Attendance & Burnout

[Kevin]

If we were cooperating as a guild we might coordinate teams of similiarly leveled characters, and then make regular times and level 4-5 up most quickly and at the same time.
[right][snapback]90213[/snapback][/right]

And this is in essence the problem for me.

I'm already starting to feel that everything I'm doing in this game is "for the raids". Of course since Blizzard designed the game to only really have character progression through items late game and put those items in raids that is kinda what you have to do to progress a high level character.

How do I keep it fun? By not making everything be about the raids. I thought I would need to stop raiding but the friday night 5 man runs that I get on Terenas help me out a lot.

However the problem with Stormrage and doing this is that we are too big for it. If we say that Wednesdays will be 5 man and small raid nights we'll get groups together but I'll hate that initial time of "who goes where and how do we set up the groups". The organization of a group this large starts to take a fair bit of time. You can structure it more to make that eaiser but then it becomes "Well I need to get on to play this toon for this group" not "I'm gonna play some WoW and have some fun!" Too much scheduling of a game just gets to me. It also has a tendency to make core groups of people that have lots of times with "outsiders" of the people that don't have as much time. Not really something I want to see.

So this discussion isn't all that different than the one we had a few months ago, about how do we get enough people up there so we can raid UBRS and scholo and strat? How do I get people for high level quests? I'm willing to help but how do I know who needs the help?

In game guild housing with a quest/instance help board would be nice since that would be an easy to update and follow thing but well Blizzard didn't want to go that route. It becomes too much work to maintain a list outside of the game, we've tried a bit with that already and failed.

I still go on raids for the social interaction and the challenge of the fights. Sure we almost never lose to Luci, but the fight always throws a few twists in there that make you have to react to be successful. Though that is more so for a warrior or a healer (the only things I've done the fight with), I would imagine that a mage or hunter would deal with each fight pretty much the same. For me having Gnolack be in just about every tanking roll you can have has helped me too. It's fun to be the MT but I don't want to do it every run. It's fun to be second tank/DPS caller, but again I like to switch it up.

Mirajj has been puller on the last few MC runs. The next few I lead he won't be, unless no other hunter wants to do it. I think that actually helps and doesn't slow us down too much.

Hopefully we can get the new loot system in place soon so there is one less thing for some of us to think about.

Another thing for me is that when I'm not raiding I'd like to spend time playing with my wife, Treesh, who doesn't like raiding. Her schedule of course makes that harder and harder to do, but having fun with her is more important to me than having fun with anyone else.

Raid scheduling is already looking like it's due for a change. Though we failed on the last Onyxia run (1% arrgh!) we should be more successful with her and the current rotation means we lose chance at a kill every 2 weeks. Molten Core either needs larger blocks of time or time when we can make sure we have the people there.

If we want to expand the pool it would be better to do it from players that aren't already raiding but might want to. I know RTM, Bolty, and Meg are coming up the ranks do they want to raid on a semi-regular basis? If they do how much help do they want in getting to 60 faster? Is there anyone else that is approaching "raid" age that thinks they want help getting there? I would much rather get more people than more toons to raiding age.

I don't want to ask anyone to play a class. I want people to play a class because they enjoy it. Not everyone will enjoy every class and the more you enjoy the class the better you are at it. Of course I'm not bringing up any of my alts just so we have another raid option. I'm bringing up my alts because I enjoy playing them. If they happen to be able to help out in a raid, great. Balador after a few more BRD runs and poke or two in UBRS will be ready raid and will be 58 or 59 from just doing that stuff so I'll have a paladin I can bring along if need be (though we are rarely shot on paladins).

I've also seen comments that healers may not be needed so much. That I'll never buy. I think there has only been one run where I thought "We might have too much healing" and that was one of the smoothest runs I've ever seen us have. We have a distinct lack of healing in the guilds still. Some of it has prevented non raid runs from happening. I know that I've had to take Taranna along on runs or they wouldn't happen. I left a pubby UBRS run for a shot at the shield to heal an alliance run. Gnolack still doesn't have a drac deflector. I'm the only consistent tank who doesn't have one now either. And right now I'd almost rather get my UBRS key completed then do a UBRS run...

I don't know I'm rambling. But I don't see a way to make the raids more fun and cut down on raid burn out without hurting the non raid scheduling. Of course if we don't keep some focus on raids we'll continue to lose members who want to get to more raid content faster.

As much as I want to see Zul'Gurrub I'm not going there without missing an Ony or MC run because I don't want to raid anymore than I do now. So I'll keep waiting until we get more consisten 40 mans going before I pull out of them. I'm still having fun on them even though we haven't gotten anywhere on the last two so I'll stick with those so that 39 others have a better shot at them working. Then I'll start dropping from those to see Zul'Gurrub every now and then.

Oh well this is way too long and rambly....