Guilds raiding 60-70 hours now?

[TEHPALLYTANK]

The ilvl jump between t14 and t15 probably accounts for quite a bit of it. They do not yet have the gear that would permit them a larger margin of error, so they must make up for it with more time put in to execute the fight with no mistakes and hope they get lucky.

[Gnarles Malarkey]

As a sponsored raider, I make a cool $700 a week Ebaying all the crap headsets and mice my guild leader didn't keep for himself.

[Moogosa]

They have sponsors

They take off work

[Taiphon]

i just wonder how they can keep a regular 9-5 job, or as me, a 6-16 job, while raiding for so long.

guess they a basement dwellers getting everything paid by their parrents. or maybe they are robots? who knows?

They take a week off from work when a new expansion is released for progress.

You're wrong to think these people are basement dwellers, they're just very dedicated and well-organized.

In Cata, they cleared DS in ~80min without the nerf in speed runs. So with the nerf, they could do 4 clears during farm, with only two 3 hour raids per week. That's a pretty relaxed schedule.

[Hirv3s]

i just wonder how they can keep a regular 9-5 job, or as me, a 6-16 job, while raiding for so long.

guess they a basement dwellers getting everything paid by their parrents. or maybe they are robots? who knows?

They don't, they get income from sponsors and need no work. Paragon, as the #1 guild in world earns a lot of money from Asus, Steelseries and many events they attend every year. In Finland you also get 500-700 euros a month if you're unemployed so shouldn't be a problem.

[spectrefax]

They don't, they get income from sponsors and need no work. Paragon, as the #1 guild in world earns a lot of money from Asus, Steelseries and many events they attend every year. In Finland you also get 500-700 euros a month if you're unemployed so shouldn't be a problem.

Please stop saying this. Spreading misinformation like this, that could encourage people to try to pursue this as an active source of income, is just wrong.

Read: http://manaflask.com/en/blog/Zemme/356/p/4/

[Taiphon]

Heck even paragon is 10 man now and they are notoriously the best of the best.

No, as I understand, Paragon was the first guild to introduce systematic alt-farming to help with class-stacking. That gave them the advantage over Ensidia in ToC.

Over time Paragon gradually lost some of its skilled core, and they had difficulty replacing because they're Finnish-only. After DS they lost a lot of people they couldn't replace. So they had to choose between losing the race in 25m, or switching to 10m.

(That's why I hate when people say Paragon defeated Method in T14. When Paragon announced their switch to 10m, they explicitely admitted they did so because they could no longer field a 25m group able to compete at the highest level.)

Anyway.
If you look at the rise of top guilds such as SK Gaming (which merged with Nihilum to form Ensidia) and Paragon, they rose because they introduced a more effective, but also more time-consuming strategy: All-day-raiding by SK Gaming, and alt-runs for class stacking by Paragon.
And the fall of a top guild happens when too many of its members become tired of raiding.

[Daedelus]

Also they raid this shedule one or maybe two weaks. And then just farm the whole raid in one or two days.
Just calculate how many hours will spend regular guild with 4-5 days of raids in 5 months compared to this shedule. Not so much hardcore right?

That's basically it - top 5 (top 20?) guilds actually spend significantly fewer hours raiding in total than your average heroic raiding guild, it's just that they do theirs in 2-3 week bursts. After that, it's 1 hour full clear, maybe 2-3 times a week (with alts) - in other words, they can do 2-3 full clears in the same time that typical guilds spend on an evening of raiding.

[Ludacritts]

Most hc raiders study or have a work that allows them to take the time off when new raid comes out, some are jobless.

Bingo. They don't get paid to raid by their sponsors. Anyone who believes this is a moron. Sponsors give them headsets, mice, vent/mumble servers, etc. They just have very, very flexible hours at work or just don't work at all.

It does perplex me, because really there's only 3 (maybe 4, if you're charitable) guilds who are competitive with the WF races now. They could easily agree with a limited schedule or designated 'off-night' for them to recuperate. If there can be cease fires in wars I don't see why that would be impossible.

And the guilds would raid on the 'cease fire' day(s) anyway hoping the others would hold to their agreement and sneak in a world first :P

[Superman-BladesEdge]

Please stop saying this. Spreading misinformation like this, that could encourage people to try to pursue this as an active source of income, is just wrong.

Read: http://manaflask.com/en/blog/Zemme/356/p/4/

Good Point. Guilds raid this many hours because they have this type of free time, or flexible jobs, or living at home without expenses. People should understand there is no "prestige" in being a wow raider for anyone except the raider themselves. Raiding for status in the world is about as lame as keeping track of whose scored with a girl the most times and having a tallied score at the end of each 2 year period.

It's a game, it will always be just a game. People should raid because they enjoy raiding, and for no other reason.

[shise]

It's even ridiculous and I've been a hard core player who used to spend 5-6 hours per raid night (4 or 5 days a week) in BC.

But we come to a point where this people has been doing so for more than 7 freaking years =O

I think it's crazy unless you are getting payed, and many of them actually are, but not all AT ALL are payed :P

[paulleedot]

I always wondered what heroic raiders did after the first month or two of a new raid. I assume by then their mains and alts are all fully heroic geared?

PvP perhaps?

[Freia]

Could/Should Blizzard do anything about this I wonder? Like, say, 50 heroic attempts (off the top of my head), and if not killed in X amount of attempts, then it must be killed in Normal mode before trying the next heroic boss. Some guilds like Midwinter did this.. After spending the day wiping, they just killed it on Normal mode and moved on to the next heroic.

No, this would do nothing because the world first guilds would just do all their attempts on alts and then use their mains for kills. Some already do this.

[pixul]

i just wonder how they can keep a regular 9-5 job, or as me, a 6-16 job, while raiding for so long.

guess they a basement dwellers getting everything paid by their parrents. or maybe they are robots? who knows?

Your typical raider with a 9-5 job uses their vacation time during the first week or 2 of progression.

The rest of us are typically university students, and simply work ahead of our classes 2-3 weeks a head of time, so we can miss class if necessary ( a lot of the time its not ). Last semester I managed to be 2-3 weeks ahead in all assignments due for my 15 hour course load, and informed all of my professors I would be "out of town", so they allowed me to take my finals 2 weeks early ( the week before progression began ).

[Mushroomkin]

If you start putting limited attempts on bosses, the top guilds will just start running mirror raids again, like they did in ToGC and ICC ..

[Osmeric]

Could/Should Blizzard do anything about this I wonder?

In the interests of the health and sanity of those top raiders, they should tune that top content so they can blow through it quickly.

[Gondlem]

In the interests of the health and sanity of those top raiders, they should tune that top content so they can blow through it quickly.

Hardcore raiders would just quit then, as they did in ToC and Dragon Soul for instance. How is that in Blizzard's interests, or anyone's interests for that matter?

While playing a video game for 12-16 hours straight might seem weird to people who have no interest in doing it or don't have the time, the "health" concerns are pretty dramatically overblown. Anyone with an office job sits in a chair 8 hours a day and then most likely drives home and sits on the couch. It's pretty much the same thing. Of course if you did it all the time it would definitely be a bad idea, but for 1-2 weeks every six months? Hardly.

[HardCoder]

In the interests of the health and sanity of those top raiders, they should tune that top content so they can blow through it quickly.

They do blow through it quickly.

If Blizzard created content that took the top 5 guilds 2 months to clear, most hardcore guilds wouldn't clear it until halfway through the next expansion.

The range of ability to overcome content in this game is enormous.