I can’t tell you what to do, but I’m in a similar situation and my answer thus far has been my friends >> raiding. If I really want to do Naxx, I can get in one of the many, many PUGs that are doing it – or try to tag along with one of the guilds that former guildmates have left for.

It’s far from perfect, and it is definitely a very aggravating situation. I wish you luck.

So this is blizzard giving everyone a shot to experience success in a raid (even if its a Pug with zero experience).

Will it get harder and provide a greater challenge for the hardcore? Well blizzard say so..

As it is now….Malygos is pretty tough. Plus there aint many guilds out there who have killed Satharion with 3 drakes alive.

What has this to do with todays blog? I’ll tell ya…

I worked very hard getting myself prepared for Heroic/Raid in TBC….but i enjoyed it immensely. With the help of the “not always that precise” Be Imba.com…i could easily track my progress in terms of gear. I have found myslef ALWAYS taking the role of “fountain of all knowledge”…the dude everyone asks about everything they need to know. I have found the main difference between me and most of my guild’s players, is that i do the reading.
BUT..Blizz has now reduced the amount of research required by nerfing the entire raid prep process…allowing access to raids for less hard-core players, logistically. Not sure if i should thank them tho…..

Picking up on Takira’s post, the raid requirement nerf has come at a great time for me…i can no longer play for 24/7…my job is too demanding. So in my situation i guess it works for me.

My dilemma is…do i now wait it out even more? Should i give the less “pro-active” players another chance to come and join me….I am SO eager to raid, but i am truly stuck between loyalty and selfishness…i know that the remnant players of my guild are skilled…i just dont want to have to organise everyting. Any advice appreciated.

Oh and if anyone on Hellfire (EU) has a suitable guild to draft 5-6 players…that’d be great.

I mean, we’re just regular players. If we can think of this, Blizzard has almost certainly.

I’ve never talked to, instanced with, or known in real life a person that was in a raiding guild that was capable of the real end game raiding (before they were nerfed of course). Possibly they wouldn’t have anything to do with the likes of me, I don’t know. Heck, I’ve only seen in game one set of war glaives that I can remember, and it was on an alliance rogue in QD. And everybody was like don’t go over there, you will get your butt killed. Funny thing was he wasn’t even ganking. Just hanging out.

Anyway, I will be dinging 80 tonight, and yes I have several pieces of BC gear that I still use. I’m fine with that. I’ve also noticed that I’m pretty much indestructible no matter how many mobs I aggro while I am farming. I’ve died twice I think in the trip from 70-80 (not counting instances or ganks mind you). And I’m fine with that too. The reason I’m fine with it is because I want to raid.

I was ready to stop my subscription and find other uses of my time when I stumbled on a guild that ran late at night when I’m on, and needed a healer. I went in with my +914 healing, and was the raid healer for Kara. And that’s when the game started being fun. It was truly amazing, 10 people every week, getting to know each other, struggling at first learning the fights, then as time when on being able to laugh and joke during Neatherspite. That guild fell apart after 4 months, and we never made it past T4 content. I was so bummed because I couldn’t really find another guild that fit, because everybody runs earlier than I can log on. So, game over at T4.

I suspect this is what it was like for the vast majority of people that were not busy downing KJ every week. And by that, I mean 75% of the player base. Raids are a truly awesome experience, and tons of people had never even been to Kara before. For them to make all raids available for 10 mans (even if the gear isn’t quite as good as the 25 mans, as it shouldn’t be), for them to make epic craftables BOE so we can sell them to help gear up other players, for them to make rep easier to get, for them to make this expansion….well it feels like they had me in mind.

Maybe the “Casual Hard Core” as they call them selves got left out in the cold. But I’m very willing to bet that Blizzard made the game so that the largest amount of paying subscribers could have a really good time. And I have been. I’ve been having a blast. Some times I wonder if these considerations enter into the mind of avid blog readers/writers. Not that you should dumb it down, or lower your level of content or anything. I just think that the target audience may not necessarily be a good representation of the wow community as a whole.

If RLs were ever unclear about the relative importance of class mechanics vs. player skill in the past (tbh, I dont see how they could have been) — well, there’s no excuse to be confused anymore.

If we choose to act upon this knowledge while we’re still in easy mode, it will put us in a very strong position for harder content. This would be a great preparation.

Cant wait to read your death knoob post :)

Now that we’re in Naxx some of our players are finding it easy and some are having a little trouble. I’ve noticed problems in fights like Heigan, where having your dps capable of reacting and moving where they should can make or break the encounter. Our guild is extremely ranged-heavy and we’ve got a lot of players used to just ‘stand & pew pew’. This is a fight that is training them to be more situationally aware.

So, while Naxx is easy for raiders who are used to intricate fights (not necessarily with the gear to go with) it’s easy, but when you get a middling sized guild that has some experienced players and some that are not so much, you can definitely see Naxx as a ‘teaching raid’. I, for one, do think it’s working as intended.

The real test will be the new raids. Yes it’s easy right now, I’m not a big fan of easymode, but I’m willing to give blizz a chance to prove it can deliver. If it doesn’t deliver, then I think you’ll see a lot more complaints.

While I still hold strong to what I said yesterday – that I’m not sure what the appeal will be once we’ve killed all available content.

BUT, I know that this content was mean to be entry level. I have a different kind of angst about it.

My guild was always one of those ‘coming from behind’. We didn’t hit BT til SW came out. Our Illidan might have been dead pre-patch but it was still way behind other K’J kills. We had a very late start. With the expansion, we had the same start as everyone else. Our method has always kind of been ‘find the wall’, ie, find the boss that we can’t kill, and consider our options.

Is it a archetype check? (tank, heal, etc)
Is it a gear check?
Is it an environment check? (Get out of the fire, kill your constructs)

And work from there.

We haven’t really found a wall. I was convinced Sapphiron would be a complete pain, but aside from a few misteps at repeating her it’s been okay. It hasn’t all been EASY, mind you. Jumping right in with fresh 80′s made Patchwerk a huge pain. That was probably the most enjoyable learning for me, because we kept tweaking and kept tweaking, til it went perfect and ended the night with a kill. Thaddius will still wipe a raid if someone’s not paying attention, there’s plenty of ways to get yourself killed in Naxx and Sartharion if you’re not paying attention. Malygos is an entirely different story.. but we don’t speak of him, B3.

But it’s a forgiving learning curve. You’re supposed to use this as a stepping stone, right? It’s hard for me to imagine the bar of the next tier. If it even goes back to being BT level organisational or ‘you want me to do what with the what’, I wonder if people will think it’s ‘too hard’.

Even on my server there’s a LOT of guilds getting out there and pushing 25 man content. I think that’s awesome. It’s a LOT more then there ever was in BC. Again, I think it’s awesome everyone’s seeing so much progression. The mood is a lot less nasty then it was concerning Sunwell. Everyone wants everyone to get a Malygos kill. It’s a testament to player drive, and the learning curve of WotLK entry level content.

If you are just getting into raiding now, Naxx might seem like a lot. 25 bosses and they all have weird gimmicks. What happens when that set reaches for the next bar and misses, though seasoned people might be saying ‘this is PERFECTLY tuned’? Like the Mu’ru debacle? Only this is Tier 8, should it be perfectly tuned? Who does Blizzard listen to?

I am so looking forward to that new stuff, though. And I’m excited to do it with other guilds from the get go. While my guild might be masochists, I think we all kind of enjoy pulling a boss and get getting splattered. It presents a pretty nice challenge to figure it out when we rez, instead of saying ‘the strat goes like ___’.

One very slight thing I’ve been worried about is that all the progression widgets I’ve seen list Icecrown and Ulduar as ’0/1′. I’m hoping both tiers aren’t just one boss/one instance. That totally will not hold my attention.