Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

Home Power Magazine looks like a good source of information on alternative ways of powering a home. (via Cool Tools)

WOW Insider has a column on guild management called Officers’ Quarters. This week’s column discusses Zero-pressure raiding? aka the move to becoming a raiding guild. I’m not sure if we’ll ever get into raiding in Sleep Deprived on Quel’doei, but here are some of my preliminary thoughts.

My plan is to not require specific specs, any level of attendance, or specific professions. If you want to bring your 20/20/21 blacksmithing/leatherworking warlock on raids every 3 months and there’s a spot for you, you’re welcome to do so.

Here are my first thoughts on requirements for if we get to raiding.

• I will insist that anyone who raids has 375 first aid. There are two reasons for this. Firstly 375 first aid is fairly easy to get. If you’re not willing to do that, raiding is going to be too demanding for you. Secondly a properly applied bandage can be a lifesaver. Sometimes the healer just can’t get to you.
• If the first pull has not happened within 30 (?) minutes of scheduled raid start, I will cancel the raid. Everyone is expected to be fully buffed/repaired/supplied before the first pull happens. We don’t have a lot of time to play and I don’t want to spend my time sitting around waiting for people to log on. There will be a scheduled raid end time. Assuming raid end time comes at a bad time, i.e. just before pulling a boss, those present will be polled to see if they want to continue for one more fight. There will be at MOST one fight after scheduled raid end time. I need my sleep, dang it.
• Read my post on Raiding Consumables and have appropriate consumables for yourself. I will make potions for free for all raiders (at least at first). However, I need to know ahead of time what potions you will need so that I can gather the mats. I can also supply the oils and stones for weapon buffs. Thanks to the cooking quests I will be able to supply at least some food buff items, but I encourage you all to level cooking.
• Once we get up to 70, I plan to designate at least one night a week where I will help with attunements and leveling. I can supply a tank (Tristam or Andromache), a healer (respec Andromache as needed), or DPS (Arthemis). I will most likely be leveling another class that can spec into healing as that seems to be our biggest lack right now. Everyone who raids must have run at least one (?) heroic instance with me.
• I will insist on a couple addons. However, I want there to be as few required addons as possible. For now I’m thinking a threat meter (probably Omen), a boss warning mod (Bigwigs or Deadly Boss Mods or ??), and a raid tracker (CTraid or ??). Am I missing anything?
• Should I insist on Minimum Class Stat Requirements for Karazhan or is that asking too much? If I do insist on that, it pretty much means that anyone wanting to raid will have to run multiple heroics, which is a good way to prepare.

There will be no DKP for 10 man instances. I have no idea what we’ll do for DKP if we get to 25 man instances, but that’s a long ways away.

I doubt that we will raid more than twice per week. Our schedules just don’t allow for more than that.

I hope I didn’t scare anyone. I just wanted to get some thoughts out there for the future. Please feel free to critique any of the points I’ve brought up.

Remember that this is all hypothetical as well. If we continue our current play schedule of about 2 nights/week and roughly 1/2 level/night we’re still looking at a minimum of 12 weeks before we hit 70. There are at least 3 instances that require you to be 70 to enter, so that’s another week and a half of runs. There are currently 15 heroic instances so even if we run each one only once, that gives us another 8 weeks. With our current play schedule at earliest it would be the middle of April 2008 before we would even be thinking about our first raid.