What a MMO can do to some people

[Signe]

Except in MUDs, all my bannings from MMOs are not because of doing anything naughty, except one, but for things I've said.  If someone acts like a total dumbfuck loser, they shouldn't be surprised if someone calls them a total dumbfuck loser... whether it's in a game or on a board.  My perfectly reasonable attitude about total dumbfuck losers has gotten me sacked from two jobs, too.     I really am misunderstood.  It's ALWAYS their fault.  It's their total dumbfuck loserness that pushes me to say radical and extreme things.

Please add "loserness" to the spelldickymabob.  I'm too depressed not to go all the way over to that thread. 

[Sky]

One of my favorite quotes from EQ: "It's ok to act like an asshole, just don't call someone an asshole." Some guy had been kill stealing me for an hour or so, and I told him to stop being an asshole. He petitioned me and I got a warning from that, with three CS people showing up, no less. I asked if he was going to get a warning for being an asshole, they said no. Thus the quote.

[Special J]

The fact that the Blizzard assheads see the raiding game as the core focus of their game tells me all I need to know. McQuaid really has poisoned the MMOG medium for all of us, thanks to his devotees Furor and Tigole. They spread their sickness everywhere.

I would go as far to say the level grinding and raiding experience in WoW at level 60 is worse than EQ.  Blizzard has so completely sold out to 'uber' guilds and timesinks.  Just look at the content they've added.  1 5-man instance and 5 raid instances; and they pretty well follow a linear progression.  They've managed to find more miserable grinds: faction and honour.  Hell, grinding honour isn't just a grind, its a job, since you have to do some each week just to maintain your rank.

I guess I'm lucky I fall under the category of players with limited time.  If you're limited in time, you're pretty well frozen out of the raid content since your not 'hardcore' enough to fill a limited number of raid slots.  And if you can't do that then you're not left with a whole lot to do at level 60 other than grind miserable grinds.  Made my decision to quit pretty easy.

[Dren]

Seems everyone is on the same sort of bandwagon these days. We wrote a State of Online Gaming Pt1: MMORPG's article over on our website.

One of the quotes from our article came from a discussion forum for another game, but it hits on the OP's point and the point of some of the folks here.

What many of you don't understand about casual players is their schedule limits. This ISN'T some teenager who bargains with his mom to get 30 hrs / week of play time between homework and dinner and weekends. This is the husband who happens to wake up 90 minutes before his wife and wants to kill time playing a game, and isn't going to even consider browsing the boards waiting for the next scheduled dungeon raid because chances are it's happening the same time he has to do honey-do's. This is the software engineer who hit "compile" on his work machine and has 30 minutes before the result, who's not going to spend 29 of those waiting for groups to form. This is the college student who has 45 minutes between classes and work that's usually busy but today, and today only, can spend those 45 minutes logged into DAoC. This casual gamer can log in and get to 50 on multiple characters, even make LGM crafters and get moderate RR, but next to impossible to synchronize their schedule to rarely ongoing raids or even well-balanced groups.

Either way if MMORPG's don't start putting in more solo content or quick content that someone with an hour or so to game can play, then I forsee the market moving more towards Guild Wars type games.  You still spend time to get good in Guild Wars, but its free and there's no sense of urgency to keep up with your friends. Running guilds in games like that is a cake walk.

The average PC gamer is 30+ years old, and people in that age bracket simply can't play 25-60 hours a week that is required to get anywhere fast in today's MMORPG games.

...

I've been saying this all along, but it gets lost in the noise somehow.  I DO play a lot of hours.  I DO NOT play more than 2 hours at a time.  That time includes the point of turning the switch on for the computer to the point of standing up from the computer.  ANY activity that is required to progress through a game has to fit within that time period.  I can't fudge it.

Those 2 hours are also never planned exactly.  I never know when I'll get it.  Gaming is a priority in my life, but no where near the top.  I do it when ALL other things have been taken care of.  I never use the excuse to get out of things with, "I plan to raid in WoW from 8-11:30 tonight, sorry."  When my guild schedules raids, I always respond with, "We'll see.  Thanks for letting me know."

My game night consists of logging on, telling everyone in guild chat that I'm available for a raid if it gets started in 30 minutes and is a short 5 - man or something, then going about solo'ing quests, farming rep., working the AH, etc.  If nothing comes together in that 30 minutes, I log out after about 60 more minutes and go to bed.  That is it. 

That is my gaming time.  If a game is developed that does not work with that type of schedule, I can't play it.  It isn't that I don't want to.  It is that I CAN'T.

WoW has so far allowed me to continue to play outside of the raiding experience and still progress.  I have to admit I'm getting to a point where 4 lvl 60 alts with a few more getting close is about as far as the current "casual" content takes me.  That's why this whole talk of more casual content coming and allowing casual players more opportunities to progress through the game is wonderful news to me.  It will keep me playing and paying.  It is as simple as that.

[Sky]

I guess I'm lucky I fall under the category of players with limited time.  If you're limited in time, you're pretty well frozen out of the raid content since your not 'hardcore' enough to fill a limited number of raid slots.  And if you can't do that then you're not left with a whole lot to do at level 60 other than grind miserable grinds.  Made my decision to quit pretty easy.

Yep, I WoW'd to 58 and then quit and never went back. Critics would say that's because I burned through the content so quickly, but it was entirely because the level 60+ content held zero appeal for me (more than that, I actively dislike that style of gameplay). Ok, throw in a bit of anti-solo 'elite mob' bullshit as well. I saw one single dungeon the entire time I played and that got old pretty fast.

[WindupAtheist]

When I played Asheron's Call, I got bored after a week and decided to quit.  Then I figured I would get banned just for shits and giggles.  I understand things have changed since then, but back around 2001 I found it simply impossible to be banned.  I would spam the GM request queue with obscenities, and the most they would do is slap a five-minute squelch on me.  It was insane.

In UO I've been referring to killstealers as fucknuts who should get cancer and die for years with nary a warning.  But one time I had an extra account that I decided to get banned just for the hell of it.  (Wasn't using two accounts, was just getting rid of this one and re-activating my old one.)  So I made Adolf Hitler.  Or maybe Ad0lf H1tl3r to get around the filter, I don't remember.  Then I just started walking around West Britain bank emoting *goosesteps* and yelling "Heil me!"

Yeah, didn't take long for that account to get banned.  Especially once I was in jail and told the GM that he must be in league with the jews.

[HaemishM]

I was just curious about LC. I only knew about SB.

If you want some good stories ask him to talk about his AO exploits.

What'd he do, manage to keep it from deleting his C: drive's FAT table on release? Cos that'd be a wicked hard exploit.

[Yegolev]

I remember one huge exploit in AO where some invulnerable guy came bounding over the city walls like The Hulk, murdering and looting.  Other than that, I mostly just remember bugs, lag, this one guy running around in just boxers wielding a pillow, lag, how I put womens' clothing on my fat, bald engineer, lag, and lag.  It was also a shitty game.

[d4rkj3di]

I backed out of WoW about the time I saw it consuming my life the way UO and SWG started to. Now I just take the shotgun approach to killing myself with MMOs. I'm currently playing 6-8 at any given time. But that's ok, right, since I can only spend 2-3 hours in each one a week, that makes me a casual player, right? (Cry for help!)

[damijin]

I'm currently playing 6-8 at any given time.

oh dear god, why!?

There can't possibly exist 6 MMOs that are actually worth paying for.

[Venkman]

WoW has so far allowed me to continue to play outside of the raiding experience and still progress.

The thing is that one CAN play on a limited schedule, both in terms of per-session time and per-week, and raid, and solo, and quest, and farm. It requires two parts:

• The right mindset: how much do you care about the pace at which others advance? If you don't care, or only care a little out of maybe-I'll-get-that-someday-too curiosity, then good.
• The right guild: I was lucky. When I quit UO and joined EQ, I fell into a good family guild and have been with them on and off through countless dikus since. To me, "family guild" is one with a good cross section of playstyles, from budding uber raiders to roleplayers. That's a family: everyone's different but still together. Anyway, some weeks I don't raid. Others I'll hit MC twice and AQsomething once. We're not Fires of Heaven because we just don't give that level of shit about these games, and it allows everyone to partake. We typically rotate people in and out of raids as people log off after 90 minutes to 2 hours.

Yes, we schedule things. And yes, they absolutely do work. If you've got a three month old in the next room, don't expect to Raid consistently. If you've got a needy spouse, same deal. Know your life, know yourself. Most of these games can be scaled to accomodate as long as you make the mental compromises.

Forget the other people. There are folks who will ALWAYS play more than you. That's the way of things.

[stray]

Y'know, I'm surprised how many people are here at F13 who really like mmo's.....Let alone people with a (slight or not so slight) addiction to them.

Being lured by the promise and ideas behind massive multiplayer games is one thing. Actually liking the currently existing titles in the genre? Haha.

First time I ever ran across Waterthread, it was because of some rant by Faust -- Who utterly ripped apart SWG (the "big" mmog at the time). After that, I scoured through other front page articles from the community, and found that there was this entire mmo subculture who dedicated a good deal of their posting time to lambasting the mmo industry.

I liked it. They were vocalizing everything I couldn't put into words.

I became addicted to that.

So.....What's going on here? Have I deluded myself?

No, I don't expect total "groupthink" necessarily, but I really was under the impression that we had a few things in common: Hate. Disgust. Great Expectations.

Not fans. Not addicts. Not closet catassing.

[stray]

Anyone ever seen the Tao of Steve?

I feel like that guy Dex was teaching the "Tao of Steve" to......Only to tell him in the end that it was all bullshit.

[Azazel]

I can't pull away from your avatar. What should I do.

Try pulling off instead.

People can be obsessed with anything but MMORPGs encourage it.

The more time you spend the better you get. This is not true of nearly anything else in life, past a certain point. In sports you can overtrain and become injured. *Just* putting in time doesn't make you better at anything in life, but it does in MMORGs. Putting in time, thought, effort and energy - yes those are required to be good at anything. But to be good at WOW you don't need thought, effort or energy. You can't grind away in soccer to become better.

With the glacial time-scale games work on, the repeated content with random rewards, the games encourage addiction. Furthermore they teach no transferable skills.

In a way they encourage it, but it all depends on how much time people have to play. I was on break from work a few weeks ago, and basially catassed 3 toons to Exalted AV rep back to back. I had the time, and no committments. This week I've been working all week. I think I logged on to do my transmutes but haven't otherwise played at all. Honor/rank grinding? Fuck that shit for a joke.

Those are two extremes, but it goes to show that MMOGs really have to cater to people with very different amounts of time to play. The all-day player (unemployed, students, etc) as well as people who work jobs of varying hours. I'd also debate your assertation that games don't require thought, effort or energy. If they didn't require effort or energy, I'd be on farming gold to pay back a mate who lent me money for my epic mount. But honestly, I just can't be fucking bothered logging on right now. I'd also say that you can get better at most sports by "grinding", to a point, and that getting to that plateau takes quite a bit of time.

These games do teach transferrable skills though, I learned to type at a decent speed through playing years of Everquest, and learning my way around a PC.

Raiding? Never been interested. I had fun doing it in EQ and all, but I'm just not interested in doing it in WoW. Now pretty much all the raid loot/content that WoW has is about to be superceded by world drops from the expansion. Something my Ex-EQ mates and I have been laughing about for a few months while continuing to not raid. My guild, who I barely know any of, has gone from raiding once a week with another guild to raiding a minimum of 4 nights a week, though since they started as a "family" guild, raiding isn't mandatory. Unless you're a priest, so some dumbfucks aseem to think. Their recruiting page though has now got all the usual "raiding guild" bullshit on it, so you can really see how the guild's focus has changed.

Name -
Level -
Class -
Class Build -
Why did you chose this build?
Professions-
Attunements / Keys -
Experience with MC / Ony / BWL / AQ / ZG
-Gear (i.e. Teir 1, Teir .5, Blues, ZG set, etc) General description is fine, elaborate if you like -
Resist levels in resist gear (FR/NR/SR)
Previous / Current Guild name -
Reason for wanting to join xxxxxxxx -
Reason for leaving previous/current guild -
Timezone and times available for raid play -
What we would like from applicants :
Level 60
125 Fire Resist minimum while in Fire Resist gear (at least let us know where your at in terms of FR:) )
A pleasant disposition and mature attitude!

Officers will review your application and get in touch will prospective persons to join us on trial raids. Good luck and see you in Azeroth!

Seem familiar? What amuses me is that based on the criteria listed here, none of my characters, and especially my wife's would never make it in.

An Auto debuff when player hit 8 hour play time daily would be a fix. LOL
Like :
Exhausted (Your character needs sleep, please get some rest for about 5-6 hours and come back again)
MaxMana -25% MaxHP -25% Damage done -25% increment penalty by 10% every 15 minute interval capped at 90%
And reduce game gamma gradually by 10% per 15 minute to simulate difficulty in staying awake. Capped at 90% by that time the only thing you can see if probably the logoff button LMAO.

They planned something similar to this initially in WoW. Remember the early days of the rest system, where you were going to eventually get kicked down into some sort of anti-catass "red mode", where all gains were reduced by a sizable percentage? Yeah. That tested out well with the beta group (i.e. catasses), and got replaced by what you know today as the blue bar.

Yeah, that was a pretty retarded idea that Blizz had, and let's face it, it wasn't for "the health of the players" or anything, it was so the hardcore wouldn't be able to catass their way to 60 quite so fast, since there was little conent way up the top end. It's easy to decry anyone you don't like as "catasses" but as someone who will sometimes not play at all during the week then play a lot on a Sunday or something, well, you know, I'm an adult and I can make my own playtime decisions based around when my schedule allows, so you know, enforced "red zones" can fuck off.

And the "rested" xp was in at the same time. They planned on having both at the extremes.

Don't forget the new honor system which is basically taking the catass out of the old system. Since I don't raid - for reasons this thread has made abundantly clear - for a while I looked to PvP to advance my character at 60 - but even that quickly sours when you get to the middle ranks and realize how much time you're going to have to put in to advance - it's just another system that pressures you to play. The new system is great because you don't have to worry about decay or competition for points - you just gather points at whatever pace you like and eventually cash them in.

This is an aspect of the "gimme LDoN/DoD/AAs" drum that I've been, erm,  beating here for some time. Hopefully the token/points/whatever grind here isn't too incredibly hardcore (like, you know, AD or CS rep) and there's a few nice items to be had from it without a massive time investment. After seeing the way WoW decided to implement faction/rep, I won't hold my breath, however.

The game is ok. I'm not enamoured by the level 60 game, but it's a lot of fun playing alongside my wife, and it's also fun playing with my RL mates. My alt and the wife's main (both mages) are in the mid-50's now, so by the time we can all properly play together, the expansion will be out, my mates will be on the fast train to 60, and the pair of mages will be trailing along, to hit 70 sometime around the middle of next year or so...

[Soln]

I'm in the same boat playing with my girlfriend and her main.  I've hung up WoW for awhile. I got really burnt when after trying to solo Uldaman with just the two of us (after 3 or 4 tries at earlier levels), we at mid-fifties get to the end only to find out you need 5 players to unlock the last area/boss.  That really pissed me off.  Not only because we could've checked and saved hours, but that it was there as a useless constraint.  I can understand putting in n+1 or n+2 requirements for endgame raids, but who cares if you can access a zone boss at lower levels?  All their drops get soulbound to you.   It's just an example where Blizz still focuses on the raid as a team sport. 

[bhodi]

You were misinformed. It's like summoning, It only requires 3. It *was* annoying, when I had a 60 friend run me through, that we had to dig up another person. As far as I can recall, that is the only place in the game that limitation appears, except for UBRS.

[Sky]

Family guilds moving into raiding guilds is never pretty. I was in a guild mostly because my buddy the eqholic was. It wasn't bad at first, we'd group regularly because they were /always on/. But then they melded with some other guild that had this inane 'inner council' leadership structure that ended up pissing me off to no end because they basically used the guild as a way to get phat lewtz for the inner council. And gone were all the friendly 'raids' (just doing dungeons), everything became set up like that stuff Az referred to.

Fuck that noise. If you want those kind of requirements, if I have to submit a resume, you're paying me for my time, bitchhog.

[Nebu]

Actually liking the currently existing titles in the genre? Haha.

I enjoy PvP in 1v1, group vs group, and large scale battles but don't particularly enjoy FPS.  For this reason, I play and enjoy DAoC. I can log on for 30 mins and have fun.  I have yet to find a multiplayer game out there with both the PvP experience and the social structure.   

I'm certain that some of the games you enjoy would make me laugh as well... it's all about playing what we like.  Pissing all over that makes little sense to me.

[HaemishM]

There can't possibly exist 1 MMO that is actually worth paying for.

Fixed that for you.

Seriously, 6-8? Seek help, bitch. Now.

[d4rkj3di]

I'm currently playing 6-8 at any given time.

oh dear god, why!?

There can't possibly exist 6 MMOs that are actually worth paying for.

My job lets me write off as a business expense any game related cost I incur over the tax year. Games, hardware, and subscription fees.

That's the why. Your second point is correct, there aren't. I'm not even sure that one exists that is worth it.

I guess I could qualify the 6-8 statement by saying while I actually do have active subscriptions to several MMOs, I only seriously play 1 or 2. The others are mostly there for research and reference material for anything I happen to be writing. If I seriously were trying to play 6 MMOs, I would dip the shotgun barrel in cinnamon oil, to really taste the hot burning death.

I'm currently spending most of my time in EVE and Guild Wars. And by spending time in EVE, I log in when it's time to change skills, until I have time to launch and pew pew some miners. Everything else is just there. I haven't played WoW in about a year, but my kid uses the account to tame dinosaurs in the Barrens, and my brother turned my 60 Warrior into his PvP project character.

[Venkman]

Being lured by the promise and ideas behind massive multiplayer games is one thing. Actually liking the currently existing titles in the genre?

There's a difference between actively liking everything out there and trying to understand why they're liked by so many millions of people. Just spewing hate ends conversations, and is, quite frankly, boring as hell.

But then they melded with some other guild that had this inane 'inner council' leadership structure that ended up pissing me off to no end because they basically used the guild as a way to get phat lewtz for the inner council. And gone were all the friendly 'raids' (just doing dungeons), everything became set up like that stuff Az referred to.

That doesn't serve as proof that all Family/Raiding/Alliances suck. It does mean you need to go into them both eyes wide open and knowing exactly what's what. My own organization stands as proof that this can work. You just need to blend with the right people. We've already ditched a few guilds in WoW alone (due to them imploding or going Raid-only), but we did that in DAoC and EQ too. We're long past the point, collectively, of expecting consistency, either in our ranks or without. There's the core 20 people and the rest who come and go because they slowly realized we weren't what they thought we were. It happens.

[Yegolev]

You know, if money was not a factor then I'd have a huge number of subscriptions.  Some just for comedy effect.  Shit, I maintained a subscription to Seed for the duration of its miserable life.  I never tried to make progress in the game in any way, I just logged on to peep the freaks like I was at the circus, and to be as disruptive to the population as possible.  In-character, of course.  I'd scream that we were all doomed, fixing the ship was futile, that sort of thing.  I wonder if I'll be remembered for my accurate prophecies?

[tazelbain]

Overlord Raph says that spewing hate about a game is a valid part of the game.

Anyway, I am one of these "No Life" people that could (and have in the past) spend all their time in a game.  But I don't because I am no longer willing to make the emotional investment into games.  I believe that before I figured this out, I would continue to play the game well past the point I was no longer having fun. Gradually frustion and anger would rise up until I'd have outbursts rage. At some point I decided this wasn't what I wanted and taught myself how to quit when I stopped having fun.  Guild Wars has been a happy medium for me.  I don't feel compelled to invest myself very much and I can start/quit at my leisure. I am hoping one day there'll be a MMOG that'll be fun past the second month out of the box, so I can invest myself without the fustration.

[Nonentity]

I feel more comfortable blaming non-entities (like mmo's and the forces that drive them) rather than people.

Why would you blame me? :(

[stray]

Nonentity

Date Registered:  July 05, 2006, 01:27:46 PM

Heh. Thought you were a gimmick for a second there.


Then again, maybe you are.

[Yegolev]

Not a gimmick.  It is real and it rubs Summon Knight on its skin.

[Big Gulp]

First the requirements to stay active were just attend 3 raids a week every other week. Only needed to be there for 1 hour of raiding.  Then it went to 3 times a week, every week strictly enforced.  Then 3 times a week and 6 hours must be learning new material.  Then the new material requirement was 10 hours a fucking week.  People who were minutes late would often be benched for the entire raiding night.

Jesus.  And you tolerated this horseshit for even a minute?  "Benched" in a video game, for fuck's sake.

This is why I've never been in an uberguild. 

[Venkman]

I find it odd how people who have spent many hours a week in MMOGs could see a requirement for spending hours a week in an MMOG as a bad thing.

What is often missed in these sorts discussions about "requirements" though is two things:

• It makes everything easier. For every five dozen pickup raids that even hit the first Boss there is one scheduled Raid that clears a dungeon
  
• It makes winning more likely

There's a reason for scheduling, and it's mostly done for consistency. I realize it'd be ideal if everyone who paid a fee had equal access to all content in the game, but nobody's making games that way. It's just about opportunities, and recognizing that everyone is welcome to figure out ways to maximize those.

There are rules beyond those the developers created.

[Stephen Zepp]

I find it odd how people who have spent many hours a week in MMOGs could see a requirement for spending hours a week in an MMOG as a bad thing.

What is often missed in these sorts discussions about "requirements" though is two things:

• It makes everything easier. For every five dozen pickup raids that even hit the first Boss there is one scheduled Raid that clears a dungeon
  
• It makes winning more likely

There's a reason for scheduling, and it's mostly done for consistency. I realize it'd be ideal if everyone who paid a fee had equal access to all content in the game, but nobody's making games that way. It's just about opportunities, and recognizing that everyone is welcome to figure out ways to maximize those.

There are rules beyond those the developers created.

Another thing to keep in mind here is that developers don't just say "this event drops really cool items, let's cockblock our player base on it because we can!".

It's actually (for those games that play this type of design) a quite involved decision making process aimed at correctly preparing timelines for new content based on expected progression of the groups of players the new content is aimed at.

If you let every single player access every single "end game" encounter on a triggered basis on demand, you are going to see 90% of your player base crammed into your latest content, instead of a relatively smooth progression throughout at least the last 2-5 levels of content. To combat that type of trend, you control the influx rate of "inflationary" items so that you can at least aim at keeping your player base both spread out, and "enjoying" (I use that term loosely given the nature if the OP) content that takes many personnel-months to develop more than a few weeks of play.

Sure, in a 100% completely isolated/instanced game like some people here seem to want that wouldn't be a problem--but there aren't any games that have ever been designed completely around that type of scenario, and a vocal miniority aside it hasn't been proven that the market wants it enough to be worth a new design and business model over.

[Venkman]

Yes. It's effectively the same payout discussions casinos and the chains behind them have to evaluate.

[lamaros]

Yes. It's effectively the same payout discussions casinos and the chains behind them have to evaluate.

MMOGs often have more shiny than the Pokies though. Amen for that.

[Xanthippe]

I find it odd how people who have spent many hours a week in MMOGs could see a requirement for spending hours a week in an MMOG as a bad thing.

I don't think people are saying that it's a bad thing for everyone - but it's a bad thing for people who don't have a lifestyle that supports it.

I cannot be in a guild that has requirements for raiding.  I just can't do it, my life doesn't permit me.  I have kids that need to be picked up from school, homework to help with, and meals to prepare - the other tasks in my life can be done at odd times, but not those.  I could raid once or twice a week, but which day and what time can't be arbitrarily determined by some raidleader.

I do, however, have many hours to play my mmo of choice - in between laundry loads or telephone calls or balancing bank statements or paying bills or cleaning house or any of the other tasks of daily life that fall to me in our household. 

I raid when I can.  I also don't want to take a spot from a more dedicated guildie; I don't mind sitting.

But to imagine me ever being in a guild with attendance requirements - no, I don't think that's going to happen.  I'm not that dedicated to getting phat lewt.

[Venkman]

Oddly enough, I have the same requirements. Heck, some of the folks in my guild are grand parents. But we are all Central and East Coast US (after years of triage, to be sure), so don't do our raiding until 8-9pm EST.

The only reason I mention this is to keep hammering home the core point: the right people can unlock lots of the game. If you're able/willing/interested in building the social network.

Some are fine not doing so. We all have our own limits. As easy as it would be for me to Raid, I find I careen in and out of interest with it. Lately I don't really care. It's mostly because come the expansion, I plan to never again set foot in any zone I've already memorized.

[Merusk]

Oddly enough, I have the same requirements. Heck, some of the folks in my guild are grand parents. But we are all Central and East Coast US (after years of triage, to be sure), so don't do our raiding until 8-9pm EST.

The only reason I mention this is to keep hammering home the core point: the right people can unlock lots of the game. If you're able/willing/interested in building the social network

This is completly true.  The guilds to accomodate anyone's schedule are out there if you want to find them.  I'm in a raiding guild that's doing BWL.  We're also made up of mostly 25+ year old folks with jobs/ school/ kids to deal with.  As such we raid Friday and Saturday nights, starting at about 8pm and do Onyxia on Sundays at about 5.  None of these last more than 4- 4 1/2 hours.  For the majority of us it'd be Raid in WoW or watch TV, as it's late in the evening and most of our kids are in bed.

  The biggest requirement we have is that you attend 3 out of 12 raids a month to stay in the guild.  If you or your schedule can't accomodate that, then it's not something you're really interested in doing, is it?  More likely it's just something you want to experience or check-out.

"Omg I have to catass"  is an excuse you're making to feel better about not being willing to find other people with requirements that match yours.  "OMG i have to group" is perhaps more valid, but I still don't understand the grouse about having to group for some things in an online multiplayer game.

[stray]

Just wondering...

How long has your guild been running? You're on Alleria, right (a launch server, if I recall)? How long did it take to move beyond Molten Core? How far geared are most of your members in BWL gear?