kennyxedge

I am in a very similiar situation myself right now. To make a long story short, I love playing my Rogue, however I rarely see Rogues being recruited at the T6/Sunwell level, and I don't know that I could play at the 5-7 day a week level any longer after taking some time off. So I decided to re-roll Horde and take my time leveling, I'm sitting at like level 52 now and kind of weighing my options now. I'd like to Raid, but I can't commit at the hardcore level any longer, so something like 3-4 nites a week with the weekends off would be ideal. But the chance of a guild taking me in once I hit 70 with the terrible gear I'll end up with are slim, even with my extensive Raiding experience. So, I guess we'll see how it all works out, worst case, I work on Badge gear until Wrath comes out.

If you are alone, you will be your own man.

 

Siddown

You'd be surprised, every server has a tonne of people who are in the same situation. They want to raid, but not commit to the 5+ days a week that some of the "top" raiding guilds require (or heavily suggest) of their members.

If you have a raiding experience with your Rogue, post on the forums about starting a "pug" group to do the content you want. If you are clear and concise about what it is you want to accomplish, you might be surprised with the results. Will you start Sunwell next week? No, of course not, but there are plenty of guilds out there now that are well into BT that only raid 2 or 3 nights a week at this point. They'll never fight for a server first, but most of those people don't care.

I bring this up because you might be setting yourself up for a fall with your new Horde character. Because if WotLK rolls around, you might just find yourself in the same position you are in now at lvl 80. If raiding content is what you want at a 3 night a week pace, advertize it on the Forums and find people in a similar position, worst comes to worst it doesn't work and you are right where you are right now. You really have nothing to lose.

 

Abnell

I originally played on US Illidan, but when I had to move to Europe I was faced with a problem very similar to the ones people in this thread have. I chose to reroll, so during October 2006, after I had moved, I rerolled on EU Kazzak. I was lucky enough to find a guild full of people who had rerolled from scratch as well, and our first Maulgar kill was on 18/11/2007. We're working on twins right now.

Our progress was actually slowed down by two factors:

1) It spanned the winter holidays so that's a few weeks of progression lost.

2) The raiding roster wasn't fully filled with veteral reroll raiders, so there was a fair amount of time lost to recruitment etc.

If you have the better part of a balanced 25man raid willing to reroll and raid ~5days a week, you are still in a good position to reroll and see the majority of endgame content before the expansion, which probably isn't due at least until the fall.

Just make sure to fully take advantage of all the gear available to you. If everyone makes their craftable gear asap while using badges/pvp/rep rewards to fill out the remaining slots you can be geared very quickly. Keep in mind that guilds killed Illidan months and months ago in gear nowhere close to what you can get without even seting foot in a T5 instance now. Not to mention that T6 attunements are removed now, so you never have to worry about going back to vashj and kael a few times like my guild.

Edit: If you're doing this completely solo, then it will be much harder to get integrated into the raiding community of a server. Like people above me have said, you need to do your research now. The possibilities are there though, and even if you don't manage to clear T6 content before WotLK, you can easily get yourself in a position to join the first wave of raiding at 80.

 

caelus

Amazing. Regardless of whether they bought their chars or not, going from first Gruul kill to Illidan kill in exactly one month is beyond me. If they were only 4-5 people, I really can't imagine how they could achieve that, maybe if you had a full 25man of hardcore raiders.

 

Tpyo

In 2005, a little of 2006 and near the beginning of TBC, I suffered from the same problem many of you in this thread are describing, and that is the lack of a satisfying guild but having an insufficient amount of connections to improve your situation.

It's true that getting a guild to gear you up without knowing anybody in that guild is definitely a difficult task. Before you can manage to convince them to do so, you must have some very powerful evidence to put forth that shows you are worth that given guild's time. Such evidence required can vary by quite a bit, depending on the guild you're applying to, and their demand of your given class. Knowing what most of the leadership in many top-end guilds want is the first step.

Being part of leadership in a high-end raid for over a year and also having recently been accepted into a guild as a completely blue-equipped reroll, I'll explain what would be important to me if I were to accept a reroll. You must realize that with the elimination of attunements in WoW, the process of gearing somebody up is much much easier than it ever has been. As a result, this task of rerolling to join a new guild is more realistic now than it ever has been.

High arena ratings are definitely a strong indicator of a player's personal skill, while some high-rated individuals can be carried to an extent and that many skilled players out there don't arena beyond 1600 rating, this definitely carries some weight.

Go over the top and go in-depth describing your class and your role, how you gear/play etc. The more thorough you are in this task, the more impressive you can come off to be. Be sure to justify any questionable spec/gear decisions you've made in your current armory profile. Answer questions before they're asked.

Evidence that shows high attendance in the past. This can usually be shown through links to previous DKP/Loot History sites that you've been a part of. An ideal example is two links to two different dkp/loot sites of previous raids both showing your name and 99% attendance next to them. While this is somewhat unrealistic, this is the ideal. Again, be sure to justify gaps in attendance.

If you're applying somewhere, it means you're also willing to leave your current guild and/or raid. Depending on the guild you're applying to, this can be a very important determining factor for them. If you're disloyal to your current guild, who is to say that you'll be loyal to the guild you're applying to? Be detailed in describing the specific events/situations that led to this dissatisfaction with your current raid/guild and state why this is likely to never be the case in the guild you're applying to. These reasons can be extremely different, everyone has their own story.

How impressive you can be in all of those tasks usually determines how strong of a guild you can get into. You must understand that luck plays a huge part in determining your application's validity to a guild. Mostly relating to the demand of your class to the given guild.

 

Speedfox

Good Morning to anyone reading this.

I am in a similar situation to many on this thread. Since beta i have experienced nothing but hardcore raiding, with my previous guild Decimation (R.I.P.) i have played through all in game raid content pre-sunwell. Recently though, with this disband and a period of time over which all my rl friends have quit the game or moved on to other things I have been seriously considering the prospects of being in or starting a rerolling guild.

As is evident many others are looking for a rerolling guild to fulfill their desires of seeing endgame content again either from a different perspective or simply with new people. Personally, I would be interested in setting the ball rolling for a new rerolling guild and would relish the challenge or embarking on such a project, although I feel I would need support from several other like minded players to make it a success.

If anyone reading this thread like me, feels that they share an interest in setting up a reroll guild please contact me through a PM or reply here. If I was able to gather a group of like-minded and equally skilled/experienced players I believe a project such as this would undoubtedly be successful.

Here's to hoping for some messages ^^

Speedfox.

 

TtamNedlog

This is a shot in the dark... If WotLK is anything like BC, and as long as a character hits 70 before WotLK is released, that character won't have to set foot in a single current end-game instance (or ANY current instance for that matter). Just by leveling from 70 to 80, they will be up to date in gear that mostly supercedes current gear.

If that's the case, I guess the latest time to reroll would be a few weeks before WotLK releases. Or however long it takes you to hit 70. *shrug*

If WotLK is nothing like BC... then I dunno.

I'm not entirely sure how they could avoid it though. In a game like this where soloing is a perfectly viable (and often preferred) way to level, they pretty much have to give quest rewards/drops that are appropriate for a player's level. A quest I can solo at 80 should give a better reward than any gear I had at 70, regardless of how tough it was to acquire. Kinda sucks, but as I said I think it's unavoidable.

In a game like EverQuest on the other hand, soloing was out of the question except for a few select classes. Even then, quests (despite the name lolz) didn't really exist like they do in WoW so the few classes that could solo weren't actually getting gear along the way. Gear almost exclusively came from groups and raids in EQ, so when an expansion came out that raised the level cap, hitting that cap didn't guarantee you were up to date on gear. Some of that gear you had from the last expansion may still be useful. There was a stricter progression in that game, and if you got behind, it was considerably tougher to catch up.



Oops I rambled way too much. Bottom line: Unless Blizzard is drastically changing the formula of the game, then the latest you (yourself, your friends, or your entire guild) can reroll and not be left behind will be a few weeks before WotLK comes out.

 

◊ Bekah

With all due respect, the current formula very much allows someone to reroll days/weeks/months- even half a year or more after the expansion drops and not be inherently left behind. To end up in the Fortune500 of wow raiding guilds may require an introduction or someone willing to vouch for you and there has to be a need for your class strong enough to consider gearing you- but that's not really much different than the other standard recruitment hurdles. The earlier in the expansion you start- the easier it is to catch up. It seems a little odd to state that to not be left behind you have to be 70 when Wrath drops. If you can make 80 within the first 2 months of the expansion, you can start at pretty much any point and be with the first wave of 80s.

Unless they change the way that they handle the expansion (which seems very doubtful- this is one hell of a good model) you've probably got the bare minimum of a year from now to get to 70, much less 80, to not get left behind.

 

◊ songster

Um, the last two posters are severely missing the point. This thread is not asking about how to be ready for WoTLK raiding, it's asking if it's possible to reroll and complete the current raid game before WoTLK arrives. At this point I'd have to say it looks fairly unlikely. Sunwell appears tuned so that a considerable amount of T6 farming is needed to pass the gear checks. That being so, I don't think it's quite feasible for a reroll guild to make it unless they start within the next months or two.

We can take the Chinese guild "The Seven" as a benchmark for the fastest Illidan kill starting from level 60. They took 52 days. Starting today, that gets you to mid July. At that point, you'll need to farm Ilidan until the majority of your team has 4t6, at least. With a roster of 33 members, that'll be somewhere around 10-11 weeks if you have zero wastage of tokens - so the very best case estimate is that it'll be the start of October before you have a realistic chance of passing the Sunwell gear checks. Current best bet for WoTLK release is some time in November. So if your reroll guild doesn't start in the next couple of weeks, you're stuffed even if you make record-breaking progress through the content.

Of course, an individual reroller isn't constrained by this. If you can convince a top flight guild to take you on, you could hit level 70 inside a week, get carried through the T6 instances (since a Sunwell-beating guild can easily clear T6 with 24 people), and walk out with full T6 gear plus some non-set items inside a week or two, and then have a shot at pulling your weight in Sunwell. So if you have powerful friends, the timer doesn't run out until ~1 month before WoTLK release day.

 

TtamNedlog

You're right Bekah. To be truly left behind, there is a pretty large window of when you could reroll. I guess I was talking less about being left behind, and more about a chance to actually be on the forefront of the new content.

And songster: oops. Guess I missed the point of the thread. =p

 

Ellery

Me and some friends are forming a reroll guild on Black Dragonflight which will aim to clear all content before WOTLK. There's actually only 2 of us who have to reroll because we both quit and are coming back so I actually have 4 rl friends with 1 or more 70s waiting for us to level up. Anyways, if anyone here is interested in joining or has any advice I'd love to hear it, really want to see at least Illidan before WOTLK.

 

Russta

To add on to the previous writings I've entered in this thread, I ended up finding myself a nice raiding community. I took a step back and asked myself if I would've done with someone I didn't really know what I was hoping someone would do with me and realized I wouldn't have even considered it when I was leading my guild. Once I came to that conclusion and accepted it, I worked my ass off everyday in heroics and joined a friend's over-geared Karazhan group until I had everything it was possible for me to upgrade outside of Zul'Aman and twenty-five man raids.

When I was at that point, I began looking around for guilds and just happened to find that one that had been recommended to me was looking for a Protection Paladin. I applied with an epic essay and got in a 4/5 (now 5/5) Hyjal, 3/9 Black Temple community. Yeah, it's repeating content, but it certainly doesn't feel that way doing it as a completely different class and I'm having an absolute blast.

Looping back to the original post, I'd guess that three months of hard work is enough to get you from a level 1 to level 70 in enough gear to apply for a respectable guild. Obviously that's dependent on your class and spec desirability and luck will always play a part (if I hadn't instance grinded, I wouldn't have met someone who's become a good friend and got me into his circle of friend's Karazhan runs, for example) but I do think three months is a good estimate.

 

Arvak-

I've watched people pick up 4-piece Tier 6 in the matter of a week after hitting 70. In fact, one of our paladins upgraded from Essence Focuser to Crystal Spire on the last Illidan and another went from welfare to 7/8 in a single reset. For myself--having little or no external support besides running Kara with various alts--it took about 4 months go from dinging 70 to clearing BT, and another month or so before I could consider myself fit for Sunwell progression.

With that in mind, the re-roll curve has a lot of wiggle room depending on what connections you have and how motivated you are to learn a playstyle to extents that reach beyond the whimsical realm of alts. Luck definitely plays a factor, it probably would've taken one month less to get where I am if it weren't for poor decisions. Loot luck also plays a heavy role since it means the difference between spending days or months in reaching sufficient raid-viability.

All I can say is that at this point, the only way I could see someone re-rolling into a top 500 guild before Wrath hits is through some serious connections and possibly sexual favors.

 

Lilpenny

For sure 2-3 different points are being brought up here.

My current guild is a 98% continuation of a successful guild. We where 3/5 1/9 when leadership took different directions and I was charged with the task of moving the guild forward. Through issues beyond my control I lost my level 70 fully geared t5 content rogue and was looking for what the raid really needed from a min/max standpoint moving forward. We had zero Ret pallys and having played a mele class well and successfully it just made sense.

The power level took about 7-8 days of good dedication by myself to just be online and by 3-5 guildies to just come kill. It was right before the attunements where lifted from BT and Hyjal so my toon was carried through the attunements from a DPS standpoint being lacking. But the great thing about the hybrid reroll is that you are still adding to the raid just by being there. Even if your only rocking 5-700 DPS as a hybrid reroll for a raid synergy purpose your are still buffing the crap out of your raid.

Possibly the most scary thing I have done in WoW is accept the roll of GM as a Blue geared freshly 70 LAWL ret pally and then be sitting here today scrutinizing our raid comp for Brutallus. Its a success story for sure, but I will emphisize the same point many others have here. There is alot of just dumb luck involved but for as much dumb luck there is also hard work by not just you at times but others as well.

I guess to sum it up its completely possible and even at times more viable to have a trusted member who you know is gonna stay and attend to re roll a class that your raid desperately needs than to recruit some random dude who is fully geared to the level of content that you are and just gives you the reason of "see the game", and not I suck and haven't been able to do this yet cause I'm bad at my class. Not to say that we haven't been totaly lucky in this area. Simply our best resto shaman is a re roll as well. Again a "buff" class for sure so raid viability isn't a massive issue.

 

BeeLz

Rerolling has definately become easier.
I raided hardcore before TBC with a mage and stayed in my guild as a casual member and basically only doing some karazhan runs with my priest and later on my rogue.
So I decided to level a new mage about 3 months ago, a week after sunwell released I dinged 70 and 2 core mages quitted so they were in desperate need of new mages. I spent a lot of gold and effort on this char the first 2 weeks and my guild decided to give me a chance again, my first raid was actually brutallus with 900 spelldmg. I raid 3 or 4 days a week now depending on work and personal stuff and after a month of raiding my gear was good enough for progress raids in sunwell. I know I was lucky but it's definately possible, with the summer comming and a lot of shamans quitting we had a hunter reroll to his enhancement shaman and recruited 2 resto shamans who hadn't even cleared ZA. Gearing up someone is not an issue anymore, finding decent raiders for a 3th horde guild on the server is.

There's also a guild on my server created mid april and killing illidan last reset, some rerollers, some pvpers and a few with more experience. Pretty impressive but I guess you just have to find motivated and determined players.

 

Risingstar

Theoretically I think the biggest problem on the re-rolling track is gearing up for Sunwell. I think a good analogy for us old farts who raided Naxx is raiding Naxx with BWL gear. Sure it's doable, but you'd need the entire raid to be fully rocking tier 2 or tier 6 to be successful.

I do realize why they did this (since most of the top guilds have been farming BT/MH for almost a year), but it is absolutely a huge road block for reroll guilds when/if you killed Illidan and having to spend three month farming him before you can down Kalecgos.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. - Plato

 

malthrin

You don't need anywhere near that much gear. We downed Brutallus the week of our 5th Illidan kill, with no Warglaive sets. The third token drop now makes it even easier to speed-gear tier 6 and enter Sunwell.

 

Psyche

I think the original question of the thread was how long would it take for an entire guild (30-35 people) all rerolling new characters to "complete the game" before WotLK. Obviously it wouldn't take long at all for a single character to get geared out enough to participate in progression raids (Sunwell), if his guild was good enough to run him through the T6 level content.

I basically server transferred at the beginning to TBC in order to play with my cousin and some other RL friends. When they all began to quit a year later, I decided to go back to my old server. Luckily my old guild was still around and willing to take me back in. I didn't expect to raid until WotLK, because we had 3-4 well geared mages already, but one stopped raiding and another has a difficult RL schedule and can't always be on time. So I got my chance.

They ran me through Hyjal and BT when I was in PvP/Kara epics (and maybe 1-2 blues). After about 2 months my character is almost fully geared. There are obviously upgrades still available, but because of the rarity of a weekly Hyjal and the wonderful RNG, I consider my character to be capable of progression raids.

They started taking me to Sunwell on Kalecgos first just as a full time decurser. I didn't see another fight in there for 3 weeks, until they had no other option for dps except me on Twins. After that, I've been to every raid that my RL schedule allows and have since seen Hyjal/BT multiple clears, and Killed Kalecgos, Brutallus, Felmyst, and Twins on repeat occasions. So my Mage is living proof that it's possible to gear out a single character for progression or end-game content in only a couple weeks/months (less time if the RNG likes you).

 

Nezralix

As you indicated in your post, it's unnecessary to provide proof of this. It's abundantly clear to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of probability that it's *possible and likely* for a single person to acquire gear very, very quickly if they've got a high-end guild supporting them.

The only thing that's really up for debate is whether a guild full of undergeared players can get up to speed quickly, and how difficult it would be for a fresh level 70 player with no real, pre-existing social connections to also find themselves actively participating in an end-game guild.

 

mayoff

The same thing that happened to the classic endgame will happen to the BC endgame when LK comes out: nobody will do it anymore. Blizzard has demonstrated through various nerfs that they want to get more people into BC endgame content, and the eventual release of LK puts a deadline on their ability to get people there. So they have motivation to continue nerfing the endgame as LK draws nearer. Therefore calculations of how much time is necessary to get to Kil'jaeden now based on current difficulty are probably too long.

 

Risingstar

Uhmm, but they didn't nerf Naxx at all pre-BC, at least not drastically so we saw tons of Naxx clears right before BC. They might tune SW a bit so that guilds on the cusp might have a better chance of clearing, but I doubt Kalecgos/Brut/Felmyst will become the first 4 in Hyjal or first 3 in BT any time soon.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. - Plato

 

Shibam

This thread may have been spurred by the recent events in Blood Legion. I anyway was curious myself on this after seeing their website. In may the guild broke up and in June 16 they are rerolled downing TK on a different server on Horde side now. I thought this was extremely fast, a little over a month to lvl to 70 and get geared, i guess with badge/kara/za stuff, but i guess everyone of them knows exactly what theyre doing. And im sure their groups are stacked and they get the most out of their gear. I also assume they did a little recruiting of 70s on the new server or had some themselves already.

 

Unperson

I have found that when you and your guild share common goals, the reroll process is not very difficult. I have always stressed that the core group of a guild, and their ability to play together as well as their natural skills are the most important facet of a raiding guild. I see a reroll being completely possible, even at this point in the BC endgame, if the players were dedicated, had the time, and all were committed to a common goal (ie, see Illidan die before Wrath launches.)

 

Finky

I know this is a bit off topic but I was just wondering where you would find the people if you don't happen to have 4-5 RL friends or a bunch of old guildes? Let me explain a bit more:

I have for the past 4 months been thinking about my absolute perfect guild, if I could have it excatly the way I wanted.
In my dream I would be playing with players who knew the ins and outs of their class. We would discuss WWS reports and min/max strategies- We would talk about boss tactics and pro and cons, instead of just linking the bosskiller guide and doing it that way.

I would trust every player with me and not think "oh god please don't let XX get the ghosts". I would know that my fellow guildies have spent time researching the encouter, memorizing postions and dangers, in fact playing out the whole encounter in their head before actually doing it.

Everyone would show up on time and buffing would be a natural part of life. There is no people at the door, phonecalls, drinks or dinners to be afk for. Just simply 100% attention during the raid. We would value effective raiding instead of brute forcing the encounter by playing 5-6 nights a week.

Recruitment would be only based partially on gear, but to a good extent logical test, anti tunnel vision test and a deep rooted knowledge of their classes strengths and weaknesses.

But where'o'where to find such people? Is there some bar they hang out at, some secret forum, just teeming with my soulmates?

 

Taeme

You are essentially describing (on and on) a top end guild. I've moved up and down the ranks of WoW guilds and you'll find many of the things you're looking for show up more often the higher up you go. Most players at this stage will have drifted upwards towards like-minded guilds and not be floating around, waiting for their perfect guild.

If you want to find those players, you're going to have to find diamonds in the rough. You will have to recruit a massive number of bad players and sift through them, searching for like-minded individuals to build a guild up around. You need to hit the critical mass of having enough solid people to raid and attract more raiders, then have the luck to find strong officers before you burn out on managing everything. Once you have a solid core, you need to carefully move the 'core' away from the main body of your massive guild - Otherwise people will feel betrayed and resentment will soar. But if you don't recruit lots of people to begin with, you'll never get a raiding guild going and you'll never have the bait to attract the people you actually want.

And you will burn out if you try to do everything yourself. You may not give up when you burn out, you might start making spiteful or stupid decisions simply out of frustration with how 'things are going'.