As someone who used to be able to commit to raid times and be reliable back in Vanilla, I am now in a position where I can not make regular scheduled raid times and will be forced into a life of a “pirate” raider. =P My play time has dramatically decreased from 14 years ago.
I won’t be able to make close friends and have a support group around me this time for gearing pre-raid BIS and such. So, does anyone else have these concerns and what are some things that people do in similar situations to really make the “best of it” given their situation? Is there a class/spec that can mitigate these drawbacks the most? Do i change my focus to just sticking with 5mans and PUG BGs?
Thanks
My old server Silver Hand, used to have multiple “Loosely aligned raid groups”. Pugging wasn’t exactly completely random, but they were more loosely organised. A known time and place every week, but the make up of people was different each week as people could or couldn’t make it. Still used DKP, but the roster was far far larger.
People were pugging MC, Ony, ZG, and BWL back in vanilla. I don’t see why it would be any different now.
Later on, and with a much lower rate of success.
IIRC Mannoroth had at least one loosely aligned group of 3 guilds that would team up for raids.
How much time do you have though?
And do you have time available at regular intervals so that you could adhere to a raiding schedule?
Because we were terrible players back then. Now I bet even if you devoted 4-5 hrs/week to raiding you could make pretty good progress if you found a good and organized guild.
Don’t forget kiddies…RAID LOCKOUTS
pug groups didn’t happen until much later and even then were not all that common.
I can probably dish out ~10hrs a week. The problem is that RL gets in the way a lot (I wont go into specifics because it just opens up another can of worms I’d rather not get into - lets just say that the people in my life aren’t gamers and don’t understand my hobby) and it prevents me from committing to a raid schedule. Its basically whenever I get a chance to get on, I take advantage and play but those times will vary from night to night, weekend to weekend.
1 Like
I see.
It’s hard to say how things will play out in Classic regarding raiding. There seemed to be a distinct lack of casual raiding guilds and PUG groups in Vanilla, but it could be different in Classic since there will probably be a lot of Vanilla veterans coming back who already know how to do the content. I bet a lot of them will be in similar situations to yours also.
I could see more raid PUGs happening in Classic than there were in Vanilla though, but obviously can’t say for sure.
And how will you vet those you invite to pug regarding raid lockout ?
Invite a player with a lockout and BAAM…your entire raid is now locked with possibly the first 4 bosses already dead.
There were lots of pugs back in the day. That’s how I got into a raiding guild myself.
I don’t remember how they did it, I think some one in raid would just sit in the instance before inviting people.
Speak for yourself. Not everyone was terrible. Many, even fairly casual players, were able use the online resources at hand in 2005-2006 to learn to play and play well. And there were plenty of resources available by the second year of vanilla. All one had to do was Google. It wasn’t the Dark Ages.
If anything, I think retail players who haven’t done anything but LFD/LFR are the ones who are in for a rude awakening. Because they are not used to competence mattering.
It’s not uncommon for guilds needing more people.
And for guilds to start a pug groups b/c lets say they only have 10 people.
It existed, and it was terrible. Even if you managed to kill some bosses loot usually went to the raid leaders little guild like 80% of the time.
I think pug raids would be common in classic if not for the raid lockout system.
If Classic did per-boss lockouts like retail, pugs would be much more common because it would be easy to find some randoms who would be fine getting summoned in for one or two bosses in the middle or end of a raid after people randomly ditch you after a wipe.
The raid lockout system being what it is means everyone locked to that ID is locked to that ID for the week. If you don’t finish the raid, any of those 40 people could essentially take it over the next day.
If your only other option is not raiding MC or ZG for that week, then I’d still go because you can network to get into the guild. Plus you get reputation.
Do you really think a guild is going to pick up 30 random players to do a raid ? What about DKP (or whatever loot rules you go by) ?
I mean… I did it in vanilla lol… that was the only way I was able to get into raids back then
I wasn’t in control of my schedule as a early high school kid.
2 Likes
I was in the same situation and have been for years. If you want a raid spot in a PUG you need to have a class/spec that is in demand and play it well. Having a good reputation would help, too.
On whatever server I was on at the time, it was fairly common to see someone in a major city Looking For Healer/DPS/or Tank.
One item limit and only for your main spec unless no one else rolled for main spec.
That’s not accurate. No one is going to join a PUG raid with the rules of 80% of the available drops going to the guild running the raid. If you ask or get asked to join a PUG you ask what they loot rules are and if they aren’t followed you submit a ticket with a GM.