LFM ZG PST
Sometimes, bored players suggest crazy things. Yesterday's madness was a random pick-up-group expedition to Zul'Gurub; twenty bored players venturing into (mostly) uncharted territory for kicks and giggles. I joined simply to see what on earth this group would be capable of, in one of those "well, why not?" moments.
The problem with such a group is its very nature -- advertised on the LFG channel, it contained many players who had never been in Zul'Gurub (or even a 20-man raid) before, and who were generally unprepared. No soul shards, reagents, potions or bandages; these brave adventurers had but the (low-durability) clothes on their backs.
After getting assembled (and taking as long as possible to do so) the group formed up, managed to actually kill trash without wiping and even faced Venoxis, coming out triumphant. My faith in the group would have been running high, were it not for little things.
Little things like a priest repeatedly combat looting (should a priest even be touching an enemy?), several members apparently ignoring raid chat entirely, the raid leader (and others) lacking CTRA and continually asking who the main tank was, and none of the other healers having decursive -- little things like this all stand in sharp contrast to the usual group I raid with.
Add to that the raid-warning spam, the leader being unable to perform ready checks and the "everyone need on drops" rule that sprang into place, and you get what sounds like the PuG from hell. Fortunately those few members who had been to ZG before helped organise the rest, but it was all in vain -- two messy wipes at Mandokir meant half the group left in outrage, and the other half in disappointment.
It was an interesting ride, and shed some light on what raiding is like to those who haven't ventured into the endgame much. However, the key problem this group suffered from was lack of attention and communication -- a leader who doesn't know the instance at all, and members who didn't listen to those who did. I don't think I'll be repeating the experiment, but I saw several members of the PuG advertising for an AQ20 group later on -- excuse me while I hide on an alt for the time being.
