Hi everyone!
It’s been a few weeks of some big changes, and I’ve been content to sit back and see how the dust is settling. Strangely enough it seems to be settling more like sediment, and I’m seeing some clear layers form after the big changes that occurred.
Before we invited <Myrmidon> into our midst, we had been heavily recruiting in preparation for Gruul’s Lair and points beyond. With over 30 new members in the last month, a lot of veterans and a lot of new recruits have been wondering where they stand. We’ve had some analyses of gear to see what we can and cannot attempt as far as future content. We’ve arranged several Karazhan groups to attempt to gear as many folks as possible, we’re running Gruul’s Lair weekly, and we recently included Zul’Aman into our mix of scheduled content. This is all in addition to our scheduled and unscheduled PvP buddies, Arena teams, instance and heroic runs, and RP events. To say the least, that’s a very full, very active schedule.
To add to the issues, I was promoted within my company to an afternoon/night position so I’m not really on in the prime hours like I used to be. With the highly effective leadership team that Tuar Annwn has in Driad, Rheisa, Gnarwakkar, Rockhide, Onyxspear and Lanfears, I’m sure my absence hasn’t affected any organization or operation of Tuar Annwn at all. However, I did keep a pretty solid grip on the operational changes made within Tuar Annwn and I’m in less of a position to see what is going right or wrong than I used to be.
As such, perhaps reaction times to certain issues has dropped. The newest members are very interested in raiding and instancing and I’m seeing a lot of frustration that things haven’t smoothed out in a few weeks’ time. Karazhan Group 4 has been a write-off between members moving, people not showing up, and folks just plain abandoning shack. Kara Group 3 apparently is seeing a lot of the same issues. We really wanted to get these groups arranged and working before we tackled Zul’Aman, but it’s clear that my hopes for patience aren’t being realized.
The three biggest issues I’m hearing are Kara not seeing good group composition, 25-mans being at an inconvenient time, and a lack of “progression” past these two points (ie. ZA, Magtheridon’s Lair, SSC).
We are immediately addressing the Karazhan Group 3 and Group 4 issue by dissolving Group 4 and putting its members in Group 3. This will create some schedule issues for folks who really were looking forward to that 10-12pm raid schedule. I will be working to create a multi-guild group so we can get into Karazhan. I have every intention of running Karazhan and G4’s original time was the only one that would work for me.
We are immediately adding two Zul’Aman raids to the schedule on a weeknight and on Sunday mornings so folks of different schedules can make a Zul’Aman raid.
For Gruul’s Lair, this is going to take some adjustment. We currently have more than 25 people who are geared and ready to go in there at 6 pm. This week we didn’t down Gruul because a few members were having connection problems, but in all honesty we’re clearing the instance quite well.
This is where I find myself between a rock and a hard place. We aren’t geared as a whole well enough to proceed past Gruul’s at this point—thus we’re farming Kara and Gruul’s and progressing in ZA. Yes we have 25 people who can go in and kill bosses in SSC and TK, but let’s face it, it’s hard to get these specific people on at the same time. 6 pm worked for TA at the time we started 25-man raids. If I change the time, then people will become unavailable to make other people available. However, we need to get the people who are currently unavailable at 6 pm into a 25-man group.
There are some solutions. We can move to an earlier time and attempt to start SSC, but this requires lots of veteran folks to be available later on Sunday. We can move to a later time but this means that some folks will have to leave mid-raid. We could also attempt to move 25-Man Night to a different night (Wednesday, Friday or Saturday seem best) in which case other folks will not be available.
In the meantime, I’m going to offer this age-old piece of advice . . . there are two types of people in this world, those who choose to be part of the problem and those who choose to be part of the solution. Tuar Annwn exists today, Tuar Annwn has advanced to the point that it has, because Tuar Annwn is made up of the latter. Ask yourself, do you want to be part of the problem, or part of the solution? What are you doing to add to the problem, or what are you doing to help create the solution?
Respectfully and humbly here for you all,
Sheigh