This past week, the
Old Guard managed to bail out Thrall once again by taking down
Garrosh Hellscream in
Siege of Orgrimmar 25N, the final raid content for this expansion.
[youtube=640,400]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5mUp9h3hFI[/youtube]
It was a pain in the ass to get to this point.
At the end of
Throne of Thunder, it seemed like it would be the last call for 25-man raiding in the
Old Guard. Several of our veteran members were calling it quits, be it less free time to dedicate to raiding or general burnout due to game mechanics or content. The remaining members were tired and wanted to have a less stressful tier. No one wanted to work on rebuilding the raid team yet again, myself included. With the release of 5.4, we collectively decided to focus on the new flex mode.
We were content with flex mode for awhile, but we started to get that old itch back. We refused to settle by downgrading the roster for 10-mans. We had too many people who wanted to run. However, we didn't have enough to fill a 25 man either... We were in that dreaded "3 to 6 short" hell, the bane for many 25-man raids in the game. Recruitment was difficult as well. The 25-man raiding environment is virtually non-existent on Earthen Ring, save for one guild -
Blood Fist. The few free raiders looking for raid teams in this expansion gravitated towards 10-mans instead of 25-mans. It certainly didn't help we were tackling normal modes with a two month late start either.
We kept pushing and didn't give up. Members sought out friends or relatives whose accounts long expired. They also contacted former guildmates whose guilds had hit hard times or wanted an upgrade from 10-mans. We generated some interest. Several members from
Order of Sanctus joined up to get back into 25-man raiding while a few old timers came back to try their hand at the game once again. We were finally able to run a full 25-man at the end of October. This was by far the most difficult roster rebuild I can recall from my last six years of helping manage them.
It wasn't easy sailing. The roster was and still is understaffed with very little flexibility. A few callouts on a single evening would easily cripple the raid for the night. There were numerous raid cancellations early on. The Christmas holidays made it even trickier. Even with these hurdles, we stubbornly kept with our goal of completing the content only in 25-man mode. Now we have finally managed to achieve it.
The dedication and resilience of our members is what has helped keep us going and enabled us to achieve these kinds of victories since our start long ago in
Naxxramas.
What does the future hold for the
Old Guard? For now, we will take on some heroic modes while making sure every raider on the team gets a
Garrosh kill under their belt. How many heroic encounters we get down depends on how long our current roster can stay interested in content that is admittedly getting a bit stale. Long term plans is to prepare for Warlords of Draenor expansion with the goal continuing in the newly named heroic modes and pushing into mythics.
