Raiding; pet battles; recruitment

I've seen a few people who refer to progression raiding as "progressive". Social reform is a noble goal it's true, but I'm not sure it's necessarily a high priority for most World of Warcraft raids.

Pet battles in their current state reminds me so much of the first generation of Pokémon. Unrefined interface, unbalanced mechanics, and an insane amount of fun. They are going to do good things with this, assuming any kind of ongoing development focus.

I'm concerned about the future of my raid group. Our best players are all people who have been with us since we were a 25-man raid, but natural churn has been eroding at that core for a while now, and our recruitment is only ever reactive. It doesn't help that our server is small these days, or that so many of the quality people tend to be caught in the gravity of a certain top raid leader and his cult of personality. I guess I shouldn't be surprised of the power of social ties in an MMO, but god it's depressing how far some very average players have gotten just by glomming onto the right person.

Recruitment is all about the size of the pool you have to draw from. It's about knowing enough people [or having enough people know you] that you can cherry pick the best ones. Sometimes I wish I could care enough about knowing people for the sake of knowing them, but that's just not who I am.

I really like the group I have. I suppose if in a month from now we're unable to field a consistent 10-man group it will be time to review our options. I have to ponder whether an Guild merger is going to be an attractive option, but I absolutely don't want to give up playing with the people I play with. With the recruitment pool of a large guild behind us we'd be set. No more horrible trade pugs slowing down our progression, and we could reach the level I know we're capable of.

I guess I wouldn't really want to give up the perks of being a guild officer either, but I'm not the kind of person who requires the ego boost of being a big fish in a small pond.

I went with a few guildies to try a Challenge Mode the other night. I think the difficulty took them by surprise. ;)