With Wrath of the Lich King and the return of the Scourge to the spotlight, an old friend comes back along with them. The Nerubians! We haven't seen much of them in the World of Warcraft yet beyond being undead lackies, they have a long, quite interesting backstory. We saw a little more in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, but their story goes even deeper. In the big picture of Warcraft, their ancestors predate all but the Trolls, and maybe even them.

In the beginning there were the Silithid. Insectoid horrors that crawled forth from the Well of Eternity just happened to grab the interest of the Old Gods. The most notable of them so far being C'Thun. C'Thun crafted avatars of war from the Silithid, twisting them into humanoid soldiers. These avatars became known as the Aqir. The Aqir are best described as 'evil' though that is always in the eye of the beholder.

The Aqir were one of three super powers in the world at the time, roughly 16,000 years prior to the Orcish invasion of Azeroth. The other two came in the form of the Troll Empires of the Gurubashi and the Amani. The three clashed repeatedly, and the Trolls only managed survival by forging a loose alliance between their empires. The Aqir civilization of Azj'Aqir held up quite well, their war lasting thousands of years, and no ultimate outcome ever came to fruition.

Two bosses may enter... but only one will get to leave in WoW Insider's fantasy deathmatch series. Every week we pit two of Azeroth's raid bosses against one another in a battle that your votes get to decide. This week we present Ragnaros the Firelord, coming all the way from the heart of Molten Core in Blackrock Mountain, and Ossirian the Unscarred, who's traveled from Ahn'Qiraj in the Silithus desert to participate in this match. Who wins and who loses? Ultimately, that's for you to decide -- so read on!

For the second time in our Two Bosses Enter competition, Zul'Gurub's Hakkar emerges victorious over a lesser World of Warcraft raid boss. Leaving our competiton is Moam, whom our readers determined would simply be overwhelmed by Hakkar's Blood Siphon ability. (Though, seriously people, how do you siphon blood from construct made out of stone?) But skipping past the blood/no blood argument: Hakkar is a God, and Moam a mere construct. In terms of raw power, it's clear Hakkar should have the upper hand in this fight, as our readers determined:

They don't come much more rare than this baby-- you had 10 hours to get it, and the overwhelming odds are that you didn't anyway.

Name: Black Qiraji Resonating Crystal
Type: Legendary Ground Mount
Speed: 100%
Abilities:

• Well technically, the crystal isn't the mount-- it just summons one. It's the bug looking thing you see above.
• It's called a Silithid Scarab, or more formally, a Black Qiraji Battle Tank.
• Can be ridden anywhere in the world. More on why that's so special in a second.
• And while this may be a "bug" (get it?), players are reporting that there's something special about the way this mount is summoned-- while you do have to be out of combat and unmounted to actually summon it (like all mounts), you don't have to be either when you start summoning it (unlike other mounts). So you could be in combat (like, in a battleground), start to summon the mount, and as long as you've left combat by the time it finished, you'll be mounted.

How to Get It: You can't. At least, most of you can't. Lots of people can get non-black bug mounts-- they drop pretty regularly in Ahn'Qiraj 40, and can only be used in that instance (and not in combat-- apparently the bugs are very skittish).

But the black qiraji mounts are very, very rare, and the reason is this: they were given only to players who hit the gong outside of Ahn'Qiraj only during a 10-hour period after the opening of the gates.

So here's how to get one. First of all, if you're on a server where the gates have been open for more than 10 hours (which is most of them), you're out of luck. So you'll have to roll a toon on one of the newer servers-- yes, there are still quite a few servers out there who have not yet opened the AQ gates.

Then, of course, you'll have to get your character all the way up to 60, so you can start the questline that will give you the mallet you need to bang the gong to open the gates. In order to actually finish this questline, however, (which starts in Silithus, if you really want to try), you'll have to go all over Azeroth and do all kinds of super heroic stuff-- in short, you'll need to be backed by a guild full of people who know what they're doing. Oh, and then there's the whole "War Effort" thing. If you were playing back when AQ first came out, you'll remember that opening the gates requires the whole server-- Horde and Alliance-- to collect tons and tons of items for "the War Effort."

But after all that is finished (all in a day's work, right?), you can finally take your Scepter of Ahn'Qiraj down to the gates of AQ, hit the gong, and this black bug mount is yours. Oh, and if you're not the first to open the gates, you can still get the mount, you just have to hit the gong (which means you need to finish the quest also) sometime within 10 hours of when it is first hit. See why the mount is so rare?

Getting Rid of It: You're joking, right? Vendors won't even accept this thing from you.

All this week, we're announcing our picks (from your nominations) for the best of the year in Azeroth. Lots of great stuff happened in the World of Warcraft this year, and we've sifted through all of it to come up with the stuff we'll remember for a long time.

Yesterday, we announced the awards for Server, Class, and Guild of the Year, and today we're proud to tell you our picks for Friend of the Year, Enemy of the Year, and Instance of the Year. Next year, we'll have all new foes (are you prepared?) and friends, not to mention tons of new instances. But before all the changes come, we're looking back at two NPCs that helped and hurt us this year, and the swirly portal we most enjoyed walking through. The winners are right after the break below.

And don't forget to come back all this week-- we've still got Player of the Year and Best and Worst Blizzard Move of the Year to announce, so stay tuned.

So the endgame guild I'm a part of (shout out to Gothic Bunnies on Thunderhorn-H!) is doing really well lately. We just got a nice influx of new members right around the time we started getting serious about MC and ZG, and just this last weekend, we finally made it to Domo (Rag, you're on notice) and, later the same day, downed Hakkar (that was an experience, let me tell you). So we're rolling right along-- we're already getting set for Onyxia, and by the time the expansion hits, we'll be ready for BWL.

Oh, right-- the expansion. I'm not in a position of leadership in this guild (or any guild), but you have to think the sudden influx of great items, new instances, and ten more levels (I just kind of assume everyone in the guild plays WoW enough to buy it as early as possible) might throw things off a bit. What's the point in farming MC for tier 1 stuff when even quest rewards in the expansion look better? And how can you get a group of 20 together for AQ Ruins when everyone has to work up ten levels again, will be starting new alts with the new races, and LFGing (with the new system) for PVP and the new instances?

In short, how do you keep a "mid-endgame" guild together when all the cool new stuff hits?

Now, if you're in Naxx already and half the guild is dressed in Tier 3, I'm sure it's not that big a problem-- you'll probably all go to Outland and level up together. And if you haven't made it to 60 yet, you're probably not worried at all-- you haven't invested enough time in this raiding system to care too much. But it seems to me that things are going to be pretty scattered when the expansion hits, and it's coming right at a time when a guild like mine is hitting our stride on the old stuff. I do trust our leadership-- I'm sure that if anyone can strike a balance between leading the guild into the new content and staying busy on the "old" content, they can. But I expect it to be pretty tough. I don't think we're wasting our time on the "old" content-- even if my ZG gear will be outdated by the end of the year, downing Hakkar was an experience I'll never forget. But with all the new instances calling, along with the phat lewts and new encounters, will current "mid-endgame" guilds ever feel the need to go for C'thun? Or will AQ become the new Dire Maul-- an instance that has some cool stuff and fun encounters, but often gets overlooked on the way to endgame?