The Rise of Salvation

Raiding in Salvation was a whole different experience compared to TDC. This was in large part due to the guild master and many of the core members being native English speakers (TDC had a Dutch core), and the guild using voice chat extensively, not only while raiding, but also socially. Also, the favoritism was gone, or at least wasn't as apparent. You didn't get a raid spot just because you had been in the guild since the beginning, you actually had to perform. And most of all, the discipline was on a whole different level. You couldn't show up late or unprepared to raid, and if you screwed up repeatedly you would be removed from the raid – or even the guild – immediately. Even though Orzolek had been an influential person in Thousand Souls, it was a guild run by several people. Salvation, on the other hand, was a one man show. The Orzolek Show.

One incident in particular, shows the raiding environment in Salvation more than anything. This particular incident is surely remembered to this day by everyone that was there to experience it. The guild was trying to bring down Kael’thas Sunstrider, the final boss of Tempest Keep. At the time (i.e. before the release of Sunwell Plateau), this was perhaps the most complex boss fight in the game, arguably even more complicated than Illidan himself. One of our long time raiders, a holy paladin called Gatecrasher, had died repeatedly in the same way during our attempts, when Orzolek called out and asked him to leave the guild. Leave the guild? Gatecrasher responded in a surprising tone. Yes, leave the guild. The raidleader asking people that didn’t pull their weight to leave the raid happened every day. This had never happened before and the silence on the voice chat was unsettling. It wasn’t long before things were back to normal, and soon enough we killed Kael’thas. But the memory of the in-raid guild kick lingered in our minds.

Marlen being inconspicuous about his past.

Our group of ex-TDC players soon established ourselves as core raiders with high attendance that consistently performed well, and Leffe was the obvious main tank of the guild. We plowed through the content and racked up a lot of Horde first kills, including Lady Vasjh, Kael'thas, and Archimonde. To this day, those are among the most epic fights I've been a part of in this game. Those that were there will forever remember the voice chat exploding when Lady Vasjh finally went down. Most raiders have moments like this, and for me the Lady Vasjh kill definitely stands out. Once again, there was no question about which the number one Horde guild on the server was.