Something strange is afoot in the wee ours of the morning here, as Nihilum is reporting that the Death and Taxes guild on the Korgath US PvP server has disbanded. This guild has long been considered perhaps the premiere raiding guild of the US Servers. As of this writing, there is no further word on why they have disbanded, only that they have and that some of them will reroll Horde.

The front page of the official Death and Taxes site does not have any sort of news post on the issue, but does have a banner that reads "Rest In Peace Death and Taxes, Beta 2004-May 2008," and has a list of their world and US first kills. The forum's name has been changed to "Death and Taxes - Keep in Touch," though there does not appear to be a forum post accessible by a basic account that gives any insight or information as to the disbanding. Hopefully more information is revealed soon.

Death and Taxes has been hot on the raiding scene for some time, gaining US and world firsts starting in AQ40 and Naxxramas, and continuing into the Burning Crusade, including their most recent US first kill of Illidan Stormrage and a few key PTR kills in the Sunwell Plateau as well.

For now, we'll watch and see if more information comes forth. Perhaps they may be like Risen, believing the end-game progression is worthless but possibly reappearing in WoTLK. Either way, their achievements were many, and they will be missed.

Thanks to Liam for tipping us off on this.

Update: A poster called Flux (who is not a DnT member but claims he has talked to some), posting on Nihilum's forum thread on the disbanding, claims that they were having trouble retaining guild members due to the long stretch of time between Illidan's downing and any new content, and that the first week of Sunwell raiding was difficult. After attempts to mass-recruit to fill holes ended in a lower level of raiding ability than they were used to, DnT's leaders decided to disband. Apparently, many DnT members will be rerolling Horde on Blackrock.

You might want to take this information with a grain of salt, but it's the best we have for now.

Behind the cut is a list of Death and Taxes' world and US first kills.

Some of you may be excited about Nihilum's live stream of a Sunwell Plateau raid, which was scheduled for today at 1 PM EDT. I know I was looking forward to it about it. However, sad news -- it's been delayed, so we'll have to wait a little bit longer to see how the cutting edge of WoW raiding does things. The reason for this delay is the opening of the new gate; I imagine they want a chance to try M'uru first before fighting him (her? it?) live in front of the world. Tentatively, the new date for the event will be in one week, May 7, but that could well change. Stay tuned for more updates.

The event itself remains the same. You'll be able to pick from four streams to follow -- Kungen (prot warrior), Darmor (fire mage), Johnnyr (holy paladin), and Buzzkil (destruction 'lock). The stream is supported by Xfire, so their software may be necessary to view it; Nihilum haven't been quite clear on that yet. I hope not, because it doesn't look like there's a Mac version. By the way, it looks like Nihilum is recruiting. So if you're a holy priest, resto shaman, holy paladin, BM hunter, or destruction Warlock on the European realms with some T6 gear, preferably Sunwell experience, and a desire to raid more than is probably healthy, click on over to apply.

Nihilum, in conjunction with Xfire, will be streaming their Sunwell Plateau raid on April 30th live to internet. This is an amazing opportunity for raiders around the world to see how one of WoW's top guilds raids high end content – unedited and uncut.

Xfire has a limit of 1000 people on the stream, so you'll have to get there early if you want to watch it. My guess is that 1000 streams is quite inadequate. Based on numbers that I've gotten on the YouTube video's I've posted here, they could easily have ten times that and still be short. Hopefully there'll be more of this, and the number of available streams will increase.

Nihilum's raid will take place at 19:00 CEST April 30th, which is 12:00 p.m. CDT, 1:00 p.m. EDT, and 10:00 a.m. PDT (all on April 30th, no crossing of the international date line).

Mark your calendars for this one. I know I will be!

EU Stormscale Guild adult swim were recently interviewed by Nihilum (you know, those guys) for downing Gruul the Dragonkiller with a Karazhan-short 8 people. Nihilum had released a video of their guys doing Gruul with a mere 15 raiders, and it was something that adult swim leader Snookiwooki said was "pretty easy". According to Snookiwooki, adult swim had a fairly light raiding schedule and were merely looking for "stupid things to do outside of raids". Because of the nature of the fight, adult swim stuck to ranged DPS to minimize worry about cave ins.

The self-described semi-hardcore guild of 35 people believe that their accomplishment can be duplicated by any equally-geared (they're currently progressing through Sunwell Plateau) raid with the proper set-up. Snookiwooki also mentions that since they won't be attempting Gruul for a while, guilds are more than welcome to beat the record. With entry-level 25-man raid content now doable with a mere 8 people, the winds of Wrath of the Lich King seem closer than ever. Watch the video here.

Maintenance day is underway until 2pET/11aPT and many WoW fans are searching for something to do, while players with day jobs log on to point out that they can never play during these hours. Fortunately, we have lots going on today, as well as some highlights from the past week that you won't want to miss.

Wrath of the Lich King:

• Compilation of everything we know of to date about Death Knights, the new hero class we'll be seeing with the expansion.
• The new expansion is now in alpha testing! Read on to find out what this means, as well as what it doesn't mean.

Arena Season 4:

• A great analysis of when arena season 4 might begin.

Anyone watching Nihilum's recent achievement closely would notice a few odd things. It was notable that the kill was achieved without a single Rogue, or more appropriately, melee DPS class in the raid. Nihilum guild leader Kungen is renowned for his traditional views on class roles, although he is open to off-specs and has even taken a Retribution Paladin on a progression kill. But there's always a simple explanation behind each of their actions (no melee classes were on, can't have all Paladins specced Holy for this boss, etc.). Interestingly, my armory-trolling cousin pointed out something curious that a close inspection of Nihilum's raid make-up would reveal: only three members (including Kungen) aren't Leatherworkers. You read that right, that means even cloth classes dropped old professions in favor of Leatherworking. The thing is, this trend isn't restricted to Nihilum. The most dedicated, progressive guilds in the game have many of their members going for Leatherworking.

The explanation is simple: drums. In particular, the Drums of Battle, which increases melee, ranged, and spell haste. In an exclusive interview with WoW Insider last March, Neg of Nihilum remarked that the one thing that impressed him (and presumably Nihilum and their raid planning) was the effectiveness of haste. Haste is a statistic that became extremely prevalent in Patch 2.4, with many new items containing haste, including spell (currently AWOL) haste gems. Our raid specialist Marcie Knox wrote thoroughly about haste in a series of articles under her column RaidRX. It's a lesson that the top raiding guilds seem to know by heart. Nihilum was so impressed by haste that most of their core raid members leveled Leatherworking to be able to use drums, because it benefits the raid more than the individual unlike other professions like, say, Tailoring.

Before Patch 2.4 dropped, many members of the game's top guilds furiously leveled Leatherworking. With almost all raid members carrying the Drums of Battle, a raid can have an almost permanent haste buff that stacks with Heroism/Bloodlust. Having all your raid members level Leatherworking -- and basically for one item -- for raid progress is a masterstroke that shows the lengths that hardcore raiders will go to push the envelope. Clearly, it isn't the only reason Nihilum beat the Eredar Twins, but with a 6-minute enrage timer breathing down on every raid group doing the encounter, it certainly helps.

Despite a scare last April 1 that Nihilum would disband, the bleeding edge guild made true on a promise to continue setting world firsts by downing the Twin Eredars Lady Sacrolash and Grand Warlock Alythess on April 10, 6:00pm CEST. The Rogue-less 25-man team were able to down the twin bosses, their first "world first" in the new raid instance, despite EU Realms having the first Sunwell Plateau gate open a day behind the US owing to the time differential. The drops were Boots of the Forgotten Vanquisher, Equilibrium Epaulets, Shiv of Exsanguination, Sin'dorei Pendant of Conquest, and Spaulders of the Thalassian Savior.

Although Nihilum didn't seem to bother getting world firsts with the first three bosses Felmyst, Kalecgos, and Brutallus, whom many guilds were able to down on the first day that Sunwell Plateau opened, they seem to be geared towards downing the remaining bosses ahead of everyone else. The second gate blocks Nihilum's progress so far, preventing them from attempting M'uru. Will Nihilum continue to make World of Warcraft history? The second gate will probably open in a couple of weeks, so we'll find out soon enough.

The flag ship raiding guild Nihilum has released a great video of them taking on Brutallus, one of the new 25 man Sunwell Plateau bosses. The video is available from several sources, and the downloaded version is of quite high quality. The version provided above, a stream from File Front, is also pretty good.

The video itself is taken from the standpoint of their main tank, Kungen, and runs for just over seven minutes. Most interesting is the additional pieces of information Nihilum provides about their raid setup. For guilds attempting him, looking at a successful raid composition can be a major piece of information. The raid setup Nihilum uses is:

After reading an announcement on the evening of March 31st, 2008 declaring that Nihilum, whom we recently interviewed, would be quitting the World of Warcraft forever, WoW Insider received quite a lot of mail surrounding the issue. Was it true, or simply another April Fools joke?

They even began disbanding their guild and joining others, and spoke of a plan to reappear together, perhaps in other games. There was an outpouring of love and concern from the community at large, and unlike the reaction to other jokes on April 1st, everyone was at least weary (ahem) wary that this one was not a joke.

Nihilum cited several reasons for their departure, including dissatisfaction with Blizzard's designs and methods, and an overall trend towards casual play while depleting much of the rewards, incentive and challenge for hardcore guilds, including changes made in patch 2.4.

At 12:01 a.m. on April 2nd, 2008, Nihilum confirmed that they were indeed yanking our chains, and even made a cheerful April Fools video. To quote, "Sorry for the scare everyone!" with a keen happy face at the end. We love you Nihilum!

After writing one of my first articles on an essay penned by Neg, one of Nihilum's resto Shaman, I was surprised and heartened to see him get in touch. We talked about a few matters related to our pieces and I asked him if he would mind answering some questions about what the guild's been up to since we spoke to them last. We hadn't heard much about Nihilum on the PTR (Vis Maior was the guild steamrolling the content this time out), but they've been upgrading and expanding their website, and one of the 2.4 raiding screenshots on Wowwiki belongs to them, so they've obviously been busy. It had also become clear that Awake, arguably their most high profile member, had left the guild, and I was curious about what was going on.

Neg very graciously answered my questions, which you'll find below the cut. Read on for his take on Sunwell Plateau and his favorite boss, Awake's departure, resto Shamans versus holy Paladins, picking up an enhancement Shaman and the class in PvP, various boss encounters, and WoW as an e-sport.

...who has patch 2.4 for you all?

I've spent the day collecting patch mirrors for everyone. Some may require a short free registration. All of them are sources I, and others, use and trust. However with that said, we can't be responsible if something goes wrong. But I've never heard of that happening.

2.3.3 to 2.4.0 patch mirrors:

• AoA Files
• FilePlanet
• MacGameFiles
• RapidShare
• MegaUpload
• Games32
• GamersFeed
• DownloadGeek
• Internode

Full 2.x to 2.4.0 patch mirrors:

• MegaUpload
• Games32
• Internode

There are more lists available at WoWWiki and Nihilum. However, there are several sites on there that I haven't been able to test or havne't used before - so your mileage may vary.

Enjoy your speedy downloads!

At first glance, I didn't really think there was much out of the ordinary about a post made by one of Nihilum's resto Shaman, Neg. A number of raiding guilds have complained strenuously about the presence of easy-to-obtain epics in the game, but any post entitled, "Does Blizzard Hate Raiders?" is typically going to get a scoff and little else.

I had read the article shortly before zoning into Black Temple for the third time ever, and for the first time with the ingame sound on. My guild had recently killed both High Warlord Naj'entus and Supremus, and while the Karabor Sewers portion of the instance is interesting to look at, it pales in comparison to what you'll see once you're offered a teleport to a different floor by a member of the Ashtongue Deathsworn. My guildies and I were really just there to farm Hearts of Darkness for resist gear and to explore a little bit, with nothing really important on our minds. Nevertheless, what we saw that night was beautiful. The floor you're ported to has a tiny, friendly area with the Ashtongue Quartermaster, but beyond that lie a number of sinister things. The ceiling is pillared by giant statues much like those that guard the portal into Outland, and rogues lurk in pairs seemingly all around you. Not infrequently you find yourself turning around to shouts on vent to see them rapidly killing off members of the raid; we finally hit upon the strategy of sending our own rogues off to sniff out the presence of danger while the raid itself was ringed and guarded on all sides by the tanks. Once another set of rogues was found, our hunters set up Flares to flush them out of hiding, marked them, and pulled carefully. You were only really safe if you were in the middle portion of the raid; wandering off to go explore on your own was unthinkable.

The music is lovely, the atmosphere is stellar, and for the first time ever in a raid I felt the real sense of a dangerous place with violent, unpredictable creatures that didn't want us there. It was one of the few times that we've actually had to use real strategy as a raid outside of a boss fight. Black Temple makes it abundantly obvious that you are a small, embattled group struggling to survive against overwhelming odds. Most raids are pretty straightforward - learn the tricks to the trash, pull the trash, clear the trash, ask "What's the respawn timer?", and then kill the boss. Tempest Keep is a pretty cold and sterile environment; Serpentshrine Cavern is more interesting visually but the trash is, in many cases, just pull after pull after pull of the exact same stuff (weirdly enough, Karazhan and Zul'Aman seem to come a little closer to the Black Temple raid mentality than their Tier 5 brothers). But there is so much obvious care and attention lavished on the endgame raids, I said to myself (while taking tons of screenshots and turning the sound up), that I just don't buy the argument that Blizzard doesn't give a hoot about raiders.

But Neg isn't really writing about the conflict between raiders and the rest of us, which has been a pretty thoroughly discussed in one form or another. It's his contention that the raiding world - what I saw on Thursday and what Nihilum practically does professionally - is becoming obsolete in this, the Age of Purple.

This got me thinking... what good does basing your progress against other guilds do? Sure, there are the ultra competitive guilds like Death and Taxes and Nihilum. However they approach the game in a way that leads them to needing to care about how close the guild behind them is doing. For most of us, competing against other guilds is only going to lead to unforeseen frustrations. Most guilds have a boss or two that they get hung up on. Back in the days when BWL was hard, my guild spent a long time defeating Razorgore, and after he was gone the rest of the instance fell within a month. This kind of common hurdle in WoW is not reflected in WoWJutsu; all you get to know is that a guild is stuck on a boss, not that they're going to have amazing progress after it.

Nihilum, everyone's favorite (okay, some people's favorite) guild, would like us all to know that they plan to come back and world first the Sunwell Plateau the way they did Illidan. Apparently since putting Hyjal and the Black Temple on farm they've, well, been farming them and PvPing and taking more or less a 'holiday' away from the game, which makes sense, insofar as they don't really have any new content to see. Sure, Zul'Aman, but when you've already beaten Illidan going back to the ten mans is kind of anti-climactic. So they've basically been done with WoW. But they haven't actually stopped playing, so it's not a comeback, they've been here for years.

Yes, I made an LL Cool J reference. I went there.

They've also redesigned their site if you intend to make use of it to keep track of their progress: I have some old friends back on Norgannon I know will be watching them intently. For those of you who won't, well, it's still a very pretty site design, and you can always watch this Babe Ruth like 'calling' of their eventual success and discover with us all if it's genius or hubris.

We had a gigantic year at WoW Insider-- from January 1st to December 31st, we've posted over 4,500 stories here on this very site, about nearly every facet of the World of Warcraft (and you guys didn't slouch, either-- we had over 150,000 comments on the site in 2007). We've reported on everything from hearthstone soaps to Norweigan mooses, and everything from Arena PvP to Zul'Aman. We've posted guides, rumors, insights, jokes, and everything else we could find connected to this game that we all play (17 hours a week on average).

And seeing as 2007 is just about to end, we figured it would be fun to take a look at the year behind us, and list the top ten stories that we reported on during that time. From comedic to controversial, these ten stories run the gamut, and they also comprise the most important news that happened in the World of Warcraft this year. As a staff, we collected all of the biggest stories of the year, and then rated them from one to ten.

So click the link below to finish out this year, and check out WoW Insider's Top Ten WoW Stories of 2007. Before the year ends, let's take a look back at what happened in Azeroth and the culture surrounding it.