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Through my years of playing WoW, and actively participating in raids, I have come to notice players that sometimes have challenges giving their fellow raid members the attention they deserves when raid invites are accepted. A true raiding guild is comprised of a group of people with little in common outside of one goal; kill bosses, get loot. They typically aren’t very social, they are driven and focused. Yet, somehow the mission of the guild is sometimes not enough to attract the best in people when it comes to consistently giving their undivided attention to the game.

Pre-Burning Crusade
Aside from the obvious attractiveness of progression, pre-BC raiding was monotonous and pretty boring. Raid trash pulls were large, requiring much CC (crowd control) and were kind of “same thing, different room”. With forty people in the raid, classes that weren’t absolutely necessary to each pull weren’t payed much attention when moving from boss to boss.

Many raiders would go AFK (away from keyboard) during trash pulls, or inadvertently disconnect then reconnect when we arrived to the boss. One more memorable AFKs happened in Molten Core during trash pulls when a main tank said over Vent, “I need to go take a shower. I will be right back.” The thing is, with forty people in the raid, the absence of one, two, even three players was not detrimental to moving on from boss to boss. It was an accepted part of raiding with a group that large.

Pre-Wrath of the Lich King
With the introduction of Burning Crusade, raid structure was trimmed down to a lean 25 people. Most guilds who over-recruited with the intention of filling the standard 40-man raid were now inundated with people who waited on the sidelines to raid. Initially it seemed as if the best-of-the best were glanced over for those the simply leveled to 70 first.

Obtaining the level cap first simply means that any one player had more time available than another, and soon those that were left on the sidelines thinned out and began looking elsewhere, forming new guilds, etc. Guilds lost good people due to the fact that they were over populated.

The BC 25-man structure left little to chance by way of CC and attention to play style. It was much more obvious who wasn’t pulling his/her weight, and much easier to manage the smaller number of raiders.

Today
Again, more importance was placed upon reaching the level cap, and great raiders who had less time than others were left to the sidelines while raids formed, and progress was made. Unfortunately, recruiting was necessary in most cases to fill the ranks. And, yet again many guilds have lost many great players due in large part to the theory that reaching the cap readied players for raiding. The fact that great players who have time and time again shown a great level of commitment in the past are, at times, looked over or replaced is sometimes unavoidable as the goals for progress remain the same, no mater how much time any one player has available to invest in his/her character.

The ever-present meters have become even more involved in the selection of who is selected to fill raid spots, and what is expected of their play, their class, and their attention. It is evident to all that run and check meters exactly who is not maintaining a minimum level of attention needed, dying a more than acceptable number of times, not using the expected consumables, inconsistent spell rotation, or basically riding the coat tails of those that are putting in 100% effort on a consistent basis.

I say this all to point out the fact that I expect for my fellow raiders to give the same amount of attention to raid encounters that I/others give, show the same amount of consistency and expertise that we know we are all capable. As someone who entrusts my raiding experience to the mercy of the raid leaders, I also expect that those leaders identify raid members that might not be fulfilling what is needed of his/her raid spot to achieve the one overall goal that we all have; kill bosses, get loot.

Different people may play at different levels, and may focus on a varied number of goals. But, on thing is evident in any guild: If a guild has a vision and a set of goals they strive towards, it is up to each member support that vision, and to act as a community to address and tackle challenges on an ongoing basis.