Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Patch 2.3 & Zul'Aman

It was announced that, baring any unexpected issues, the next patch will be released next Tuesday. This includes the opening of the next 10-man instance Zul'Aman.

I have been looking forward to ZA since I first heard about it. I tried to spend time "casually" raiding 25-mans and even that is a chore. In order to be able to raid sometime, you pretty much have to be prepared to raid all the time. Which was more work than I realized I wanted to do.

Since 25-man raids exist and Zul'Aman is 10...there the whole matter who fitting square pegs into round holes again. Before I had the common goal of Karazhan just being a step toward 25. But this time around I'm treating 10-mans as my endgame.

What I foresee this meaning is me not being able to find a place to do 10-mans, if all the 25-man raiders group up. I never thought it would be an issue. But things change.

For the first time in a long while, I'm wondering should I find another guild. I just need something my speed, more conducive to WoW being less of a time commitment.

Its very easy to stay up late when everyone around you is doing the same. Its easy to think raiding for as many hours as I have in the past as being normal when everyone I play with pretty much does the same thing.

Lately, I thought about how I'm the same gamer, just the raiders in my guild are pushing to raid longer and more often. This...just when many raiding guilds have broken up or were merged into other guilds. I get the feeling our guild wants to play catch up more than just go at their own pace.

They don't really seem to care if I make that push with them, and maybe that's telling in itself. If Zul'Aman doesn't work out how I've been hoping it does - a more casual raiding opportunity - perhaps a change of surroundings is in order.

7 comments:

biohzrd said...

I am in a guild that uses a unique approach to raiding. There is no set 'group' for kara... we all sign up and raiders are picked by party balance and signup times. All ties are broken by open rolls. If we get 20 signed up we do 2 groups. Yes it can be tricky on the 2nd or 3rd night but we manage it every week.

This helps casual raiders in lots of ways. #1 there is no commitment to raid, but you always have a chance to raid, #2 you get to experience content with a different party makeup everytime, and #3 no weird clique problems because it's all open rolls to see who goes.

Please check out [A] Garona US - The Council of the Dedicated - http://www.thecotd.com - yes we are recruiting!

Sourmash said...

A small group of my friends reached this point too, and finally just struck out on our own. It's working very well, but the key is finding enough people like yourself to make it all work.

We accept people with no plans to raid and those that want to, but it's laid out very clearly from the outset: guild culture and fun ranks higher than progression. Our niche is married people with kids. That means our raids start after bedtime, and aren't so long we can't function at work the next day.

Clearly, we are the ones best served by Blizzard continuing to add new 10 man raids to the game, and it's something we hope continues into the next expansion.

Yane (Yet another night elf) said...

bogota and ontherocks, have you found you have solid attendance using your methods?

Sourmash said...

For raiding? It's solid in that the same people signup to go to Kara, but right now that's about 7-8 people every time. We're still really small, but we all understand that no Kara means we're jumping right into a heroic that night and it's no big deal.

First and foremost, there is no pressure to raid at all, and we take in people who don't want to. I post signups, if we have the numbers we go, if not we don't. Simple as that.

With that said, even considering my time in a more traditional raid guild, this is the most fun I have had playing WoW.

biohzrd said...

Yes. We raid Kara 3x per week. On average 1-3 members have to roll off for a slot. About once or twice a month we get enough folks for 2 Kara runs.

Our trouble currently is fielding 25 raiders every week for SSC/Gruul. We are considering hosting open raids as a method of recruiting.

biohzrd said...

I should also mention that the members who get left out of a given raid often run a heroic.

Ardent Defender said...

I pretty much like the arrangement that "ontherocks" and "bogota" uses for raiding or if cant then run heroics. I'm a casual WoW player but a dedicated player so more than casual. I'm not fond of 25 content raid. I prefer smaller team approach.

I'm a tank in my usual duties and I love doing it. But I play WoW for fun foremost and dont want having to be committed to full time raiding become another full time JoB. Would like to raid casually if the numbers are there to if people are up to it, if not have fun running Heroics. Just dont want my fun time to become a JoB to peform in itself. But I also like the suggestion above from previous posters.


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