I'm interested to know what kind of deadlines and agendas other top end guilds are setting for their members. We've sat back and let people get keyed at their own pace for the most part, but it's getting rather taxing having only three healers on and ready to play. They're quite tired of the Karazhan key quest chain :).

What do your guild's agendas look like?

Are you going to push Karazhan hard, or skip it?

Have you tried heroics? Are you planning on it?

What about world bosses? At what point will the gear curve catch up to the 25 man content that is already ready to be done? Magtheridon? Doom Lord Kazzak?

Basically, I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off and don't quite know where to start. Looking for advice and opinions :)


At this point we've done Hellfire Ramparts and Blood Furnace on heroic mode...the loot is basically negligible upgrades to be worth the effort. Karazhan looks to be a "good" time sink to start out with...but we're ready to delve into 25 mans and don't quite know when it would be realistic :)

As far as my guild is concerned, we're hitting Karazhan hard... it's way too much fun to skip, and very much in line with gear progression from non heroic 70 instances.

2 nights in there and we've cleared a bit more than half the instance, resulting in many many gear upgrades.

Heroics, it seems, will only be doable without much terrible trouble once we're geared from Karazhan.

(btw: Tell Boosted and Moane they're nubs, kk? :D)

It took us 2-3 hours to learn and kill Maulgar, with zero Karazhan loot and a rather un-optimal raid makeup (tanking mage had 7500 HP unbuffed :( ). I recommend farming the zone as soon as possible, because T4 Shoulder tokens are going to be out of whack for a long, long time to come.

The keys for Tempest Keep (Prince Kaelthas) and Serpentshrine (Lady Vashj) require specific quests done in three of the heroic instances, ala Baron 45 minute run. So you will have to run them many times to get your guild keyed. Mount Hyjal keying requires clears of TK and Serpentshrine - the Hyjal key quest requires drops from the final bosses, and obviously no one knows yet whether the drop is shared loot or single or 2-3 per run.

From beta, magtheridon required very heavy FR gear for the tank at least, perhaps only the heroic mode badge rewards? Its very unclear at this point, I haven't heard of too many people zoning into Mags Lair which is strange since no key is required, just 25 level 70s - the instance is on the west side of hellfire keep, at the bottom of the valley. The trash isn't too bad and you can be at the boss in under 30 minutes. Since they buffed Gruul from beta to live, its possible Mag has also changed.

Slinghtly off-topic.
Is there any indication yet (roughly) what level of consumables content is being balanced about in the 25mans ?

our guild size has ballooned some how and we are running 4 karas this week, probably 5 next week. We got maulgor last week will get at least one this week when we're done in kara. No nightbanes yet, probably 1-2 next week. AFAIK no one has even tried a heroic yet but we will for nightbane obv. DNT is on our server and got kazzak yesterday so we're probably going to leave him alone for a while. I'd say we're doing ok.

Our current favorite is Karazhan. Everyone seems to be chomping at the bit to get into it right now. We're shooting for outdoor raid bosses ASAP. Personally, my head is ready to explode from wanting to do everything, of ever size. ;)

By the way, here's a slightly easier to read flowchart for keys. I imagine we'll take a while getting through as many of these as possible before settling into any real schedule.

http://worldofraids.free.fr/bc/BCRaids.png

edit: Oops, the other flowchart was in another thread. Keep the link... free of charge.

My guild is restarting Naxx in mid-February, that's all I know right now. At 64 I'm the lowest level pre-BC raider so I'm all for a few runs into Naxx to complete the Atiesh for our GM, solo questing is getting me down.

Our guild has like no deadlines. By now we have 8-9 70s but critical classes are missing, so I don't see us being ready to raid for a while, which I have to admit is annoying. I wish we could start Karazhan asap but at this rate I suspect another 2-3 weeks before we have enough of the right classes all keyed up.

Oddly enough, the guild leader's refusal to institute deadlines is why half the officers quit and my guild was disbanded last night.

Just curious, what kind of guild was it? Was the sole purpose of the guild to raid?

It was a raiding guild. We downed Thaddius just before the expansion came out putting us 3rd for Naxx progression on Dalaran Alliance. They over recruited so that they could have enough people without needing everyone to raid every night. Quite a few left just as the expansion hit, joining one of the new "we're going to be #1 in expansion progression" guilds, and a lot of other people would rather play the new content than grind to 70 just to raid. It seems that while the guild leader wanted to maintain a "family" guild and let people go at their own pace to 70, and then once people were 70 hit the raid content, some of the officers wanted to force people to level and key up with the threat of a gkick. So the officers quit, their friends quit, and then the guild leader quit.

The Sidhe has no deadlines, but it is for the most part a family guild (even though we were raiding a little bit of Naxx pre-TBC). There is some pressure to level up as quickly as possible but no one is being forced, really.

We have about 20-25 level 70s, but our guild is fairly large and we're not keyed yet.

Simple fact is if you were a hardcore raider before TBC, if you focus on leveling, by now you should be 70. My server has over 500 lvls 70 (you get 49 people in /who 70 for every class outside of peak time) so it really doesn't require taking time off work to get to 70 in 2.5 weeks at 4-5 hours of play time per day plus weekends. A lot of people use the "RL" excuse but that excuse has been used forever, to excuse everything. Obviously some people decide playing 2 hours a night and sometimes not logging on at all on the weekend is fine for them, or spend a lot of their time online tradeskilling or playing alts, but then don't go around claiming you're a hardcore raider because that's just casual behaviour. When half a guild get to 70 and find out some of the more critical classes decided to take the slow road, then drama is inevitable.

Wow, Dendory, that post seems just a tad bitter.

Right before the expansion was released, my guild's leadership decided to take a more cut-throat route and reform, filtering out whoever they saw as the weakest links in an attempt to solidify a 'better' core for the upcoming content. Their plans didn't take root, however, since word got out about a list of players who had made the cut and from there the reform just kind of spiraled out of control.

A number of people who weren't on the list were rightfully angered by the move and decided to restart a guild of their own, while most on the original list as well as most who weren't joined the new reformation. So basically what wound up happening was the leaders decided to take the hard-ass approach and remove players they didn't feel were up-to-snuff, but at the last minute got called out on it, felt the pangs of regret and then invited almost anyone who asked.

The fallout has been interesting. I was the third person on my server to reach 70 and it's given me a nice vantage point, watching people climb the ranks and seeing which paths they take. There are those like me who have enjoyed the break from raiding and have taken the time to smell the flowers (complete all quests, rep-grind for keys and items) and then there are those who skipped most of the way to 70, mass-keyed people through borrowed instances (Steamvault, Arcatraz, etc) and have been pushing for Karazhan ever since. These are the people wearing Naxx gear who refuse to believe they can benefit much, if at all, from zones before Karazhan.

The push and pull between those enjoying the road to 70 and those that want to move right back into the disciplined raiding atmosphere has provided a great deal of conflict in my guild, especially with all of the less 'hardcore' players who joined in the midst of that early drama. The biggest problem that I've seen with all of this is that there seems to be a notable lack of players interested in returning to 'raid specs.' Off-specs could certainly play roles in the upcoming raids, but I've noticed a distinct lack of dedicated healers post-BC. Very few, typically those who rerolled healers, actually want to heal.. and so we have some of our best and most experienced (very important!) healers running around as shadow, elemental, enhancement, feral, etc.

Personally, I don't mind since they're enjoying themselves, but it does provide little incentive for me as a player to want to throw myself at an instance like Karazhan. Instead, I've just been enjoying the smaller scale of grouping while everybody else figures out what they want out of the game.

I really don't agree with this mentality at all.

If you have a professional job you can't regularly show up with only 4-5 hours sleep and you're not going to tell your boss to stuff it when he asks you to travel for a couple days. Believe it or not, sometimes you can't play, and you can't make up that lost time later. At least, you can't if you want to be gainfully employed, drink, and occassionally mingle with the opposite sex.

My rule of thumb is that If you didn't hit 60 within the first month of the original release, you were a casual player. If you don't hit 70 before the first month of the expansion, you are a casual player. There's still about two weeks left before I start giving people shit (but in a nice way, I don't think we need to start being assholes for at least 3 weeks).

For the record, I've been playing 12hrs+ at least one day on the weekend and 4-5 hours a night. I'll hit 70 this weekend without breaking a sweat, but I also made certain to buddy up with a priest and a druid (they're 68 and 69). Individual leveling is swell and all, but if you don't have support classes when you want to start running 5 mans, you're fucked. I'm sure going back and helping them with group/elite quests that I already did probably slowed me down. I'm also pretty sure leveling up mining/smithing slowed my leveling, but when I hit 70 I'll have a kharazan equivalent weapon and a collection of gemstones to socket all my gear with (plus a serious horde of khorium).

It's the long run that matters, not some arbitrary timeline.

Wow, what a way to live.

The game isn't a race, it's supposed to be fun. Is it really going to matter in a month or two how fast people leveled anyways?

No most people are saying 8 hours per level is making good time... so 80 hours of play time give or take. You did it in 6 which means you played more then 12 hours a day for 6 straight days.....

Being "hardcore" as you claim, is not what makes a good raider. Most of my guild is sitting at 70, we had the first 5-6 70's on the server and currently have 2 Karazhan runs going (yes they took off work, or didn't have school or whatever). However, as of last night I was at 67, and guess where I am today... work. There is something called RL that does interfere with leveling. People with full time jobs (or ones like mine that are more then fulltime) can't spend 12 hours a day leveling, even on weekends (since the fiance would have a major issue with that). At the same time I have been a full time raider for 2 years, I can do ~4 hours a night 4-5 nights a week, but that is the max... beyond that there just no additional time to be had. So at 20 hours a week, I plan to hit 70 around week 4.

However, once I get to 70, I shouldn't have any trouble getting into raids, while the people who took time off work and raced to 70 will eventually find themselves in the same situation they were in before TBC, if you were in a top raid guild then you still should be, if you were, don't expect to get recruited based on the fact that you could put the rest of your life on hold for 1-2 weeks while everyone else continued to deal with their RL Commitments.

Amen.

My situation exactly. Our Guild raided during the week a few hours each night. We were one of the top Naxx progression Guilds pre TBC. When the TBC came out people were leveling so fast, I was quickly left in the dust.

I didn't take holidays from work to sit in from the computer. I didn't shew my friends/family away for entire weekends so I could play till my eyes bleed in order to get to 70. Leveling quickly does not make you a good raider (any top guild knows this). In fact leveling in TBC has been pretty easy, it's been a playing time has been the only constraint.

Personally I am enjoying the content. The dust will settle sometime in March and it will business as usual again.

In my experience the most reliable raiders are exactly those that don't invest too much time in the game and the reliable raiders are the ones that a guild benefits most from. There are exceptions on all sides, but the ultra hardcore types seem the most prone to sudden moodswings, difficult behaviour or complete burnouts. Dendory was talking about the avarage power-user though, which I think would account for most people on these boards. His post was simply just a bit on the sour side :p

Along these lines is an interesting article/interview I read years ago at The Daedalus Project: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001334.php

The interview subject is the leader of a high end guild and makes a number of statments that surprised me at the time, but don't really surprise me anymore. For example, he mentioned that they look for people who "play enough" but not people who play too much. The rationale in his case was that people who play too much are most subject to circumstances that make them quit. I think they had a guild member had to leave because they were running from the law.

And of course when someone quits you lose all that gear.

Anyway, it's interesting reading.