The fact that RS triggers 10m strict exclusion has no relevance to whether it is or is not considered in the progression calculation.

That being said, I don't intend to add RS the progression ranks. I want to keep ICC as the main measure of progression until Cataclysm is released (which should not be far away now - given the recent beta announcement).

honestly surprises me that Heroic Arthas is still alive in strict 10 with how lenient it is. You could literally field a team of full 277s and still qualify as strict 10 as long as some guild members were able to sidestep marrowgar kills or you just had an outside-of-guild raider or two.
I guess its somewhat refreshing that those competing in strict 10 are at least somewhat playing by the spirit instead of simply by the rules.

Great news! We had our first 10m strict guild kill him yesterday - The Typhoon Struggle of Defias Brotherhood-EU. Here is a quote regarding the challenges of 10m strict from their GM, Sheeana:

On a slightly different topic, if any of the 10m strict guilds want to see how they are doing with respect to killing Halion then you can see the 10m strict world kill list here The Twilight Destroyer (10)H - GuildOx - WoW Guild Progress, Character and Loot Rankings

Polar,

I was wondering if you'd had any thought on how you might handle prereq kills in Cataclysm. By which I mean the new normal/heroic model seems to be the way forward for Blizzard, and it includes locking heroic content until the normal instance is cleared, usually by one person. At the same time, heroic mode can be toggled on a per-fight basis allowing unlocked guilds to pick their heroics rather than do them in strict order.

But we're seeing on our own rankings a lot of strict-10 guilds who haven't killed LK, but are taking in a Kingslayer and knocking over easy heroics like Gunship, then picking up kill credits. Other guilds with a more strict approach are leaving heroics alone until Arthas is dead.

Obviously there won't be any difference between strict and non-strict guilds in Cataclysm, but I wondered if there's a stance on allowing credits for guilds who have bypassed the prerequisites. On the one hand they made a legitimate progression kill, but on the other they're somewhat cherry picking the easy fights out of order, either in 10s or 25s.

Did anyone raise an objection to counting Malygos if the guild hadn't killed Sapphiron or killing Algalon without all the keepers having been downed? I don't remember anyone saying anything, but I could be wrong.

I agree that for the time being that's probably not realistic to implement. If the rules were changed now there would be a lot of guilds that would have points taken off of their scores but it actually goes deeper than that. The gear that they got from the heroics would have given them an advantage in normal modes... the same advantage that 25man normal gear has over 10man normal. Following through to the logical conclusion, the next step would be to give all those guilds a big DQ. (Or if you want to get silly you just put them in "strict" and the guilds who followed progression become known as "strict-strict.")

Following strict pre-requisites isn't necessarily a bad thing but the rules for that have to be set before anyone sets foot in a raid instance. If this is on the table for Cataclysm then it needs to be decided before launch.

Well, I think Malygos was a different situation as he was clearly more difficult than his attunement boss Sapphiron. I recall there were many people upset with killing Algalon when Hodir HM required bug abuse, but that was also a different story.

This situation feels to me much more like the old attunement-removal days of TBC when guilds started skipping Kael and even Vashj in favor of plowing the easy fields at the start of BT/Hyjal. Certainly enough guilds went for it to be worth ranking, but it would be unfair to ignore the fact that they hadn't killed some previous bosses. So I would agree that it's best to continue counting heroic progress even if they lack an LK kill. As long as they're not getting credit for a boss they didn't kill, I see no problem.

In a system which weights different boss encounters, it's easier to sort out these situations. I quite understand why Guildox doesn't have them, but it is a drawback.

The real issue here seems to be that the Gunship Battle Heroic is something that is much easier than killing the Lich King on normal mode. The other heroics are of equal difficulty or harder - meaning that if you can kill Marrowgar heroic then you should be able to kill the Lich King on normal (you see the data I am using at GuildOx - WoW Guild Progress, Character and Loot Rankings)

Would this issue be less of a problem if I were to include "The Fall of the Lich King - normal" achievement in the progression score calculation - effectively giving an extra progress point to a lich king normal kill?

This seems to be a good idea. I like the simplicity of it. Does anyone have an objections before I roll it out?

People who are interested into ranking won't have any objection about it unless they are bypassing the system by taking a kingslayer to down some easy HC boss.

Most raiders are fair when it comes to ranking.

OK so over the last few weeks our guild has been working on a few achievements. We done "many whelps handle it(25man)" and got realm first for it. then a few days after i was looking on guildox and noticed something was missing... the "realms recent guild achievements" block on the left hand side has vanished. i myself and a few other people i know quite like that feature and you get an idea what some of the top guilds are up to on different realms aswell. has this feature been removed fully or will it be making a come back anytime?

I am currently in a Strict 10 man guild that is looking at recruiting some more members. At this late stage of the expansion, finding members that suit our requirements and fit in with legislation, are few and far between. This has caused us to look at the future of 10 man strict and wonder how is it going to be monitored in Cataclysm. Is there going to be a 10 man strict ranking? If so, surely this niche area would have been opened up to a broader spectrum.