When did heroic become the norm?

I am not sure when the mentality of raiding changed, and I don't think it was just our guild. It was a global thing.

In Vanilla, our guild struggled to do 40 mans, we were scraping along with 25-30 doing the best we could. We didn't do the big raids so much, MC was the most we did. We did things like AQ20, the original ZG, and MC. Raids like Blackwing Lair and Naxxramas were beyond us. But that was ok, that was what we accepted that we did as a guild.

Then Burning Crusade came. We did Gruul, Magtheridon, a bit of Tempest Keep and SSC. We never got to the end bosses before the next expansion, and we never saw Sunwell.

Come Wrath of the Lich King, we all went into Naxxrammas, and the whole 10 man and 25 man thing started happening. Perhaps that is where our mentality changed. Back then they were on separate lockouts, so you could do 10s and 25s and there were 2 tiers of loot. That might have been the start of the concept of being able to do more as 10 than a 25. Some 10mans had the more active players, the more regular raiders, and more was accomplished. But then off we went to Ulduar (and we didn't get enough time in there from my point of view in regards to Legendary shard acquiring!) and we didn't get to the end of that, and then TOC came. We did get that, and we had a few tries on heroic for the first time. That was the first time we felt like we did anything that was harder.

After that came ICC and we had the 10/25 same lockouts. That limited our raiding to 25mans or 10s. We didn't try any hardmodes before the nerf, we were not into doing those, we were just happy to get Lich King down (after they started the graduated nerfs). We said back then we aren't a heroic guild, we don't do heroic modes.

So into Cataclysm we went, and tackled Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight, doing both on normal mode. By then lots of people were starting heroic modes of those, and though we did attempt a few in early times, we didn't go back and do it.

Then Firelands was upon us. And when Rag was dead, we started trying to do heroic modes. We didn't get Rag before the nerf, but we managed to do heroics after that - which we wouldn't have done before I guess.

So now we are in Dragon Soul. And there is an expectation that we will do heroics after we finish normal. But... this is not us! This is not how we've been for 5 years!  This sudden mentality of doing heroics when we used to just do casual stuff... it's strange!  And I realised, that now we are DOING heroics... I might have to change my blog banner.  As it says we do 10 and 25 man NON heroic raids.

Am I excited to do heroics?  Of course I am.  However, I don't want our guild to splinter into little factions because we become elitist and certain people want to exclude others.  Our guild has endured for so long because of the friendship between the officers (most of whom are regular raiders) who hold the backbone of this guild together.  People join and then leave for other guilds, real life stuff, give up wow, or just take breaks.  But our strength has been that we have stayed friends, and we stick together.  I don't want to lose that.  People ask me why we don't do this or that, we should push for this or that... and I always have to think, is it for the benefit of this guild?  Will this cause division between officers such that there is a need to break away?  So far we have our disagreements but we never have officer infighting.  As I said it probably helps because we have all met each other and have become RL friends.  But, I hope this heroic move is the right move for us.  It will keep our better players, but it might alienate our socials.  Our socials add personality and fun to this guild.  The high end raiders add prestige and boost our reputation on the server (as long as they're not dicks).  I suppose they add personality too.  I'm overgeneralising a bit.

If you think about it, lots of guilds have gone that way!  It's like if you don't get heroics down you're crappy.  Maybe it's because content is easier?  It used to take us a week to kill a new boss.  I am hoping that having a casual raiding group and heroic ones works out.  Though at the moment, it seems to be going ok.

Comments

  1. Casual and heroic raids probably will work out for our guild. The normal raids will gear up some socials which hopefully will able to act as reserves for the heroic raids (for the first few bosses probably) so it doesnt matter as much if suddenly two or more core raids are out of action for a day or so.

    I remember on vanilla WoW the guild I am in were fortunate enough to run regular 40mans and still have subs waiting outside. But they had their guild since ultima online. They took me to up to AQ40 (every boss except the last one) but I dont think they cleared naxx before BC. But they moved to Warhammer online after BC came out >< and that began my guild raid drought til now.

    I still felt 10 mans are just a expanded form of instances and doesnt have the feel of 40 man. I remember we have to have specialty teams to deal with certain adds, tank rotation, target rotation etc. Like teams that work on a big project. The 10 man and 25 mans now just feel like an extended group. But I guess with less people you cant make as grand a project. And back them we dont have all those DBM etc adds that made raids easier (but then I dont remember as many timers back them, just more mobs on boss pulls).

    Which one is better, I am not sure. As long as everyone is having fun.

    Ksret

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  2. @ksret - That's the main thing! I just hope everyone is having fun.

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