Happy New Year!

Hope you all had a safe and peaceful holiday season! wb!

Several of us finally rolled on Horde side instead of making a new alt Alliance side. And what we did is working very well for us: recruit a group to work with, work with them. We are on right about the same hours and we hence do a lot of questing or instances together.

So first off, if you want to join us, bring your A-game to Kilrogg, Horde-side. Look up /who ReHorde for “Legends ReHorde”. We are currently tiny in size, but having absolutely no problems getting any groups or quests done. We are leveling at phenom pace, skilling up our professions and making a hoard of gold – he he. It is necessary to caveat the following: we absolutely expect your A-game over there. There is a strong culture over there of ‘how much gold are you at’ and ‘how close to the next 10th-20th-30th-40th level are you at?’ The time we are putting in there, necessarily is very very efficient. ding 20 but don’t have all your secondary professions maxed out? what were you doing with your time?! ding 20 and have less than a 100g on you right now? c’mon slacker, pull your weight! By level 20, you should have all the gold you will need to cover leveling up and buying your first mount, be wearing mostly blues and have enchants or armor kits on everything that can be at that level. It is only getting even more tougher as we level higher – it is all about being the absolute best you can be with the time you do play.

And the result? Is it stressful? Far from it. We have never been more relaxed or laughed as much. In setting the bar and expectations high up front, we have simply just been meeting them together. It helps keep us working together too – we all are available to help each other out no matter what is going on.

We also set in stone that no matter who levels how fast (some have more time than others), everyone is expected to be in the groups when needed. And it has made short work of any tough quest or instance.

Secondly, then, is that we here on Alliance should take note of that which is working so well and do it here also – very akin to what was posted here in Nov and in preceding months.

Find people that you are online with at similar times and recruit them into the guild. Then, no matter what is going on, help each other and work together. Expect A-game from each other and you will get A+ game from everyone. If you recruit the people you like leveling with and that are online when you are online, you simply will not have a problem finding anyone to do group quests with or to do instances with. And as we are finding, if you have 4 people incl a healer and a tank, you can always do instances with zero wait time. Even with just 3 of you as long as you have that tank and healer.

If you think about it – the easiest way to start raiding at level 80, or getting geared for it, will be if we simply have two 5-man groups that are really familiar with working together and that each have a tank and a healer in them! Done!

Where things have gone screwball before is where you have a collection of individuals and not ‘teams’. Where people worked together only when they were going to get something out of it for themselves, too. As soon as it was not helping them, they left – leaving the rest behind and to pug that role in. Invariably, frustrations led to departures.

The guild’s New Year’s resolution is to form a collection of 5-man GROUPS that can and do raid together.

Not individuals – groups. The officers are less concerned with how well individuals are leveling and how well an individual is geared for a raid and far more interested in how well a group is leveling together and how well a group is geared for raiding.

Try that thought on for size. You’ll see it makes pretty much everything easier and more efficient.

We’re back – and we’re leveling to 80!

update: the big changes

So as to not waste your leveling time, in short bursts here are the major changes:

• Promoted to Knight-Captain (senior officer): Dorkonus, Catix – congrats to both and thank you for your service to the guild.
• The senior officers (Knight-Captains) are now the ‘governing body’ responsible for the guild. We have shifted the day-to-day capabilities from the sole Guild Master rank to the Knight-Captain rank (thankfully, finally!). Knight-Captains can withdraw gold from the bank and have all but the guild structure (e.g. ranks, permission settings for ranks, buying guild bank tabs) within their domain.
• Open Recruiting has been re-established. This means anyone in the guild can invite someone to join our guild. Only invite players that are friends and good players. Do NOT run around blanket inviting strangers into the guild – that is the best way to give us many, many headaches and far too many asshat parades. Again, this is reinstated so that you, the membership, can make the guild the place you game with friends.

What is the long of it all?

We made a long history of being a great place to level with your friends and get groups with your friends to see the content. We are leveling again. We had some successes in raiding and some failures – the successes were largely tied to the same things that made leveling and 5-mans successful — playing with friends and enjoying it. The failures stemmed largely from either asshats making it unenjoyable, or there being a gear gear gear frenzy that drove the raiders to have a sufficient gear gap due to play time that raiding became ineffective and stressful. Obviously, after the dust settled, we position ourselves to again re-build focusing on the strengths and successes and do our best to steer clear of the known failure points.

If it is your goal to rush to 80 and get the end content down and geared up at all costs, this is not the guild for you. We will raid with our friends, not a stressed out bunch of gear-mongering strangers. Granted, some of us friends will get stressed out. Some will gear-monger from time to time. But we aren’t strangers. And that fundamentally is the LR difference to leveling, grouping and raiding.

In the past, there was a very strong drive that if you were not in the guild, you could not raid with us. hogwash. If we do not have a guildy that needs that raid seat, and you are a friend of ours, we don’t care what guild you are in – come have some fun!

For too long now, almost all decisions were having to be made by the guild master. This meant we had to count on me logging on a lot. And when I did log on – I could spend HOURS just standing in the bank doing admin for the guild. Heavily resolving a lot of the results of asshat parades. We have changed that. There are some very distinguished players that we are very lucky to have in our guild and they have all been given the senior officer rank of Knight-Captain and are immediately invested with the full power of the guild. Collectively, they run the guild.

Let me say that again: collectively, the Knights-Captains run the guild.

The Guild Master rank will exist to provide the game-enforced one person responsible for naming ranks, setting rank permissions, buying the tabard, and buying guildbank tabs. Everything else is under the control of the collective Knights-Captain. I, as the Guild Master will keep one toon in that rank for admin reasons and will perform its admin duties *as directed by the senior officers*. For now, I will also retain one toon at the rank of Knight-Captain; however, based on guild desire and appropriateness, I can be replaced.

There are six senior officers right now, and we will look to promote one more so that ‘there were seven’ to make sure there is always a tie-breaker.

BTW – each Knight-Captain can withdraw up to 500g a day from the bank for guild-specific needs (not personal!); however, lets try to build up the bank account, not deplete it!

Open recruiting has worked in the past based on respect. It is respectful to trust everyone with that power. By derivative, it is respectful to not blanket /ginvite anyone in a zone. Keep in mind that we are not trying to be the largest guild on the server nor are we trying to have the largest collection of misfits and asshats. We have a very strong distaste for drama llamas and bullsh!t. You have that power to invite people into the guild so that you can continue to make the guild that place where you play with your friends. We had a few bad apples abuse it and turn it into a huge admin nightmare – let’s not repeat that. It will remain open unless the senior officers decide differently.

As we level up to 80 and begin to enjoy that content, invite your friends to join us, either as part of the guild or otherwise. Use vent! We have found that vent is one of the most cornerstone pieces for forming new friendships rather than the impersonal text chat. Many of the oldtimers log first into vent then into the game! It’s there, we pay for it – use it! It specifically does not have a password on it so that you can bring your friends into it when grouping up – or just to hang out.

Consider this guild your favorite hang out pub or coffeeshop with your friends. See you in the game!

casual “pick up” raiding has begun again!

we’re raiding casually again! mostly doing pick up raiding where we grab together whoever is on and fill the empty seats with friends outside of guild and knock out a small raid or heroic. we’ve been doing 2-3 heroics a day in the past few days.

hoping to see us keep that trend up for the next short while until the release comes out and then pick up again once the 5-mans start.

overall, the game plan is to start raiding again as soon as it makes sense in the expansion first by filling empty seats with non-guildy friends, and then as we recruit to fill those seats, move to all-guildy raid groups.

if you’re feeling like easy heroics to get badges/gear, logon and come have some fun!

having fun in Kara again…

… you can have fun in an old haunt once again. especially when you bring people that have never seen it before or have simply not done it with a guild run.

raiding page has been updated with our LK changes

highly recommend you read it. discuss it now with me. cuz it is going into effect *very* soon if there is no discussion on it (consider it in effect unless revised).

starting next week, we will kick off a casual raid group (since everyone is leveling and chillin) depending on whether we get enough raiders applying to be in the raid group (they really are chillin!).

So what are some of the changes that lie ahead in store for us?

We are moving quickly to align the mechanics of how our guild works with the goals of our guild – the vision of where we are going. As always, these can be discussed and changed as governed by common sense. Certainly, look to this website for any changes, if any.

It is a logical milestone now, with LK coming out, to pause, consider changes and strengths and make sure we are aligned accordingly. Our re-focusing effort surrounds some basic tenents:

• we use common sense as our overall rule of governance
• we play together to enjoy the game – fun and respect are essential balanced ingredients
• we level together, we pvp together, we raid cities together and we raid dungeons together
• we plan to raid through all of the LK content, and continue to raid (for fun) pre-BC and BC
• we are helpful of each other; however, we do expect people to quest and level – not just ask for run thru’s
• we play together; however, we do not all have the same amount of play time – some are more casual and some are more hard core
• we value reliability and although it is just a game, respecting other’s and their time requires us to do what we say we will do

For the most part, the means to achieving the results of those guiding tenents is the collective membership of the guild and how each member behaves in the social structure that is our guild. There are structural norms and mechanics that facilitate the guild’s operations. The changes started and ahead to those norms and mechanics, to support our tenents are:

• recruiting – we closed ‘open’ recruiting and returned to ‘closed’ recruiting requiring an officer to interview and extend the /ginvite; minimum-level requirement for recruiting upon LK release; focusing on mature recruits that understand our social structure, fun and respect;
• raiding - we will separate casual and hard core raiders into a casual raid group and a hard core raid group with common and specific rules – rather than lump them both into the same raid group; use of reliability as a factor in selecting who is on a dungeon raid;
• ranks – we changed ranks to test aligning better with actual roles and will complete changing them to line up and support the activities and roles within our guild;

Each of these changes will need its own post to detail the changes; however, this provided insight into what is changing and why.

An example of a tangible change is putting in place a minimum-level requirement for recruiting upon the LK release. It is not the goal of our guild to be used and abused as a leveling guild where people join, get us to help them level to end cap, then leave to raid somewhere else. It is the goal of our guild to recruit solid contributions to our culture and capabilities, play and level together, and raid together. The focus of our general membership, upon the release of LK, will be to level to 80, gear up and begin tearing through the raiding content – this is not accomplishable if the larger portion of our membership are new members in the low-levels (1-70) that are needing a lot of leveling help. After LK is released, brand new members to our guild will need to be level 70 at a minimum – unless they are personal friends, odd exceptions, etc. Everyone already in the guild will likely be grand-fathered in unless the account is inactive or incapable of leveling self-sufficiently. Which is not to say that we will not assist lower levels to rise up – just that they need to do the majority of the work themselves and that the focus members are charged with primarily is ‘get to 80 together, gear together, raid together’.

Another change is to set up casual and hard core raid groups (at least one of each) so that the available play times of the two type of raiders do not affect each other negatively. Note: raiding is not required. pvp or even social toons exist. Raiders, however, will be assigned to either a casual or hard core raid group and that is their ‘raid home group’. Raiders will commit to their specific raid group for a period of four weeks – which is to say that raid group rosters can change to accomodate members’ RL needs. At this time (still under discussion), casual raiders are signing up to raid twice a week for four weeks with one planned absence (i.e. raiding seven times in four weeks); hard core raiders are signing up to raid four times a week with one planned absence (i.e. raiding 15 times in four weeks). Before you jump out of our seats with FOUR times a week (?!), keep it in context: raiding three times a week is not ‘hard core’ by any measure in WoW; working with the raid group four times a week may not mean working for three hours a night, four nights a week on a specific raid dungeon – it can also mean two nights a week doing 1.5 hour raid dungeon badge clears depending on where we are in progression and what the raid group needs to best apply its time to. It *does* however mean that you are available and working with the raid group four times a week. Also, each raid group will be larger than ten people (most likely about 16 people) and not all of them will fit into a 10-man raid; however, they need to be online and available to the raid group – leaving them able to do other things or level an alt (as long as they can drop everything and come immediately upon need). Who will be in a specific 10-man (or 25-man) will depend on the raid needs for the specific dungeon, and who has the top reliability scores in the raid group. i.e. if you have three healers in the raid group, need two for the raid, and two have great reliability scores and one has a poor reliability score – it makes sense that the two reliable healers are going to fill those seats. Reliabilty scores will be published and updated as they change (daily?). If someone does not sign up for a raid, or does not show up, or shows up late/unpreprared, leaves early – they should not be surprised to see that their reliability is lower than someone that signs up for the raids, shows up on time, prepared and stays for the entire raid. Most “dkp” systems try to reward reliability within the system – we will track reliability separately and publicly so that there are no surprises about the scores anyone has. As with all things we do, we will use common sense to guide us.

It is safe to say that in the hard core raiding group, there will be a lot of raiding going on and all the supporting activities – we should expect those hard core raiders whom are raiding twice as much as the casual raiders to clear content much quicker than we did when we had a mixed raid group, and they will gear much faster. It also means that the players will most likely be focusing more on one toon rather than a huge host of them just as a matter of available play time (unless all you do is play WoW!). Conversely, the casual raiders will progress slower through the content, gear slower, and hence can focus on many toons all at once because the raid group is not going to leave them behind. We do not forsee the hard core raiders being able to gear three or more toons at the same rate as the raid group – skilled players with a lot of playtime would likely be able to pull off two toons; however, most will have one toon that can keep pace with the raid group and keep a second “close to” alt.

Having said all that, plan accordingly! And if you are currently not in the guild and are planning on returning, I HIGHLY recommend returning quickly now and sorting out which raid group you are in (I expect we will have multiples of them). Once we “lock and load” a raid group, the only way to get into it until the next raid group selection (four weeks later) will be if we have attrition (loss of toons) or unacceptable reliability scores.

These mechanisms support bringing winning teams together, that play together and stay together enjoying the full content of the game.

Welcome to the new era!

-Ironhelm

Nagrand, then Undercity… sort of, until a crackhead condom ran off with our heals and died!

It is particularly interestting to read the comments on the bottoms left and the bottom right kill roster listings.

Look carefully, we kill a shammy and TWO seconds later he is killed again! = )

We dids a lots of dhamage. Nicely done boyz!

accomodating both our hardcore and casual players

How do you accomodate both the hardcore and casual players in our guild in a manner that is healthy for our guild’s growth, culture and interpersonal dynamics?

Good question. With ‘common sense’ – our usual approach! As always, we put out a recommendation and if it needs to be changed or tweaked, we do that.

We have found that we have players that want to raid or do heroics every day and we have players that do not have gaming time every day or do not want to raid every day. It injects turbulence – especially if raids are conducted when casual players are not online.

One approach might be to poll the casual players as to when most of them can raid and schedule the raids for only those time slots; however, that leaves the hardcore players wanting.

A second approach might be to schedule raiding when best suits the hardcore raiders; however, that could easily exclude the casual players.

Well it would seem that the obvious answer is to schedule the raids when the casual players *and* the hardcore players can BOTH raid. Pretty damn obvious. Pity it is the wrong answer!

Hardcore players will quickly gather a lot of badge-purchased gear by doing Heroics. (If they do Heroic dailies on a daily basis, they can likely earn twice (or more) badges a week as the casual players.) Very quickly, the hardcore players are carrying the casual players in the raids – or worse, the hardcore players’ progression is hindered by the lack of more players that are geared at their level.

It is not a ‘guild commitent’ problem. It is not a ‘desire to get geared’ problem. It is an ‘available time’ problem.

To accomodate both our hardcore players and our casual players, we are changing gears and taking advantage of some mechanics (Heroics) and common sense outcomes.

First, we all need to ‘let go’ of the insanity that ‘everyone’ has to be geared and ‘in the raid group’. There are level 70s that do not want to raid – they want to pvp — they have raiding toons, but they also have pvp toon(s). They are a good example that shows not all end level characters need to be geared and in a raid group. Instead, lets replace it with filling and gearing our raid groups the best we can. If we have a hardcore group working on Naxx in the expansion and a casual group working on BT – that is fine! Sure, casual raiders would be delighted to come on a raid that is way above their gear grade – who wouldn’t?! However, letting go of the pressure on casual raiders to ‘be there’ and freeing the hardcore raiders to progress beyond the reach of the casual raiders isn’t just a good idea, it is simply reality. We just need to stop artificially fighting reality.

Second, we will add Heroics to our line up of ‘events’ – and of course, they are ‘on the schedule’ daily! It helps to have a ‘regular’ time slot for people to plan for to reduce conflicts with their RL and hence be available more often. Going forward, we will institutionalize 9pm server time as the time to do Heroics. That way, if you have an itch to do some tough content and get some badges, you know others are likely going to be online to do the daily Heroic starting at 9pm server time. If 9pm does not work for you, put something in GroupCalendar and see if others want to do it at the same time you want to (note: check whether you are posting things in server time or local time.) Daily heroics and other heroics every day helps scratch the hardcore player’s itch daily. It also allows casual players ‘to get in on the action’ regardless of when a 10-man or 25-man occured. Finally, it also lets players (hardcore or casual) that do not have time for a 3 hour raid to still get some tough content in – so it even addresses those players who simply cannot lock in a huge chunk of time that night for gaming.

Now, how do we fill those raids/heroics?

Heh. Fun.

Starts with us getting into some habits. Like using GroupCalendar to schedule an instance or sign up for a raid/instance. Means we need to get into the habit of showing up early enough to add the members and then get some pugs in if needed to fill some seats. (Note: lets develop a pool of pugs we like to run with and if we stick to regular schedule, it is likely they will hook into it making it easier to start on time every time.)

Recruiting. That really never stops. Rather than complain that someone is doing something else (RL, in game, whatever) other than raiding with you, recruit enough people that we do not have single points of failures on given nights. A quick note about recruiting: we *do* have open recruiting in the guild *right now*. The purpose of that is for you to have the ability to FIRST assess someone as a good quality addition to our guild and SECOND to be able to invite them into our guild. It is not open so that you can drift net fish and haul in all kinds of garbage without any care to the impact to the guild. Make good decisions on who *you are recommending* when you invite them in. It is very soon going to affect you if you build a track record of inviting garbage in.

Reward reliability. We will put in place ‘karma points’ that amongst other things rewards players for signing up for raids/instances and for being there on time and through to the end. It is relatively simple with GroupCalendar and Wowwebstats.com – either you did or did not sign up in advance, and either you did or did not show up on the combat report for 100% of the report! Reliability also plays into resolving who gets priority for the raid seat should there be a conflict that cannot be resolved easily amongst the raiders – people that are highly unreliable take a back seat to those that are highly reliable. It’s bloody obvious! Karma points are coming!

Finally, lets get those raids back on GroupCalendar so that people can choose which ones they want to do and sign up. We will put up raids for Kara, ZA, Gruul’s & Mags – Badge runs and regular runs for Kara to give geared players a chance to clear Kara quickly in a badge run while keeping a regular run open for everyone that meets at least the min requirements (posted on the Raiding page).

It should be expected that raiding will start out shaky while we get back up and running. We are going to need to pug in to fill empty seats. Raids may get cancelled if we cannot fill them. Patience. Heroic instances! If after we post scheduled events, and if folks publish raids that suit them better and we still find we cannot fill a raid, then we have to accept that the upcoming expansion is basically reducing interest in raiding until it comes out. At this point, I see a low leve of interest in raiding and a greater interest in ‘getting ready for the expansion’ coupled with a driving interest to do Heroics.

Heroics are very much within reach for us all at end level – and both hardcore and casual players can optimize to them without too much turbulence. 9pm server time. Every day. Easy. It will take a while to turn this into a habit. All the while, inviting quality new members to join us.

That is how we are approaching accomodating both our hardcore and casual players.

See you in the Heroics.

a word about raiding, gear and the expansion

without kicking off a firestorm or panic-fest, a reliable source in the beta has confirmed that his Tier4 & full ZA gear was replaced by level 71. does this mean Tier 5 and Tier 6 are going away at level 71? no. only have T4 and ZA confirmed as replaced by level 71 – for one individual.

however, it should answer without any doubt that raiding ‘to get gear right now’ will lead to prompt disappointment. on the other hand, raiding ‘to see content’ or ‘to have fun with your friends’ is just as valuable to us as it was before.

there have been some people that have expressed a ’stressed’ or ‘urgent’ need to raid content ‘to see it before the expansion’. it has lead to some folks leaving the guild in search of better chances to do T5/T6 content before it is ‘obsolete’. unfortunately, this is a rather mis-guided response.

the content will not be ‘obsolete’ until you gear *past* it. if level 72 greens turn out to be equal to T5 gear (as an example) and T5 gear is needed in order to clear T5 content, then by correlation, a group of us at level 72 with level 72 gear will be able to clear T5 with the same level of challenge as doing it with T5 gear – except that we will not need to spend week after week attempting T5 content and praying for drops to gear an entire 25-man. instead, we will be able to level up and gear up in greens in a matter of a week (?) and then have fun working on the T5 strats.

we’ll continue questing and leveling (and hence getting gear increases) and when we are at par with T6 content, we will do T6 content.

sure, we can go back when we are ‘over-geared’ and it is far more forgiving to do the T5 and T6 content; however, we will still do the content when it is challenging (except we will be wearing greens that are higher than level 70 gear).

semantically, it is exactly the same as doing the T5 and T6 content now, except without the *long* “getting geared” period. it will be just as challenging as trying to do it now with purples – except it won’t take weeks and weeks to get all the purples that all the tanks and all the healers and all the DPS need. if you think about it, if a group of five do a quest and get a T5-equivalent quest reward, that is like a T5 boss dropping a token for everyone at the same time – except that it takes far less time to do the quest, and no T5 boss drops all the loots that exactly that group of five needs.

so really, the recent rash of ‘must go to a guild that can get me into the T5 content before it becomes obsolete’ is just a demonstration of short-sightedness and or impatience. what it *did* do was create such a large amount of drama and dissatisfaction, that several members left and returned to their old guilds to get away from it with the hope that it will blow over and that we will hook up with them again in the future after the expansion comes out. there are a very few that have moved over to one guild; however they do not represent the larger population that found the entire poach and subsequent interruption in raiding distasteful (while i do not believe it was his intent to interrupt our raiding, it was the obvious result of his short-sighted so-called ‘attempt to help’).

most all of the departees have expressed a concern that those that remain ‘in house’ will have unfavorable sentiments to those that departed – please don’t.

whether they left because they were mislead, or made a decision and changed their mind, or just wanted to get away from the situation – live and let live. i know several of you have come to me and expressed a solid loyalty to the guild and disdain for those that have left – i appreciate the loyalty to the guild as i am sure many do; however, let’s not cast stones to those that would return or to those that do not, for that matter.

long before this whole poaching and ‘critical mass’ mess occured, i had lots of friends in other guilds. now, i have some more friends that are in other guilds. i invite you to adopt that view rather than send me whispers about ‘the traitors’. i am not telling you to not talk to me about things that are disturbing you; just understand that i can listen without having to subscribe to your viewpoint.

granted, there are some people that i would not want back in this guild – and most of the people on that list got on it *long* before the recent events.

i suggest we focus on what we do well – contribute to a guild culture and atmosphere that is top notch. recruit new members. the officers and i will be putting in place slightly more guidances or restrictions to prevent other guilds from using our resources (*cough* use your own guild vent server! *cough*); however, our focus is on our goals and not on restricting others.

changes to raiding for the next few weeks until LK comes out

there are always big swinging changes come the start of school in the Fall. we have a few of our own.

first Kara: until now, we have had a select few individuals heavily supporting the Kara raid split across two days (Wed & Fri) and using it to help others get gear. those same individuals for the most part have been playing the role for many months now. add to the mix recent recruiting successes over the past couple of months and we find ourselves with a enough geared toons to run Kara and clear in a night.

effective immediately, we will have a Kara geared/badge run weekly and a Kara gearing run/wipe club. huh? Geared toons are not restricted to the badge run. they can run the wipe club Kara raid as they choose – but out of courtesy, clear it with raid leader or guild leader first in case too many folks shift one week and end up canceling the badge run by absenteeism! the wipe club is where the toons not geared to clear Kara will raid until they are geared to clear.

as an example, Ironhelm will run with the badge run of Kara (but can choose to run with the wipe club to help if needed) and Ironbow will run with the wipe club — given room on either raid. because ironhelm is geared to clear Kara and Ironbow (in this example) is not.

there are a lot of reasons behind this decision – not the least of which are that the geared toons have already paid their dues in the wipe club and it is time for them to reap the badge run rewards and spend their time in the Gruul’s and Mags wipe clubs. allow me to be very clear about that: just because you are in the badge raid for Kara does not mean you are no longer in the wipe club in another raid dungeon. Ironhelm is definitely in the wipe club for Gruul’s and Mags seeing as we seem to always pick the pugs that wipe!

second, for Gruul’s and Mags we will continue to loosely staff half a raid and pug in the rest; however, we intend to find some non-guildies that are good raiders and group up with them on a regular basis rather than constantly pug in totally new faces each time. this might take a few weeks and there will always be a few seats filled by fresh faces; however, that is the gist of it.

lastly, ZA: the badge raid for Kara = the wipe club for ZA.

there has been a lot of pressure lately – a lot of which was self-induced by the raid group – to progress. we seem to have learned a valuable lesson that progression grinding quickly burns raiders out. especially if you try to progress too quickly. gear does not mean you can tackle the strats and knowing the strats does not mean you can do them without the gear. there are plenty of progression guilds out there where they flog themselves on progression until they quit the game. we are not one of them.

we are getting back to the basics: like having fun. yes we will raid, however we are not raiding against a progression clock. and once LK expansion comes out, and we all get to 80, we will raid through the content to the end content (w00t for all content being 10-man content). sure we will do some of it 25-man, perhaps even all of it. however, remove the pressure to push through at a pace that the raiders as a whole cannot sustain or meet.

with 10-man raids in LK covering all of the content, we will be easily able to run a friendly reward competition to “first downs” across two raid groups (at least) in our guild. however, friendly pressure is the only type we will plan for.

= )

peace out.