So I was gone for more than a week. There are numerous reasons why:

  1. Shifting a hardcore raiding guild from one expansion to another is not easy.
  2. Having your co-GM go casual because of real life can create administrative hurdles.
  3. Thanksgiving
  4. Work
  5. School

Shifting Lunacy to a New Expansion

This expansion was the first in which I had to shift an existing guild from one expansion to the next (as a leader). In the other games I’ve played, this transition was always relatively simple. So I had no prior experience on which to develop my ideas, which hurt in the end. With Dark Age of Camelot, I was a casual player and didn’t much care about what a new expansion meant. Trials of Atlantis pretty much forced people to raid, but raiding was easy and you could simply brute force your way through it. And if you didn’t like Trials of Atlantis, you could simply reroll on a classic server. During the shift from WoW 1.0 to TBC, I was creating a guild from scratch, rather than preparing people for the shift and preparing for the loss of some people. And I wasn’t really around to see how my previous guild handled it.

This expansion was particularly interesting because it didn’t take long to level at all. The first person to 80 on our realm (from my guild) hit it in well less than two days. By comparison, I was the first person to 70 on Proudmoore in TBC, and it took me about double the time it took him to accomplish the realm first. People didn’t believe me when I said I would be 80 by the Monday after release, even though I had to work on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (albeit with two partial days). Sure enough, I was ready to raid by Monday morning. As were a handful of people in the guild. We tried to marathon the 10-man on Monday, but came up just short as it we raided into the wee hours of the morning.

The Mistake

One mistake I made was assuming that we wouldn’t be ready to raid the 25-man until Thursday. I also wanted to try running two Naxx-10′s and decided to wait until Wednesday for that. However, we clearly didn’t have what we needed to do two Naxx-10′s, so we essentially wasted Tuesday doing nothing but heroics. What we should have done was start Naxx-10 on Tuesday, finish it on Wednesday and then use that gear to work our way through Naxx-25 undermanned.

As a result of this mistake, we lost the server first on Naxx-25. Another guild raided something like 22 hours over two days to do it, while we were on off our raiding schedule. We got the server second on Sunday.

While we ended up losing, we realized a couple things:

  1. This content is easy. Such that losing the server first on Naxx-25 is no big deal, as the content is akin to Zul’Aman. All we lost is a title.
  2. We cleared it in less than half the time it took the guild that got the realm first. Actually, we cleared it in a third of the time. So that speaks well of the core of our guild.

That’s not to say there wasn’t any drama. Some people whined about losing the title. And another got melodramatic over the loss saying “shit is going to hit the fan.” My response was essentially that he has to view the situation realistically and abstain from overreacting. It wasn’t as though we had lost the server first on Malygos, afterall.

Rectifying the Mistake

I knew a realm first on Malygos was easily in our sights. We had all day Monday to work on it, and people who were familiar with the encounter already. In response to the member expressing his concerns after losing the realm first on Naxx-25, I simply said “We can get the server first on Malygos.” And I was damn confident in this, as we had no problem getting it on Malygos-10. That’s not to say our strategy for phase three was perfect, but it worked.

And, sure enough, we accomplished it easily.

Guild Leadership Changes

Not only was it difficult to transition Lunacy from one expansion to another, but it has been even more difficult to do so with my co-GM stepping down. I had to promote someone to help me lead the guild, and they are only just really settling into the position. And I’ve had to find another to help even out the load. This increased my workload about two-fold from the already hefty weight of managing the loss of members and change of classes some people desired.

I’ve had to transfer my guild’s domain and set up new hosting, which I am not quite done with, yet. I’ve had to figure out how to restructure the guild with personnel changes in mind. And I’ve had to worry about the funding involved, as I am a poor student. Also, I’ve had to juggle this between work and school. And Thanksgiving was fairly busy, as well.

So my guild isn’t quite where I want it to be. However, then again, the content now is so easy that I think it would have been an major accomplishment to improve given the number of guilds out there that raid five, six and seven days a week. It was like the second coming of the ZA race, only bigger and with the added requirement of leveling up. Who can log on first? Who can level first? Who can raid enough to beat everyone else on the simpler accomplishments?

This Race Was More About Numbers and Time; Skill Has Been Unheralded

The race for world and realm firsts at the beginning of this expansion was more about time and numbers, as opposed to skill. That’s not to say that skill wasn’t a factor, however. It most certainly was. But consider the merge of SK Gaming (a.k.a. Curse) and Nihilum to create Ensidia. What has this done for top-end raiding?

Most importantly, it allows the guild to share their members across multiple raids. And it is more than likely that every single one of their players is highly skilled and considered on nearly equal playing fields. What this means is that roster crossover doesn’t have much of an impact and you can man an A raid and B raid based on who gets the best drops.

Consider if this had happened in TBC. Suppose Nihilum and SK Gaming each get one pair of glaives for their rogues before Sunwell is released. (I realize Nihilum had poor luck, I’m speaking hypothetically.) Instead of just managing with one pair in a raid, or recruiting new rogues with glaives, they could instead place those two rogues in the same raid when Sunwell comes out. By doing so, they avoid recruiting new rogues, which takes time and comes without a guarantee of finding someone as skilled as they need. Instead, they can simply share their members and increase the possibility of one raid’s success, without having to extend too far beyond their current roster.

What’s interesting to note, however, is that it seems Ensidia overlooked the skill involved in the 10-man Twilight Zone. By all accounts, including my own, doing Sartharion with three drakes in the 10-man is more difficult than doing it in the 25-man. And Method actually beat them to this accomplishment. But while Method received a nice blurb about it on World of Raids, WoWProgress doesn’t recognize the accomplishment as part of raiding progress. So while Method got the world first on the 10-man Twilight Zone, they only have the 9th world ranking to show for it.

This highlights an increasing dilemma amongst the raiding world. WoWProgress has jumped on this, but only for the heroic version of “The Twilight Zone.” Achievements like “Heroic: A Poke in the Eye,” “The Immortal,” and “Heroic: You Don’t Have an Eternity” are equally deserving of recognition, if not moreso than Twilight Zone.

In my opinion, Might is unheralded as one of the best guilds in the world in terms of skill. But they only have a 57th world ranking on WoWProgress to show for it. That is honestly tragic when they are in the top five in the world to do some of the most difficult achievements in the game right now.

I Like Hard Modes; I Like Achievements; But Realm Firsts for Some of Them, Please

I like the fact that Blizzard has included a hard mode for Sartharion and achievements that are worth doing to obtain some recognition. And I think every new encounter should have some kind of hard mode that results in more or better gear, as it would allow hardcore guilds to separate themselves from guilds that simply brute force them. With this possibility, I am actually inclined to look at the current content in a better light. I was initially disdainful, until we put in some serious work on Sartharion with three drakes up. I think this is a good direction for raiding.

However, Blizzard needs to have the foresight to track realm firsts for some of these “hard modes” to give guilds the recognition they truly deserve. I feel quite confident that my guild is on track to get the realm first on the heroic version of “The Twilight Zone,” but we won’t get an announcement for it like we did when we killed him the first time with 19 fresh level 80′s.

This is a great direction. It just needs some refinement.

Ulduar Is Where It Truly Begins

Naxxramas is retreaded content. Sartharion, Malygos and Archavon are the only new content. And all three are jokes on the surface, as they should be at entry level. Guild progress right now is in an unimportant state, especially with the holidays also coming up. Ulduar is where the raiding game will truly begin. And it won’t end until Icecrown. Don’t discount guilds that cleared Sunwell, but got off to a slow start in Lich King. It says very little. Especially if they are doing well on the more difficult achievements.