Trying to find a new home. Frag said I might be able to find one

[Kevin]

What we are really looking for is a group that we can run instances with. Sure, getting some KZ or ZA (or even beyond) would be super, but few of us are geared for that.

OK I keep reading this from people and I keep laughing at it.

We've had toons that were literally 70 for only an hour or so, in mostly greens in T6 content with us. Yes I fully understand that this can be frustrating for the person playing that toon and it certainly isn't as helpful as that same toon played well wearing T4 or T5 or T6 gear. But it's better than going with 23 or 24 people. Yes I make the assumption that the undergearer toon has done their homework and found out how the encounter works or at least has asked someone else playing their class to give them the basics. 500-600 DPS from a new L70 hunter in greens and blues who understands shot rotations and knows how to "stay out of the fire" so they aren't really adding any healing burden certainly is not a well geared hunter doing 1300 - 1600 DPS. But they are certainly better than zero DPS from having no one there. They are better than a well geared hunter who doesn't understand shot rotations and is still only doing 500-600 DPS. Or a well geared hunter who understands shot rotations and can do 1300 - 1600 DPS but dies after only 10-30% of the fight is over on a consistent basis (we all make mistakes or suffer from lag spikes or have a cat jump on our keyboard and the best of us can muck up and die early every now and then).

Gear is a side effect of the game (even though it's required to progress your toons after a certain point and a minimal level is required to be able to unlock new content as well). I know that isn't the attitude of everyone in the guild and I've obsessed over pieces of gear as well. Heck I talk about gear all the time. I mention weekly that I want X or Y in guild chat on my hunter even. However if I don't get it and we keep on making progress on Kael or in BT I'll be happy. Even if it takes a long time to make any of that progress. To me (and many others in the guild) the goal of the game is to do the best I can with what I have and have fun with people I like. I'm willing to work with that any time any place. It means we've gone into raids at times with very little chance to win. Everything has to go perfect for us to win because we have no margin for error with the gear or the raid composition we are running with or the numbers because we are going in with only 20 people or whatever. Often we fail in those situations or only partially succeed, but many of us still have quite a lot of fun trying. Sometimes we win in those situations as well because everyone does perform perfectly. And those are fun too.

Goofing off is encouraged to a point. But it's expected that if goofing off caused a problem that you are able to turn on the "serious" and get the job done after the issues have come up. The game is for fun. And we understand this doesn't fit everyone. Which is why I try to be up front about it. It's why we've had a few members raid with other guilds because the fun for them is more about progressing (seeing new content) or progressing faster than what we push for.

But I want to clear up that just because your gear is not where you want it to be or where it's generally expected for it to be for certain content shouldn't mean you should exclude yourself from content with us. Yes, if we do somehow ever manage to get more than 25 signed up for a raid, gear can come into consideration. There are some fights where if you can't reach X HP or X DPS then you actually can be a detriment to the raid. But most raid encounters even if you die right away you have still likely helped the raid more than if you were an empty spot. :)

So yeah we are an exception when it comes to raiding. Some of that is from the fact that we can't always fill rosters. But even when we could, we run a queue system for rostering. As long as the raid appeared viable (and usually when we had more folks than slots the decisions the raid leaders made about what was viable were correct though admitted sometimes we put together raids that failed) we would sit anyone. We sat our best geared tank and our best geared healer because it was their turn on a run and we still killed a new boss. The goal, when we are in that good situation, from the point of view of progression and planning, of having more people than slots is to get everyone into the content, which is why the system that many members have never seen in action, means you are more likely to sit if you have raided recently and more likely to go if you only have raid availability one night a week.

It does mean you may end up in content you are less happy to see 2 or 3 raids in a row before the content you really want to see just doesn't fall on the schedule right or because of how sign-ups work for raid viability. But we always try to make sure that you can see the content. Heck just a month or so ago we scheduled a Kara run for a member who has a very erratic schedule and set it up to make sure he got to see some of the bosses in there that he had never seen or only seen once despite the fact that this person was on our very first Kara run, that happened in March of 07 and even though we've run as many as 4 Kara locks in one week a few times. We sat a couple of folks who normally would have gotten priority for Kara because the gear would have been good for them. Of course we later made sure that those folks who needed gear got runs.

It doesn't happen as fast as some people like, that is for sure. It's an extreme case where it takes over a year to get folks to see the content they want but we do try. That's what I like the guild to be about, try to keep it about. We fail at it sometimes. But I feel we succeed more often than not.

Why do I keep putting up walls of text on this line of thinking recently? I think it's because WotLK is coming out soon and things will pick up as far as activity again when it does and I know the differences in play speed of different guild members will show up again. Some folks will get to 80 way before others and get to instances way before others, but I want to try and make sure that as many folks as possible will get to see teh 5 mans level and gear appropriate since some people love that more than anything else in game and I want people to know that raids and progression will happen again, most likely 10 man versions but maybe 25 mans and that we will do our best to include everyone in the guild. Maybe not as often as some folks would like but we will try.

And of course folks new to the guild have to understand that I post walls of text a lot. :)