World Of Warcraft: Raid Guild Leader's Perspective on BC

An on going discussion on the Official World of Warcraft boards has spurred quite a response from the Raid leaders all around. And Tigole has replied. Read the thread in full
here (22+ pages)

Q u o t e:

1) The scale up in difficulty from 5 mans to heroic 5 mans and Karazhan is intense. We cleared through MoV on our first timer, then spent this week banging our heads against Romeo and Juliet. Most of our team has the best gear out of 5 mans. Since our gear is not going to get much better, and our skills will improve only so much after 2 years of raiding, the only way we'll be able to reliably beat this level of content is using massive amounts of consumables. At least 2-4 flasks, and food, pots, and elixirs for everyone. This kind of consumable mania is really against the spirit of our three nights a week, semi-casual raiding philosophy. If I need to spend 8 hours a week farming for raids I will likely not raid. Consumables are far too important now.

We're discussing various solutions to issues with consumables. We're aware of the issue and agree that it is an issue. With that said, I don't really think Karazhan is overly difficult and requires massive amounts of consumables.

Q u o t e:

2) The gear improvements from raiding are too poor. .

We're taking another look at the raiding gear. I'd agree with your statement.

Q u o t e:

3) The keying process is too difficult. I'm not worried about our normal raiders - what I'm worried about is attrition. What happens 5 months down the road when we need a fill in for the black temple? We'll have to recruit someone in blues, run them to revered with 3 factions, then through heroic 5 mans, Kara, etc. etc. etc. Because the keying process is so difficult the top guilds on the server will be even more relentless trying to pry members away from less progressed guild. A suggestion here would be to make the raids like Arcatraz - the person with the key can open the door. If not, replacing members is going to be very, very difficult.

I partially agree and partially disagree. We have some ideas that will help people "catch up" who join the endgame later on. With that said, I'm not so sure endgame players would like the face of the game if everyone had instant access to all of the content. There is something to be said for progression and the sense of accomplishment. Don't get me wrong, we have to be careful not to create a brick wall for new people, but I think there is a balance to be struck here.

Q u o t e:

4) There seems to be a distinct lack of 25 man raids that are going to be doable by "normal" guilds.

I agree. As I have already stated on these forums, Magtheridon is proving more difficult than intended. We are planning on toning him down. We've made some minor fixes to Gruul as well but I think that encounter needs to be toned down too. Gruul and Mag should feel like Onyxia did 6 months into vanilla WoW.
I don't really agree with points 5 and 6 but I do feel like your previous points all had merit. Hopefully, the changes I mentioned will alleviate some of your worries.