Okay, so at this point, we’re deep into the pre-expansion rut. People’s focus has shifted from current raid content to Cataclysm content that isn’t yet available to us.
Guilds who killed Lich King long ago have attendance problems, and guilds who haven’t yet killed the Lich King are still feeling the pinch.
As members get bored, frustrated, tired, or just burnt out on the game, it becomes harder and harder to get together a group of 25 people to run ICC in the months leading up to a new expansion release. I’m not here to offer solutions, because at this point, I don’t have any. At this point, my goal is just to keep my guild (Conspiracy) running at all costs, with a constant battle of recruitment (at this point, anyone interested could still apply… even resto or feral druids).
At this point, Conspiracy got set back a bit in progression, and has always been a more casual guild, so we still haven’t killed the Lich King on 25-man (though we have killed him on 10-man and have been making pretty good progress on our 10-man hard mode runs!).
For Conspiracy, we’re still hanging on, but having battles over things like whether to do hard modes before we have LK dead on 25-man as a gearing tool & morale boost, but we still have some members who feel like buying a LK kill for a member just to unlock hard modes feels like cheating. I’m sure we’ll eventually kill LK 25-man before the next expansion, but being locked out of hard modes completely for now really sucks because full clears are potentially boring and LK is still just outside our grasp.
I really wish that doing Hard Mode Gunship & the easier hard modes didn’t require a LK kill, because it locks a lot of guilds out of having a progression path that allows them to work at their own pace. I really wish Blizzard would reconsider their Hard Mode lockout system for Cataclysm, and instead build a more flexible system that allows all guilds more flexibility & options.
That said – I just wanted to pose some questions out to the community: How is your guild surviving the pre-expansion slump? Has your guild considered buying your way to hard modes if you are stuck on the Lich King? Or, if you are already on hard modes, how are you keeping people interested in the weekly grind?
We’ve been doing off-night runs & achievements to try and fill the time with more fun activities, along with gearing up alts on alt run nights.






New Cata Eclipse Bar pictures
So, this latest patch brought us a new Eclipse bar and some UI improvements.
The new bar looks more night & day themed, and one side glows light after you get the Eclipse proc. The graphic is really neat. Even your spells on the bar are highlighted (Lunar Eclipse has moonfire & starfire light up on your bar. Solar Eclipse has wrath & insect swarm light up).
I think it really looks good. Here’s some pictures! (click on each one to see it full size).