SOS! Mayday! Help! Drowing GM!

So, the general flakiness and lack of focus (and attendance) in many of our core raiders has me thinking. I’ve been putting off making decisions about what I’d like the guild to look like in Cataclysm but I might need to start thinking seriously about it. It seems that the end-of-expansion blues are starting to hit and a passion for raiding starting to wane in many people. While this is understandable to a point and I certainly expected it the reality is it sucks. We haven’t completed the progression I know we are capable of and I’m not sure we will unless I can figure out a way to get the raiders more motivated. It’s a tough situation to be in right now. We have many that want to finish what we started but just a few key people taking a mental and/or physical break completely screws us and fully pisses off the people that want to raid. (I’m getting more than a few /rage whispers during wipes on dumb shit. Trust me, folks, I feel your pain.)

I’m not entirely sure what the options are right now. Do we reduce the raid nights to put less “pressure” on folks that are starting to drift? If we do that it means extending timers on occasion to get to some progression - not sure how that would go over, lol. Do we take a break from progression and focus on the achievements needed to get the mounts? I can see where that might drive focus and attendance at least temporarily since only one person doesn’t care about mounts (Yes, I know you don’t care about achievements! Stop telling me!) I’ve pretty much ruled out recruiting at this point unless someone omguberamazing applies since we are tired of breaking in new raiders. I can pull from the Friday casual raid but then they are short and, frankly, there’s a reason most of them aren’t in the main group (sorry but it’s true) and the few that would be good there are either couples who insist on raiding together (have I mentioned how much I hate that?) or people with iffy schedules.

Damned if I know at this point…I just want to see a few more hard mode bosses down, get my mount, and then I’ll do whatever the group wants!


Anyways, back to Cataclysm. I was fondly hoping in a knowingly delusional way that they would change something…ANYTHING…to make 25s more appealing. Sorry, Blizz, but more of the same loot isn’t going to cut it for a lot of people. Personally, I like 25s soooo much more than 10s. I can understand the appeal of a close-knit group, less trouble to organize, blah, blah, blah. I don’t care. I still think it’s dumbing down raiding even more and catering to the casuals too much. 10s just lack the epic feel of 25s and I will miss that if they aren’t really do-able anymore. I don’t need to rehash the whole post…you can go look at it if you want to read the full rant.

So, for Cata here’s what I need to start figuring out….

Who wants to stay in the guild regardless of the raid size?

Who will stay if it’s one size or the other and which size would that be?

Who is definitely leaving to do their own thing?

If we stay a mainly 25 man raiding guild what will we need to recruit?

Who is changing mains/main specs?

If we become a 10 man guild (ugh, I think I’m nauseous) who do I want on the team?

And is it more than one 10 man team?

I think I’m narrowing down what I’d like to see just a bit. I’m thinking I’d like to reduce the size of the guild to about 30 people or so and be able to do three 10s and yet still be able to save a raid for 25s here and there. Once we get the feel for the content we may find that the appeal of more loot in 25s is a factor to gear for hard modes. That means we need 6 tanks, 9 healers, 15 well mixed DPS, and a whole lot of off-specs!


Anyone out there care to share what their guild is planning? Help! Please!