The inevitable malaise of tier 7 content

The last few months has been my first major raiding experience in the entire (off and on) multi-year period I’ve been playing WoW. In vanilla WoW I mostly quested and only at the end did I set foot in one Onyxia raid and a few UBRS runs (on my old hunter). In TBC I only did 10 man raids and only really got as far as the first four bosses of ZA down.

In WotLK however, I have done all the raid content except for Sarth 2d & 3d (either 10 or 25). Blizz opening up the raid content has definitely benefitted me, and while I doubt I really needed “ezmode” to progress (more like a decently sized and focused guild), I’m very happy with how I’ve done in this raid environment.

Now the guild I’m in, Enveloping Shadows, has been doing 25 man raids since around December and I’ve apparently downed heroic KT 13 times (according to the Armory). I hardly think these are the kinds of blistering hardcore raiding statistics that would foreshadow mass burnout, and yet that seems to be what’s plaguing ES.

As of late we’ve had major difficulties putting together 25man raids. Whereas in the past we had people clamoring to get in, now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel and even pugging. Apparently some people have gotten to the point where they got what they wanted from Naxx or wherever and have dropped off the face of the earth until the next content patch–maybe.

One particular holy Paladin joined the guild after pugging with us on a Naxx25 run. She was there for several KT kills, and over time accumulated a Voice of Reason, a Turning Tide, and a t7.5 helm. Each time she won the item over a Pally who was already in the guild. Two weeks ago, after getting the helm, she stopped logging on. And now the original Pally is in the raids, still healing when needed, but with much worse gear.

It’s annoying selfishness to say the least.

In other cases we’ve had players that definitely still need loot in Naxx, but just stopped logging in. They’re clearly burned out at the moment. One player decided to quit WoW forever and put all his possessions in the guild bank and passed 10k gold to the guild leader.

I’m not burned out myself, I’m finding ways to keep busy–be they abortive raid achievement attempts or screwing around with a new mage alt–all while eagerly awaiting Ulduar. Other tasks I’ve decided to pursue to keep myself busy are accumulating the full T2 set, farming a Disgusting Oozling, and laying the material foundations for eventually constructing a Thunderfury.

Like I said, definitely not burned out. I’m probably one of the few dopes in the guild that finds Naxx fun and exciting still. But, nonetheless, wtb Ulduar pronto!