Apathy has rained on me

Lately, whether due to tiredness or Recent Events, I've felt somewhat less enthusiastic about raiding, preferring instead just to tootle about on my hunter, levelling up gradually and getting into Uldaman failpugs repeatedly. It's actually a combination of the above factors, probably, plus a feeling that despite pressure from some members to attempt it, we as a guild just aren't ready for ICC. Sure, we can down the first 3 (maybe 4) bosses, but then it gets hard, and I honestly don't think we're capable of tackling it yet. Rather than bash my head against a wall in ICC, I would much rather spend time in Ulduar and see it through to completion. In fact, I'm fairly sure there are people in the guild who haven't even seen all (or any) of Naxx.

The problem is, I'm often needed for raids. At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I do good DPS, good healing and maybe even good tanking, though I've not tanked many raids. I feel like I'm needed, which puts pressure on me to log to my main characters for the benefit of the guild, at odds with what I want to do at the time. Mind you, despite my initial reluctance, I do actually end up enjoying myself if the raid goes well like it did in ToC10 the other day, and it's always a nice feeling being with people who are seeing something for the first time ("What's the Lich King doing here? And wh... aaaahhh wtf?!").

Perhaps I'm being selfish? Should I say "bollocks to the guild"? Put that way it does seem selfish, seeing as without them I wouldn't have much. I could maybe hook up with another guild, but I do like the people in New Dawn, and have known some of them for quite a while now. We're one of those indeterminate "social raiding" guilds, with frequent tension between the "progression" folks and the "let's just have fun together"s.

I do think that, like Tam, I put priority on "not putting up with shit" over "doing raiding". It's why I made my hunter (and my Horde rogue, who shall remain nameless) in the first place: to escape the shit-flinging and whining and drama. And yet, I made these characters on the same server as New Dawn, presumably because I believed subconsciously that things would blow over and I could then play them without feeling like I was hiding.

The social aspect of WoW is a large part of its appeal to me, and I have little interest in progression in the usual sense. I enjoy raiding when we have a good group and are making progress in something that at least a few people in the group haven't seen before. If I'm one of the ones experiencing The New, all the better. I really couldn't give a hoot that we're not up there getting server-firsts; Cataclysm is a long way off, so we have plenty of time to see all the raiding that WoW has to offer us until Deathwing goes and upheaves it all. Meanwhile, I just want to have fun.

In Other News

Beyond the shaman and DK (double respec will be needed for Gorain, o joy) changes in today's 3.3.3 patch, one other thing stood out to me:

Players can no longer roll Need on Frozen Orbs in dungeons under Need Before Greed loot rules. Pass and Greed options will still be available.

Excellent, no more orb ninjas! This change pretty much had to be made anyway, actually, what with Frozen Orbs being tradeable for things like Frost Lotus now. It'll have interesting implications for server economies, at any rate.

I'm also cautiously optimistic about the changes to the random dungeon system. Increasing the length of the deserter debuff (up from 15 minutes to 30) should hopefully encourage people to stay with the group they have, especially if they DPS, and removing the waiting period before being able to kick someone from the group should mean less time wasted with idiots. On the other hand, for tanks who don't over-gear Heroics by at least two full tiers, and have the audacity to show up with less than 27k health unbuffed, it could mean insta-kick, though at least the kick instigator having to provide a reason may deter this behaviour somewhat. Time will tell.