This raid movie is so well crafted, I don't even know where to begin. Take the excellent "story behind the story" video Legend of Stalvan and mash it up with the elegant, well-edited and highly entertaining Serpentshrine Caverns raid video and throw in moments of bizarre humor plus the most memorable rendition of an 80s emo tune ever to be sung a capella over Teamspeak and you have this machinima masterpiece. Guild Numen of the UK Silvermoon server have unequivocally set the bar for raid videos.

Don't be put off by its twenty minute plus run time. It's worth every moment of your time. Highlights after the jump.

There's some pretty interesting forum drama going on in the European Raids and Dungeons forums.

Lewt, an undead priest who spent two years in the guild before quitting WoW, claims that Nihilum purposely exploited a bug on their world first Lady Vashj kill (instead of an accidental bug that took away HP, as the guild states.) According to Lewt, you can purposely wipe at 20 percent and have a paladin use Divine Shield, which I don't really understand unless Lewt actually meant Divine Intervention. Then Vashj will reset to Phase 2, but since her HP is connected to the pillars she has, the HP will disappear when they despawn. This leaves her at 1 HP. Presto, a priest pops a soulstone and Shadow Word: Deaths her, and there you go. Lewt even provides a screenshot of him finishing off Vashj with an SWD, complete with chatlog.

Kungen, Nihilum's guild leader, fires back with some screenshots of guild chat immediately following the kill, which are full of confusion. He said that the HP loss was a bug during the fight that surprised Nihilum, not a specific strategy that they exploited to get the kill. Lewt responds by saying that Nihilum had exploited in the past on BWL, bought gold, and had the guild second-in-command, Awake, pay Kungen's real-life bills. I've heard the first two accusations, but the last one is freaking awesome. My guild leader never pays my bills.

And from there, the thread goes on in many entertaining ways, with Nihili (or whatever) and ex-Nihili arguing about the guild: whether it's possible to lead a normal life in Nihilum, whether the "Danish Mafia" edged out the English players, and a lot of other things that I'd probably understand if I spent more time on the Euro forums.

I really don't know enough about the Vashj fight to judge this. I don't like Nihilum's guild recruitment policy and the gold buying rumors, but I'm not exactly ready to take the word of someone who named themself "Lewt." Another forum poster probably has the right sequences of events: The raid wiped, they noticed that Vashj had bugged out, Lewt decided to pop the soulstone and SWD her, writing "Sorry, I couldn't resist" in chat. Then the Divine Intervention thing was when they were trying to get their loot off Vashj #1 while Vashj #2 had spawned. And now that Vashj is fixed and the top guilds are on to Black Temple, it's sort of a moot point anyway. As proven with Overrated, guilds who truly cheat will get found out eventually.

What do you think?