When TBC arrives, guilds will switch to the mode that most of us haven't experienced for almost 2 years - multiple 5man runs and occasional groups for elite quests. When my first guild was doing this things, nobody of us was a pro raider. Hell, most didn't even know what is raid. So, there was hardly any attempts to organize people, the best i can remember is schelduing a raid for "Battle of Darrowshire" and Nathanos Blightcaller. Instance run happened sporadically, on the fly. Basically on FFA basis - whoever first managed to grab a tank and priest wins. Some people that logged later than most was quite negatively affected by this, since they usually can only find a group on week ends.
I'm sure of lot of people started like this, probably vast majority. But now things are different, we have 3+ tiers of raid content experience and desire to start experience new raids as soon as possible (and be competitive). How are you going to handle instance runs ? Will try to scheldue runs, trying to optimize leveling and gearing process for an entire guild ? Or you going to leave it as it is, because it is too much hassle and effort not worth the return ? Balance between two approaches ?

For the instances without lockouts, it will be left up the members for sure. For the instances with lockouts, it remains to be seen, but I assume the same will be true there.

How to handle loot is however far more complicated. Random is a horrible tool.

Just FFA , this context recently came up when I pointed out that t4 loot is from both 10 man and 25 man content and did this affect our decision to run 10 man as random roll, 25 man as dkp. Mainly in the fact between 5-10 mans we would have to be careful to not monopolize tanks,healers and the ability to lead (a 10 man) into a officers club.

As I understand the current content, keying yourself for later instances involves getting revered reputation and completing heroic 5 mans with various reputations and instances.

I was actually there for the 40-60 rush in a "raiding" guild on a new server, the pre-raiding Rebirth (we were called DoN back in the day, a multiple game guild that eventually pulled their support from WoW and Skywall which left us on our own with a new name). I suspect that the leveling rush will still be a factor as will the cascade effect of people hitting certain levels. I'm kinda glad that I have the hands on experience from that time frame to relate to. It was my first few weeks as an officer in ANY guild and my whole job was organizing raids of strat/scholo/lbrs/ubrs.

Boy did I make a lot of mistakes.

1) We tried to do a "raid time" Scholo OR Strat OR LBRS run every night, and inevitably had 14-16 people sign on. There was half an hour wait for the run to start going (we were treating it very much like we currently treat our 40 man runs, invites to a raid start at 5:30, groups were sorted out at 6pm for the run. BAD IDEA. No one likes waiting half an hour for an hour long run.).

2) Because, at the time, people HATED running the 5 mans as 5 mans, there was a ton of contention for who got the full group and who got screwed and had to sit out of running "5" mans for the night. Inevitably we'd stack those 10 man raids with 2 tanks and 2 healers and lots of dps and the 4-6 leftovers were usually dps classes that couldn't even do a 5 man in guild if they wanted to.

3) 1-2 people were considered raid leaders and organizers. If you didn't have the raid leader in your group- you might as well just log off. If you didn't have the organizer (that was me and only me. God forbid I got sick and didn't log on- It was total chaos) matchmaking your group, you might as well just log off- you were doomed to failure. At the time we had no idea how to help the people in our guild feel capable of organizing their own runs.

4) Everyone had to come to Ironforge for the start of "raid time". If you weren't in IF, you weren't going to be in the main 10 man raid group that would leave as a pack. This did do what we wanted it to at the time- broadcasted our guild name in large numbers as a daily advertisement in IF. There was always that super cool pack of level 55+ people toting our fairly distinctive (at the time, such things mattered) tabard and bunched up all together chatting and laughing together. It was excellent advertisement. It was horrible HORRIBLE for guild morale and player frustration. (but.. I'm in WPL right now.. I just got out of a pug run! Why do I HAVE to come back to IF to be considered for a spot?) I might do it again as a publicity stunt for a week using volunteers- it really was quite effective at the time for getting new guild members... but I'd never, ever, make another 5-10 man run require a pre-meeting and together travel from a different location.

5) Priests are healers, warriors are tanks, everything else is dps or a secondary. If you don't have your required priest and warrior, the run is doomed to failure. Never ever let your guild get sucked into this mentality. Massively bad juju.

What I WILL do in TBC:

Have a "sponsored raid time" from 6pm-9pm (our current raid time) where the officers will change the gmotd to reflect new groups starting (or interested in starting) and where our members are highly encouraged to run level appropriate 5man content to gear up for a faster start of raiding. Since our raid group is already very well trained to be there 5-6 days a week (something distinctly lacking from the 50-60 leveling) I expect much better turn out. The officers will not, however, matchmake specific "this is our raid for the night" runs until we start getting enough 70's on of the appropriate level for the night to run Kharazan. 5 man content is strictly optional, but highly encouraged. Luckily we're a small guild and I'd say the vast majority of us have the same goals now- to get to 70 and start raiding again.

None of the 5 man content is beyond even our weakest members to lead, so we're going to expect them to have a hand in their own group formation. This is already our alt 5-mans policy so hopefully it'll translate well. 5 man content is simply too small for the kind of micromanagement that comes into play with raid leaders and raid organizers.

Yeah, last I saw, the TK raid key requires you to beat Heroic Shattered Halls, Steamvault, Shadow Labyrinth, and Arcatraz.

You need to heroic multiple instances for TK Key. The Karazhan key requires no heroics.

/g lets do slave pens

I'm not really seeing the room for productive discussion here. Is there anyone out there that's going to have some kind of rigid formal system for leveling from 61 to 70 or making up 5-man groups to do quests along the way? I mean, once you get to 70, and you have to coordinate gearing people up and getting everyone keyed ASAP, that's a different story, but that's no different than what a lot of the early raiding guilds had to deal with in retail, in terms of doing mass UBRS runs to get a viable Onyxia group back when Drak dropped only a single Blood per kill.

If anything, the freeform nature of getting from 61 to 70 is going to be a refreshing change of pace, I'd think, from scheduled raid times and DKP and such. Everyone will progress as their own pace, and I'm sure that in guilds that are really serious about raiding ASAP, people who lag substantially behind in the leveling curve will be replaced.

It might be not clear, but in my original post i've asked about all kinds of pre-raid activities, including gearing and keying at 70.

But gearing and keying is still rather obvious. People gear at their own leisure. There's no point forcing people to run 5-mans, especially with the natural competition for raid spots that will exist when current raid guilds hit 25-mans. Keying happens along the way, and if you need more keys, you run UBRS70 to get them. If raider #1 wants to raid, he has to help raider #25 get his key.

I don't know, the original keying process for Onyxia went fantastically smooth for us, and I don't see anything else happening at 70. WoW keys don't require you to camp meaningless trash mobs for hours upon hours waiting for a drop (Hi Vex Thal!).

I can't even begin to imagine scheduling this stuff. I mean, how could you account for the differing needs of the guy who works vs the student who will get ahead faster because he can quest during the day? Will you tell the student to go back and do instances he's levelled past because that's what you've got on your schedule?

This is a good opportunity to kick back from hardcore progression and just enjoy an easier pace. The majority will go fast -- that's the nature of the players in my guild; they enjoy it, it's what they want to do. The others will go more slowly, and that's fine. The requirement is 25 people -- a few going slow won't be holding anyone back.

If the majority of your guild does go slowly, then it just serves as an indicator that that's the mood of your guild after raiding hard for so long, and I think it would be counter-productive to try and force something faster.