The officers have had multiple meetings over the past several months, and we've agreed on some changes that we will be implementing once Cata goes live.

When Cata goes live, the EPGP system will be fully reset for everyone. In addition, everyone is free to change which toon and/or spec is their main. All we ask is that you please let us know what you're planning on doing with your toon(s). To be eligible to raid the new content in Cata, you have to be level 85, have a decent set of level 85 gear from heroics/vendors/crafted, and have read the basic strats for the fights.

The biggest frustration we have had as officers is maintaining turnout to be able to run 25mans. In fact, in the past we have kept our performance/recruitment standards lower than we'd like for no reason other than we desperately needed people to fill raid slots. In Cata: loot, achievements and level of difficulty will all be the same for both 10mans and 25mans, so we will not be running 25mans in Cata. We will be downsizing the guild slightly, and our goal is to have two flexible 10man teams.

10mans are easier to organize. Raids should move along faster with less downtime. Lag is less of an issue in 10mans. It will be easier to learn the fights and harder for slackers to hide the fact that they're coasting. With fewer spots to fill, we can recruit a better caliber of player. Overall, we see lots of upside and very little downside to making this change.

With only having to run 10mans each week, instead of both 10mans AND 25mans each week like we did for most of Wrath, we expect our time spent raiding to be slightly less. Our goal is to have Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday be our primary raid nights. Friday/Saturday will still be nights off. Sunday/Monday are our backup raid nights for in case we didn't clear a raid, or possibly alt nights if we did clear everything, or just nights off. Obviously when we first start raiding and learning the fights, we will probably need to use Sunday and/or Monday to finish clearing raids, but less often over time.

The second biggest frustration we've had is with part-time raiders. We fully understand that some people just don't have the spare time or desire to raid frequently. But from our point of view, it's frustrating to have someone only show up once in a while. A low level of attendance results in someone who generally doesn't know the fights that well. Someone who isn't warmed up at playing their toon as well as they could be. Someone who frequently 'forgets' to bring flasks, food buffs, potions, etc. Someone who doesn't take the time to research their spec/gear/skills and go the extra mile to be as good a player as possible. Someone who takes loot and doesn't show up to help us down bosses very often.

Therefore, we will be altering the loot system in a couple of key ways.

-Raiders need to attend 2 out of 3 raids on average to maintain their rank.
-Raiders need to have decent performance (dps/hps, survivability) to maintain their rank.
-Raiders will have priority over Members/Recruits for invites.
-Raiders will have priority over Members/Recruits for loot (NEED before OFFSET still applies).
-New members will have a base GP credited to them (exact amount TBD, roughly equal to a chestpiece), which prevents the PR of a new recruit jumping to the top after earning the minimum EP.
-An extended absence from raiding (one month+, this length of time may be adjusted) will result in your EP being reset to zero, but not your GP.

The goal of these changes is to reward the people who show up frequently and contribute the most to helping the guild progress. We realize this may seem harsh to the people who don't raid as frequently, but we feel these are necessary changes to kick our raiding up a notch in Cata. If these changes aren't acceptable to you, then now would be the time to start looking for a new guild, no hard feelings.