What I Did on Summer Vacation

So what have I been up to for the last 6 months or so? I've continued playing World of Warcraft. When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were halfway through Tier 11 content and had just made the switch from Horde to Alliance. We were starting over on a new server. Essentially, we became a guild within a guild, something many predicted would happen when the perks were announced. We operate completely autonomously as a raid team. Nothing changed there. Our PVP players were able to join the Rated Battleground teams of the larger guild.
I think the guild merger worked out well for all involved.
We continued to make progress through Tier 11 but as we got closer to the end, the attendance problems continued to plague us. We lost many raid nights because our 11 man team couldn't field 10 raiders. We were frustrated, but we were hesitant to recruit. It takes a certain type of person to mesh well into Devolve, and Wich was concerned about getting too big.
I had been leveling my Shaman on Altar of Storm in a guild with some old friends from my Mal Katai days. I watched the guild for a solid month. Raids would be scheduled and then either not happen, or bail after attempts on Magmaw. You remember him, the first boss in BWD. The guild decided they lacked to the DPS to kill him. For weeks I watched and no raids were scheduled or attempted. One night, after yet another cancelled raid in Devolve, I decided to stop being frustrated and start taking action.
My plan was simple. I was going to see if my old Mal Katai friends were still interested in raiding. I approached Wich, our Raid leader, with the idea. He was still concerned about the team getting too big, but he gave me the green light to talk to them. There were three friends from Mal Katai on Altar. Trelic, Raistilan, and Celoria. They don't actually play those toon anymore, but those were the toons I came to know them by. It turned out they were interested in raiding, and within about a week they had transferred to Arygos and joined us for the end of Tier 11.
We didn't actually finish Tier 11 until the first night of Tier 12 when we downed Nefarian in one of those epic battles where the tank dies at like 3% and everyone runs around like mad praying the DoTs can finish him off. Somehow we survived. That was the first night in a long time I really missed blogging.
Of course, we had traded one problem for another. Our raid team now had 14 members. Instead of cancelling raid nights due to lack of attendance, we were sitting people. To me, this was a much better problem to have. I have to give Wich credit here, because he did something I've never seen a raid leader do in my 5 years playing WoW. He sat himself on a couple of occasions. Sitting always causes a little drama, but for the most part our team has accepted it well.
We've struggled a bit getting started in Tier 12. We had some turnover, not in members, but in toons. Our Feral Druid got frustrated with the relatively squishiness of Bears and became a Death Knight. I've switched my Hunter over from Survival to Marksman. I've done a couple of raids as Beast Mastery when we didn't have a Mage or Shaman around.
Currently we sit at 2/7, though we expect Ryloth to die soon, if not tonight.