On the Proudmoore forums today, more than 30 out of the 50 most recent forum threads were of raiding guilds (including a lot of the top guilds on our server) requiring a healthy mix of tanks, healers or DPSers... even a couple specifying hunters, which you'd never expect to happen.
This isn't, however, restricted to just my server - I've been seeing a lot of bloggers posting about their raider shortage lately, and if they're anything like me they'd really rather be posting about something else and only do so out of desperation.
(And speaking of desperation: Southern Wardens needs DPS; visit our guild forums if you're interested. Please. Trying to get a full raid to try Sarth2D/3D is like a PvEer trying to hit 2000 Arena rating at the moment)
So... where are all the applicants?
Personally, I'm blaming Blizzard's new raiding design.
You couldn't really PuG the 40man raids at 60 (except maybe MC/Ony), therefore you needed to join a guild. You couldn't really PuG 25man BC raids (pre-nerf, and not counting Gruul/Mag) at 70 either.
On the other hand, PuGging WotLK raids is so easy that I often see LFG notes indicating they'll only join if there are 2+ drakes up on Sarth, or that they have the key for Malygos and the Achievement for killing him.
Non-guilded casuals aren't forced to join a guild to raid like they were in pre-WotLK times; you can raid when you like and still get gear from Emblems if you have bad dice.
I'm even guilty of doing it myself - my only kills of 10man Malygos have been in PuGs, and I have one of the best (and best-looking!) hunter melee weapons to show for it. I've also been known to PuG 25mans when I know my guild isn't doing it that week.
Will Ulduar be hard enough to force people to start applying to guilds? I don't know. On the one hand, I hope so, because my guild needs raiders. On the other hand, I don't, because I like having the option to PuG stuff if I want to.
Of course, I can always hope that there are enough people on Proudmoore to be able to have both....
3 comments:
I'm hoping that Ulduar ramps up the difficulty enough that it pushes people to join guilds to run it.
I'm also hoping that a lot of people continue to run Naxx in pugs, purely so I can get some fun in on my pally once she hits 80 :)
As for your dual-spec question? Tank/Boomkin for Urs and Tank/Heal for Madwynn. I still haven't managed to get the hunter past level 70 - the horde quests in howling fjord are just annoying :)
I'd come to a lot of the same conclusions, Phyl - I think Naxx being an easy entrance has been great for individual players, especially the more casual, but it's been hell on organised guilds.
I anticipate that when Ulduar comes out:
a) people who want to see it will have to join a guild
b) new, badly-organised guilds who don't have the resilience to cope with difficult progression and wipe nights - who are just in it for the easy wins - will fracture and the keen raiders will trickle into guilds that _do_ have the ability to cope with failing without drama.
That sounds judgemental of me; it's not meant to be, just trying to be realistic :) The guilds that have been raiding since TBC or before remember what it was like wiping for a month on Razorgore, or trying to get past Moroes, and so on. We don't give up when we fail. I'm sure some of the new guilds will evolve into strong raiding forces themselves, but some will collapse when they come up against a harder obstacle, and they'll feed their raiders back into the recruitment pool.
...I hope!
nice post!
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