I'll frame this in a description of my guild, but I'm posting it because I know that there are many others in very similar situations, and I want to see what they're planning.

We're a 4-day raiding guild with 9 Naxx bosses down. A common topic of discussion is how far we can actually get before TBC arrives. No matter how we look at it, there is a huge amount standing between us and Kel'Thuzad.

To back up a bit, we started Naxx somewhat late (killed Rasuv 8/01). We'd had a lot of heavy heavy turnover in AQ and were behind, and we decided to focus on and kill C'Thun before starting Naxx. Most weeks we got about 1.5 days (maybe 6 hours) of new content in. We were a bit behind the curve in terms of gear and general raid cohesion still, wiped a lot in AQ, etc. We made the most of the new content time, however (I think people were just having fun on new Naxx bosses and concentrating better), killing all of them in 1-2 raid nights of work. As we started getting into the territory of 5-6 bosses down, we simply ran out of time in the week. About two weeks passed with essentially 0 new content time, and we were forced to drop AQ.

Which brings me to where we are now. We've abandoned all other content, and have about 14-15 hours a week to work with in Naxx (we have a large enough working contingent that we can't raid past midnight). We've built a strong group of people who like raiding on that schedule and have dedication to the guild, and our goal is to get as far as we can before TBC.

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The big question: How are other guilds at about the same point evaluating their chances of reaching the end? And how is the lack of information on a TBC release date affecting your planning?

Say it was announced tomorrow that TBC actually was coming in November. Kel'Thuzad would be out. The 4H would probably a reasonable goal. I doubt we'd even bother with Loatheb. We'd basically like to stop doing all farm content and just spend our pre-expansion raid time fighting the bosses we haven't killed yet. That, of course, means that we get no Frozen Runes, and amounts to giving up on Sapphiron/K'T permanently.

Or say it was announced that it was delayed until next year. Now everything looks different. We want to keep farming Naxx gear and especially Runes aggressively. We want to run ZG for enchants on T3 hats, Reels for tanks, and ZHC's for healers. We want to shore up guild cash reserves and get people farming Grave Moss. We may even want to recruit a few classes.


I'd love to hear from other guilds who are dealing with, for the first time, the prospect of running out of time for content.

Denial, basically.

Exactly. We are essentially pretending that TBC is never coming and it is actually working out pretty well. Loot distribution (we are officer award) is lower drama than ever and we are basically working on content that we want to kill rather than worrying so much about a progression cycle.

Well, other than the people that have mysteriously vanished or gone on break until there are easy-mode phat lewtz to be had again that is... oh, there will be drama come TBC indeed.

Jumping on the denial bandwagon. We've killed Thaddius and are working on Heigan (so 9 too, we started late with a late C'thun kill like you as well), and while there's a good chance we won't ever see Sapphiron, we're gonna do everything we can to get as far as possible. We've also gotten rid of a lot of the people who quit two months before BC because they "just cba anymore". The people who are there every raid working on Heigan or whatever are the people we want to group with in the expansion.

Oh, we're certainly going to clear Naxx at least once, at whatever level. That's really besides the point--coming back to kill K'T at level 67 is not the same as sticking it out an extra month in AQ to kill C'Thun. I don't think there's any point raiding Naxx regularly once TBC hits. At that point, we've missed the boat on the zone with it's intended challenge. We'll get to leveling and come back to Naxx once or twice just for the fun of it.

Also, for people who give up on Rune collecting, my guess is that brute-forcing Sapphiron will be a seriously nontrivial affiar in its own right.

You don't need to collect runes to beat him in the expansion. There are a lot of green drops "of X resistance" with hefty amounts of stamina and the resistance in question. It'll take a while to kit out enough people in that stuff, but it's definitely doable.

We're forcing a KT or bust attitude, but if it comes out in November- it's going to be at the very best possible learning curve a race- and if we have a more average learning curve we may just sputter to a halt working on #12 or #13 when beta drops. We dropped AQ and BWL this week, we're forcing acellerated learning times for Thaddius, and pretty much praying that we can hang on by the seat of our pants. Downed Heigan last Monday for the first time (#9), goal is to down Thaddius (#10) tonight, and pray we can repeat dancing in the 3 hours we have tomorrow.

We've been telling people to prep up for Loatheb for a month now (He's slated for either #11 or #12 depending on where Gothic fits in), encouraging getting the necessary supplies early so we don't force a run the market- we're the only Naxx guild with more than 4 bosses, the herb market literally rises and falls based on our progress. >.< Luckily we're fairly confident Loatheb farming will be of a limited duration. We started an accelerated rune collection program involving every stealth capable naxx-attuned alt in the guild and lots of word of thawings (I think we're bringing in an additional 4-5 rune spawns per week and we may BARELY make it to the 960ish we need in time if we haul ass) and we've started discussing what we'd be willing to sacrifice for a Sapph kill if we can't finish the rune collection before we get to him. Don't know how willing the other guilds on server would be to sell us thier runes until a firm relaese date (which cuts off thier progress) is blue stamped.

I see disaster on the horizon regardless- I remember last year when the holidays pretty much brought our relitivly small guild to a grinding halt as folks took vacations and shuffled around. I think where we get by Thanksgiving day is where we will probably wind up sticking unless the expansion comes out in late january/feburary...

KT or bust imo. The loot drama has certainly cleared up though, especially with several active beta folks linking fun upgrades all the time.

Well, we are in pretty the same situation, (although we are a little deeper in Naxx with 11 bosses down and 3 wings clear) and one of the major problems we have is that we decreased from a stable ~45 player online at invite to 35-40, what brings many problems with our raid schedule(Ignoring some funny things as 36h server maintenance). I think every guild has some players which raid mostly (or at least to some extent) for items or have got a beta invite and recruiting as the normal solution at this time is quite hard and an enormous risky thing since neither we nor the applicants know what will be in about a mont.

So, how do you keep your guys motivated?

Loatheb really isn't that hard and shouldn't take more than a couple nights. Spend a couple hours doing dry runs and get the spore rotation down solid. Just use bandages to start. When you can get him to ~60-65% by the first spore, you should be able to destroy him with world buffs. On your first full run, have one dedicated person calmly call out which consumable to use to prevent the possibility of someone missing the raid warning.

At the moment we've got 4 of our active officers in Beta, and we've gathered up everyone into one guild made by a great friend back in alpha- we've also seemed to pick up a lot of Illumination from Tyluriawhatever (Sorry Nikita!). It's fairly easy to herd folks folks back off to live for raid times and be responsible parent-types, especially sharing guild chat with other raiders. (although there is QQing when they get thier KT kill for the week and get to play for the rest of the week and we have to shuffle back off to bash our heads on Thaddius)

So Beta isn't really a problem- officers set good examples (even if we'd really rather be fishing in Beta... no matter how sucky the skill up rate is) and everyone else follows.

The OMG obsolete gear thing isn't much of a problem for 2 reasons- 1) People don't seem to believe us when we say that T3 won't survive past the first raid instance, or they're in denial... and 2) We're still trying to focus on the progression over the loot. We're the only guild on Skywall with a shot at Kel'Thuzad- that's something very tangible in a prgression sense that we want.

It's a race. As long as we keep our guild looking forward and focused on the race with the possibility of a finish line in sight- we'll stay focused.

De Nile ain't just a river in Egypt.

We're in somewhat of a similar boat. We transfered servers a couple of months ago, so even now we're still doing BWL and AQ40 every week, just for the rare upgrades which we manage to never see. We also had somewhat of a late start - Instructor dieing late July, Anub early August I think. We raid 4 nights a week with atleast one night for new content, normally two, with 7 down in Naxx. That's Heigan rather than Grob though, so it'll be 8, possibly 9 after tonight.

Really, we're basically putting it out of our minds for the time being, and it's working pretty well. People are focused on what we're doing now, rather than what we're doing in 4 months. I think there's a good chance we'll atleast see 4H before The Burning Crusade launches, but it really just depends on when they're aiming the release at.

As far as motivation goes, well, I don't know. Our attendance has picked up noticably since Alpha/Beta went up, I guess since people have something to really look forward to.

Wait, what?

We just got heigan down a few days ago, and tonight is our loatheb night starting now, and there are mysteriously half the amount of people online :(

I feel really bad for anyone who isn't attempting or has defeated 4 Horsemen already. Their learning curve is far beyond any other boss fight in the game, honestly the first 12 are totally beatable before TBC, Loatheb is actually extremely easy with a good heal rotation and stacked + buffed raid. But 4 horsemen, well no matter how many videos you have watched, prepare to line up and wipe for hours.

Not only that, but sapphiron is no pushover either...

Comparison to Four Horsemen he is, a very nice and straight forward fight after the complexity of Four Horsemen.

We're researching some of the gear and just from what I've seen on Priest drops, I'm not seeing very many (maybe 1?) level 60-65 blues that would cause me to dump any of my tier 2 or tier 3 gear. Especially not at the cost of breaking up set bonuses.

I've looked at various sites that detail TBC drops and I'm not seeing the appeal. If somebody has hard links to blue level 60+ gear that is better than tier 3, by all means educate! I've heard all the rumors and read the posts, but can't find the loot links (at least for Priests) that will make me DE anything I've gotten from Naxx.

Otherwise, our Guild is increasing our time in Naxx with the assumption that much of the T3 loot will carry us to level 70. In other words, time spent in Naxx is still time well spent.

Meh.. it's not like gear is the only thing you get from Naxx as a raid.. It's pretty valuable in terms of learning and teamwork and certainly in coordination. I feel vastly more confident in the competance of my raid in TBC now that we have effectively cut our teeth on well designed and challenging content.

More than half the raid still can't dance, but they will learn and be better players for it.

This. We'll likely crap out before Four Horsemen; maybe on Loatheb or Gothik; hard to say. I've been proven wrong on our progression before, but really nobody cares if we don't finish the zone, we're just having fun making stuff dead, where we finish at the buzzer isn't so much a big deal provided we were trying up until the very end. Of course, there's no cement TBC release date except most likely "before Christmas" so theres no telling how much longer we have to play around. We keep doing BWL and AQ40 because the time and interest to do them is still readily available (also, just killed c'thun for the first time 2 weeks ago; no way farming him isn't going to happen). All in all, fuck TBC, the current content is its own reward for now.

EDIT: We are likely putting an end to recruitment though (I hope) since we've probobly got enough people to tide us over to 70 even with the threat of attrocious burnout in the expansion.

Just go on and keep killing bosses as long as people are willing to basically. I would like to see Kel'Thuzad and kill him before the expansion but unfortunately this isn't happening. But there's no need to start a huge drama either about progress, just make sure you know who showed up to help push progress in naxx while he knew that tbc was close and keep him as a raider after the expansion.

Just as bekah has said skywall hasn't had much of its progression in naxxaramus until late. We are full of late bloomers as far as guilds. Even now the guild I am in horde side has just started killing bosses, and instructor and anub are now down in about a week.

The main focus of the guild on both factions(sacred samophlange is my main's guild, alliance side) is to just see how far we can get before TBC comes out. If we keep downing new bosses for another month, it will definately kick ass(keep morale up). If we just sit back and farm BWL and what we can do in AQ then people will get lethargic and not be ready to challenge themselves in the new instances. From what I've seen they will be amazingly fun as well as challenging.

BTW: <3bekah and fiola :D

even though i agree with the strategy of "pretend it isnt coming out, and keep pushing" ill play devils advocate for a minutes.

Why not take the month off? do the things that you never have done because of heavy raiding. camp the BB boat. stealth into Iron Forge and kill people at the AH. go to bed before 2am, do some group pvp (can do it in AV now too). etc etc. Why burn yourself out before the expansion when you will be up to your chin in new content?
some people might get burned out by an even higher pitch of intense raiding. Would you rather lose them for say 1 or 2 more naxx kills, or keep them around for months and months of TBC domination?

ps im not at home and cant use my niffty spell checker. i apologize for whatever bad spellings im sure i just made.