The thread in the Raid Leader section prompts this post. The officers need to decide (and fairly quickly) what you want to aim for. You're reaching the stage where you are already leaving some people out and more importantly you're really not that far away from being able to put all bosses in Karazhan on farm status. So where does SOG go from there? Do you want to go for Gruul?
If you want to move forward then you probably need to consider several things:
A second Karazhan group - this will help gear up new & existing members for a 25 person raid instance.
Loot system - if you're moving to 25 peron raids then look at whether or not you should use a loot system again.
Recruitment - any of the above need more members. Teni has already listed basic requirements but you ar eprobably not that far form fulfilling most of them.
There's a bunch of logistical and structural questions that spin off from the above, but I'd suggest you put your heads together in a TS meeting RealSoonNow(TM) as you will need time to prepare and implement any plan.
The alternative is to decide to remain a purely social guild and stop at 10 person raid instances.
Over to you.
TL.
I don't have a very clear and structured view about this right now, so I'm just gonna toss out some loose ideas that are right on top of my mind.
First about the Karazhan runs we have at the moment: we are slowly moving forward, but it does seem like there is till some time before we can say to have that on farm. Now I don't know really how hard the remaining bosses are in the rest of the instance, but with the pace we've had this far, a loose guess could be at the end of the summer. It might seem slow, but I for one at least don't mind that.
As I can recall, we seem to have just the people we need to fill one Kara group. Usually there are only one or two in the queue - think I've seen three people queued only once or twice. We also have about just enough of each of the classes as well (usually a healer/lock/druid that is queued), so if we were to start a 2nd Kara group, we would need almost a whole new raid group with new folks, of the right classes...
Why we have this few sign-ups I really don't know. We have about 100 folks in the guild, which most now are 70 (and many are attuned), so if people just don't feel like raiding, or it's the wrong days or something - who knows... Perhaps we should have a poll about that at some point?
As for 25-mans. If and when we start with it, I think it is clear that we need to have a loot system. Just rolling have worked very well in Karazhan in my opinion, but when the raid is more than twice the size, that isn't really an option.
About recruiting people to get enough to fill 25 slots (or two 10-mans): if we need to have a bulk recruitment of half of those, than I think that is something we should pass on. 3, 4 or perhaps 5 new people at once would be ok, but 10-15 just brings too many unknown factors at the same time.
Also remember, that we've just recently gone through the summer exam period, and it is now summer, so many people are more busy and doing other stuff, so I don't think the coming month is the right time to start crewing up.
Perhaps SOG is meant to be a "small" guild for some time still. Personally, I really like what we have now - it is nice, easy and moving forward at a very laid-back pace. There is no rush about things, which I feel is good.
I have some more thoughts as well, but have kind of a hard time putting them in writing... Will add some more later if it comes to me :)
Thanks for that Bob, it is helpful.
Re the remaining bosses in Karazhan: you do not have that much left.
Prince you got down to 40% on your first tries, so he'll drop imminently.
Nightbane is the hardest boss left and you'll be able to summon Nightbane once Gorion completes a couple of heroic runs.
Netherspite and Illhoof are simply a matter of understanding the mechanics and then following orders. If you got Prince to 40% then you can do both of those.
And that's it for Karazhan - 4 bosses left. So not long to plan to either remain a Kara only raid guild or to plan to advance to Gruul.
As for size: another option is to make an Alliance with another guild for 25 man raids. Alliances have been very successful on this server - Righteous was a different alliance for each raid group, SOG started out in an Alliance when we did not have enough to get into a 10 man instance on our own! Currently the Dice/Neverwhere alliance has 2 bosses down in SSC and The Union (an alliance between Lords of Midnight, Order of Avalon, The Bridge Keepers, Band of Brothers) has downed Maulgar and is now working on Gruul.
The point being you do not have to be large to raid and you do nto have to be small to have fun. You just need to have a plan and know the direction in which you're heading!
TL.
Four bosses left - I reckon three weeks and we're finished in KZ (although ironically Lucian will have only one piece of epic armour from there by that time I reckon).
I do still want to progress however, so my vote is for an alliance. Quite honestly however, I don't have a baldy who to ally with.
I would open recruitment for one more member of every class and then see where we stand.
That should take us another step forward towards getting in Gruul's lair. Ideally I think SOG should set itself the target of downing Gruul before the end of the summer.
Got a chance to browse the forums a bit, so I just wanna add another comment here whilst it still is fresh in mind.
It's regarding to the thread out in the raiding section where some folks asked for getting the next raids up on the sign-up site:
Quote from: Gorion;196813remember, we are not a hardcore raiding guild, and theres no bindings regarding if you raid or not, same thing goes to the officers aswell, no one is bound
I believe that was a very good answer, and it catches the essence of what I really like with SOG the way it has turned out :thumbsup2: