RG1 and Progress...

[Menedil]

Who actually wants to go to MC? From what i understand, we mostly do MC still because it helps guildbank out with moneys for flask of titans etc. Fair enough, we DO need this. But doing MC once a week is holding us back; this is time which would be better spent in AQ40 getting experience. A lot of people dont even bother to show up if they know MC is going to happen. Would it be the same if it was AQ40? Im EXCITED to go to AQ40. If its MC I'm more than likely to be afk/not putting effort in.

I dont know about the rest of RG1, but the best part of raiding for me is the first boss kill; putting in effort and achieving something. Unfortunatley i dont see many first kills on the horizon for us, whilst we're in our current situation. It's a shame because I believe we have the ability to succeed, but perhaps a lot of people lack motivation to go further. I know im sick of molten core after a year and its really making me lose interest in raiding in general, not just in MC.

To the officers: How much money do we on average make from a molten core run for guildbank? Perhaps we can find a way to generate this through other means, and then maybe have an aq40 raid night every week which isnt just "oh we have 2 hours left after killing nef, lets go to aq40". I know AQBank has a LOT of potential revenue sitting there unwanted, im sure we could afford to run MC only fortnightly, if at all.

I realise that a few people might need their T2 leggings still... but we killed ragnaros nearly 7 months ago, he must have dropped 50 pairs of leggings for us. Some people probably do deserve to get theirs if they havent already, but does everyone else deserve to be held back on progress because of it? MC is last years instance. We need to move forward.

Naxxramas is now open as im sure you all know, and we're only just starting AQ40. People want to get in there and see what it's all about. With new instances coming out every 6 months or so, why are we still doing MC after 12 months?

For me a night in Naxx wiping would be worth 10 in MC, and I know many feel the same, so we BEG you PLEASE let us make progress!!!

Maybe this thread makes no sense, but i dont care!

[Luthor]

I think youre making some good points here, really worth listening too.

[Voretex]

Joint RG1 and RG2 MC night might be TEH BEST?

[Bastet]

worth chatting about.

[Gorion]

i really want my TF

[Sandrion]

Lately I have been thinking about stuff related to the raid groups, there progress, there problems and there future (both short term as post expansion).
 
Here are some of them:
 
Firstly the one you stated Menedil. Because you are still doing the older easier dungeons there is only little time available for learning in a new one. RG2 will have the same problem soon enough, since we need one day for MC and the second for Onyxia and BWL. After downing a few bosses in BWL there just won't be any time left for further progression, even if we'd do MC and Onyxia on the same day.
 
Another concern I have is people with blue gear joining a raid group in the near future. For MC this isn't much of a problem, but since RG2 now also started raiding in BWL, it won't really be possible for 'new' people to join a raid group. How will this influence recruitment?
 
Third, when the expansion arrives (end of this year, probably in November) this will have a major impact, since not everyone will buy it and the raidgroups might need to be re-formed. Maybe there won't even be a second raid group that is raiding expansion content. It's better to anticipate this, then to wait for the problem to arrive.
 
And then there is the attendance problem ..., well I think you get the point.
 
I have some suggestions regarding this, but I'll post those tomorrow :happy:  (since I gtg now).

[KreuZ]

Have to say that I agree with this personally and those who haven't gotten the Tier2 legs can most likely get something else from AQ40 when we've progressed just a little bit more. Unless we cut MC soon, we'll only have 1 day max on AQ40 progress which is very little.

[Ashjen]

kk Mene made some exellent points here, that are unarguable. also basicly what kreuz said. i just want to show my support for this argument which is very valid. but id also like to add something. and thats about motivation and the lack of it .. i just see some peeps not going that extra mile to get us where we belong. yes if you raid it costs gold yes it hurts if we wipe. but seriously you cant just expect to get all bosses down on 1-2 try. i see a lot of  ppl just making some lame excuse, and then leaving allways after just some wipes. leaving another 30 guys who are burning for more tries hanging <_<

yeh we all got RL. but it all comes down to your motivation and enthustiasm. if you are exited about some new bosses you wil stay for as many wipes as it takes and then some. what we really lack atm is this enthustiasm. i use about  5 major mana pots in BWl just on nef. this is not becos i want to feel special, but it is becos its necessary. we all need to show a little motivation for raids. use 30 mins of your daytime  instead of dueling/some other worhtless time taking stuff, to get you that edge!
 that you know wil help you and your guild in their raid succes! what ever it could be. fishing/farming/trading. all that.

atm i am working full time. night shifts, early morning shifts all that. i got a gf  that needs time as well and hobbies. yet stil i find time to play, it takes sacrifices like raiding til 1 AM and waking up at 6 AM :thumbsdown: but hey! this is the lifestyle i have chosen, and i am gonna try to take the best i can out of it. yes it sux to be tired at work but every1 is facing these problems. it all comes down to who wants it most! and i see atleast a handfull of ppl allways doing their best, allways wanting to go an extra mile and being ready to  make sacrifices for it. so this is my plea either PUT UP meaning do your best to not leave a raid til its actually called(unless you got an emergency ofc  b) and if you find within yourself to not be cabaple of, or just lost the motivation. plz leave your spot to some1 who is ready! tbh lately ive been starting to think about quitting wow again... raiding with friends takes a man far but theres limits, like menedil said we need to work our way to AQ40 by whatever means for motivation Fun and raid proggress. ultimately were going to want to do naxx. SoG has lot of potential this has been proven, now we just need to find it and use it !

and lastly one thing i have noticed. is this odd thing we have that i have not seen in those "top guilds" this ridiculous afking between wipes /buffing. this really needs to stop:angry: 39 ppl cant wait 10 mins on one person for 10 mins. you do a boss you wipe you res you buff you talk about it on ts and you go... there is no 20 mins brake in between. or there really shouldnt be i hope we get to cut this annoing habit soon.

[Voretex]

I agree with ashjen

[Menedil]

im just wondering what happened to the SOG spirit.. think back to december/january last year when we were SO damned close to taking ragnaros down, almost everyone that raided farmed for fire prot pots, mongoose pots, mroe FR gear, you name it we put effort into it, and damn was it rewarding when we got him down....

how times have changed.

[Voretex]

Thats not true at all menedil.

I farmed over 150 FP pots solo, used them all in 1 raid.

SOLO (gathered them solo)

There was no spirit there

But i agree with u in principle.

[jantore]

I think for us to do MC, BWL and AQ40 we need to have 40 ppl show upp all the time and do the following.
 
Thursday
BWL
 
Sunday
If needed BWL then MC
 
Tuesday
AQ40
 
Or the following
 
Thursday
1915 MC pulling at 1930. Finish at 2200.
BWL 2215 do Razegore, Vael and Broodlord. Finish at 2400
 
Sunday
1915 BWL pull at 1930 do remaining bosses. Maybe finish at 2200. Then go to AQ40 kill Skeram.
 
Tuesday
AQ40 and have a full day taking the next bosses on the list.
 
If we are 40 ppl online we will do MC in less then 2 hours and 30 min. BWL we clear in one full night and if we can do 3 bwl bosses the same day as MC we can do the rest of BWL verry fast. Without whiping from firemaw to Nef takes about 2 hours.
 
So that will leaves time for AQ40. But this req that everyone in the raid focus.
 
U say that oh MC is boring. I had the feeling a while back to, but now i have a challange and that is to do as much dmg as possible for the entire raid. I know that healers might feel bored but we warlocks try to give u somthing to do sometimes, so please heal us if we should get agro. It will be more interesting.
 
So if we are still going to do MC and be able to AQ40 this is what needs to happen. PPL need to focus alot more and we need to raid to 2400.
 
When did Ragnaros the first time we played untill 0100. And did a full mc clear. And we used to play in MC untill we where finished, no matter if the time was 0100. So ppl u are guardians and raid time is from 1915 to 2400. So u are actually req to stay the entire raid.

[Bob]

If its MC I'm more than likely to be afk/not putting effort in.

Who are you to talk about focus in MC Menedil?  I guess it's not long untill you say the same thing about BWL, heck it seems like we're almost there...  It doesn't really seem that you are max focused at Nefarian either; starting to host that poker game as soon as the killing blow hits you...  That doesn't exactly help out on raid focus either!
Ashjen said something very clever that I think sums up that part pretty good: "you do a boss you wipe you res you buff you talk about it on ts and you go..."

I'm very aware that this might have been a bit under the belt, but it's something that has slightly (understated...) annoyed me (and others, I'm not alone about this part) since it started a couple of weeks ago.
I just had to blow out some steam, and for that you might think low of me, but I'm gonna try to be a bit more fair for the rest of my post.


First of all, what you're saying about lack of focus and enthusiasm: if you take a look at last weeks raids, that problem isn't only in MC.  It has been many times that we've had problems even filling the BWL raids with fully motivated people, and that's a shame.  And even though MC is by fare routine for us, it doesn't mean it has to be booring (you can read my oppinions about this in [post=140280]another post I made[/post] on the subject).

Secondly we have the problem about too little time in AQ40.  This is a problem the way it is now, no doubt about that.  One can't have great progress in a new instance if one have less than a night's raid for it each week.  But it doesn't have to be that way, and we don't have to skip MC to get more time in AQ either.
As of now, our best clearance of MC is 2h37min, and that wasn't even a speed-run attempt.  It shouldn't be too hard for us to push that down to 2h30.  If you look at BWL we have had the best time there at 4h48min, and here we have much room for improvement - should be doable at 3h30 I would guess.
If you sum those two, you get a total of 6 hours, which means one hour longer than our raid night is now.  The conclusion one can draw from that, is that we can either add 1h to Thursday raid night and clear both MC and BWL in one go, or leave the last hour (say Chrom and Nef, or something like that) for Sunday.  That leaves us with two whole days for AQ, which should be more than good enough - but it requires that people attend and stay focused!
And trying to do MC and BWL in one run should be a challenge good enough for anyone!  JT said something in his post that he used to feel that MC was booring, that was till he gave himself the goal to deal out as much damage for the raid as possible.  That's the spirit, and if everybody did that, we could really speed things up.

Than I've arrived at the topic concerning the loot.  It's primarily two things that hold us back there: T2 leggings, and the legendary drops.
You said "but we killed ragnaros nearly 7 months ago, he must have dropped 50 pairs of leggings for us", which is about correct.  We downed Ragnaros for the very first time at the 5th of January.  Last Thursday that was exactly 30 weeks ago, and with two leggings dropping each time, that makes 60 leggings.  Now we haven't downed him every week since than, so 50 is perhaps a good guess.  But we are more than 50 people in RG1, and the drop rate hasn't been all even among the different sets either, so it's not hard to tell that there are yet quite some that haven't got them.
I'm not gonna comment much on the legendaries, cause I don't know too much about them, but I honestly think that we should have at least one Thunderfury in RG1 before we leave MC...

Now on to the subject about wanting to progress further and faster into the new instances (Nax being the obvious one).
Silver Oak Guardians have never been a hard-core raiding guild, and I truly hope that we never will be either.  To be able to progress through the instances at the same pace as Blizzard implements new ones, you have to be hard-core.
And to expect us to have the same progress through the summer as we've had the rest of the year, is a bit too much if you ask me.  People have holidays and other stuff that simply can't be avoided at this time of year.  Remeber, this is the first summer and long vaccaiont we have to "face" since we started raiding, and that obviously brings some challenges, but it's nothing we shouldn't be able to deal with.



This has become quite a long post now, so I'm gonna try and round things off.

I might have stepped on some toes here, some perhaps even intentionally, but it has only been to try to push forward a point.  I would be more than glad to continue the discussion, either in private or in public, about any of these matters, and it would also be great to perhaps move it to TS, cause it's not always easy to express oneselves in writing (I know I have some problems there sometimes, with English not being my native tongue).

No matter what happens and where the guild goes, I will follow.  It it weren't for SOG, there wouldn't have been a WoW life for me - it's just plain unthinkable for me to go another path than that of the guild.
I've been a member now for more than one and a half year, and I've been through many hard times together with the guild and my fellow guildies.  We have faced different challenges, both in-game and "out-game", but they have all one thing in common: we have made it through together, and we've come out stronger on the other side.  I believe the result will be the same now :smile:

[Neff]

im just wondering what happened to the SOG spirit.. think back to december/january last year when we were SO damned close to taking ragnaros down, almost everyone that raided farmed for fire prot pots, mongoose pots, mroe FR gear, you name it we put effort into it, and damn was it rewarding when we got him down....

how times have changed.

Kinda feel the same. But that was before, since i quit:P


Bob, you pretty much said it all. We still need Molten core, but i acutally thnk Jt's option looks valid.

[Deadlyspirit]

I agree.

Must say both bob´s and JT´s are good points to set for the planing of the raids. So maybe it is just a matter of talking about it. So we know how ppl feel about it.