Naxxramas

[MongoJerry]

Major raid burn out is common phenomenon nowadays in the World of Azeroth. First it was blamed on the subpar design and itemization of AQ, but more and more voices suspect underlying fundemantal issues, such as an overboarding raid duty as you have pointed out.

The Core has solved this problem by basically eliminating MC altogether, unless some night happens where the lag in AQ40 is too bad to bother, and by getting more efficient with our BWL runs. There's enough loot dropping in BWL and AQ40 that we can skip the MC middleman. Someone new to the guild can just come along and pick up any loot that we would d/e anyway. Plus, those who want to raid more often or equip their alts can come on the optional AQ20 and ZG raids and get loot that's equal to or better than MC loot without burning out the guildmembers who don't want to raid as often.

At the same time, we've gotten our BWL runs down to 3 1/2 hours and have become more efficient about killing the early AQ40 bosses. So, we spend one evening clearing BWL, one evening killing the first four bosses in AQ40 (maybe the first five now -- we did that on Tuesday), and then we have the weekend to work on new AQ40 bosses. The other nights are officially off for the guild but those who want to raid more often can run AQ20 and ZG. (Sometimes we run those after the 40-man raids if we get done early enough). This gets everybody the loot they want, lets us have some time to work on new bosses, and at the same time doesn't cause raid burnout.

So what'll happen when Naxxramas comes out? Probably by then, we'll have gotten to the point where we can run all of AQ40 in one night. So, we'll be able to run BWL one night, AQ40 the next night, and then have the weekends to try out Naxxramas. Of course, by then, we'll have so much loot that we might not even need to run BWL anymore. Already some people are grumbling that we should skip BWL and put more quality time nailing down the Twin Emps in AQ40.