It's all fun and games until...

...people start getting benched.

Blizzard changed raid content in The Burning Crusade to be smaller, focused raids, capped at 25 players in the zone. Most raid guild to that point had built a team of 50ish raiders to consistently field 40 for the weekly raid content farms, and still account for those with conflicts or who burned out along the way.

I have mentioned previously, that I am a member of the Militiae Templi guild, on Magtheridon-US. We were no different, in terms of our guild roster, but due to a somewhat casual element to our guild structure, we had turnover to a much larger degree than did more focused raid guilds. Friends would come and go, all the while, we recruited to fill the spots left open as we progressed through AQ40 and Naxx. In the waning months of WoW1.0, MT went through this decline and recruitment at a much more rapid pace, due to a heavy burnout ratio and a tightening school schedule from a lot of the regulars.

Enter 2.0... Many have not returned from the void, but as expected, many have. A new thread is up on our forums, tracking the class balance of our future raid team potential, and at last count, we had 48 people actively making progress towards level 70 and undoubtedly expecting a position on the raid team.

You do the math... 48-25 = 23 people or roughly half of the active guild who will not be invited to raid on any given day. Another way to look at that math is 48-25 = drama.

I can only imagine that this is a fairly consistent situation in nearly every guild on every server in WoW2.0. Today, guilds are having a great time, working together for mutual progress on the path to 70 and instance attunement. Tomorrow, they will be politely explaining to long-time dedicated members, why they are not going to have a spot available for them in the Mag raid.

I hate guild drama. I am not looking forward to the growing pains that are about to set in.

Anyone else see this in your guilds?