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Ahh… The PTR is live and there is so much excitement in the air about the impending 3.1 patch that you can cut it with a Betrayer of Humanity!

In the midst of all of the hubbub our guild has asked that we put most of our live raiding on hold to take a closer look at the PTR. Nearly our entire raiding population, along with many from outside of our guild, have copied our characters over and plan to tackle the 3.1 content head-on.

While this is extremely exciting, it is also bound to cause many headaches in the coming weeks. Here are a few of the pros and cons of being an active raiding guild on the PTR:

PROS

• Getting to see new content will spice things up from the curing farm of same ‘ol, same ‘ol bullshit.
• The pressure of new content usually weeds out the weaklings.
• Teamwork is crucial and typically builds comradely between raiders.
• PTR testing is crucial to the game we all know and love. See what happened in 3.08 when there were so few people testing? Bug-o-licious!
• You get a TON of exposure to some very involved players who could one day be potential recruits for your guild. Forging new relationships with players cross-server opens doors far beyond your guild.
• Being able to test out new specs, talents, spells, glyphs, etc. will aid your LIVE experience. You can also share your learnings with players with similar specs throughout your guild.

CONS

• Being the first to see the new content means that there are few to none encounter guides. Gotta figure it out for ourselves!
• Raiders might ends up burned out on beating theirs heads against the wall of progression by the time the patch actually goes live.
• Typically, none of the add-ons we so heavily rely on are functional… at first.
• The excitement of loot is short-lived when you realize that it will only be yours until the testing is complete.

In the end, our current LIVE content is on farm and is typically cleared in under two nights. So, what else is there to do besides tough it out with the rest of the guild on the PTR? For us, the PROS far outweigh the CONS this time around. A year ago we weren’t in this stalemate of content. But, for now I would rather see something new than to see off-spec loot whores taking more crap for their third set of gear.

We are set to start the PTR headaches this weekend. We are hoping to get a lot of experience in Ulduar under our belt fairly quickly considering the guilds that we have partnered with on the PTR. We plan to share our learnings on the podcast, and hash out ideas on the blog. So, if you have any PTR raiding guild type of questions, please feel free to ask away!

or pose a 3.1 question to our PTR raid group at