There's a lot of excitement and energy surrounding a new raid tier launch. We asked our raiders if they wanted to raid an extra day or two for the first week of mythic with the goal of turning new content excitement into new content progression. The response was an unanimous and emphatic YES! Read on for more details.

Starting with Shadowlands launch content, we will be raiding an extra day or two for the first week of Mythic. This will most likely look like raiding Wednesday and potentially Monday. While that works out to two extra days on the raid calendar, it's effectively one extra day across two weeks on a normal calendar.

This is the message we sent our guild members asking for their opinions on the change:

Osiris and I are seeking your feedback on a potentially raiding extra days during week one of mythic for Castle Nathria (Shadowlands launch tier).

We're not giving up our 2-day schedule long term. We feel it's the right balance of time vs progression for the state the game has been in for the last 10+ years. However, there's a lot of excitement and energy surrounding a new raid tier launching. Watching the world first guilds, the day raiders, and even the 4, 5, 7 day a week guilds run content makes us wonder what we could do with the extra time. While we will never be day raiders or raid every day of the week, adding an extra day or two during that first week to turn that excitement and energy into productive progress is something we want to explore.

The benefits are obvious. More time should equal more progress which will equal more gear. More progress means easier recruitment. Playing more frequently in a competitive environment should increase consistency of play, both in DPS/HPS output and avoidance of mechanics. And we're hopeful that will carry over into week two. We're also hoping it'll help energize the guild.

The downsides are more chance for burnout. Extreme burn out if we raid extra days but don't kill bosses. There's a potential for resentment towards those raiders who have hard commitments they cannot break on days other than Tuesday or Thursday. That's something Osiris and I will actively fight as we have in the past with flex content on off days.

This is a decision we'll make on a tier-by-tier, boss-by-boss basis. Obviously, if there is a broken boss like MOTHER or Trilliax beams, it makes zero sense to dump time into that. Likewise, if there is a boss tuned like Fetid Devourer where we don't have the DPS because we don't run 10+ split runs, it doesn't make sense to dump time into the boss other than a cursory play with mechanics early in the fight to get a feel. Or even a boss like G'huun (4 locks) or any other boss that requires insane class stacking that we don't have a roster to support, and no viable strategy to get around the class stack. If we go forward with this, we're going to be smart about it and not mindlessly smash our face into a wall we can't get past.

Finally, I want to reiterate that we're only talking about the first week of mythic and only for Shadowlands launch content. We can reevaluate as a guild after Castle Nathria to see if it's something we want to continue with going forward.

The response from our raiders was unanimously and enthusiastically in favor of the change. It's something we're going to try for Castle Nathria and see how it goes.