Kneesmasher's guide to High End Raiding Phases

Admin Number of posts : 74 Age : 47 Registration date : 2007-07-12

Quote :: The fact of the matter is, most non-raiders have no clue what kind of effort, time, energy and work it takes to defeat new content in the game. Whether that new content is Plane of Time or TSS Forstcrypt or Demiplane of Blood, the dedication and effort is the same. There are basically 3 phases that a raiding guild goes through: Progression, Transition, Farming.

Farming: When a new recruit joins a guild that is in a farming stage, they join up, see mobs dying right and left, loot is flowing like water, and it's all pretty darn easy. So for several months they ride the wave, get 3, 4 or 5 drops a month or more, see brand new mobs (for them) die without much effort and they don't think about the work that has come before hand. If a new recruit watched my guild raid Anguish today they would think "WoW! I thought Anguish was supposed to be Hard?" We blow through it in 2 hours or less just to gear up new recruits and we're off to something else. Players new to high end raiding are seeing the events for the first time. Those of the core group have already seen it 50+ times and have died to it numerous times trying to figure it all out. All before the new recruit ever stepped foot in the zone.

Transition: The Transition phase is where you are trying some new mobs but still have a foot in the farming mode as well. It's a mixture of both farming and progression. Trying some new encounters but still hitting the old favorites because there are still some core members that need drops. Loot is still flowing, but you are making that transition from an older zone like Anguish to a newer zone like Demiplane of Blood.

Progression: This is the hard part. This is where you find out who really wants to raid and who was just along for the ride. It's learning new encounters in a new zone. You die...alot. Loot flowing into the guild slows down. You might spend an entire night or an entire week working on one encounter, dying over and over again. No loot drops the whole night...or the whole week. Yellow bars of XP disappear as you die over and over again. You die to trains. You die to poor pathing. You die because you didn't know to clear this or do that before engaging. You die to the encounter itself. You die because you set up in a bad place. Frustrations in the guild run high. Anger breaks out from time to time. It takes dedication, commitment, tenacity and perseverance.

Many players just don't have what it takes to last through a progression phase of a guild. They join a guild in the farming phase, rack up some loot, think wow this is easy, and then that guild moves on to progression. They figure out it's not all fun and games. It takes hard work. They haven't had loot in a month. They've died over and over again. They start logging in less or they see another guild, in a farming phase, and think the grass is greener over there and jump ship. Meanwhile, the core of the guild continues on. The true raiders. Those who really are committed to accomplishing something. They realize it's not about them, but it's about the guild...the team. And they watch out for each other. They log in, night after night. They are almost always great players who take pride in their personal abilities and using that ability to better their guild and progress. And the progression comes, inch by inch, fight by fight. And those that left oftentimes come whining back realizing that the guild has moved ahead without them and maybe they shouldn't have left afterall. Or the guild that they jumped ship for is now moving into a progression phase as well and they are seeing the same things again.

The phases basically go:

Farming...Transition...Progression...Transition...Farming...Transition...etc. etc.

In my experience it usually takes a new recruit or player about 3 months to see if they really want to raid or it's just too much darn hard work. Some go 4 months, some only 2, but about 3 months...give or take. That's when they realize they are cut our for higher end raiding or they aren't.

Kneesmasher