Nihilum have scored another in their seemingly endless string of world-firsts: the Black Temple boss Mother Shahraz. Dang, guys. Give old North America a chance, huh? Nah, I'm just kidding -- congratulations once again, of course! This only leaves two encounters left undefeated in the Black Temple: the Illidari Council, and Illidan himself.

As with the Essence of Souls, nobody really seems to know much about the fight, although the boss appears to be a six-armed demon. And like EoS, they got their loot, with no bugs to get in the way there. Here's what dropped:

Nihilum is really on fire these days. Fresh from seven world firsts in the past week or so, they have now achieved the world-first kill (on the live realms, anyway) of the Essence of Souls, a Black Temple boss. No details have emerged about the fight that I've been able to dredge up, although WoWWiki speculates that the boss has a different phase for each of its three different faces.

In their comments thread, Nihilum deem the Essence of Souls "the hardest encounter we've met so far in WoW, ever" and "likely the hardest and most intense encounter in the history of world of warcraft," so my guess is it was probably pretty hard. Congrats! And in an unusual turn of events, they actually got their loot upon killing the boss:

Nihilum has released the video clip of their world-first Kael'thas Sunstrider kill. This means they have completed Tempest Keep: The Eye. Congrats to them, and thank goodness the GM gave them all the Black Temple attunement items! Nihilum has also mentioned that they will be releasing multiple videos of boss encounters over the next few days, so stay tuned for more!

After a perfectly executed 30-minute wipe fest, Curse has downed Azgalor - the fourth boss of Hyjal. This means that there is only one more boss in their way: Archimonde himself. Unfortunately, since everyone died, the corpse despawned, which resulted in no loot. Hopefully a GM will be on later to rectify their issue. Congratulations to Curse! Good luck with Archimonde!

There are a couple of hazards of being a blogger on this side of the pond. The first being that, when you consider one of the largest raiding guilds currently tearing through raid content is in the EU, there's quite a bit of time lag between when they take bosses down and when I sit down to run news postings. The second thing is that in the case of a guild like Nihilum, they've trained on the PTRs for quite some time and are thereby completely ready to tear through these fights and rack up the official Live Server World First kills in nothing flat.

This said, as if to answer my progression post yesterday, Nihilum returned to Black Temple on the heels of their last string of accomplishments and took down three more bosses. First they turned their collective might toward Teron Gorefiend who dropped some quite tasty goodies. From there, they chewed up Gurtogg Bloodboil and spit him out. (again, not without snagging some sweet loot first!) From there, Nihilum headed for (and successfully tore down) the Shade of Akama for lots more nifty purple goodness, and another live server World First. While they did not finish the Essence of Souls event (pictured) they are hoping to return and knock that out in short order.

Now some of the reactions I got in mail the last time I posted a progression post for Nihilum raised an interesting question to me. If a guild goes on the PTR and learns the strategies there does that somehow lessen their world first accomplishment on live servers? It seemed like several people felt that the accomplishments were diminished due to having been done prior on the PTRs. Personally, I've got mad respect for those who blaze the trails -- whether on the PTRs or on Live servers, although I am nostalgic for when it was a bit more of a surprise as to who would do so. (One of the few downsides of the job, I suppose. heh)

[via Nihilum]

Looks like we've got a new player on the World First scene. Death Wish, of Cho'Gall-H, has downed High Astromancer Solarian in Tempest Keep. Loot was a pally healing belt and a magic damage wand. It appears that Solarian is the last boss before Kael'Thas Sunstrider, so there's a good chance we'll be seeing the blood elf prince go down soon. Grats, Death Wish, and may all your hits be crits!

Right after Blizzard fixed a bug in the Magtheridon encounter we see the world first kill of Magtheridon by Nihilum (a Horde guild on Magtheridon EU). Killing Magtheridon allowed them to complete the attunement quest to enter the Eye (25 player raid in Tempest Keep), home to Kael'thas Sunstrider. Congrats, Nihilum, and may more firsts follow!

[Via World of Raids]

The forums are abuzz this morning with news of a world-first level 70. In just 28 hours, Gullerbone, of the EU Archimonde server took his mage named Gawell from 60 to 70 in the Outlands.

Our friends over at World of Raids managed to get an interview with Gullerbone shortly after the event.

The beginning of the interview is below, click the read link for more, and then come back and let us know what you think about Gullerbone's dogged determination to get this world first.

[WoR]Teza: Can you introduce yourself quickly in a few words?

Gullerbone: I am french and 24 years old, a member of Millenium (french guild) since 1-2 months and I was the one playing the mage called Gawell for this exp rush, eventually I will reroll shaman to complete my PvP arena team.


[WoR]Teza: Whats your played time from 60 to 70? Which zone were you in when you reached lvl 70?

Gullerbone: It took me 28 hours to get from 60 to 70, and dinged 70 at 4:04 am (CET) on Januar 17. I was in Netherstorm (subzone: Mana forge) when i reached lvl 70.


[WoR]Teza: What was your preparation? How did you make it in such a short time?

Gullerbone: Cau (the 1st european lvl 60) and I planned the exp route step by steps, trying everything to make sure it was the most approriate, the groups organization with the guild Millenium and their members. Each member rotated using a definite order to help me to grind on mobs, mostly with AE, surrounded with several guildmates healers, tanks, pullers etc...

Death and Taxes has been hard at work racking up those world first kills, but they've encountered a problem with Kel'Thuzad - namely, the event begins, ends, and there's no Kel'Thuzad to fight. Nnep describes the problem thusly:

...during our buff period we noticed he sort of, uh, dissapeared. Phase one still triggered as normal, although afterwards when kel'thuzad would normally become an entity, a la thaddius, he was still missing.

Not that you can blame poor Kel'Thuzad - several forum posters have speculated that if they were a raid boss and saw Death and Taxes running down the hallway, they'd disappear as well. Fortunately, however, Tigole claims this is not the way the encounter is intended - and perhaps we'll be seeing another world first soon.

The Ouro encounter has been hotfixed to "bring the encounter closer to the intended difficulty."  Expect the following changes the next time you encounter Ouro:

• Ouro's "uptime" will be increased before submerging.
• The scarab damage is being reduced.
• The cooldown between Sandblasts has been increased.

Perhaps this means we will also soon be seeing a world first for Ouro.

Update: Fixed spelling for "Ouro."  Conspiracy theories abound regarding Tigole's interesting "Ouru" spelling.

Interestingly enough, the day of the first world C'thun kill is exactly a year to the day of the first Ragnaros kill.  This must make one wonder, due to the timing of revisions to the C'thun encounter - has this all, in fact, been orchestrated by Blizzard?

[Thanks, spencer]

Only hours after Blizzard made additional changes to the C'thun encounter, European guild Nihilum (Magtheridon realm) seems to have managed to kill C'thun.   Forum post with details here, and screenshots and loot are listed on their website.  Congrats, members of Nihilum for this impressive world first!

[Thanks, spencer, for the quick heads-up on this one!]

Two of the most difficult bosses in Ahn'Qiraj - C'thun and Ouro, neither of whom have yet been defeated - have both been hotfixed to make the encounters (presumably!) less difficult.  With major PVE raiding guilds on the verge of giving up on the buggy C'thun encounter (see Death and Taxes and Elitist Jerks for examples), CM Drysc posted regarding changes to both encounters.  If you approach either of these two bosses in the future expect the following:

• Ouro's Quake effects deal significantly less damage
• Lowered hit points for C'thun's Giant Claw Tentacles and Giant Eye Tentacles
• Decreased damage from C'thun's Ground Rupture ability, which should also now be resistible
• Significantly decreased melee damage from C'thun's Giant Eye Tentacles
• The faction changing debuff applied to players in C'thun's stomach should no longer appear
• Tentacles should no longer spawn in C'thun's stomach
• A player in C'thun's stomach can no longer be the target of C'thun's Eye Beam

Will this be enough to encourage disheartened guilds who have been wiping for over a month on the C'thun encounter?  This seems the way of many of the game's major bosses thus far...  Ragnaros was impossible, until the encounter was tweaked by Blizzard.  Nefarian was impossible, until the encounter was tweaked by Blizzard.  Does it surprise anyone that C'thun is impossible in the same way?

[Thanks to Wreckless and Dave for contributing links]