I wouldn't quite use the past tense. We want to kill him within the next two days. We haven't wiped prior to phase 3 in ages, but we never make it to phase 3 in adequate shape to finish the job. If we kill him, great. If not, oh well.

Honestly, our current situation is largely a matter of choice -- a choice not to recruit with the expansion around the corner. That's pretty much why our progress slowed so much right around Labor Day. A number of people quit to focus on school as the summer ended, others had various RL circumstances come up, and then Naxx has taken its usual toll in terms of burnout over the months, and we've gone from a guild based on a model of ~80 raiders who average 60% attendance to having ~60 raiders who still average 60% attendance. That means that every day is a roll of the dice, and has been since mid-September or thereabouts. Sometimes we'll have a pro group and a half-dozen people waiting to get in, and we'll kill 9 bosses in 4 hours. Sometimes we'll have 3 priests and 3 mages show up when we want to do Gothik, or 13 healers when we want to do Sapphiron, or 30 people total, and we won't be able to do much of anything. Kel is tricky when you have 15 melee classes and 3 mages sometimes, and so forth. And thus progress has been like pulling teeth.

Frustrating in the extreme, but the general internal consensus has been that we'd rather tough it out and keep our existing structure going into the expansion, than invite now and find ourselves with a glut of players in two months. Mostly off-topic, but I figured I'd respond since I get people asking me about this a lot.

Ah, okay... I misinterpreted the phrase 'this reset'; didn't mean to imply anything. Best of luck!

You know that 17 page Rebirth recruitment thread on the Skywall boards? It's because we're having difficulty putting out 38 players +2 apps on a semi regular basis. Much as the few trolls hate us, it's spawned us a noob app zerg and at this point we're not getting terribly picky about the gear on who we take to trials. We just cut a day from our raid schedule because we can't even run BWL with the numbers we get on most Fridays. The people laughing at us spending a month on Thaddius? 4 week ago we got our first look at him. 3 weeks ago we got to spend about 3 raid nights working on him. Had a lot of dc problems. (Go figgure) 2 weeks ago we had 2 hours on him. Last week we called off for Thanksgiving. This week we've cleared everything but Abom wing, but depending on our number counts on Sunday/Monday we may be lucky to get 2-3 hours on him.. half of which will probably be relearning the encounter since we haven't seen it in 2-3 weeks. It's not exactly weeks of solid attempts. It's brought progression to a grinding halt. Nothing we can do really- at the height of our guild population we had 60 raiders in guild total, we've never had a night with more than 48 members online.

1) Our server sucks for recruitment. Even Alliance side. I don't even want to think about the problems you folk must be having. We've literally imported a third to half of our current solid raiders.
2) Holidays sucks for raid schedules. Last winter we saw similar problems although, at that time, it pretty much collapsed our raiding for 5-6 weeks over the stretch of mid Nov-early Jan. A lot more of our player base then was semi casual. Even now we only had one raid night in the raid-lock week that Thanksgiving fell and we're looking at another week to two weeks at Christmas/New Years. Plus we're generally having more people who have parties and family to deal with so overall attendance is slightly down. IF this year follows like last year, we'll have plentiful recruitment in mid-late January as folks get back into the game (especially with the expansion dropping then). Just gotta buckle down and survive until then.
3) The Expansion sucks for raid guilds. Not in an immediate sense of ooooooh my gawd we all suck afterwards- but in the very real sense that everything is getting reset and absolutely nothing you pick up between now and drop date is going to matter. There's a big portion of gamers who play for that sense of progression through gearing- and those players have a difficult decision- keep raiding with no sense of progression? Or spend time with the family and come back when the expansion drops? The exodus has been large enough that it's fairly reasonable to assume that they will eventually be able to get back into a good raiding guild post expac, most guilds are recruiting afterall.

Lump it all together and you've got a nasty cocktail this holiday season for raiding.

General advice: Keep your guild together. Defiance has a recognizable name and despite the trolls you're the furthest progressed horde guild on server. Apps identify you by your name and progress. It's why people fight so hard for server first, second, or third (And frankly, why it's so easy for us to not care about server firsts. When you're 2-3 bosses ahead of the next guild down it's easy to be detached from the race.). Name recognition sells and by the end of this all you may have is your name recognition.... but that's enough. Nightwind survived on name recognition alone for 4 months but couldn't pull it together at the end. From the expansion drop date until the first burst of raiding- guild "positions" will be frozen in the race. You can reasonably call yourself the top progressed horde guild on skywall until probably march (assuming somoene doesn't pull ahead at the last moment) at which point you'll have to start killing raid bosses again to prove it. Being the top guild = more apps, and better quality apps. Keep raiding what you can, keep what raiders you can... and muddle along with the understanding that all you have to do is survive until January 1. Pure momentum will keep people involved from Jan 1 to the drop date.

4-6 weeks of survival gets you the prize- a guild to level in and only rebuilding through recruitment if necessary for the expansion.

Yeah, i've seen quite of a few of my guildies quit or take a break till expan. I guess we aren't feeling it as bad considering all the cross server transfers that keep coming in to replenish us. Though our server's practically dead with the fact that attrition has basicly killed two horde guilds beneath us, allowed for applications which i'm thankful for but with only two guilds now that raid that can do naxx, let alone kill twin emps, is something that saddens me to consider all the good guilds we had before our server came a graveyard due to the paid transfers.