The other main guild raid, usually called ‘Raid 1’, packed it in last night. They had been having some bad luck and frustration and the raid leader had enough. I will not say more on that either to speculate or analyze because it is but not my place and also I don’t have any details anyway. I only mention it at all because we have a lot of guildies that drop by here so it is a relevant news item.
Personally it does make me think of a few things. First off it probably means the guild will lose a few raiders. That is a shame. But if someone wants to raid they have to go where the raiding is. We have a lot of good raiders in this guild and only a few of them are actively in our Fri/Sat run. That brings my thoughts around to a second point. That point is that this guild can still support another raid or two. There was/is also another Friday Saturday run but it has a lot of the same raiders as the Sun/Mon group so I don’t know what the status of it is. No I am not speculating, I just don’t know. But even aside from that group this guild can probably support another raid. We will have to see if anyone steps up to try and run one.
This brings me to another random thought. Maybe we will start a regular alt night raid. Maybe on Sunday or Monday. We actually did run one of those last night… Well we started to and then we realized we had all but one of our people, including the two missing from our Saturday night attempts…. So we went back to Firelands. Heh. However before we went we dropped by TotFW and knocked that out which got Bocat her title 😀
My final random thought on raids packing it in is how much can I help out or support other raids in the guild. I was actually in the other run for a while. I kept a whole geared tank alt set aside for several months to either run regularly with them or as a standby. I am sure that was helpful to them. At some point though I decided 4 nights a week was too much and stopped. There is only so much raiding you can do at any one time. So I am left wondering if I/we could have done more to help? Maybe. Without burning out? I don’t know. Probably not… but I do wonder. Also if another raid formed I might try to help… If they needed it… maybe. It would depend on the schedule and how I was feeling. Honestly 8 hours a week is plenty of raiding….. but sometimes I want to just pull out a DPS alt and pew pew. I have no real conclusions there. Just a few of the thoughts and feelings that float by at a time like this. Alright that is enough random thoughts for a ‘news’ post.
For any Raid 1 folks that leave the guild I want to say good luck in whatever you do and where ever you go. And for any in guild raiders thinking about starting a different run I say go for it… but it is a lot of work and stress so be warned. I can’t promise any help but there are a lot of good raiders in the guild so there is probably room for another raid. I hope so. I don’t think I want us to be the only game in town.
I just want to say for anyone who happens to be reading this – I’m going to miss having Raid 1 around. Especially back at the start of Cataclysm when we were really sharing ideas and people back and forth, I think it was very healthy for the guild to have two raids.
Hope you can all find another raid, or if you’re just burnt out, some fun in WoW that doesn’t require raiding. And I hope we remain guildies!
Yup. Cross pollination is a nice thing. Even when you don’t end up using the same strats. Nothing says ‘owned’ on a fight like knowing how to down the boss with more than one stratagy.
Thanks to everyone for TotFW – and my shiny new title!
I might not have a lot of skill (yet) but I do have one thing – lots of extra time to play!
I’m happy to fill in or bounce around if I’m needed, or help out if there is anything I can do – you know where to find me 😀
We really enjoy having you fill in! You listen well, and learning a fight for the first time is always hard. So glad you got your title! That was awesome!
Well bowl me over with a (insert something appropriate here)! Had no idea it was even a possibility. More than ever before, i strongly appreciate our wonderful group. That we can go all night on one new fight with no audible grumbling, second-guessing, of in-fighting just seems amazing to me. I hope for the best for members of the other group, and wish I could have done something to help them stay together.
After 2 years of raiding, we did call it quits. Half of us wanted progression, and the other half didn’t. What do you do? Holding the progression-wanting group back got boring, but the others got too frustrated in learning and wiping on the new fights and would rather go back to bwd/bot. We did decide to combine a few from the Sun/Mon group with a few from the Fri/Sat group to start a new group that ONLY wants progression. So, we can still beat our heads up against a wall together 😛
I’m glad you have a plan to keep raiding. I really think Crits needs two solid raids. I’ve gotten all sorts of inquiries from newcomers about, are there raid slots, how can they get in, and I have to tell them that we can consider them when we have holes but we don’t have any slots open. Good luck! What nights will you run? And who is raid leading?
It’s not obvious to outsiders but I handle all the logistics for our raid – figure out who is coming, fill empty slots, try to keep track of peoples’ gear, do loot master duty – and heals lead, while Reversion does most of the other stuff. Ado, Slice and Sorak throw in a lot of strategy help and often do the calling since Reversion and I as tank and heals have poor visibility on a lot of fights. I’m also the “morale officer”, I try to keep my finger on the emotions of the raid and act as a cheerleader when it’s needed.
I don’t know how any one person leads a raid, it’s at least a two man job.
Hey, thanks for keeping us posted. Let us know if there is anything we can do to help. That is an understandable situation yall got into. It is hard to change the paradigm of a long standing group. Sometimes you just need to start fresh on a new footing. For progression raiding everyone really has to be on board with the concept. It is a lot of work and a lot of wiping and is not for everyone. You have to be able to look back at 20 ‘head hitting the wall’ wipes and go “yeah… I see some small progress there… that was totally worth 200 gold in repairs and 3 or 4 hours of time.” If that thought makes someone shudder it might not be for them.
The ‘let’s just kill stuff’ group last night went pretty well. We cleared up to Nef and got some good pulls on him. Tonight we are going after BoT and maybe back to Nef after that if things go well.