Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker was a 1H legendary sword rewarded for collecting the 2 Bindings of the Windseeker and a bunch of bullshit. The weapon was game changing for raiding. The proc's debuff was an effective 20% reduction in auto-attack damage to every mob it affected, including all raid bosses. In addition to the damage reduction potential of the weapon, the proc was also an extra burst of damage which helped with threat which was miserable at the time... AND it was AoE threat, which was even harder when Thunderclap needed to be cast in Battle Stance and only affected up to 4 targets and Warriors pretty much had nothing else that generated AoE threat. (Some of these threat issues were remedied by the discovery of Battle Shout spamming. Because of these reasons the weapon was used by many a main tank all the way through the completion of Naxxramas (even into early TBC as well), and even if the MT wasn't using it, SOMEONE in the raid was wielding it. Not having at least one Thunderfury in your raid was a huge detriment to your ability to compete against guild's that did have the weapon. In addition to the sheer power of the Thunderfury it should be noted that it was, and arguably still is, The coolest looking weapon in the game. So Naturally it took CSM almost an entire year to complete our first one.
Lore
As far as the lore of the weapon goes, apparently Ragnaros and his lieutenants Garr and Baron Geddon beat the shit out of Thunderaan a long time ago. Apparently they were too shit to actually kill him so he was imprisoned in a prison that was somehow later split in two. The two halves were held by Garr and Baron Geddon. Eventually the players get one of the Bindings of the Windseeker and they can talk to some douchebag down in Silithus and he tells you he needs you to get the other half of the Bindings of the Windseeker and an Essence of the Firelord off Rag. He also needs like fucking 10 Enchanted Elementium bars which equated to 100 fucking Arcanite Bars. Hope you like mining for Arcane Crystals. The rest of it was not that terrible but the Bindings were ~3% drops off of Garr and Geddon. Some guilds would see 3 of the Garr Binding before they would eventually get a single Geddon Binding. After the player had acquired all the necessary materials they took a raid down to Silithus and freed Thunderaan from his prison. Finally free after millennia he greeted the players that had freed him. The logical next step was to murder him and steal his weapon, which we did.
Wielders of Thunderfury in CSM
CSM completed their first Thunderfury on the Fourth of March in the Year of Our Lord Two-thousand and Six. It should be noted that this is over 10 months after we had killed Garr and Baron Geddon for the first time. We killed those bosses every week for 10 months trying to complete a fucking Thunderfury. Over 6 months after basically all our mains needed nothing from the shithole boring instance we still diligently ran it because having a Thunderfury was just that big of a deal.
- Infinite: Having obtained the Geddon Binding previously in Tilt, Infinite only required the Garr half which we had already gotten 2 of at that point (Jody and Red). On that fateful night (March 4, 2006, over 300 days after slaying these bosses for the first time) raid content for CSM suddenly became magnitudes easier.
- Jody: Exactly one week later, on March 11, 2006, Jody would get CSMs first Geddon binding and then complete his Thunderfury as well.
- Churagar: A refugee from CAKE on Firetree, Churagar was previously the main tank for his guild. In his time with CAKE he had obtained the sword and that just sweetened the deal when he and his friends were recruited in Early Naxx.
Materials
- Bindings of the Windseeker Right half from Garr.
- Bindings of the Windseeker Left half from Baron Geddon.
- Essence of the Firelord 100% drop rate off Ragnaros if you had the quest
- 10 Enchanted Elementium Bars (Mats per bar: 1 Elementium Ingot, 10 Arcanite Bars, 1 Fiery core, 3 Elemental Flux)
Memes
The Thunderfury was pretty much the original item meme of World of Warcraft, only possibly predated by The Nicker. If anyone ever linked the weapon, or even if no one had at all, people would respond "Did someone say [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]??" And then other people would say it, and then it would be all that was in trade chat until they got tired of it. Presumably this item was so popular for this sort of spam because the name was so incredibly long and also that it was orange and thus stood out from all of the blue and purple spam. Blizzard honored the legacy of the weapon on WoW's 11th anniversary with a temporary Inflatable Thunderfury toy that had charges. The toy would make whatever your MH weapon was look like a Thunderfury for an hour. In addition this meme would be honored by the Feat of Strength Achievement "Did Someone Say...?"
In Legion
The Outlaw/Combat artifact for Rogues in Legion was a set of swords, The Dreadblades. The hidden skin for The Dreadblades was a pair of hi-res Thunderfurys. To obtain the skin the player had to gather 2 Bindings of the Windlord from Dargrul in Neltharian's Lair and Ash'Golem in Vault of the Wardens. These Bindings had an even more abysmal drop rate than the original Bindings (~0.5% each), presumably because they dropped in 5m instances that could be chain run. Early in Legion Outlaw was an incredibly strong spec, and since legendaries could not be transmogged onto weapons and Thunderfury was still one of the best looking weapons in the game so this skin was highly sought after. It was very common to find groups of 5 Rogues chain running Nelth's Lair or Vault until they had run out of instance resets. Plenty of Creative use of game mechanics were employed in these runs to make them faster and more efficient. Gliders were originally used both to bypass the first 3 bosses in Nelth's Lair by running on top of the entire instance and also to fall down directly onto Ash'Golem in Vault after clipping through a wall. Blizzard would nerf this by disabling gliders to be used in all instances after years of them being usable simply to try and stop Rogues from using them to farm the Thunderfury skin more efficiently. Later a new bypass for Nelth's would be found involving jumping over the boss gate behind the first boss and then using grappling hook to skip to Dargrul from another area. Lisaloeb got the Ash'Golem Bindings after about 20 kills. Lisaloeb killed Dargrul 165 times on normal before finally receiving the second Binding and completing the appearance.
