How did you become a raider?

[Calliemari]

I started raiding like a month before Cata released. Yes, I'm a wrath baby. I don't find anything different as far as 'staying out of shit' goes, but I do find healing 100x harder now than it was in Wrath. Mana was not an issue, it was impossible for people to die really. I had 0 issues with going into Cata raiding/healing, but heroic 5 mans really helped with getting used to the chore healing is.

[Acideyeliner]

Joined WoW a little over 3 years ago, A few weeks before Sunwell patch. Joined with a friend I'd made on another MMO. We quested together and eventually found a guild. Made other friends and got them to join our guild, and levelled with them. Our GM helped us out with quests and such, was very patient and got us to learn the game. Turns out his main was in a raiding guild. When we all hit 70 about the same time, he got us in as friends. This guild wasn't amazing, they were just friends looking to kill bosses and not make it a job. The day we joined we all went to Kara, had a blast! Probably the best couple hours of WoW I've experienced in here. We wiped, made fun of certain bosses, wiped on chess... And everything went better than expected. We later did Gruul's, Mags, some SSC, first boss in BT, farmed Sunwell trash for sunmotes and such. Raiding was my "thing" after I got my first tier piece from Maulgar.

Then WotLK released. We moved on to do Naxx, OS, but couldn't quite get Maly. After the GM went away for work for a week and when he came back, we had killed Maly. He couldn't believe it. He raged and kicked a lot of players, saying they had no right to raid when he wasn't there (Yeah, really).

Bunch of us moved on, many more quit WoW all together. Joined another guild that cleared every week but never got the drakes. Moved on to another guild where we cleared Ulduar when it was still current progression, and I felt on top of the world. Did ToC, never got into ToGC much except 10 man. Faction changed when ICC came out and joined a guild where we got 11/12 H... eventually raiding died when H LK didn't. Faction changed back to Alliance in Cataclysm when guild drama started erupting in the middle of raids and we started degressing, wiping on Halfus for 3 hours, etc.

I'm now in a 8/13 H guild and loving it. Raiding is still my "thing". Watching this game change is probably mostly what keeps me coming back though. Watching a dk solo what took my guild a few weeks of progression to get... /QQ

[Marcussz]

I heard of the ICC 30% buff.

[Prez-]

I only really got into raiding early Wrath, when I started getting plenty of keybinds, then I started striving to always become better.

And I'm pretty happy where I'm at now.

[Forgottenone]

A friend told me to come to some place with him so I did. It was a raid and MC and all I did was kill what I was told to kill. Well the Felheart gloves dropped from the first boss and I was in shock that I got something that was greater than a blue......from then on my goal was to get many epics!

[Deleted]

Started playing when WotLK came out,5 minutes after i dinged 80 a friend invited me for KT 10 man. I was O.O. Killed him and got my first epic:The soulblade. From that week i organized very succesfull pugs for naxx 25,and thats how i got started

[Grym]

Only play WoW for 2 years but played FFXI for 4 years before that, so been a MMO players for a while.

When I started WoW I know full well I will be raiding when I hit max level, so even before 80 I already read into EJ and such, check class changes regularly and as soon as I hit 80 I just went in and raid with the guild I leveled with (they raid reasonably casually), eventually moved onto a guild that raid regularly, then onto a guild that push for progression, now onto a guild that always target HMs.

That's pretty much it, not very interesting :S

[Deleted]

Back in vanilla a guild was looking for members to start 40 man MC raids (they just cleared ZG). Sounded interesting, had no idea what it was, so I tagged a long and that is pretty much it. Raided in vanilla way up to the end of AQ40 (never passed the twins though). In TBC did some raiding, but then the guild made a merge with another guild and everything went to hell and many original members got left out, so I started to just PvP. In wotlk I just got full epic from heroics when I saw a guild looking for a MT healer so I whispered that person, was inspected and had a chat and then I was the guild MT healer. Did every raid with the guild from Naxx up to and including most of ToC (had some hard modes missing) and then stopped raiding because for personal reasons. Still in the same guild as the one I joined at the start of wotlk, but even though it is a hardcore raiding guild, I am in it as a long time member/friend and doing mostly PvP.

[Deleted]

I started in TBC to join a guild that was doing karazhan, next to all were either new to the game or bad players, we killed Attumen - Opera every week, but never proceeded or tried to go further.
I eventually left that guild and joined a better one, I got in touch with some good players there who wanted to move further than the current guild. 6-7 of us ended up leaving the guild and starting our own, we got more people into the guild from across the realm and started to work on Gruul's and Maggy's then moving on to void reaver and lurker and further into TK and SSC, respectively.

We eventually hit a roadblock and people started to leave, I then tried to form another guild with others, it didn't work out at all and at this point I was on the brink of quitting. I then got in touch with one of the good players from my first guild who now was in a guild progressing MH / BT, I got a trial and got some gear, but then that same guy told me he was moving up to a guild who was farming MH / BT and soon starting SWP progress, since I was new in the guild I didn't feel any guilt in following to the higher guild. I got pulled through MH / BT to get me some gear, I then got up to the gear the rest of the guys was in and we started in SWP, we ended up being close to a kill on Felmyst once WotLK was released.

I stayed in this same guild until a month or so before ICC was released, although the guild wasn't exceptional in it's progress we still cleared everything in 25 man normal, a few of us also tried harder things in 10 man ulduar and ToGC and ended up getting the meta-mount from ulduar and also doing tribute of insanity.

I ended up not being happy with just doing decent in 10 man since I wanted to do the same in 25 man. So I then applyed to a guild being a top 50 guild to clear insanity 25 man, I've been in that same guild now for 18 months or so.
In ICC we ended up getting a world 55-th H-LK kill in 25 man (we raid without voice-com, but the kill was during 15% buff), atm we're 12/13 with neffy to go, oh god I long for some farming days before firelands comes.

But I've been hooked on raiding since my first time in karazhan, just fascinated on how everyone had a role etc. And it got even more fascinating with 25 people involved.

[Robotron]

When TBC came out, I knew I wanted to get into raiding then. I leveled up fairly slowly from 60-70, then I kept plugging away at trying to get into raiding until I finally managed to make it into a guild that had Karazhan down but was making the transition to 25 mans from there, so they were in the process of mass-recruiting. I jumped on that train and was part of their first Maulgar kill (my first raid). From there, I surivived the weeding out procedure and became one of their best players within a month.

[Lightcaller]

I actually got asked by one of the guilds if I wanted to join them recently, and I have been raiding with them since then.

[Keoren]

I was pugging Steamvault in TBC and an officer of a certain guild was happily surprised by my performance. He asked me if I wanted to join them as a raider. I said yes and despite me being still in partially blue gear I got dragged into MH/BT raiding with them. It was bit stressing picking up all the tactics for all the bosses as fast as I had to, but worked out in the end. Before this I had only pugged Kara/Gruul/Maggy so it was quite exciting.

After WotLK launched the guild ended up quite casual despite still actively raiding. I enjoy competition so just as Ulduar came I applied elsewhere and have been in my current guild ever since.

[Willelm]

I started as a priest on a pvp server and -hated- it. I was in a super crummy 10 man raiding guild but was having some fun until the other priest healer got her panties in a twist that I wanted (gasp) the same loot she did. I asked permission to leave and joined a 25 man guild where the GL's girlfriend was raid leading but was super crazy and basically made the guild fall apart... so I went back to where my husband was still at, the crummy 10 man raiding guild. I didn't want to go back there because of all the stuff he complained about with them, but didn't feel I had any other options.

The old guild picked me back up but at that point had expanded into 2 ten man groups. The first was full of the "elite" players (ie all the officers), and the other one was filled with the people who could just show up whenever. I had decided I didn't want to play a priest so I rolled a paladin. I worked incredibly hard to make my Paladin ICC-heroic ready, running ICC 25 in a pug every week to get gear. A paladin (ret/prot), had quit in group 1 so I applied to fill in the spot. They almost picked some jerkoff with a healing meta gem in his ret gear over me, who failed to move out of simple shit and was a complete idiot about ... well, everything. Always on about being drunk to raids and shit. But my husband (bless him), fought for me so I got in and topped DPS meters and off-tanked for them in my shitty tank gear. We eventually got the ICC 10 drakes, but not without some major problems, like a mage wearing PvP gear during the Sindragosa fight because he "needed more stamina to survive blistering cold." He did less DPS than the tanks, stood at the stairs, and if he had just worn PvE gear to begin with we would have had the DPS to take her down from 2% to dead. What a fucking idiot!

About this time though Cataclysm was coming to fruition and my husband and I were getting tired of the guild attitude. The officers were greedy with loot. Even if someone needed an MS piece from heroic, others would want to do it normal for off-spec loot. Keep in mind this was barely 2 months before Cata, and the never used their off specs during the raids. The only people who did were the tanks who sometimes switched to DPS.

It got to the point of, "Well I don't want to bring this person because they want to do this fight in heroic and I need OS loot from him." And also the healers, a druid priest and paladin, could barely manage to heal Sindragosa heroic. With the 30% buff. They thought they were the most badass team around but in reality only the Paladin was even decent.

Also, I was SICK of being on a PvP server. Leveling alts was a nightmare and it wasn't my cup of tea. I always ran into the same team of horde during dailies. I didn't like the stress.

So with the onset of Cata my husband and I decided to switch to a PvE server some friends were on. We got into a raiding guild and while we're only 3/13 heroic, we're pretty happy. Now a part of the core raiding team in a guild with a DKP system on a PvE server, playing with our friends... yeah, we're having a lot of fun.

[Deleted]

I joined a random guild years ago, then one night we did a UBRS 10m raid, i got told to get vent, we did it tho it took a while and from then on I've been hooked on raiding.

Worked my way up from UBRS > ZG & AQ20, then swapped guilds to a MC/BWL/AQ40 guild, and from that point on I've always been in the best guild on my server upto and including now.

[Koshun]

Started with the Eye (or whatever it was, I can't remember) back in BC. We killed Fel Reaver and I'm almost 100% sure I pulled a grand total of 400 dps. I was an awful Feral Druid back then, but after that I began to raid more and more with my guild. Luckily, it wasn't a very demanding guild and had plenty of people to carry me and I just got good at the game.

[Akairos]

I PvP'd through Vanilla as a mage on Proudmoore-US, swapped to a Warlock on BC release on Bloodscalp-US.

PvP'd as a Warlock till Black Temple was released in a guild called <We Don't Raid>.

Got tired of PvPing, so I joined <Eminence> while they were in Gruul's lair/starting t5 content. Progressed all through Sunwell with them. I felt so lucky to join this guild. To go from PvPer with no PvE experience to one of the top raiders on the server.

Swapped to a Paladin Tank a week or two before 3.0 after my guild exploded on Twins one day and when <Eminence> reformed I main-tanked for them along with my guild leader Corinthia (I miss you Eliza if you ever read this ^_^), we all transfered to Scilla-US mid naxxramas when lag became to much, I continued tanking there for them.

Eventually <Eminence> broke up a few days after Ulduar released and myself and my closest friends found that another Bloodscalp guild had come to Scilla, <DPS>. We joined DPS and I remain there to this day, plodding away at hardmode content.

[Masqerader]

got to lvl 60, guild start raiding zg. and i was the only mage. and well we needed sheeps and food


exp all content, but never finished much in tbc cause it just got to the point where wrath was announced and people just stopped trying

[Train Heartnet]

Both my roommates got me to join WoW, and taught me how to play. It seemed commonplace to me because both were in Top 100 US progression guilds since BC.

[The Chilli God]

Patch 3.0, but before WotLK came out. It was that transitory phase where they tacked on a 30% hp nerf to all the BC raid bosses and buffed everybody with cool new talents and stuff. I was considering leaving an RP guild because their guild leader was a whore (whom I later found out had bestiality issues), and because they had a raiding team but would never consider me for a spot on it. Heroics were too scary, and hardly anybody did normals, so I was stuck in greens and blues.

As luck would have it, I had posted myself into LFG on the lookout for anything, saw an ad LFM for Kara, decided to join, made it clear about my gear status, the two leaders didn't mind because of the nerf. So I found out that five or six of them in the raid were transfers from another RP realm, looking to set up a raiding guild on this server for Wrath. And as soon as I zoned in, one of the raid leaders looked at me and exclaimed over vent, "Oh my god, he looks just like Frodo!" Cuz, y'know, gnome rogue.

We cleared the run. I sucked. I was one of those guys that didn't know about the resources out there to improve your character, but I did get Spiteblade and some other epics as well. And the raid leaders said that they absolutely must have me in their guild. Must have been because of my accent on vent or something. They harassed me about it daily, but it was friendly harassment. I gave in about a week after the raid and joined the guild, and have stayed with them to this day.

[SylarAC]

I started back during release and slowly leveled a night elf hunter. I remember being at level 50 or so and seeing a hunter in Giantstalker gear and being like omg I want to be that and better. Eventually I ended up being in an end game raid guild having full tier 2 and doing clears of AQ40 and then doing parts of naxx40. Skipped playing in TBC. Was in a top US100 guild during Ulduar and TOC and getting Realm firsts for yogg-0 and heroic 25man TOC.

Now I'm strictly PVP.