Step 1 – Recruitment
This step is crucial. I suggest trade chat. You want your spam message to be unique and specific, letting people know that you mean business and the raid isn’t for those who are dead weight. Make sure to use all caps for extra emphasis, try to abbreviate anything at all possible (the extra attention to efficiency will certainly grab extra attention from serious raiders), and try to have a reasonable gearscore requirement. Something like “LFM NEED HLRS AND TANKS 4 ICC25 NO SCRUBS GS 8k+ WH 4k+ ONLY PST” should suffice.

No doubt those with the courage to respond will be only the cream of the crop as far as hardcore raiding goes, but every now and then a terrible will also try to sneak their way into your raid. Here’s what you can look out for. Anyone that sends a tell that forces you to think to yourself: “was that really English or did some Scandanavian mail-order bride escape from her cage and hop on papi’s laptop again?” is probably a keeper. Yeah they can’t communicate effectively enough to order a Big-Mac at a drive through, but rest assured, the law of averages dictates that since they are so bad at human interaction, they must be awesome at raiding. Anyone with 3 or more X’s in their name like SuperStabRogueXXX or Xdeathnightxx or megaXxXpewpewmage is also a keeper. Also any hunters or rogues named legolas or deathknights named Arthas–the originality and familiarity with the genre shows intense dedication. Finally, keep an eye peeled for those recruits with specific demands and an aura of superiority. This indicates that not only do they have the betterment of the raid in mind, but they’re willing to help out the newer players with helpful insight into their class, making the raiding environment more enjoyable for everyone.

Step 2 – Raid Instruction (Optional)
Honestly there’s nothing important here as far as details go, explaining or paying attention to encounter mechanics is an over-rated practice that scrubs like to trumpet as reasons why they keep wiping to trivial content. Make sure everyone has flasks though, this is important. Tanks go tank stuff and dps kill everything, if anyone dies, yell at the healers or replace them if necessary.

Most of this stage will be made up of giving inspirational speeches in the case of wipes and keeping your raid in line if they start complaining. Make sure they know who the boss is. The best way to deal with bad performance is usually yelling, but sometimes can be leaving the raid and logging out for the night as well. In the case of a trivial wipe, recommended pump-up talks could be: “Guys, this is easy as shit, just stop sucking and let’s kill this already”, or “I swear to god if one of you retards screws that up again we’re done for the night”. In the case of many wipes on the same boss, becoming more obstinate will show strength and prevent the raid from becoming discouraged. If all else fails, just tell the raid to shut the hell up and do it like professionals.

Stage 3 – Profit
Self Evident. Try not to brag too much about your kills and the resulting loot. 4-5 times in general chat per raid as well as a realm forum post should suffice. Try not to be too condescending to those that aren’t awesome enough to enjoy your gear level, but let’s face it–you’re better than them and you have the purples to prove it. It’s also tacky to link achievements unless the goal is win an argument about who knows more how to play.

Hope everyone enjoyed the helpful walkthrough and try to stay dry while raiding out there.

Serious struggle staying safely staggered superseded some satisfying success slaying Sindragosa. Some server stability situations severely stunted successful sessions; still, stalwart superstars sustained. Subsequently, serendipitous slayers started settling sizable scores succumbing spectacularly to the sole surviving soul.

But you say “I know all this, I want to know about the guild breakup and what Rev is up to NAO!”. Will we be back raiding 25 man ICC and competing with Exigence/Exodus/Exo-whatever guilds to get the bright shinies as fast as humanly possible? Will we fall into the ranks of the once-proud guilds turned casual that talk like they would make world firsts if only the world wasn’t stacked against them, or will we crumble entirely and go quietly into the night? I couldn’t tell you for sure, but if the actual story was half as interesting, I’m sure someone would make money on the book deal.

What we are doing is the same thing we’ve done since the guild came together and really the only thing that our guild has been very good at: running around with our buddies having a good time doing whatever we can given the number of people we have online and their relative interest. This week that meant killing Valithria Dreamwalker (10 man). I didn’t take a screenshot because even while the encounter was amazing, it honestly couldn’t compare to how amazing the following screenshot is:

I’ve also once again resumed my task of editorial overlord of the news page, which means you can expect a steady but unpredictable stream of guild news updates, juvenile humor, twisted current event references, and literal litany of literary alliteration crafted to twist tongues while informally informing the casually curious.

That, and post funny nuggets for those that were here get to chuckle at while the rest of you scratch your collective heads with a ponderous WTF?

Then we went to see Yogg Saron in his home at the cave of Caerbannog, so we decided to bring the most fearsome creatures known to man, the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodents you’ve ever set eyes on!  These rabits have a vicious streak a mile wide, they’re killers!  I’m warning you, they’ve got huge, sharp teeth — look at the bones!  We thought we had Yogg Saron finished, but as it turns out… he has the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.