I'll be in Iceland on the 14th, and back in-pocket on the 21st.

That major paper I've been working on for the last couple months is due the next day. I expect to hopefully be done by then, but since I'm one to procrastinate, heads up that I might miss it for that reason. If so, I'll touch bases with you beforehand to give my 2 cents worth.

Am available anytime..14th or the 21st.

Both dates are fine for my schedule.

in pocket...

I have an exam at 7 on the 21st, so I dont know if I will be able to make the meeting. Also, on the 14th I will be studying, so also not a good day for me.

Anytime after should be fine, but untill this exam is done, i may have to be low profile.

GRRRR....I'll get you next time....you Blasted Troll!!!

I am available either day. BTW, I am at the airport atm, waiting for the plane home, will be on soon.

Very well put Tundra, and noted. This does sum up alot of the concerns as of late. I think this might me a topic we will be going over....just a hunch with one of the meeting topics being..Raiding Issues.

I don't know that I agree. We've been able to get Gruul runs together fairly often when we legitimately try, I think there were runs for two weeks straight, and this is allegedly still not a raiding guild, so you're not going to have enough attendance week after week for a large run just yet with our 70's population. We're also nearing the end of the school year, so those juggling jobs & school & other things will have one factor removed from the equation, and likely be able to attent a lot more events (I personally look forward to being able to participate more with events & raids like I did last summer). We should see better attendance with stuff as a result of people with more free time.

I guess it just depends on your goal. If you want to have regular weekly 25-person raids going on, well, that's not yet a realistic expectation of the Gamers With Jobs community. And if we go an external alliance route like in the past, that's going to shut out many community members for one reason or another, also like in the past. Yesterday's little debacle with Seth/Baseball got me thinking about it again.

I'm thrilled to participate in GWJ raids when I can, be they of the 10 or 25-person variety. I'm not interested in a multi-guild alliance being where I have to go for the larger raid action. And if we go that route, we simply flat-out won't be able to have GWJ 25-person raids anymore.

It's something I really hope not to see. We had, what, 8 people try to take up Seth's invite? That leaves at least 17 guildies capable of 25-person raids not interested in extra-guild raiding. Likely more, since we haven't only had the same 25 people hit Gruul's each time we've gone.

I'm speaking up on concerns now because I don't have input into the officers' meetings, and the officers are comprised primarily of fairly heavy raiders, so I just want a more casual, community-minded (not game-achievement-minded) view to be considered too. It's not a matter of not trusting the leadership; we have good leadership in our guild that's done well to weather some drama before. So please don't take it as such. It's just me speaking my mind for a perspective I want considered in the "raiding concerns" portion of the meeting.

[edit]And yes, as you all know, I do worry too much, and my stress level the last month or so has been into the stratosphere, so I'm trying to take everything I think/read and put it through a "chill out, Farscry!" filter. So apologies in advance for any overt paranoia on my part. I'm working on trying to de-stress more of my life so I'm not on edge all the time. All kidding aside, I've been particularly bad off in that regard lately, and it's led to me behaving too emotionally-driven and irrational too often.[/edit]

Hey Fars, I just threw together some quick responses. This post is not meant to be belligerent or hostile in tone. It is my personal response to many of your feelings and perceptions regarding how this guild functions.

If you run Kara as a guild run, then you're raiding. That makes your guild a raiding guild. Our guild is a bit different in that we support casual play. IE: We don't mandate how a person specs, for example.

As time has gone on, I've become more convinced that it may never be a realistic expectation of the GWJ community. And I'll explain why:

Our max-level population has never been higher. We have right around ONE HUNDRED level 70's. Although, out of that pool, we have several people that have multiple level 70 toons. In any case, I believe Krindle's point stands. If we can't field a run that requires a quarter of our current population, then we do have problems in one particular area.

We spend a good portion of every meeting discussing how best to conduct raids and still service the community aspect of the guild. People seem to believe that organizing raids into a functioning, cohesive entity will de facto destroy the community aspect of the guild. It hasn't yet and that is because we "heavy raiders" fully understand where we came from.

The first thing is that, we'd never force someone to run something they don't want. We truthfully have had problems getting people to show up for the runs they've committed to so this is hardly an issue. Secondly we're barely having 25-man runs as it is. We're one boss into the first 25-man raid. If we start losing the geared and skilled players that have enabled us to get even that far, then it's safe to say that even the 10 mans will stop.
If an alliance were ever to be formed, it would be for the purpose of learning the fights; burning the gold on repair bills, and starting to take down content. You can't farm Gruul or Mag until you've downed them.

Roger that, I won't take offense then. Which, unfortunately, I do have a tendency to do.

That's also why I wanted to specify late in my post that I appreciate the leadership we've had, and my disagreement has nothing to do with a lack of confidence in our community's leadership.

It just seems like a lot of our community's activity for content at level 70 in recent months is dominated by raid scheduling & concerns. To me, and it's entirely personal perception, when raiding becomes the dominant topic and activity for a guild's direction, it makes it a raiding guild, and the main concern that I have is always in riding that line as a casual player who enjoys (and does well at the ones I've been in) raiding as well.

Wow. I had no idea we had quite that many active level 70 members of the guild. Given that, I'm inclined to agree with you and Krin in this regard; it shouldn't really be that tough to get even a bi-weekly 25-person raid going when we have that many people available. Weekly maybe, depending on the people the guild is made up from (busy people with jobs and families to care for), could be tough at times, but even that should be reasonably feasible.

I didn't realize we were having that much trouble with attendance for things that people have signed up for either. Probably partly because during the week I'm not able to attend much (so I don't sign up) and don't see things fall apart due to this. That's a bit of an issue, though it comes with the territory for our community (RL first and all that, and people have eventful lives with odd emergencies ).

I don't want to farm Gruul or Mag. I want to have the fun and adventure of learning the fights and being there to achieve victory. I loved being a part of that when we started Kara last summer (though alas, school started before we finally took on Curator+), and I've enjoyed our Gruul's runs because of it too. I'd love to continue being a part of the team banging our heads collectively against the brick walls of tough fights, trying and improving until we can conquer them. It's not near as fun for me when it's on farm and we're just rolling through.

It's a pity that gear is such a focus on content progression with Blizzard, because that's what holds us back a lot as a community due to farming/grinding timesinks, not necessarily player skill.

Its appears that we are on the cusp of a transformation. The frustration was very palpable last Sunday with the failed Gruul's muster and I'm afeared that if we don't find some way to accomodate the 70s in reaching higher content we may lose them.

Unfortunatley with the signups, we had a record low of about 11 people Monday morning show interest in Gruuls. Obviously, I'm not going to make those 11 wait around and see who else shows up, so I put together another ZA run to appease the masses

Ah well, I'll watch for the next Gruul's attempt then. As for ZA, just about another 100 +healing and I'll finally be reaching the 1500 +healing minimum and maybe start getting in some runs with you guys for that. It's entirely possible I might be able to achieve that with some enchants!

I think raiding dominates our scheduling because it does. Why does nothing else dominate our schedule? Because nothing else does. The interest in other scheduled group activities is microscopic by comparison; it doesn't even register on our instruments. This is coming from someone who would love world PvP on a weekly basis.

Perhaps someday, scientists will develop instruments sensitive enough to measure interest levels from our 70s in non-raiding activities. Who can say?