was Summoned there by the lock.
The location is a small building called the Misty Pines Refuge. A single neutral npc stands outside the cozy little building. Inside there's a nice warm fire, a table ready for hosting a meal, and a comfortable looking bed. Not to mention the slightly racy painting on the wall. A hunter's cabin, perhaps. This is just my opinion, but I bet the horde always assemble here for an IF raid, and I bet every allie over level 10 knows about this "secret" spot.
At around 12:25pm we were discovered by a level 10 allie. True. He wasn't flagged, but he left in a hurry. Since we were only 19 strong at that point, a few folks figured the alliance would sally forth from IF to come kill us. One even went so far as to say, "We are so dead." A lot of us, Philly included, were hoping the alliance would come out in force because we wanted SOMETHING to happen, instead of just hanging around. At least I had time to keep doing chores around the house while I waited. No one came to kill us.
At 12:40 we had 25 raiders. Until this point Philly was the only healer that had joined, and I had mentioned to the raid that they'd better stock up on bandages to heal themselves, as yours truly was good, but not that good. We worked our way up to three healers. We also lost our raid leader, and a raider named Yessuh took over. He immediately let us know that he would not start the raid until it was full, and that included having three tanks and seven healers. "We can't lose," he said, once we have a full raid.
At 1pm we had 27 raiders but still not a single tank. The raid leader worked for recruits. We did lose raiders who quit the raid, getting bored or impatient or who ran out of time, but I was surprised at how many stuck around. The raid leader called for patience.
At 1:15pm Philly told the raid leader I was leaving the raid to run Wintergrasp, and that I would return if he was still taking invites when I was done. The horde lost the WG battle, and then Philly got invited back into the raid. There had been some more progress.
At 1:40pm we had 37 raiders including five healers. And two tanks. At long last the raid leader decided that was sufficient, and warlocks started a massive Summoning effort to get everyone into the tiny cabin in the mountains outside Ironforge.
The alliance didn't seem to notice or care that there were nearly forty horde raiders, mostly level 80, prepping for an assault right under their noses. We got everyone assembled, mounted up, and were on our way.
Ironforge is one alliance city I had never been in. The entrance is a hole in the mountain with the city inside. We flooded into the opening and were told not to stop until we reached the room of King Bronzebeard, our target.
Racing with a bunch of horde through an alliance city was an awesome feeling. Something akin to army ants on the march, no one wanted to get in our way. A number of alliance did set up a defense for their King, who is an elite boss target with more than 5 million health. We figured that on a Saturday the city would be packed, but the allies could not match our numbers. We focused everything on their King and brought Bronzebeard down, and then cleaned up any allies that had been foolish enough to flag.
The race out of the city, hounded by alliance and city guards, was a ragged affair, and Philly nearly got lost. She found her way out, though, along with a few other stragglers, and we fought our way through a crowd of npcs and allies that flowed out of the city after us. Philly made her escape, but missed the tram, which was our escape route. The raid leader was prepared for that, however, letting us know that we could hearth out of enemy territory and we would all be Summoned to our next gathering point.
The only thing Philly was sorry about was she forgot to snap a pic of Bronzebeard's kill.
The raid leader asked for everyone re-assemble at the tiny outpost of Zom'Goram on the coast at the far north of Ashenvale. There is a Summoning Stone there, intended for players heading for the dungeon Blackfathom Deeps. I thought that was clever, taking advantage of a Stone so that we didn't have to use a warlock. With the raid assembled again, we hoofed it up the coast to a lone pier. An alliance boat docks there. We shanghied the boat, killed the crew, and took it to Auberdine, which is the boat hub of the Alliance.
Hijacking another boat, we sailed to the shores of Azuremyst Isle, home of the great alliance city of Exodar. This newer city, home of the space faring Draenei, has yet to find popularity among the alliance. It was nearly deserted, and we plundered it quickly, killing the Prophet Velen. Javajoo, who was staying at the Inn, was close enough to hear his screams.
At 2:10pm we headed back to the sea once again. We were down to thirty raiders, and had replaced one of the tanks. We lost a raider overboard, too, but our patient raid leader held us on the pier until he could swim back to us.
We sailed to the piers of Darnassus, and stormed into the city. Our target was Arch Druid Fandral Staghelm, and the path to him wound all over the city. At one point Philly found herself actually leading a group of raiders after we lost sight of those in front of us through the curving, narrow streets. I'm sure the raid would have quailed in fear had they known that the "Lost Girl" was leading a troop in the enemy city. But they didn't know that, and Philly caught sight of the back end of a horse making the next turn and we stayed on course.
We met our stiffest resistance yet against the spell casting druid Staghelm and a swarm of allies, who were waking up to the horde invasion. Staghelm also fell, and with three leaders of the Alliance slain, we marched out of the city virtually unscathed.
Last but not least was Stormwind. The Alliance might want to re-think the convenience of their boat system, as hijacking those boats makes access to three of their key cities quick and easy. King Varian Wrynn was the final leader to fall under our assault, leaving the Alliance leaderless.
It took a little over three hours total, but we had earned the achievement For The Horde!
A lot of credit goes to the raid leader, Yessuh. He was a bit of a braggart, and he tested the patience of a lot of raiders with the time it took to put a full raid together, but he got the needed tanks and healers, and kept it together to get all four leaders down in a single run. Pretty impressive, actually.
Ok, the proof of the deed (for you, martin. :P )
If you're still with me at this point you may be wondering, well, what was the prize for taking up a whole Saturday afternoon? Philly is riding it proudly.
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