Originally Posted by
Ridesdel
All ranks are server, not world.
I will say this, I have raided since TBC, I started shortly after the start of TBC, and rocketed a maged up to 70, faster than many thought possible, because, after talking to a few "Hardcore Raiders" in school they said it was the most fun they have ever had. So in TBC I was DPS, my guild never got very far because even though we where relatively good, not the best, but better than average, we where used as a stepping stone guild. In fact, many of the people who where in the top 3 horde guild came through my guild, but that's another post for another topic.
Come WotLK, this time I leveled my alt prot/holydin up to raid level and raided as the off tank in 10 man, and heals in 25. while we where never top of the progression lists we where in the top 25 of the server most of the time. ICC comes out, and for a while we are in the top 10, but then the raid lead of the 2nd 10 man group has a disagreement with the guild leader because he was stripped of his officer rank because he did not show up to his raids for a week, left the guild, and took nearly all our raiders except for the ones that where with us since TBC, as when they where recruited they went through the secondary 10 group instead of the core.
Cata comes, several more raiders have left due to burn out, and do not come back. But still we are able to raid, but this xpac we started raiding before we where ready, to great consequences, the first tier we couldn't get past the first 2 bosses because once we started raiding most people thought they had enough gear to get the first few bosses down, and devoted all their time to gathering mats for flasks and feasts instead of farming heroic 5mans. After about 2 months of this I had an argument with another of the raiders over how to down a boss, simple thing really, but at the time it was our 5th wipe of the night, but no changing tactics so everyone was running hot, I just had hit my boiling point then and took a 3 month break to come back during 4.2. I went back to raiding on my holydin, but not with my guild group because of the way I had just disappeared for 3 months, I waited until they offered me my spot back, instead of demanding it back. All if fine and dandy until DS, LFR comes out and the raiding population explodes due to alts being able to get geared enough to start DS. We go back to having 2 10 man groups we progress along the back end of the bell curve, but still fairly quick, and everything is fine....fast forward 5 months, back down to one group, but still doing normal because it was an easy farm, noone raided on alts other than LFR, just getting burned out.
Now MoP, first few months, big population of raiders, our guild has no trouble getting the people on for raids, but lots of trouble getting gear due to the daily grind and poor luck in heroics. When we finally get our gear to 460+ for all of our raiders, our pool had shrunk to the core 7 people that have been raiding with us since begining of Wrath, and a few long time members that just got into raiding in MoP. Despite trying to recruit, many of the competent raiders have left the server, or stoped playing, during end cata, leaving just recount heroes to choose from, many who don't last long because they refuse to learn the fights. come the current patch, 5.2, small bump in trade about people looking for 1 DPS/Heal/Tank for 20-30 min at a time, but when Sha is up a full 40 man takes less than 10 min to fill, with the last 5 min looking for tanks and healers if it's not started by a guild.
TL;DR Through out the history of WoW my guild has seen first hand the rise of raiding in TBC and WotLK, but then the serious, and profound decline begining Cata, and the subsequent rise when LFR came out, and the drop again, when gating for entry level came back.
Moral of this rant? If the starting tier of raids where not so heavily gated, but more like Naxx(WotLK) we would see a bigger pool of raiders because they don't give up so early because of the massive amount of work you would have to put in to get the gear level to even walk into a raid and expect to have a snowball's chance to down even the first boss.