Haven't set foot in a raid yet. I'm a successful Black Morass run from being keyed for Kara, though.
I feel like typing, so I'll share my recent experience/perspectives. Not that they make me uber by any stretch of the imagination, but maybe someone will read it and later find themselves in a similar situation and find this useful.
I had been with the same guild since the days of leveling my Hunter (then and now my main WoW char). Awesome people...never any drama whatsoever. Most of them like to play a lot of alts, however, so I wound up hitting 70 before any of the others even hit Outland.
There's a big transition at 70 (or so I've found). Where once you could log in, grind or quest for a while, and then log out feeling like you'd accomplished something worthwhile, once you hit 70 and that xp bar disappears everything seems to take just that much longer to get that feeling of progression. Gold is easy to come by, but 5000g is still a chunk. XP is replaced with rep and gear. In most cases (barring dailies) rep gains at 70 require a group for instance runs, and some of those instances can be very challenging.
Consequently, as people in my guild started hitting 70, they started to disappear...either they were burnt out or they didn't manage the transition. In the case of one, they realized what I soon thereafter realized: we couldn't get anything done at 70 with our guild the way it was, and that wasn't going to be changing any time soon. I finally reached a point one night where I had spent 3 hours in a level 70 instance with a shamefully performing PUG where I realized that all WoW was for me at that point was a chat room with a dynamic background. I was quickly accepted into a new guild with more level 70s (and more importantly, more level 70 content being done within the guild).
I managed to find myself running instances almost nightly with the same group of three other people. We'd pick up a third cc/dps class as needed and just go to town. We were clearing instances that used to make me shudder in terror based on terrible past experiences in them with PUGs. One after another we started cranking them out... Steamvaults, Shadow Labs, Mechanar, Botanica, Shattered Halls and then just last night, Arcatraz.
3 days into the new guild, however, I apparently made a mistake. The GM (another Hunter) had not been playing much lately for whatever reason. I guess she used to run instances with the people I was now running with. On the day in question, our tank was on and I was clarifying (in /g) with him whether or not he'd be on a little later for instances. He said he wouldn't be, so I commented that I'd let the "regular crowd" know.
Well, the GM happened to be on at that point, and apparently felt I had "stepped on [her] toes" and that she should be the one passing along information like that. She got so ruffled by the whole thing she changed the guild message of the day to include a warning to not do her job for her, and then she booted me from the guild.
Say what?
Yup. For telling a guildie in /g that I would let the other two guys we had been running with know that their tank wasn't going to be on that night. I ended up going back to my old guild and that's when I realized something very important.
Success in WoW is as much about who you know as what you know. No doubt about it, if you are fundamentally inept with group play, it doesn't matter how many friends you have, they're probably not going to want to carry you all the way from Steamvaults to Black Temple. Having said that, despite being back in my old guild (still with no more 70s than when I left) I had made a bunch of contacts. I still run instances with the same people that were enjoying so much success, and since we've been picking up additional players to fill our 5th slot, we've been getting to know a lot of other level 70s who are good folks to have around in a pinch.
Getting things done in WoW has never been easier, and that's also in large part because none of us are in an unrealistic rush to get where we don't yet belong. Our regular healer hasn't been on in a week (we're getting a bit concerned), and he's quite a bit behind in terms of rep for Heroics. Nevertheless, we're still cranking out the instances and slowly creeping to raid readiness in terms of gear (just hit Exalted with Ogri'La today and knocked out a bunch of summoned boss fights so I could get my Crystalline Crossbow, and got a Sonic Spear from Murmur just last night as well).
If the time comes where we've got heroics on farm and the only way to go is into raids, I know I'll have no difficulty getting into one of the reputable raid guilds on my realm. Everyone hates sh*tty PUGs (probably even the people who make them sh*tty) so when we get a healer or a cc/dps from one of the big raiding guilds on our server to join us for a level 70 non-heroic, we get a chance to show them what we're made of. We get to show them strong tanking, solid crowd control, very respectable damage, and a friendly group of folks that just show up to have some fun and get things done. We don't get greedy over loot, we don't wig out when someone makes a mistake, and we can walk into an instance like Arcatraz where none of us had ever been (with the exception of our two PUG members) and clear it in reasonable time for a first run. (lol for gnome npc mages shouting about opening cans of whoop ***)
In short, my Hunter is far enough along now to start getting into some of the more challenging end-game content, and I'm having a ton of fun doing it.
Edited, Oct 1st 2007 11:07pm by AureliusSir