The Raid Observer: Updates on Tier 13 and the Latest Interview

In this short update I'll offer a few updates on tier 13 progress and provide links to the recent interview I did with the US raiding guild, Exodus, ranked 7th (and 9th overall) in the recent 25-man raiding race.

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Updates on Tier 13
 

183 guilds (82 twenty-five man guilds and 101 ten-man) have now cleared through to Madness on heroic mode, with the majority of 25-man clears being completed by EU guilds, followed by US guilds, and the majority of 10-man clears also being completed by EU guilds, followed by Korean guilds.

 

The thing I've been finding interesting about the race (and all progress since Cataclysm, really) is how the majority of our raiding community appears to be shifting toward 10-man raiding, while the top raiding guilds are generally able to sustain dominance at the 25-man level. I suppose that makes sense in that recruitment is usually the biggest challenge for any raiding guild and, theoretically, more successful guilds will have a higher number of applicants coming their way. Although I suspect issues like retention, server size, and continuity of a guild can help sustain numbers.

 

I don't mean to say, however, that raiding at the 10-man raiding should viewed as a demotion from 25-man raiding or that all guilds would prefer to raid at the 25-man level. In fact many guilds have always intended to raid at the 10-man level and prefer it. But the speed at which the 25-man guilds (proportionately) are clearing the full heroic content suggests that clearing the heroic content quickly is a higher priority for the large sized raiding guilds. Does the speed at which we clear content indicate how serious we are about raiding? I actually don't think so, but I think it's easier for us to determine the serious of raiding when we have data to look at and the data seems to say that the more competitive the raiding guild, the more likely they will be a 25-man raiding guild.

 

Latest Raid Observer Interview

I spoke last week with the US raiding guild Exodus and have posted the interview up on my YouTube channel in a three-part series. I hope you enjoy this very lively and direct discussion with the guys.