The Gap on AFK Gamer

Must-read article on AFK Gamer about The Gap developing between average and hardcore raiding players.

What was news to me is that attunement to the new patch 1.11 dungeon for people not revered with Argent Dawn will be "5 arcane crystals, 2 nexus crystals, 1 righteous orb and 60 gold", or about 300 gold. At revered the cost goes down to about 100 gold. Now I totally understand concepts like the UBRS key, Molten Core attunement or the Onyxia key, where you have to do a series of quests, and visit one or several minor dungeons before you can access the raid dungeon. But having to buy your way into a raid dungeon sounds rather stupid to me. Unless you happen to have chosen the unlikely combination of mining and enchanting as your professions, it isn't even technically possible to get these items yourself without using the auction house or guild bank. You might want to buy righteous orbs now and sell them at a profit when the patch comes out. ;)

But the real issue explained in the article is that people who are already raiding a lot will be able to get even better loot, while people who aren't in a good raiding guild yet will not get any stronger. Thus when a raiding guild loses members to the dreaded Real Life, there aren't even people around that are marginally equipped and keyed out well enough to be able to join them. The "minimum requirements" for being hired by a raiding guild are constantly going up, with the potential candidates not being able to reach that level, because they can't get everything just with pickup groups. Unless raiding guilds spend a lot of effort to raise potential replacments, and I don't know any guild doing that, they are going to paint themselves into a corner.