First, don't misundertsand the title, it's not a "whoohoo guys I'm back" kind of thread.
What I'd like to discuss is how to start wow again at this point of time, and what do people who are still playing it think should be done to get going again.

So, some little backup. I've been playing wow since early beta, I leveled a ton of characters, I played warlock/hunter/prot war/priest in high end raiding up to naxx(stopped at the frost dragon guy tho, picking up herbs 6hours a day was getting damn boring), then played mostly pvp at BC release with a BE paladin, and quit some time before 2.1 patch.
What I plan to do currently would be a bit of raiding, nothing too hardcore, but who knows since I have plenty of time, and I guess some pvp on the side too. I want to level a druid which is one of the 2classes I never really tried and because it offers enough flexibility in case I don't feel like healing anymore without having to reroll.

Ok the issues are as follow:

1) The server choice.
I have to choose a server pretty randomly, since everyone I knew back when I played also quit around the same period or before. I checked the wowjutsu website to find out which server was lively based on the number of guild that had "green+" ranking, which I think is everyone in SSC/TK. Would you say it's better to choose a more peaceful server that might not be as advanced overall(no guild in the top20) or should I just go for one of the full server everyone migrates to which hold the big names(nihilum, forte, whatever else I don't really know the others). I usually played on full servers before, and while lag at time was an issue, I liked being able to find groups at random hours and such, which I doubt you can find on medium pop servers.

2) Char developement.
At this point of time, how hard would it be to catch up enough to join a raiding guild that's not too far advanced? I read some recruiting boards, and everyone seem to accept people that have T4 or T5 gear at least, but I don't see any that don't have min gear reqs. How am I supposed to gear up in karazhan/mag/what's-his-name-ogre-king, are these puggable or something, or the guilds that run them aren't even worth having websites for? Can I entirely skip those and just suck up useless loot for a few weeks in SSC/TK like people did back in the MC days in early AQ? I mean, do guilds do that at all, or would it be like running MC when you were in naxx before?

The alternatives are arena gear/rep rewards/crafting, did they add new stuff to these(well arena I know but I mean the others) to catch up with gear progression, or would spending a week gathering the items would only get me to a heroic instance level like it used to, which would be pointless for raiding?


So to sum it up, what do you think of starting wow from scratch right now(playing my old chars would not help, most are still 60, the only 70 is a hunter and it only has blues). How hard would it be and how long would it take from 70 to be able to raid at least SSC/TK.

I haven't started leveling yet, I'm pretty much waiting for 2.3, and getting in the right mindset to level yet another char(should be 15th or so now). I can play all day most days, so time wouldn't be an issue, and leveling is not really an issue either, I lvled my BE paladin in less than 2weeks, with the 2.3 changes and the fact I won't play a crappy leveling class, I think I could lvl the druid in a week. My main concern atm is, would it be worthwhile, or would it just be better to wait for the next expansion to even the grounds again.

It really isnt that hard to catch up with the raiders these days. Unlike pre TBC, raiding gear isn't that much of a step up in quality compared to gear obtainable by other means.

The first place to get gear is from levelling up. The quest rewards give a decent starting level for gear, not quite raid quality but a good base level. The next places to get gear from are:

- tradeskills. particularly tailoring for cloth classes as these items are comparable to all but the very best raiding loot.
- faction rewards. Again some very good stuff here and faction is mainly gained from running the dungeons. Pretty easy to get revered with them all, a bit more work to get exalted (typically about 10 runs from revered to exalted).
- heroic badge rewards. A few very good items here to plug gaps which won't get replaced until the very top tier raiding (not even then for some). these rewards are about to get even better with 2.3.
- heroic dungeon loot drops. Requires a bit of luck to get the drops you need, but some of the items are very comparable to the lower tier raiding rewards.


So before you get outside 5 man groups you can have some very good gear, certainly good enough to start raiding SSC/TK if you are a quality player.

You can supplement this gear with Karazhan drops (and probably soon AZ drops) which again is pretty comparable to raiding loot for certain items. Karazhan is definitely puggable, although a better bet would be to try and help out a guild run which needs extra players. If you are a good player then they should be happy to have you.


Consumables are very much less of a problem these days. I cherry pick the easiest daily quests and in just half an hour a day I have more than enough money to raid 4 days/week with full consumables.

In summary, if you put in the work then in a short space of time there is really no reason why you cant get up to a level where SSC/TK guilds would want to have you - probably a couple of weeks after hitting L70 if you really put in the effort. The expansion is still probably a long way off at this point.


As for server choice, I guess it is up to you. PvP vs PvE depends on your personal preference. However I would point out that it will probably be easier to find a suitable guild on a PvP server, plus you have the option of moving to PvE if you want. There is no way to move from PvE to PvP. That said, if you really hate a PvP server (I do personally) then its no disaster going for PvE.

My preference would be very much to go for a high population server. You just have so many more options that way with guilds in all difficulties on raiding and I don't think lag is likely to be much of an issue. Again medium pop isn't a disaster but just offers less flexibility, although you can always transfer servers if necssary. I would avoid low pop servers like the plague.


Finally in terms of class choice, my advice would really be to pick what you like playing. Personally I think there is nothing worse than playing a class you don't really like just to get in a raid.

That said, some classes are more desirable than others. Horde paladins and alliance shamans are still somewhat short on supply so would improve your chances of getting into a good raiding guild. As always healers are generally in higher demand than dps classes. Druid is certainly no bad choice since they can easily switch between healing and tanking roles and perform both very strongly at the raid level (their dps abilities being really too weak to justify a raid place on their own merit).

I seriously suggest getting into a "backwater / middle of the road" server if your intent is to catch up to raiders. The smaller you make the gap between yourself and the average endgame player on your server, the easier your time will be.

We removed SSC and TK from our regular raiding schedule after 2 Kael'thas kills I think. We went back quite often to attune people who were on vacation during the first fills and new trialists. But basically, we stopped SSC/TK right after getting into HS/BT.
I can't speak for other guilds, but I think quite a few dropped T5 instances rather fast for more time to progress in T6 zones.

Most of our recent recruits were server transfers and people from disbanded raid groups.
If you don't have a healthy mix of T4 and maybe some T5 level gear, you need to find really really strong reasons for someone to consider your application. To make you stand out.
Knowing people helps a lot (also getting into some friends'/alts' Karazhan), but you make a fresh start.

Alliance Restoration Shaman are highly sought after and can get you in even with lower gear given that you have a lot of experience. Not sure about druid demand.

Getting into a guild in SSC/TK is considerably easier. Having good level 70 blues, an epic reputation/arena weapon, maybe something crafted too and you're set to go. Former raiding experience makes a large difference.
And T5 guilds can trial you anytime - T6 guilds need to schedule an extra attunement just to trial you.

For crafting - leatherworking is generally considered rather weak compared to others for BoP gear. I see quite a few druids with the the cloth healing set though (Primal Mooncloth).

That is terrible advice for anyone imo. The difference between "backwater" servers and much more populated or advanced servers is the number of average raiders, not the average itself. Instead of 1 Gruul/SSC/TK guild on each faction you have 5 such guilds. Sure the better servers have more BT clearing guilds but there's also more middle of the road guilds. A lot more opportunities to find a guild and raid. As for heroics and Kara, on a very healthy and large realm you have very little trouble finding groups for these, where as on a crap realm there is just not enough players to be able to run what you want when you want it all the time.

Alliance Shaman is currently the most underplayed Class/Faction combo in the game, and I'd second the recommendation if you really want to have the best chance to catch up with the endgame content.
Absolutely. I moved to Area 52 from Kargath, and its a mammoth difference having nearly 4k 70s as opposed to just over 2k. It's easier to find groups, app to guilds, and a far better play experience all around. Warcraftrealms is a good resource. you just have to tweak the stats page to look at just 70s.

You could wait until 2.3, where badge gear is more less equiv to t5.

T5-level guilds asking for T5-level gear might be living in a dream world - however, given the scaling present in the raid-level content, don't expect to jump into a mid-SSC/TK guild with nothing but your level 70 blues and a grin.

My guild is currently 3/6 SSC and 2/4 TK, and we expect to be working on Vashj/Kael by the end of the month. We won't even give an applicant wearing less than moderate-to-full Karazhan gear a reasonable shot any more - they simply can't keep up on this level of content.

The advice from above was good, too - 2.3 will help you to integrate, if you're willing to put the time in. The badge rewards and ZA drops are of T5 quality (and, in many cases, actually better than their T5 equivalents). On the other hand, once 2.3 lands, gear expectations will go up on the part of most raiding guilds, since such high quality gear is so easily accessible.

Obviously it depends on the class. Offensive casters are a lot easier due to tailoring. However, since you mentioned druid I will say I think that would be a lot harder. If you went feral as an offtank you could probably get away with the Season 1 Gladiator gear however that is still going to take time to farm 70k+ honor. Also, despite your previous raid experience, I'm going to assume an SSC/TK guild is going to want to see you have some idea of what you are doing with the current class you are playing. Speed leveling to 70 and quickly farming gear isn't the best evidence of that.

2.3 is probably a month away. In terms of how fast you can level... you said you did your paladin in two weeks. Is that two weeks of calendar time? That seems insanely fast if you are talking about straight up solo leveling without outside assistance. Even then it will take another month or so to gear up your 70 in order to be viable for SSC/TK. You aren't going to be able to walk into a Zul'Aman raid with a handful of blue 5 man instance drops and quest rewards.

Unfortunately we don't know what the raiding landscape will look like 2-3 months from now, especially with the advent of Zul'Aman and the (possibly) continued dumbing down of 25 man instances. It is entirely possible for them to drop the BT/Hyjal attunement requirements in that time. If that happens SSC/TK will be largely abandoned and you would need 200+ heroic badges for enough good feral gear to be viable in Tier 6 instances.

All of that said, I doubt we will see the beta for WotLK for another 6-8 months. There is still plenty of time left to enjoy TBC but you are still going to face a bit of an uphill battle as far as getting into a solid raiding guild.

You're completely out of luck unless you're willing to join a blue-geared guild just starting Karazhan, because the rest probably don't want you, even if they have T4/5 players who consistently perform worse than you would in blues. Even in that case, you're likely going to have to contend with the fact that a lot of guilds have an A-team kara group that you won't get invites for, a B-team that you *might* get invites for but isn't very successful, and then a C-team that kills three bosses and falls apart, but locks you out of participating in the A- or B-team in the event of an empty spot. So it's going to take awhile, because not only do the B- and C-team not kill things very quickly, but they also have people who actually need the loot before you.

Heroic badges are certainly not the answer. You're shit out of luck unless you know a competent tank, because not only are competent tanks in short supply to begin with, but most of them are occupied with their guilds and/or not interested in the least with tanking a pug heroic. At least if my server is anything like yours, then if you have 4 hours per weeknight to devote to the game, you'll be doing one heroic per night and getting 3-5 badges. At that rate, you'll be looking at 2-3 weeks per raid-quality armor item. The rewards for farming badges of justice will be pretty lucrative for some people, but without a circle of competent and/or geared friends, it won't be lucrative for you. Even with a guild that clears Karazhan *and* actually lets you come along, you'll be barely up to par for SSC/TK guild recruitment by the time the next expansion comes out.

And that's really the upshot here. If you start when 2.3 comes out, then you'll be able to get a couple of new characters up to 70 by the time the expansion rolls around, and then you'll hopefully be able to wrangle a better position for yourself after the gear normalization. But in the meantime, you'll almost certainly be obstructed by some combination of snobbery and in-group behavior.

I think you may be jaded, bitter about a rejected guild application, or perhaps both.

As the GM of a raiding guild in mid-tier 5 content, we continue to pick up applicants of a variety of classes (Druids included) on a fairly regular basis. Burnout, boredom, vacations, etc. don't stop just because we hit our theoretical roster cap. Gear is an issue, but we can put an applicant in full tier 4 in two weeks' time if they're capable.

Don't discourage people from trying to get back into the raiding scene. It's entirely possible.

This is very poor advice. The smaller/backwater the server, the fewer options you have. If you want to raid, "recommended" on server select means "It's recommended you play somewhere else" because there will be most likely ONE guild you could join. Also, on these servers the best guild is usually impossible to get into. Find an ancient server that is marked FULL and hop in, you'll have a dozen guilds to chose from that run Karazhan.

Didn't you just say that you don't bother with apps that don't have nearly full Karazhan gear?

But will the same be true a month from now when 2.3 and Zul'Aman goes live? How often will you run Karazhan then? Not much if at all I would assume.

He's just being intellectually dishonest. He already said they hardly even consider applicants unless they don't need Kara gear, and then in the next breath just threw out some "you can do it!" rhetoric.

Every [raiding] guild wants responsible raiders. From this basic theory all others are derived.

Being geared shows a dedication to role and a time commitment that indicates your drive and dedication. You can't hope to contribute at a level that your gear proves a hindrance to. It's all about farming what you can, when you can. The beauty [and curse] of the game atm is that gear is very accessible to any and every-one who is willing to spend the time and effort to get it. Heroic badge rewards, heroic drops, entry-level raids, arenas (!) have more than adequate gearing to allow you to step into guilds at the Hyjal/BT level (even guilds with Kara-geared MTs have cleared bosses in BT during periods of rebuilding).

Maxing out your professions shows a dedication to your character, and people are more inclined to invest in others who have first invested in themselves. You want to be the 'go to' guy in as many situations as possible. It's not all about what you bring to raids, it's how you mesh with the guild at large that is arguably more important. While you're at it, don't just max out your professions, collect as many patterns as you possibly can. Constantly raising the bar as an individual is irreplaceable to guilds who are attempting to raise the collective raiding level.

Lastly, who are you. What makes you you? Why did you choose that spec? Can you back up your decisions? Are you open to criticism and suggestions? Can you take what you have both in gear, spec, and personality and bring it when it comes to crunch time? Do you pvp? Or are you a 1-trick pony? How well do you mesh with the crew? Do you play well in the sandbox? Will you stick around during [inevitable] rebuilding stages? Loyalty is a must, while stubbornness to a lost cause is personal loss.

You pave your own success and failure in this game. I wouldn't be so worried about finding a guild that will accept your [hopefully] sincere and dedicated application. I'd be more concerned with guilds living up to your standards, provided you are serious with what you do in-game. Autonomy of members is priceless. Raids need individuals who know their individual job. The clock doesn't work without the moving... pieces.

Druids are a pretty good choice as it's relatively easy to get geared up.

For healing you can pick and choose from leather or cloth, so you can get a decent blue set fairly quickly. Rep rewards can fill in a few slots as well.

If you go feral you can get started with the heavy clefthoof set, as well as a braxxis staff of slumber. That combined with quest rewards is really enough to get started tanking heroics.

In either case badges of justice will be your friend. There's a giant selection of stuff to choose from in 2.3. The daily quests for heroics should make it a bit easier to get groups for these as the rewards are nice (25 gold and 2 badges). Generally speaking it's significantly easier to get a group for these as feral

If you stick with restoration, I'd advise picking up a 2v2 arena team. Find a warrior, warlock, or rogue to team up with. Resto performs extremely strongly in 2v2 and the points you can earn from it can definitely help fill in holes in itemization.

The guild I'm in praises and pushes members to devote to their mains- to max out everything possible and expand (breadth and depth). While alts are fun, your frustration only proves why the aforementioned is even more important. You can only play one at a time, and when your guild needs you, you want to be as much of a crutch as you can provide, entrusting that your fellow guildies are doing the same (hence standards, and enforcing standards, is what makes or breaks a guild).
Alts detract from the attractiveness of your main. Where your heart lies, there your treasure will also be found. If you're a step behind, it sometimes takes that much more dedication and commitment to get on par. Save alts until you've 'made it' ... and even then, there's always something you can be doing to further your character. An upgrade to one person is an upgrade to everyone. Invest in the guy that you want others to invest in as well.

This is good advice in general. Sticking to one character until you've gotten into the end guild you want to be in is definitely the easiest way of doing it.

As far as alts go in general, once you're in 'that guild' it depends upon the guild culture. Some guilds *love* alts and encourage you to level them and spend DKP gearing them up because you never know when MT01 or DPS07 is going to fall off the map, and your alt could be their replacement. Others prefer to recruit for those replacements and focus on mains. The extent of my alt work right now is 10-15 arena games a week on my alts and saving points.

Both views are valid, do we know which the VERY top end guilds cater to? I only have experience with a couple and only one was top 10-25 type level, and this was pre bc, so I suppose my view is biased.

That's the main issue I considered, I didn't expect to hit 70, get a few blue bop from the AH and get into a raiding guild, obviously I was considering farming gear, which implies leveling tradeskills to get the money for crafted stuff/enchants, and running a ton of crappy instances for rep, which would then open heroics. My concern was that, there's a limit to what you can do solo, and I don't really feel like guildhopping too much. In the past I played in a few different guilds, but it was with different characters, and on different servers, usually after I took a small break from the game.

I don't want to join a low guild, leech some drops, move to a mid guild, leech some more and move to a bigger, I'd rather try to skip the low guild and go for the mid guild, and stay there for a while. I haven't really followed the itemization progress, but are items that much more important now than they were before? Because I remember contributing quite a lot with my priest in blue/mc epics in naxx when we were low on healers by playing it smart(FFS rule/GH canceling mainly compared to other more lazy players using flash) and drinking more potions. Obviously, not for a fight like patchwerk, but I was there for our first thaddius kill because I was one of the few healers that wouldn't miss the jump, or go left instead of right.(that was in a pvp oriented guild tho ^^).

Not really an alternative, I used to be class leader and coGM and it pretty much sucked. While I was the favorite class leader(at least that's what I heard), I just didn't like the job, I'm not a big fan of responsabilities, I do my job fine but don't want to worry about others.

I haven't done any attunement in BC, barring karazhan which was really easy as far as I remember. I read they removed attunements for SSC/TK which were heroic stuff, I remember having the quests for that. That leaves attunement for hyjal/BT, but really I don't see myself going there anytime soon.


Anyway there were a lot of different opinions, it seems most people think it could be doable, so I think I might just give it a try. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a guild on the way to 70 too, that happened before when I was leveling with a friend, I jumped from brd blues to AQ purples, which was pretty cool. Now I just need to find a random mage to portal me to shattrath for free, and from thunderbluff too, and rewrite metahud like I did before since I deleted my UI dir a few months after I quit.


Oh just one question, did they nerf heroics since 2.0? I remember that doing them wasn't really that easy with a pug, is it any easier now? Or will I have to get a tanking set to tank myself if I even want to pug it?

A great deal will depend on what kind of place you are looking for.

I regularly recruit undergeared players if they look like the right kind of fit for the guild. Much depends on the type of 'undergeared' though-- if you try to app without crafted epics and properly enchanted/gemmed gear, I can already tell that you probably are not a good candidate for a raider slot. Intelligent gear choices matter far more than gear color. People who come to me with a green item or two but a map for replacement and who show they are actively working on upgrading.... that counts for more than walking in with an assortment of Kara purples.

Please understand that we're a casual guild, so our level of progression is pretty far behind the curve, even by the standards of our server. So, under what circumstances would a guild like mine want a player who is obviously striving to gear himself up for bigger and better things?

Guilds that are still learning would consider your fund of knowledge a tremendous asset. If you are reasonably patient and good-natured, it's entirely likely you could strike a deal with a guild that could use your services. It's hard for me to convey how difficult and rare it is for us to find someone that has experienced true high-end raiding. Many of us lost our top-end players to guild splits and coalescence or to server transfers. The experience-drain has meant that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, in terms of progression.

The gear you can skip is class- and role-dependent-- I run a shadow priest in part because I knew that my reroll would not represent a gear drain for the guild. Running a class that is not raid-drop dependent may be a better answer for you, if you would rather find one good guild than attempt to move through a series of guilds as you progress.

Others have already touched on the viability of heroics, crafted gear, and arena gear, so we'll take that as a given.

By all means, roll a druid, alliance shammy, or something else which can fill "key" roles - ideally, multiple roles. Having a toon which is both flexible and desirable will make both PuGs and guild applications far easier. (I wish I'd known that when I started the game.)


Now, that said, there are actually many guilds which are recruiting at the "starting Karazhan" level, for many different reasons, and many more working on Gruul/Mags. Even on these forums, which have a decidedly high-end focus, I regularly see requests for help from folks trying to figure out and overcome T4 content.

The catch, however, would be finding one that's a match for you if you were a Naxx guild pre-expansion and looking for a similar environment, since these are usually not the focused and goal-driven (not gonna use the "H-word"!) raiding guilds who would have been in Naxx - those are mostly working on T6 content now. There's a huge spread in their quality of play, leadership, amount of time spent raiding, and turnover. These "late to the endgame" guilds run the gamut from informal groups of RL friends, to "former glory" endgame guilds which were gutted by the 40-10-25 man funnel, to "casual raiding" guilds whose members can only take 2-3 nights per week away from RL. Some aren't interested in doing more than Karazhan and Zul'Aman; some have or are building 25-man teams. Some have basically skilled raiders who perhaps started WoW late, or who have very limited play time; some have (as described above) a spread between an A team that could be in a hardcore guild to a C team that can't find its own arse with both hands; some are honestly terrible and are simply wiping over and over on Moroes.

In my opinion, based on your self-introduction, if you could find a "late" guild which lived up to your expectations, you'd probably be a great catch for them. For such a guild trying to build up an actually skilled raid team at this point in time, trying to recruit good raiders is incredibly difficult - the vast majority of the better ones are already in T6 content!

The question is not really whether there are guilds recruiting pre-Kara, so much as one of being able to find one of these which won't drive you crazy with a slow pace, "casual" raiders, and which could get you where you want to be - frequent raids of high-end content. I don't claim to know the answer. My own guild isn't likely to kill Illidan ever, for example; we're realistically just working toward perhaps someday downing Vashj. However, if you find a "late" guild you like, I suspect that someone with extensive raiding skill would find it very easy to get a slot (or perhaps find himself asked to lead a raid).

Complicating things even more is the fact that very few of these "late" guilds want to be "feeder" guilds - one of the biggest problems facing such a guild is attrition of folks who have gotten through Karazhan and don't want to wait for the guild to build their 25-man team. So I would advise you, if you decide that such a "late" guild is a useful resource for you, to be up-front about your intentions when you come in, and respect the wishes of the guild if they don't want someone in their raids who will decamp after being moved through Kara.

(This isn't meant as a recruiting troll; based on your description, my guild isn't raiding anywhere nearly as much as you want. However, as someone in one of these "late" guilds, I feel that I've got some perspective on what some of them want and can offer.) =)


As for Karazhan PuGs, I don't think it's a hopeless prospect. The "late" guilds often have trouble scraping together full teams, especially if (for example) their best healer is knocked offline by last night's windstorms. (*cough*) You will often find "most of a guild" runs looking to fill one or two key slots. These runs are statistically be less doomed than the horror-movie "kk folkx, LF7M kara, need tank+healz and GTG, slots going fast!", although it certainly pays to stalk the person who's doing the advertising. ("Gosh, you're wearing an awful lot of pimpin' greens for someone who claims to have Prince on farm.") However, there are good experiences, too. For example, we recruited a great healer after he sent "Bored healadin LF kara" to Deadwind Pass general chat.

I will also suggest that a great way to meet people is to PuG heroics. Level up, get keyed, and abuse the heck out of the LFG tool and chat system. Many guilds use heroic PuGs as a recruiting tool, and demonstrating competence in a PuG which might "just happen" to include some people from a high-end guild is a great career booster.