Like the Roman legion for which they are named, Triarii is an Alliance guild focused upon beating everything that Blizzard develops for World of Warcraft. Created in September 2005 on Thunderhorn-EU, Triarii rose from the collapse of another guild, Fate of Kings. Long term guild master Perfectzor founded Triarii with a few online and real life friends, eventually expanding the guild to its present size of 69 accounts.

“We wanted a name that people would easily memorise” Perfectzor explains, “with only one word so when people mention us they don’t abbreviate it. I’m personally a Roman history lover and together with other members came up with ‘Triarii’ because it was a Roman legion which contained the most experienced after surviving many battles. Like us after Fate of Kings.”

As with many raiding guilds membership is at a premium. “What I look for in a new member is activity and personality. We want fun people in order to continue with the good mood in the guild.”

“When we are recruiting we normally announce it on the realm forums. [Anyone] who wants to apply to us can always use our forum and the respective section (http://triarii.srproducts.co.uk), filling in a template we have.”

“Since the beginning we tried to have only eight per class in order to have the average needed to raid and some backup, though since we have some casual members we have some classes with ten.”

Triarii wasted no time in pushing forwards to the high level instances. “We started to raid Molten Core one week after creation. [At first it] was a bit different and hard, because we had to have 40 guys doing the right thing. When we started doing Blackwing Lair for the first time we didn’t have enough people because raids on new instances bring stress, wipes and bad moods. Some tried to skip it not helping the guild at all.”

“We have a schedule each week so everyone knows what [day an] instance is and when. During the day we have members organising their own raids to 20 man instances like Zul’gurub and Ahn’Qiraj. We raid every night, only having a break on Fridays.”

Perfectzor’s role as guild master is one many might envy, but keeping everyone happy is not an easy task. “It’s always very hard to please 69 people…many different personalities…creates some conflicts. [But] the best part for me is looking back and seeing what I have created and see the success we have achieved. I feel proud of it.”

Much has changed in WoW over the months and Triarii has had to adapt to that. “Since the guild was created all in it have to spend a lot more time online to play the game. Sometimes it looks like a job to some, and at least to me it is.”

There’s more to Triarii than simply the high level content. “…it’s like a big group of friends it’s not just a raiding guild. We always put fun first. We end up making a lot of friends, with some members only coming on to chat a bit before work. It’s a guild where we try to enjoy the game to the max.”

On a server the size of Thunderhorn-EU it can be difficult to avoid drawing attention after achieving success in the 40 man instances. “We had some rivals in the past and arguments with other guilds but now usually we make alliances with some for world bosses. It’s not a certain thing but we allied with Caelum, Pecado and Legion of Exiles. We were kinda in a race to beat The Raid Alliance in getting Nefarian down and we felt pretty good in doing it. We got him first, around 30 minutes before. All friendly competition of course.”

“We’ve had three best moments I think, when we killed Ragnaros for the first time, Nefarian for the first time, but especially Onyxia who took us three to four hours of wipes before we got her. But all three were very satisfying in the end.”

“We have some interesting stories like doing Azuregos with Navles (a Horde Tauren Warrior) as off tank because he was trying to make us wipe, we just managed to kill Azuregos. And one Vaelastrasz kill we were all dead at 1% except one of the Paladins, Akcope, who bubbled and finished Vaelastrasz by himself.”

To date Triarii has beaten Molten Core and Blackwing Lair, and continues to do so on a weekly basis. Their goal at the moment is to be the first guild on Thunderhorn to beat Naxxramas without having completed Ahn’qiraj previously. While that may seem an insurmountable goal, it does seem to fit in with their Roman namesake.