Ok, so I’m about to dump my thoughts. I was going to post on my guild forum, but I don’t want to start too much there and I want to empty my brain somewhere.
My guild is a strict 10 man raiding guild, as defined by GuildOx. Have a read about it, but here’s the essence of their defnitions…
What are the 10-man ‘strict’ guild rankings?
The 10-man strict rankings show the achievements of pure 10-man raiding guilds. A ‘pure’ 10-man raiding guild is one that does not participate in 25m progression content. We recognize that 25-man guilds or guilds that regularly participate in 25m pug runs often have a distinct advantage since they can gear up at accelerated rates and move faster through 10-man content. Consequently, our 10-man strict rankings exclude guilds which access any 25-man content that offers higher ilvl gear than what the current 10-man normal content provides. If you are a 10m guild that has members which want to run 25 man pugs then the ‘strict’ classification is not for you.
First introduced by GuildOx in early 2009 – we became the innovator of 10m strict guild rankings.
We have always been a strict 10 man raiding guild (since we formed in July last year), not doing any 25 man recent content and we are now top of the realm. This sounds wonderful, until you counter it with the fact that there are no other strict 10 man raiding guilds left on our server. Now it’s starting to cause problems. Raid sign ups have dropped off lately and we’ve had to cancel some raids. Some of the more active raiders are keen to PUG ICC25 on their nights off for something to do and are hassling for us to forget our strictness. I am curious about motives and the effect it will have on our guild.
Motives – well, as far as I can see the biggest motivator to pugging ICC25 must be loot. Not many of my guild are achievement chasers, so I doubt it’s for that. Most of the folk in the guild have other characters they could play on on off nights.
I have almost the best gear I can get on Seph from normal 10 man ICC and am looking forward to downing LK and moving on to Heroic – we’re at 10/12 at the moment. We achieve things without the gear that 25 man raid guilds have. We have to kill stuff the way it was intended and not be “boosted” by having better gear. I can see that to some this might cause problems, but I LIKE thinking that we did it the proper way. (Interesting side not – wouldn’t it be fun if Blizz made it so that gear automatically downgraded if you did 10 man raids in 25 man gear 
)
What effect will it have on the guild and raiding? Will people decide that they would prefer loot over guild achievement and not sign for our raids if they can PUG ICC25 and get loot instead of wiping for 2 hours for an evening trying to kill a new boss?
It’s a tough one, but from my perspective, I like being strict 10 man. I like raiding with 9 close friends and having a laugh. Doing 25 man raids is too much for me now. They feel crowded and you don’t have to be as on top of your game. The challenge of 10 man for me is higher. Nobody can slack. You all have to be completely focussed.
For me it’s easy – I don’t want to pug for better loot and I can see no other benefit in doing ICC25. The fights are the same, the bosses are the same. There’s more to the game than loot and gear score and e-peen. I’m sticking with my strict 10 man. I just hope the rest of the guild will stick with me and sign for raids and carry on through to kill the Lich King. I’m sure we can do it and we don’t need 25 man gear to do it.
*wall of text crits you for 100000 – so sorry for the lack of pictures*
Ok – I’m not sure this has come out right, but it’s a start and I need to go play with my kids, but this has been welling up inside me for a week and I had to let it out somewhere.
Hey Seph!
I do like the idea about 10 man achivements. However i do disagree that 25 man raids is mostly for those who only seek gear, Sorry but you put it up a bit like that dear. some of us find the biggest thrill of a fight when we manage to get 25 people to work together as a unit and in the end down a boss. Also i disagree on 10 man being harder than 25 man content. However i completely understand the desire for work together as a small 10 man team. Best of luck with Taketen. Many guilds struggle now so your not alone. Just hang in there.
Cya ingame seph.
-Gruffer
Hey Gruffer – thanks for your comment
I didn’t mean that 25 man raids are only for gear. I meant that for a 10 man raiding guild, it would seem to me that the primary reason to want to pug 25 man stuff would be for gear. I agree that doing a boss with 25 focussed people is a thrill – I can remember how it felt with 40 of us 
When I say that 10 man content is harder I mean that it is harder with only 10 man gear. Guild Ox recognise this in their ranking for strict raiding. When you do 25 man stuff you get more opportunity for loot (particularly if you do 10 man raids as well) and therefore the guild can gear faster. I think for now I’m sticking with homely and cosy 10 man raids – pugging VOA25 makes me edgy even these days 
I’m sure we could debate this more, but I needed a whine, so did it here 
Cya in game. Have fun and success in Immortality. Seph xx
Hi seph! Mutch to catch up in your blogg now ,been i while sense i was here.
Rading for me is more fun whit 9 other friends, dont mind 25 mans but like the 10 man more. wouldent mind to go some 25 pug/guild runs in ICC, screw guildox strict. We can go for other goals 10 man achivment or 10 man progress or just have some fun.
I play the game because its fun and hang around whit friends, get a time off from real life and soo on.
/ Hugs Phox
I see a few peoblems with 10 man strict.
The first problem and by far the biggest. What to do when you are not raiding ?
I expect that Taketen raid roughly 2 hours a night maybe 4 nights a week. And that leaves a lot of sparetime. Not all like to lvl up a lot of alts and not all like to gather herbs or work the AH. When the daily hc is done. Weekly raid and 2 voa runs done. There is simply to much time outside the raids.
Take my sitution. I raid 25 mans and on nights where i am not doing that i do 10 mans. Else i just stand in Dalaran and talk to people. I can understand that some may find being excluded from 25 mans a problem. For me. all that this game offer now is raids and i would hate to see my non guild friends do icc 25 and feel that i did not have the option to do it. I do understand why a guild wish to compete to become number 1 on a server. Grz on that
I’ve found this game called “Real Life”. That’s what I play when I’m not raiding.
Well, that or play with my little baby role playing alt on Argent Dawn
I much prefer 10man raiding, and imho 10man raiding IS harder than 25. In a 25man raid you can have 5 ppl who have no idea how to play their class and/or any clue about the tactics of a boss and the rest of the raid will carry them through. 10man requires everybody to be on the ball.
Considering we’ve been raiding for an average of just 4 or 5 hours a week our progress for strict 10man is very very respectable.
Hi there,
I am running a strict 10man raiding guild on the Anachronos server in the EU and we are just doing it for fun. We are all having a good time and while we make mistakes, we are progressing.
We are currently #3 on Anachronos and we are going to have a look at RS10 this week.
We decided to do 10mans because all our mains guild pugs 25man content and we were getting bored with that… and just doing 10man means that you have a lot less room for error, which is a challenge for us and we are liking it a lot once more.
We also decided to do it because we wanted to have fun again and it was getting to be not fun any more with our mains guild.