Monday, January 15, 2007

Too soon to tell

The announcement that WoW would be moving from a 40-man raid model to a 25-man was made several months ago. Some successful raid guilds felt as this player did and were unhappy with the idea. How do you decide who will get cut from the roster? Will your guild run two 25-mans? Will there be an A team and a B team?

Some players and smaller guilds felt finally they would have a chance at being autonomous yet be able to progress as well as larger raid guilds or alliances. Their problem wasn't finding the time to play, but finding 39 other people to play with.

Until recently, my guild's raid leaders hadn't said much on the matter. Finally, with BC upon us, they gave their plans to push 25-man content: Grind fast to 70 and forming alliances with other guilds who have players at 70. In other words there are no plans to wait on slow levelers in our own guild before tackling the new dungeons.

This is what I think separates a raid guild from a regular guild. A raid guild is less about playing with people you like than playing with like-minded players.

While it is too soon to tell what will happen with the guild, I can speculate. If you don't get to 70 soon you will quickly be left behind. Guild ties will not hold you a spot.

That leads me to make a decision. Do I focus on grinding or leveling at a more relaxed pace? Do I focus on enjoying the quests and content, or do I grind instances over and over again for rep and xp gains. More simply, do I want to be a raider or not in BC?

Are any of you facing that decision? What will you do tonight?

7 comments:

Daryl W.T. Lau said...

Love your site very very much... I was wondering if you'd mind exchanging links with my wow site named - World of Warcraft Tips, Guides & Exploits

The url is:
http://wow-tips.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should reduce the number of ads on your blog, daryl. Also, popups are irritating.

I'm actually not reactivating my account until next weekend. Not because I can't, but to start off on the right foot of not caring too much about going fast. Also, I'm dropping my main and starting over on one of the new servers. I want to make sure I always have fun while playing, and don't get lost in grinding or anything boring like that.

Daryl W.T. Lau said...

yeah.. I hear you! Can get tiring chasing the jones and time consuming too. I presume you're gonna try out the new class?

Anonymous said...

I'm a guild leader of a small guild (about 20 accounts) we formed a month ago after our 100+ account raiding guild died.

As I participated in TBC beta, and have seen a great deal of the expansion, I strongly advised my guild mates to not to hurry and not rush through to lvl 70, but rather enjoy the expansion content as much as possible, do some exploring and try to stay together and maybe find some like-minded people to let our guild grow.
Level 70 and the new endgame content is coming early enough, and we got all the time of the world, although we certainly do have raiding ambitions, as well as a strong PvP orientation.

Cap'n John said...

A Guildie forwarded me a directive he found from one Hard Core Raiding Guild Leader about what his Guild members can expect post BC.

Essentially, a lot of Instance Runs, in fact nothing but Instance Runs, all the way to 70. When they log in, as soon as a spot becomes available in one Instance Group, they are expected to be there, grinding away, doing the BC Instances over, and over, and over, until they're ready to log out, at which point someone else in the Guild will take their place.

If they attempt to complete quests other than those completed in Instances, if they attempt to experience new content when they're needed in an Instance, if they're caught rolling another Toon to experience one of the new races, the Guild Leader promised to /gkick them.

He has estimated that with this method most of his Guild should be able to ding 70 within 3 weeks, at which point they will begin working on the new lvl 70 Instances.

Now that's serious hard core, and not something I want any part of. I wouldn't mind experiencing the lvl 70 25-man Instances, but I'll get to 70 on my own time and I'll do the Instances when I'm ready.

I'm only a casual hard core gamer, I'm not true hard core.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, that's pretty sad. Hard to understand why one would avoid content like that.

Yane (Yet another night elf) said...

One of the top, if not THE top raiding guilds is sporting 30 or so L70s within a week of BC being released.

So while 3 weeks sounds amazing to us, for those competitive raiding guilds that's slow!

Capn John I'm casual hard core too. If I had the free time I can see myself attempting to be hard core - not sure if that's a good thing however.

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