Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Is there really a need to raid more than twice a week?

I occasionally read recruitment threads of other guilds, partially out of curiosity, and partially to see if there's a nice recruitment layout I might want to use at a later date. Sometimes I'm surprised by what I find by what people offer or what they expect.

Particularly, I notice quite a few guilds still raid 3-4 nights a week, a pace I gave up as too demanding.

For most purposes, I don't understand raiding more than two nights a week anymore. It used to be a near necessary, especially with resets every week and no way to extend a lockout, but even then it seemed an awful lot of time to spend each week in a game. Just because I might spend 20 hours in a week playing a single video game, doesn't mean that I want to spend 20 hours a week every week playing a single video game (because you can't forget the time spent doing heroics, leveling alts, and playing the AH on top of raiding). Personally, I burn out.

At my raiding peak I'd run 25-mans three days a week and 10-mans two days a week, and that was just too much. I like WoW, but there are a lot of other forms of entertainment I enjoy besides WoW, such as other video/ computer games (played the new Dragon Age II DLC, woo!), D&D, anime, books, etc. When I'm playing WoW, I'm not doing any of those, and there's only so much time in the world.

At the time I started my two night a week 10-man raid guild, 10-man raiding was still the poor cousin of 25-man raiding and how the hell could anyone get anything done before reset with only two nights a week?

But we managed. We did wonderful things like clearing 11/12 Heroic ICC in a single three hour night so we could spend all of our second day on Heroic Lich King. (We rarely extended the lockout because people didn't like the idea of doing nothing but the Lich King all week.) We prided ourselves on efficiency. We still do.

We like that we've cleared the majority of Firelands bosses within our first three attempts. We like that we never spent more than three hours downing any of our six heroic T11 kills. We like that raids start on time and people come back on time from our scheduled breaks (if you're 2 minutes late it means you're last, people are doing /poke at you, and chances are everyone else was back on time).

Even though we like raiding, we like that we have good progression for minimal time investment. We lost a couple raid nights after 4.2 landed due to real life issues, but we're still 6/7 in Firelands, and hoping to down Rag in the near future.

One of our raiders, who really likes raiding, also raids on an alt in another two night a week group to get more of her raiding fix. When I mentioned that I was surprised she wasn't with a three or four night a week raid guild instead of us, she said that raiding more nights a week doesn't mean the guild's going to do more with the time that they have.

Skywall is not the most progressed server out there, so when I say we're in the running for server third kill of Rag it may not mean much depending on what your own server is like, but the thing is... the patch hasn't been out all that long! I don't know when Patch 4.3 is going to land, but if you figure it's at least three months betwen major patches there's still two months or more to work on Firelands.

It's not necessary to raid more than two nights a week anymore if you just want to see the content, not unless there's a drive to be the first at something, to brute force a boss kill, or you just really like raiding (and even then, you could do that on an alt like my guildie does). Two nights a week has even allowed us a fair amount of time for heroic kills. So if I was a prospective applicant looking for a new raid guild, where would I go?

Would I want to be in a guild that's 6/7 raiding two nights a week or 1/7 raiding four nights a week? (I've seen the recruitment ad for the latter. It's out there.)

We're not best in the world or best on the server, but we're doing all right and because of this I know that it's possible to do a lot with just two nights a week.

Yet when I look at other guilds advertising their raid nights, I'm quite shocked that a lot of them still raid 3-4 nights a week. And these aren't necessarily heroic guilds either. What does a 4 nights a week raid guild that has only downed Shannox do on its other nights? Are they raiding T11 still? Maybe some of those raid nights are retro raids?

I admit I don't understand and their ads don't help me to do so.

If a guild's struggling with content, adding more nights to the raid schedule probably isn't going to help them see it faster. More raid resets will, because that will give them more gear to compensate for any lack of skill. A guild that takes 50 attempts to kill a boss that takes another guild 5 isn't a better guild because they killed it first, and they may be burning out their members by doing so.

4 comments:

Jasyla said...

Days per week doesn't seem a important as hours per week. There's really not a lot of difference between raiding 4 hours 2x a week and 3 hours 3x a week. I personally would prefer 3x3hours since sitting in a raid for any longer than that tires me out (and to think, I used to raid 5-6 hours a night).

I must say, killing all your heroic bosses in T11 in less than 3hours is very impressive. Not every guild can do that.

I do agree with you to some extent, especially for the less-progressed guilds. Having a 4 day raid schedule when you're only killing one boss per week? Ugh. That sounds awful, and unneccessary, though it seems like a problem with player skill more than anything else. However, not all raid groups can kill a new boss (or three) in a single raid night and will need more raid time to practice if they want to clear farmed bosses and wrack up new kills.

Hana said...

Our raids are three hours long, and it's a long-standing joke that our kills are on our last attempt of the night, so we'll sometimes say "This is the last attempt of the night!" when we're only an hour in.

It's true it's really hours that matter more than days, but guilds generally emphasis days, and I've had applicants say they're looking for a guild that raids X days a week.

Like you, I wouldn't be able to sit in place for a raid longer than three hours. :) I could push it on occasion, but not too much. I generally want to go to bed after that.

Anonymous said...

"Just because I might spend 20 hours in a week playing a single video game, doesn't mean that I want to spend 20 hours a week every week playing a single video game"

This sums up my feelings exactly. I like playing WoW, and I play it a lot. That being said, I don't want to feel like I *have* to play it a lot.

There's a big difference between "I want to log on and play for 3 hours" and "I have to log on and play for 3 hours".

My mentality won't get me a world first. But it will keep me having fun, which is the important thing.

Skarn said...

Yay! Way to go! Our guild is the same, we raid just two nights a week, 3 hours a night. Alas, we are not as progressed. We're 2/7. We never did Heroic modes in T11. I think you guys are just better than us. :)

Doesn't matter though, cuz we have a good time and clear the content. MORE than enough for me!