A Moral Decision.

I took a day off WoW yesterday, I do that from time to time.  We never raid on Tuesdays any more any way.  That was one of the first decisions I made when I became raid leader.

The reason for that is because Blizzard was in that phase of every Tuesday they had problems.  You might remember it.  We had a streak of three Tuesdays in a row where the servers where not back up by the time we start out raids, 7:30 PM server.  There was another Tuesday just before that streak where people had a problem logging in.  Over a two month span we where unable to start our Tuesday raids on time on Tuesdays 6 of the 8 weeks.

Getting fed up with that I just decided to avoid those issues completely and just say screw Tuesdays.  For a casual guild the idea of not running Tuesdays doesn't hurt us.  We are not cutting edge in progression so we do not need to be raiding the moment the lock outs reset.  No one has ever complained about it so I'd have to say it works for us.

Basically that is the only big decision I think I have ever made as a raid leader.  To stop raiding on Tuesdays.  Sure I've made some other decisions with people to bring and telling people to switch rolls.  Those are all situational, I do not consider them big decisions even if they do have an impact.

Last week we had one of our main spec healers, who is new and still gearing up, heal for us on Magmaw.  One of our other healers, running on an alt to heal, went on his mage so she could try healing now that she had enough gear for it and he would DPS.

We did not get many attempts in but things did not go well over all.  We never got Magmaw down which was quite upsetting.  When we continued the raid I told the new healer I wanted her to DPS which I was questioned about. 

I have no problem being questioned about things.  Keep it private however, and they did.  I announced I wanted to let her get a few more pieces of gear first and go with a more geared healer for the fight.  In truth, I want her to get a little more experience.  I am not completely sure she is ready for raid healing just yet.  Saying it the way I did however allowed me to say she could roll on healer gear being she was helping us out by running as DPS.

End result was we downed Magmaw, the leather healing pants dropped, she won them, everyone was happy.

I am not always right but sometimes it is nice to see things work out the way I hoped they would.  I am not great at estimating ability but I would like to believe I am getting better at it, such as this situation would prove.

This is not where my moral decision I am questioning comes in.  In a time where raiding seems harder, sure seems harder then ICC was when it first came out, I have no issues with the decisions I have made.  I am loving the challenge and it seems that everyone in the guild has as well.  We might not be progressing as fast as we did in ICC but it sure seems like we are earning it more which is fun.

What I am questioning myself about is old content.  Basically outdated stuff that we run for fun and achievements.  Some of the content has items I needed, like the Data Disc in Ulduar or the Key in Naxx that I have never been lucky enough to win a roll for.  Story of my life really.  I don't win rolls, it is just that simple.

I am starting to think, being I am raid leader and these things are required in a sense, I need the Disc for us to do Algalon and I need the Key for us to do Maly 25, should I just award them to myself instead of leaving it up to a roll every time we do them?

Being it is outdated content we never have full groups and we can never be sure to have the people that have the access with us.  As the raid leader I am always there.  I should be able to get access to the raids or bonus bosses and not have to depend on others being there.

Would I be right to just award myself these things?

It is not like I would ever award myself mimirons head or something like that.  Just the keys to access the content. 

My argument is that if I am leading what we are doing I should be able to get full access to it and not have to depend on someone else having the access.  What makes me question it is that I have never believed that a raid leader or guild leader or anyone really should have claim to any item in content you do as a group.

I would never join a pug that says xxxx reserved even if I did not want it.  I do not agree with people that take things for themselves.  Raids are a group effort and everyone in the group has the same rights to things that drop even if it is outdated content.

Which then brings me to my next question.  If we do Naxx 25 as our weekly and I take the key and no one has problems with that what happens if Cataclysm comes out with something like that?

Would I also take the key for that being it is current content?  The pattern would now be set that content access would go to me as raid leader but current content is a horse of a different color.  People might see that differently and I would be just as bad as those jerks that advertise xxxx reserved.

Would it be right for me to declare things that access content for myself?  Remember, I am not talking about gear, fun items, mounts, etc.  Just things that access further content.

It is a moral dilemma only because I believe in fair play and I believe that in a raid, everyone that downed that boss deserves an equal chance at the loot it drops.