Friday, December 14, 2007

The raiding I miss

Yesterday my guild went to Gruul's lair, and there was an empty spot for the first boss fight, killing King Maulgar. That gave me the opportunity to raid once again, which I hadn't done for a very long. Not counting one very bad Karazhan raid, I hadn't had fun raiding since before TBC came out. And funnily I enjoy the aspects of raiding that the hardcore raiders hate: Gathering all the people together, chatting in front of the raid instance, preparing. And I enjoy doing my job well during the raid. I was happy that I hadn't forgotten how to raid heal, and that the main tank was never anywhere close to dying while I was on him. I even saw more of the fight than I usually do, due to my new widescreen monitor. In previous raids all those raid windows didn't leave much room for a view in the middle, but with widescreen the situation is much better.

The part of raiding that I don't enjoy are fighting for loot or raid spots. Not that we had any fights, but I was deliberately keeping my head low. Maulgar dropped epic shoulders which I could have used, but as soon as I saw that other people needed it too I withdrew my "need" request. As long as I haven't worked out whether I can and want to raid regularly with my guild, I'm not feeling comfortable grabbing raid loot. In my opinion raid loot isn't really the property of the individual player, but more a resource of the whole guild. Giving raid loot to people who aren't using it to increase the chance of success of the guild in the next raid isn't all that useful. Same thing with raid spots, we had more than 25 people for the Gruul fight, we had too many healers, and from the healers I certainly was the least well geared, with the lowest +healing, so I let somebody else take my spot.

Now I am thinking about whether I should try to join one of my guilds Karazhan raiding teams after christmas, if I'm having so much fun raiding. But as I enjoy the social aspects of raiding, Karazhan isn't ideal, the raid is too small to be social. And my usual playing times are from 6 pm to 10 pm, while my guild's usual raiding times are from 8 pm to after midnight. I need to work out how often I am willing to raid until late in the night, getting up at 6:30 am next day for work. Raiding itself isn't so hard, it is the organization around it that makes it difficult.

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