Wednesday (2 Feb) - Blackwing Descent - Yes or No

Wednesday (2 Feb) - Blackwing Descent - Yes or No

The good news for Happy was that the 168g each Bag of Jewels was selling a lot more briskly than usual. The bad news was that finding materials to make it keep getting harder to come by. Happy has already talked about the problems getting felcloth. Now it seems that ironweb spidersilk, another mat required to make the gem bag, is becoming harder to get as well as more expensive. Ironweb spidersilk can be farmed off the spiders in Silithus, at least Happy believed that it could still be gotten from there since Silithus was left pretty much alone by Cata. Silithus is a mid-high level 50s zone. Happy needed a flunky - ah, an adventurer - to check things out and hopefully come back with a bunch of ironweb. That job was perfect for level 56 Mery.

Mery had never been to Silithus, and the closest she could get via the flight path was the outpost in Un'Goro Crater. Once she arrived she was surprised to learn that the base of operations in the crater had moved. The new post was near the center of the crater where the volcano is, a much more dangerous area than the old post which was up on the outer ridge. Numerous quest givers tried to entice Mery to stick around, but she headed across the heart of the crater to find the passage out of the crater and into Silithus. Finding the way out of the crater could be tricky - at least it used to be.The trail leading from Un'Goro Crater to Silithus is now well marked, even if it is only barely a trail still criss-crossed by numerous hungry beasts.

Mery made the trip without incident, and even killed a few spiders as she made her way to Cenarion Hold, the neutral city of Silithus. Not wanting to waste her time just hunting spiders, Mery picked up a couple of quests and added wyrms and scorpions to her list of things to kill.

With tanking pet, Sassy, there to hold the creatures down, Mery was a mercilous killing machine, sending Sassy off after the next beast the second the current target was dead. Mery looted and skinned while Sassy entertained the next mob. Mery spent about forty minutes out on the sand, taking a little extra time to hunt down those spiders.

Happy was pretty disappointed at the take, however. Mery collected only four ironweb, barely enough to make one gem bag. One is better than none, which was how Mery saw it. She greatly enjoyed her time out in the field and DINGED! to level 57 as well. She crafted a new pair of mail gloves for herself, but she can't level her leatherworking skills any further (375/375) until she reaches level 65. Which sucks, says Mery, knowing how far down on the list she is for in game time.

Meanwhile, Wild got his dailies done and hung out in Orgrimmar waiting to see if there would be a raid, and if Wild was going to be in it.

The good news was that Tol Barad was in the hands of the Horde, so Baradin Hold was open for business. Mf, who was the raid leader for the BWD run for Wednesday night, was looking to fill a ten man raid to get into BH while we had it. This was shaping up to be a good raid night if we could take some shots at BH and then hit BWD. The raid sign up sheet had 9 guildies on it, and there were 16 level 85 guildies in game. Only four of those 16 guildies were on the sign up sheet, though, meaning that we had five no shows. Ok, how many guildies want to raid BH? asked Mf in guild chat. We got two takers. Two. There was no raid.

It was disappointing to say the least. I know that we are a "social guild that raids" and not a "raiding guild" per se, but come on! If we can't get ten guildies to join a raid two nights a week Wild is going to start having withdrawal pains. Part of the issue is that we have a number of guildies who have been raiding regulars that don't seem to have the time right now. We have a nice influx of new guildies, but they haven't had much interest in raiding. Wild decided to do an informal poll of guildies to see where they are in terms of gear progression. I always felt that Wild was slow to gear up when major game changes occurred, but maybe this time he's actually further ahead that a lot of others.

Wild has an i342 gearscore. Anyone with at least i340 is certainly geared for raiding, although PUGs want things a bit easier and may demand i350. For guild raids, though, i340 will do fine.

From the guild Armory Wild noted nine guildies, counting himself, who have raided with Wild pre-Cata and post-Cata. Nine out of twenty weekly raiders in two groups pre-cata.

I counted 11 guildies who raided regularly pre-cata but for whatever reason are not raiding now.

I also counted eight new guildies who seem to be in game a lot but have an inconsistent raid record, all post-Cata.

We have a lot of other level 85 guildies, but they haven't been raiding with us or signing up for raids.

So, how do the gear scores work out among the above three groups?

Pre/Post Cata raiders: 8 of 9 at i342 or better, 1 at i337
Pre-cata raiders: 4 of 11 at i342 or better, the rest mostly in low i330s
Newbies not raiding: 8 of 8 at i342 or better, 2 over i350

What this seems to indicate is that more than half of the pre-cata raiders that killed the Lich King are still gearing up and may or may not be raiding any time soon. We seem to have a strong core of new guildies (whether new players or alts that are now mains), but they don't seem very interested in raiding.

The most telling thing may be that I could only come up with 28 guildies that were raiding or might raid out of the whole guild.

In one sense Wild is doing better than a lot of other guildies in getting geared up. Unfortunately, Wild may be all dressed up but have nowhere to go.