When you create a thread to brag over something meaningless, yes, yes it is.

Man I hope not. DG being legitimately difficult was the best thing to happen to the raiding scene in this game since NM Kephess.

Unlike the wannabe detectives in APEX who throw around wild accusations with no supporting evidence, I have it on good authority that the following transpired: 1. The NMTFB patch was originally scheduled for release on Tuesday, June 11. 2. Based on the PTS, everyone assumed the bosses would be super easy, with the server-first kill going to whichever guild could start raiding the earliest. 3. Accordingly, Hatred had members take June 11 off work so they could login as soon as the servers came back online after maintenance. 4. On short notice, the patch was delayed until Wednesday, June 12. 5. One of Hatred's tanks, Thiol, could not get that day off work. 6. Panicking because they might not get a server first, Hatred convinced Rolly to temporarily switch guild tags for the day. 7. After defeating Writhing Horror, everyone quickly discovered that Dread Council is much harder than the PTS version, so Hatred could wait until Thiol is available before progressing further. 8. Rolly returned to Select Few and joined them for their Writhing Horror kill. Now, I don't doubt for a second that Hatred would have still earned the sever-first clear even if they didn't temporarily tag Rolly as a ringer. However, does that count as cheating under Denchet's rules as posted in the OP and therefore disqualify them from the rankings? That's not my call...

That depends on what you consider to be a "good guild". I'd say there are 2-3 genuinely high-end guilds on each faction, but Empire has significantly more also-rans (again basing this on NMEC progression; we'll see if that changes with NM Dread Council). And I wouldn't use 10-stack Dreadtooth as a meaningful measurement of anything. Many guilds chose to skip it completely because it required 24 players, way more than most 8-man (and even many 16-man) guilds have members.

Hmmm...I'm honestly not sure about that. We'll see how things shake out with NM Dread Council, but the last time there was a genuinely hard boss in this game that required actual skill to beat (NM Kephess), the top three guilds to down it were: 1. Imp 2. Rep 3. Rep Third place defeated Kephess within 10 days of first. Then there was a gap of over a month before the next guild (Imp) beat the boss. For the two-hour NMEC clear, it went like this: 1. Rep 2. Rep 3. Imp Similar to killing Kephess, there was only a small gap between first and third, but fourth place was a month and a half behind the top three. There are certainly more Imperial guilds overall, but in terms of very high-end raiding I'd say Empire and Republic are more or less equal on this server (based on NMEC progression which may or may not still be relevant today).

Sure, but three pieces would only increase total raid dps by a fraction of a percent. So if a guild is consistently wiping while Kel'sara has ~1% HP remaining, then the additional loot from skipping the Council and farming Operator, Kephess, and TFB might push them over the top. I doubt many guilds are in that position, though. More likely, what they really need is improved play and better execution, not a few gear upgrades.

A few upgrades are not going to make or break a guild's ability to beat this fight.

They killed it within the first week of release (prior to Tuesday's reset), so there's no way they could have skipped past it to farm the later bosses first.

<3 5char

Go ahead and keep making wild accusations without any supporting evidence. You're only endearing yourselves to the other guilds on the server (as per TSO's reaction to your baseless claim) in the process. Hercule Poirot you are not.

http://i.imgur.com/fvkyNL7.jpg

I resent the insinuation that my presence in your guild would tarnish your name.

Oh, it most certainly is a personality check, but perhaps not in the way in which the question's author(s) intended. Asking a question like that shows the type of attitude the guild's members have towards women and how welcoming they would be to female gamers. It's so juvenile and sophomoric. "But it's just a joke," they'll say, "why do you take it so seriously?" I take it so seriously because that kind of sexist and misogynistic mentality is all-too-common amongst the gaming community. If you're a male gamer and have never had to hide your gender when playing with others online (notice that up until now everyone has assumed I'm a "he", and I've never corrected their error), you have absolutely no idea just how bad it can be. I quit playing on Xbox Live altogether because the rampant sexism was too much to take. I was the victim of all manner of insults and even threatened with sexual violence (I won't repeat the details here as it would trigger the profanity filter) solely because I'm a) a girl and b) I killed them a few times in CoD or Halo or whatever. PC gamers are slightly better than their console bretheren in that respect, but only marginally so. I've been in MMO guilds where the GM would tell me to "shut up and make me a sandwich" whenever I said anything on Vent. And this was considered funny! Thankfully the guild I belong to now is very welcoming and inclusive and would never tolerate anything like that. I have no idea why, but nowhere else except when playing online video games have I encountered such casual and pervasive sexism. So instead of shrugging it off and saying, "it's just a joke, don't take it seriously," I've decided instead to publicly shame the mysogynistic fratboys who think this is acceptable. With any luck, I might discourage some people away from that kind of attitude and make the world just a little bit more friendly for my fellow gamer girls. Rant over. Sorry for disrupting your thread, Denchet.

Conspirators? Do go on...

Haterade? Hardly. I would never join a guild that thinks "What kind of chicks do you like?" is an appropriate application post question.