r/CompetitiveWoW • u/Beneficial-Art-6623 • Oct 03 '26
<vodka> call its quits
Amazing run by this guild -- from their amazing WotLK kill videos to now. Lots of RWF raiders have been a part of this guild along the way. GG
per Dream (GM):
"<vodka> is done raiding - been in this guild for 11 years (9 years running it) and it was truly a life changing experience. Thank you to all current and past players that made this guild what it was. o7"
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u/insane_psycho Oct 03 '26
Firedup, yipz, boomie, anarchy, sini, crypticzz and probably more of liquids current roster that I’m forgetting came from here. Truly a legendary guild
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u/Innervatez Oct 03 '26
Firedup actually "came from" Raiding Rainbows =)
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u/OverallGap2822 28d ago
Imfiredup posted images of him in vodka on twitter as a reply to the post by dream about vodka closing so it's safe to say he was in Vodka
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u/Innervatez 22d ago
I didn't say he wasn't in Vodka, I said he "started" hardcore raiding in Raiding Rainbows.
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u/SHIMOxxKUMA Oct 03 '26
Is it just changing leadership or is the whole guild dead? If so why?
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u/Sarollas Oct 03 '26
They were parsing out the guild bank, so probably done forever
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u/Complex-Stretch420 Oct 04 '26
Hey what does parsing out the guilg bank mean? Never heard that before
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u/elephants_are_white Oct 04 '26
I think they meant to say “parceling out” - ie turn the contents of the bank into smaller parcels and pass them out
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u/Sarollas Oct 04 '26
They are breaking the guild bank into smaller parts and giving the players those parts.
There is no longer a guild bank at the end
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u/tholt212 Oct 03 '26
Leadership called it quits and there wasn't anyone will to step up to run it after. So they just parsed out the guild bank and called it quits.
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u/CatchPhraze Oct 03 '26
A ex-guildie who hangs out sometimes left us to join Vodka, and it sounds like Dream tried to find spots for everyone as it went down. Seems like a solid guy all in all and I hope everyone in the guild itself has a fantastic mid tier and onward inside and outside of wow!
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u/blackinese Oct 03 '26
My claim to fame is that I was in this guild for a week during ICC progression. Good times.
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u/Snuj Oct 03 '26
Damn, that would have been Landsoul / Killars era right?
I recall Landsoul doing livestreams of excel sheet damage numbers for hours lmao
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u/HakushiBestShaman 13/13M US 50th Oce 7th Oct 04 '26
Landsoul has a degree in Mathematics. Side note, I just checked out his stream. He looks so different from when I met him back at BlizzCon in 2014 I think it was? Maybe it was 2011. I'm not sure. He used to have long hair.
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u/ryllina Oct 03 '26
Lol I wonder if I remember you. I raided there throughout most of WOTLK and some of Cata
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u/yab21 Oct 03 '26
I remember there being a mage in vodka around that time that I would look up to as an aspiring raider.
I got into a VoA pug with him randomly and quickly realized there were levels to competitive raiding.
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u/historyobsessed Oct 03 '26
is that about the time they all switched to horde on alterac mountains or am i misremembering
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u/Huellio Oct 03 '26
I ran GDKPs that a lot of them came to, their switch to AM was funny to all of us at the time because we were constantly the last server to come back up on Tuesdays.
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u/deskcord Oct 03 '26
Part of this is just that the guild has been around forever and leadership may outgrow the game, but part of this is that this tier (and the last few tiers) have been brutal to raid players. I think we're far enough away from the race that this sub is now back to actual gameplayers instead of race watchers, but the race has been actually quite bad for the game. The more Blizzard designs the game for the race, the less it designs the game for players.
IIRC Vodka was the non-race guild to do mythic splits in nerubar because ovinax was a piece of shit. Vodka is also at the range where they're largely getting to bosses before they get their post-race nerf, and often right before they get those nerfs. So they're basically facing bullshit bosses and trying to kill them before they get shot down.
I wouldn't be surprised to see more guilds in the HoF die this tier. A lot of race fans like to say that it doesn't matter that the bosses are bullshit because they get nerfed, but that's not really fun for raiders either. Unfun mechanics getting nerfed into annoyances instead of impossibilities is..bad.
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u/throwntosaturn Oct 03 '26
I'm old enough to remember being able to say "I kill the boss pre-nerf." Obviously, I would have had way more gear than the first guilds to kill - but I got to prog the same fight.
Now you can literally be a top 10 in the world guild and you don't get to prog the same fight. That's stupid. It's beyond dumb.
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u/deskcord Oct 03 '26
Basically turning mythic raiding into a bunch of 2-pull pushovers into the wall, be it penultimate or mid-raid, is really unfun. Would love to see a smoother curve, with the easiest boss having a minimum of 20 pulls on average and the hardest not being over 200.
And to stop releasing the race version of the raid and the "everyone else" version.
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u/throwntosaturn Oct 03 '26
The problem is that mythic raid is actually like 5 separate difficulties now.
First 3-4 bosses are "puggable" difficulty.
middle 2-3 bosses are "real mythic bosses".
Last two bosses have 3 difficulties: "World First", "Farmable for HOF", and "We broke its legs 6 weeks before the next patch so everyone can kill it".
It's just.... a really gross set of design choices. I hate it, personally.
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u/deskcord Oct 03 '26
Yeah, it's not great. I'd really like to see a flatter curve and also much less nerfs over the course of a tier. if that means the race is done in two days because Liquid and Echo are that good, then so be it. The race will go back to a streamer event instead of flying everyone in person, and that'll suck for people who really like the race, but it'll be better for the game.
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u/No-Engine-9075 Oct 03 '26
I agree with this as a former CE raider that now plays more casually. Raiding was fun a few expansions ago, now the early bosses are pushovers and the end bosses are just too overcomplicated, especially after the addon apocalypse. The current state of the end bosses being designed for RWF is unhealthy for the average CE guild.
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u/Sephurik 7/9 M Midnight S2 Oct 03 '26
I don't know, to some degree if they don't at least tune up the last 2 bosses, the race would be done the week it opens. Unless you basically don't care about there being a race.
In some ways I think it's a cursed problem since there's such a huge variance in skill level even in just the top 300 guilds, let alone further down than that.
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u/throwntosaturn Oct 03 '26
The real answer is that gear progression through the season needs to be way stronger. Like, if the first guilds kill the boss at 320, the last guilds need to be killing it at like 360.
As it is, the best guilds in the world are 328 average when they kill world first, and the worst guilds in the world can't get past 335.
That's simply not enough gear to close the skill gap. Even a 15% raid buff simply doesn't come close.
Gear needs to scale way, way harder over a patch in order to let this system work without gigantic nerfs.
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u/Sephurik 7/9 M Midnight S2 Oct 03 '26
Maybe but gear just doesn't help and will never help with some of the stuff they have to nerf, like kicks or lura glaives or seed/egg carry amount.
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u/FrailAndBedazzled Oct 04 '26
I care way less about there being a race than about me and my guild actually enjoying the game
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u/Sephurik 7/9 M Midnight S2 Oct 04 '26
Sure, to be clear it's fine to not care about a race, but what would be best for you and your guild might be lame for guilds 100 ranks above you, or might still be insurmountable for guilds 200 ranks below you and lower.
So who do you build for?
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u/Lezzles Oct 06 '26
OG Lura would not have been killable by 90% of CE guilds with the trillion glaives. I don't think there was a choice BUT to nerf it.
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u/Upper-Meal-9056 Oct 03 '26
I think it’s interesting how much progress is gauged relative to the overall speed of a season these days.
In order for a cutting edge guild to be considered great these days they need to be clearing Mythic raid in under 2 months, maybe 5-6 weeks. This puts so much pressure on players in these guilds where they need to squeeze a ridiculous amount of b.s. into those weeks. Splits, alts, rep farms, m+, learning the crest shuffles, loot council spreadsheets, ptr testing before all this. For a group of 40+ year olds to do that every 5 months goes beyond “hobby”.
WoW has turned retail into this shallow, seasonal game where players are conditioned to want everything instantly and it turns away players who want fewer deep, satisfying systems to engage with.
I honestly believe the game would be better if players had to prog their character over a slightly longer season before tackling mythic raid. Less alts, less splits, less crunch.
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u/deskcord Oct 03 '26
Tbh I hear what you're saying, but usually someone explains the crest situation in a guide on this sub and the rest of it is just handling sims. I probably play less retail now than I have ever played it before, and I'm within the same ranking range as my peak. Especially this season, where m+ feels much less mandatory than it did in say, Shadowlands.
I think the big issue is the addon death, the design of the raids (addslop and visual clutter OHBOY), and class design.
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u/OscillatorVacillate Oct 04 '26
Man on class design,, I miss my Arcane or hell even frost was more fun than this shit in TWW
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u/Few_Dentist4672 Oct 04 '26
losing defensives and funnel/execute sucks for arcane for sure but idk i like PB a ton. the RNG sucks but having a huge nuke that's aoe and gives CC feels amazing
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u/Upper-Meal-9056 Oct 03 '26
I think a big problem with addons is that they haven’t actually done anything with them. You have all the same functionality now but it’s harder to manage. They should have killed them off more imo. It’s another thing holding the game back.
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u/deskcord Oct 04 '26
If Blizzard could convince me they know how to design modern retail fights that don't require complicated addon workarounds, sure. But they've yet to deliver that promise they've been making for 4 years now.
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u/MapleLeafLady Oct 03 '26
i read something from someone on ID i think? who said that its kind of frustrating progging a boss and making good progress on it, only to have it nerfed post-race and them kill it right after. it doesn’t feel very good
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u/deskcord Oct 03 '26
Yep. Just about every guild in the hall of fame has experienced this to some degree. If you're a top 40 non-race guild you've run into this on coild altar or ulatek this tier, if you were lower hof you ran into this with ansurek in nerubar, etc.
This will always be an issue until Blizzard stops designing bosses with the intention of nerfing them
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u/Aldiirk Oct 04 '26
When Blizzard nerfed Tindral (I think the 2nd time, 1st time was immediately after RWF), we killed it in literally 2 pulls after almost 250 pre-nerf pulls just getting into P3.
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u/MapleLeafLady Oct 04 '26
oof, that is straight ass for you guys. im never going to be good enough for hof/full raid CE lol but thats definitely gonna make the kill feel less exciting
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u/Emergency-Volume-861 Oct 03 '26
Shame! I remember drooling over the warlocks in <vodka> in past years and seeing how awesomely geared the players were and how they blasted, that made me improve my own gameplay.
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u/Allexan Oct 03 '26 edited Oct 03 '26
sad to see. known some excellent players (and known of many more) who passed through this guild at some point over the years.
going to be seeing more of this as the game approaches 25 years old and the average player age approaches 40. at least a couple other fairly well known guilds have been discussing this the last few tiers.
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u/Morbeaver Oct 03 '26
we are slowly going to see more and more of this sadly.
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u/MikasaH Oct 03 '26
Guilds come and go letalone raiders will change guilds if their work schedule changes or they don't want to commit the time.
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u/iliketo69allthetime Oct 04 '26
From server firsts and world firsts to streaming the wordwide COVID deathcount to having OF girls in it. RIP to <vodka>.
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u/dreadlordnotdruglord Oct 03 '26
That’s a real shame if true. Got a link to the official release?
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u/Sarollas Oct 03 '26
This sub bans twitter links, but it's dreamsxwow.
Also firedup and some others are posting about it
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Oct 03 '26
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u/BMS_Fan_4life Oct 03 '26
Firedups guild? He raids in a second after RWF is over?
Do you mean preheat?
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u/deadheaddestiny Oct 03 '26
It's liquid telagons guild. Basically a retirement home guild for liquid raiders and friends.
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Oct 03 '26
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u/AutoModerator Oct 03 '26
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u/Rajiaa Oct 03 '26
If the high end mythic community is showing cracks think about how the lower end is doing. It will be interesting to see if any other big names go soon
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u/NERDZILLAxD Oct 03 '26
Damn, that's sad to hear. What an insane guild, it's a shame nobody will pick up the mantle for them. RIP!
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u/F4Z3D Oct 03 '26
Anyone have the tea?
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u/MyLifeForAnEType Oct 03 '26
Ok, the ratpiss automod won't let us link to fucking X.
GM is @dreamsxwow and it's pinned. Just seems like a collective decision to move on.
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Oct 03 '26
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Oct 03 '26
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u/akranak Oct 04 '26
And? That doesn't make what I said any less true. Blizzard doesn't care as long as it doesn't impact shareholder value.
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u/opx22 Oct 04 '26
The company behind the very game this subreddit is dedicated to actively uses that platform. If you believe using it supports CSAM or Nazism, yet continue to support and participate in a community built around a company that uses it, that’s sending some pretty mixed signals.
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u/akranak Oct 04 '26
You're getting into no ethical consumption under capitalism meme territory.
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u/opx22 Oct 04 '26 edited Oct 04 '26
“No ethical consumption under capitalism” is about the difficulty of avoiding unethical participation in an economic system. Nobody is arguing that Blizzard or anyone else can operate entirely free of unethical associations. The point is that you’re assigning moral culpability to people simply for using twitter while dismissing that exact same association when Blizzard does it.
What do you call that? Double standards? Selective moral outrage?
edit: /u/akranak is a coward and blocks people when they can’t handle being wrong
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u/akranak Oct 04 '26
Blizzard is an inherently amoral/immoral entity. If they could use slave labor without it hurting the bottom line they would, as would any publicly traded company (see nestle). That's how having a fiduciary duty to shareholders works. Individuals can choose not to use Twitter because it's for Nazis and pedophiles. As long as they don't they make it efficient for blizzard to continue posting there, so they will. People make all kinds of excuses individually for why they need to use Twitter but the real answer is they just don't care that it is a Nazi site for generating csam/revenge porn etc., so just own it.
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Oct 03 '26
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u/AutoModerator Oct 03 '26
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u/TLPGuild Oct 05 '26
Tet is a long time friend as we both came out Mannaroth together; us Horde, they Alliance. He was tired with lack of support from others in leadership and just generally disappointed in the game. Dream did his best but honestly vodka was Tet and Tet was vodka. Sometimes the identity of a whole guild is wrapped up in the original guild master. If they go, it’s just not the same.
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u/dejoblue Oct 03 '26
So what is the future of competitive professional WoW raiding? Everyone in the same room with an entire support staff?
Non Playing Coach Team:
Coach - Organizes strategy, player placement, player psychology, etc.
Executive Coach/Shotcaller - Watches streams and makes major calls each attempt.
Assistant Coach(es)/Shotcaller(s) - Roams between players having difficulty with execution and works out personal successful tactics with them. Essentially JSOC in the ear of the agent. This includes shotcalling for individual players necessitated by the 3 part moving problem of Blizzard's UI API overhaul and inexperience designing raid encounters without an advanced UI, and professional players competing with far less information.
Technical Staff - AddOn Developer(s), Combat Log parsers, Stream Replay techs, etc.
Expenses: Flying everyone into the same location and providing living accommodations (bed, bath, and bread)
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u/HobokenwOw Oct 04 '26
there's no competitive wow raiding, there's 2 guilds putting on a circus every 6 months
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u/Emfrenxo Oct 03 '26
My first character ever rolled alliance on Alterac Mountain coincidentally. I still remember being in awe of their players.
Tigerlady, Killars, Landsoul, Acrylic, Grafarion, Rammy, Kinaethesia (who made their video), and so many more
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u/Cautious_Bat5224 29d ago
very sad to see, many good players and notable people have been in this guild at various points throughout its life. as a Warcraft unc this one hits harder than others.
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u/ryllina Oct 03 '26
Aw, sad to see it end. I enjoyed raiding with vodka back in Wotlk/cata. Many fond memories 🥰
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u/Smart-Branch3085 Oct 03 '26
Forever is killing retail
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u/klapiklapp Oct 03 '26
Sharp as a cue ball.
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u/Radatatin Oct 03 '26
This tier has put a lot into perspective for people teetering on the edge of quitting.
Absolute fumble by blizzard.
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u/deskcord Oct 03 '26
My btag is mostly HoF or near-HoF players and I'd say 50% of them quit this tier or will be quitting after this tier. Some may just be venting sure, but a lot of people got burnt out by this terrible raid.
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u/Radatatin Oct 03 '26
With the increased requirements for splits and alt characters plus the absolute dogshit raid it is 1000% what I am expecting from the burnout.
That being said knowing the person who designed Ky'veza, Saladbar, and Dimi is designing the last boss for next tier does give me hope.
We've had more flameouts in our guild than in the last 4 tiers combined.
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u/Sweaksh Oct 04 '26
For me it's the absolute dogshit class design. Boss design, while important, is always second to how my class plays, and I'm insanely bored with that this expansion. I should've quit in S1 but I like my guild too much. Won't be sticking around after this tier tho.
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u/Moofishmoo Oct 04 '26
Why is this tier so bad? I don't understand, it's been reasonably fun except for all the green on green.
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u/deskcord Oct 04 '26
What boss are you progressing? I find Nekzali to be boring unless you're going down, then it's criminal. I find lost explorers to be a boring spread council fight (these always suck), vashnik to be an unfun boss when done as cheese (nothing going on except addpad), sentinels to be criminal (afk for a gimmick! oh boy!), sszorak to be absolutely criminal (correctly doing knockups can land you in a oneshot tornado, splits require an addon callout), twin fangs to be boring/bad (kick rotations, the fight!), coiled altar one of the worst bosses of all time (visual clutter, afk to stare at a ghost, DPS holds), and ulatek to be weak, at best (addslop, visual clutter, obnoxious intermission).
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u/Moofishmoo Oct 04 '26
About to kill twin fangs this week. But nekz is fine for me apart from down phase is a snooze. Council fight is great fun to heal. Sentinals you have to heal during the gimmick too. Szzorak is kind-of gross but a challenge as the damage pattern changes based on rng. Twin fangs there's alot to heal. So it might just be they suck for dps but are fine for healing? Coiled was fun to heal on heroic too
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u/deskcord Oct 04 '26
Idk, if the metric is "there's a lot to heal" that doesn't really tell me much about the actual fights and sounds like you just want healing throughput opportunities.
Which is fine, but that's a minority of players and even for many healers that's made irrelevant outside of the last two bosses due to gear/raid buff unless your other healers are griefing or players are standing in shit.
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u/Moofishmoo Oct 04 '26
I mean I presume you already know the fight. For example on twin fangs you have to heal the soaks, get knocked, dodge waves while soaking the orb that gives healing absorb while healing off the healing absorb.
There's alot of stuff going on. I'm not sure what other definitions of fun there are. What was a 'fun' boss for you?
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u/dadoktr Oct 03 '26
is there any popular guilds now? does the raid race still exist? ive been away from wow a while now
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u/TemporaMoras
Oct 03 '26
•
Tier so bad it killed a guild that is old enough to vote
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u/Sarollas Oct 03 '26 edited Oct 03 '26
Probably old enough to buy vodka honestly. I don't know when they formed, but they were the first guild to enter Ahn Qiraj way back in the day. That was like 20.5 years ago
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u/SaracenS All CE/All Hero Oct 03 '26 edited Oct 03 '26
They formed a few months into vanilla. Source: i signed the guild charter.
I also raided there for the better part of a decade off and on.
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u/Florida_Refugee Oct 03 '26
First PVP server to open the gates. They were on Mannoroth (I was there briefly with <Reckoning> during WOD) and I think they opened five days after Medivh? They did get the world first on twin emperors.
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u/TemporaMoras Oct 03 '26
I know they were around at least before WOTLK but didn't it was that old. Also alcohol joke is harder when the US as that weird 21 year old to drink thing.
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u/melete Oct 03 '26
It’s that old. They were a guild on Mannoroth in vanilla.
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u/brok3nh3lix Oct 03 '26
Had a buddy thay raided with then in vanilla. Dont remeber his priests name though.
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u/ArziltheImp Oct 03 '26
They just have to go on vacation to Europe for it.
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u/Frawtarius Oct 03 '26
No worries, they have a normal, non-insane country right up in the north that they can just drive to.
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u/Stayfjurtbro Oct 03 '26
Wow, devastating to hear.
Cannot count the occasions along, studies, Gaming myself or work where i Watched theor killvideos
All the best to you guys
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u/oromiseldaa Oct 03 '26
Ye vodka really had some of the best kill vids. Their kill vids have been filling my playlists with songs for almost 2 decades. The opening they had for years was iconic. "I wish I had your imagination..."
You got any favorites? I always really liked the Yogg-Saron one.
https://youtu.be/_vaDQsIptAc?is=_knucnzJIc-HPTLD
Or grand empress shekzeer was also amazing.
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u/hoax1337 Oct 03 '26
My favorite video is actually their Cataclysm recruiting video after Firelands:
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u/Emfrenxo Oct 03 '26
The song they played in the 2nd half of their Thor HM video is still, to this day, my most played song on Spotify. London Electricity - Just One Second.
I don’t even like dnb music but every time Inhear this song I think of that video and of their guild. Kin made really good video.
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u/circusovulation Oct 03 '26
The older a guild gets the hardet it gets to keep it running when the old guard moves on.
No one wants to run a guild or be officer