It's the End of the Raid as We Know It

So this past Friday marked the final official TRI raid of this expansion. We wrapped up with one last Lich King kill. It's a fitting finale, I guess. To say I'm sad about TRI no longer officially raiding 25s is a bit of an understatement. I think the worst part about this at the moment is not knowing what TRI is going to do in Cataclysm. Will we stay together as a 25-man raid, or will we break up into a group of 10-mans? As it stands right now, the future is more than a little uncertain, at least to us non-officers—I have no idea about whether the officers have discussed things or started planning or if they're just waiting for Cataclysm to drop before figuring things out.

Officers have talked about how there will likely be unofficial 10s and 25s continuing to run raids up until the next expansion (or at least patch 4.0) drops, but to be totally and completely honest, I doubt anything much is going to happen. I'm not saying that to disrespect the officers or anything—I'm just being realistic. Between burnout, summer plans, and StarCraft II, people just don't seem to have the time to put things together anymore. For example, the Icecrown Citadel 10-man group I ran with ended up disbanding. It was supposed to combine with another 10-man group to keep going, but I haven't heard a thing about it running or not running for months now. Another 10-man specializing in achievements and hardmodes was under construction, but that either fizzled out or went underground. I'd pick up the mantle and try to put something together myself, but I can almost never get a full raid rostered unless it's an ad-hoc weekly raid quest run, and I simply can't justify either the time investment or the inevitable frustration I will be left with if I try to put together anything else. =(

On top of that, the forums that were the essential out-of-game hub for TRI folks to plan things have pretty much died out. Part of it is due the fact that raid signups were moved to an EQdkp site, and part of it is the result of the snowball effect in reverse (in other words, the forums just couldn't maintain the critical mass necessary to remain active). This makes it exponentially more difficult to actually generate interest in any event that requires some degree of forethought and planning. Events such as raiding. =\

Honestly, I just don't know what to do now. Raiding is one of the major factors that keeps me playing WoW. On weeks when I don't raid (either because there is no raid or because I know I won't be able to attend), I find myself logging on less often. Additionally, when I do log on during such weeks, I end up aimlessly wasting time just logged in and running around Dalaran wondering what to do. Comparatively, weeks when I know I'm raiding are far more fulfilling: I log in with clear-set goals, I waste less time running laps through Dalaran, and I'm better able to focus on the tasks I set for myself (such as hunting achievements or getting recent upgrades gemmed and enchanted).

I guess I'll just mess around with PvP for a while. Battles in Lake Wintergrasp are usually a good time, though Arenas and Battlegrounds are far less fun for me. In hopes of making the lattermost a bit less stressful, I've invested some Badges of Triumph and Honor Points into a pseudo-set of PvP gear to get me to 799 resilience (which is 799 more than I used to have =P ), though the loss of nearly 15,000 mana is very noticeable. I'm still horrible at PvP, and the chance of me heading into Arenas is hovering roughly between fat and none whatsoever, but a quick trial run by random queue has shown me that Eye of the Storm is at least tolerable with some PvP gear.

Perhaps it's time to try my hand at leveling an alt again. All previous attempts have been futile, but it's worth a shot, I guess...