25 Man Raiding Reality Check

We have been fully transitioned to 25 man raids for a while now and it really is much more fun and rewarding to kill a new hard mode boss on 25 but once in a while the conversation still comes back to what we could be doing if we just ran 10s. DREAM Paragon posted a comparison a while back (http://www.paragon.fi/articles/10-vs-25-comparison) and pretty much confirmed what we already knew from our own experience. We’ve done 6/7 in 10 and 5/7 in 25. Let me tell me you, Baleroc hard mode 25 is a cluster fuck. Not only that but simply keeping up with the recruiting for 25s can be painful. The management of a 25 man guild obviously takes much more time and effort as well.

Nesingwary is a small server with a very tiny pool of raiders to pick from. Inevitably we are going to have to take on some folks that might not have the gear yet or might be lacking in the experience in hard modes that we would like to have but we take them on with the hopes that they will prove to be worth the effort. Yes, it means a few more wipes and may take a bit longer to down something new but our options are limited.

You might think a server transfer would solve the issues but that in and of itself would open up even more challenges. Most guilds I’ve known that moved servers wound up collapsing in a very short amount of time due to key players not moving over and being unable to find the recruits they were certain were just sitting there waiting for a good home. Not to mention I run guild full of altoholics and it would cost everyone waaaay too much to transfer the co-dependent little bastards! A better option for us is to recruit off server and bring them to us. They are hard to find though and it’s a commitment to pay the real life money to do it. We’ve had success but it’s dicey.

The other suggestion that periodically comes up when people get frustrated with progression is to go back to 10s. The trouble with that is we have recruited for 25s. I stare at the roster and all the duplicates of certain classes and have no way to decide which really great mage to cut or which DK I would want to do without; we have 3 very good healing priests, 3 locks, 3 hunters…I like them all and they do well. Who could I possibly evict from raiding with us? Things would have to get very, very bad for us to go back to strictly 10s. I care too much about the folks that raid here. And did I mention how much more exciting it is to get 25 hard modes down?

Right now we’re in a pretty good spot. We have 27-30 for each raid so emergency RL stuff is largely covered but that doesn’t mean I get to stop looking for good people! I’m concerned about folks that have been raiding non-stop since December and don’t want them to burn out and maybe make rash decisions about the game before the final patch hits. I worry about people needing to make changes due to new jobs or family situations. There’s always the possibility that some of the new folks will flake out and disappear (no, no, you know that NEVER happens!). Mostly, I just worry. The odd thing is….I actually care about the people behind the toons in Heroic and want them to be happy and doing well in RL too. That means if they need a break, they get a break. And I figure out a way to cover it.

On the upside, we’ve been around for two and half years and have been raiding consistently the whole time. We’re talking about who are rolling monks for MoP and working the PTR for Deathwing. Something tells me we will be around for a while yet and will make it through all the challenges and frustrations of progression in a 25 man guild on a backwater server…somehow.