WotLK, Guild Alliances, and Raids

[shiz98]

Hi there! I'm wondering if any of you here at tankspot have any experience with raiding and guild alliances in WotLK. I'm not really looking for an answer to a specific question, but rather looking to see if others have had a similar experience as I have. Specifically, I'm interested in how the launch of WotLK has affected raiding in your guild alliance.

I realize that there aren't a lot of guild alliances out there, and even fewer alliances that will be similar to the one I'm in, but I would appreciate any insight on the matter. I'm not sure it's something that's easy to describe to someone who isn't in an alliance similar to mine, though I'm definitely willing to take a crack at describing the situation (it would, however, be one honking huge wall of text :P). The reason I'm looking for people who have the experience in the area to respond is that I seriously doubt anyone who doesn't have experience with being in a guild alliance would be able to offer practical insight.

That being said, I'm willing to have a more theoretical discussion on the matter if people out there are interested :)

Apologies for the terrible writing skills presented above; my english seem to have escaped me for this pose.

[Guthammer]

I run with Leftovers on Silver Hand Alliance. We are technically not a guild alliance, as anyone with a raid level character on Silver Hand can join--but I figure a raiding organization is close enough add to your discussion.

Frankly we are huge, successful and bigger than we were in BC, IMHO. Currently we have 14 different 25 man charters (raid groups) and close to 30 10 man charters running just over 100 raids this week.

Frankly LO is the best thing I have found in raiding, ever--which for me would be since EQ launch.

[shiz98]

Haha, funny, that. We over at the SGA had actually had a discussion about how you guys do things over in leftovers a couple months ago. Personally, I like your approach better. I guess I'll go into why.

The SGA primarily exists to give small, casual guilds a chance to raid. It's sort of strange, however, in that some of the largest guilds in the server (if not the largest) are members. In vanilla we had 3 (I think... been a while) 40 man raids going. Furthest we got was up to c'thun. In TBC we had four 25 man raids going, and one or two 10-mans (a lot of people did 10-mans in guild). Typically, each raid had maybe 10 "good" players, and 15 players who were very much casual. Most of these raids were moving through SSC/TK when they died off, but the remaining raid (which had always been the furthest in progression) was about halfway through T6 (you know, the point where it gets hard), at which point they hit a hard-block on teron due to lack of skilled players.

Anyway, all this to say that we over at the SGA have had a pretty successful raiding history. Lots of big raids, and a couple 10 mans floating around. With WotLK, all this changed. We have a single 25-man raid, and one public 10 man raid. There have been attempts to start up new raids, but people just aren't there.

My personal theory is that with the release of 10-man content, the majority of our guilds are able to see content without having to resort to 25-mans. Contrast this to TBC, where in order to see content or get gear you had to find a 25-man. Of course, it's quite possible that people in the SGA are just not concerned with raiding right now, or that the content is too easy to warrant doing 25 mans, or whatever.

I was just curious to see if anyone else was in the same boat.