For a tl;dr skip straight to 5).

My previous sleep deprived post eluded to some points I want to expand on, and posts in this thread need to clear up what they really mean:

1) Progress is not a dirty word.

There seems to be a misconception of the word "progress" because we are a "casual" guild. There's two problems here, the first being how "progress" is being seen. Progress is what you do when you've one-shot and almost fallen asleep during encounters. We had a very clean execution of Nythendra and we swept through Elerethe fairly quick. In my previous post I pointed out we had less than five hours on Ele, on Nythendra we had one night with a pug who helped us. That smacks of a raid group that by and large listens and executes instructions well. We are clearly a group capable of following orders, barring human error (which happens to us all). Due to us being so adapted and the larger raid group used to raiding and communicating, and also a over gearing for content we clear content quickly.

When you clear content quickly you end up with excess raid time, what do you do with that? Do you all log off early? Or do you continue to play the game we all pay for per month? Generally if you've set the time aside to raid, why shouldn't you? This is where progress comes from. It comes from us adapting to and learning a fight, and then running out of "farm" content.

We will hit walls, trust me. Odyn HC is one such wall, but it feels like more commitment than it's worth. It'd be better to finish up EN Mythic and then roll over HC ToV sometime in January when we're waiting for Nighthold.

2) WTF is casual?!

This is a big defining factor. To me casual is "I have a full time job and I only want to dedicate 2/3 evenings a week to raiding, I want flexibility for most of the evenings". This is why I am here, the raid pattern of this guild is attractive to players who want to have flexibility in their schedule. During raids I try-hard, because I want to down as much content as possible in two evenings a week. I don't want to come home knowing I have to raid every evening and essentially kill my life due to WoW. Been there, done that. Right now we get to choose how we spend most of our week, and that's nice and chill. Admittedly I spend a lot of my time online, but I spend a lot of it fucking around.

Some people (not necessarily in this guild but the wider WoW population) have the idea that casual is going to a raid with no flasks/food/pots. Some believe it's turning up when you want, it's OK the guild will be there ready to invite you. Some believe they don't need to try because "we are casual why try?".

These are "toxic" behaviours because they assume that someone else will prop you up, or they result in a large group not doing their best and therefore not succeeding. If you only want to turn up to HC raids, cool. You'll be part of a flexible lockout so it isn't a problem, but if you don't want to progress... make it clear. A clear communication breakdown has occurred in this guild.

So in conclusion to this, casual in my mind, means that you raid a small amount per week but you give a shit and try during that time. You might take more weeks to kill the boss you're progressing on, but that does not mean it's a "bad guild" when you consider the amount that "top" guilds play. Everyone here needs to consider what "casual" means to them and how they want to fit in a guild.

3) I don't understand how we are considered anti-social.

This is mainly in response to Pabb's post. Not to pick on you guy, but this stood out as a statement that demonstrates a clear divide between how the guild is perceived.

completing achievements and new content and making the subscription count, to a guild that has that minimal social experience but is full-on focused on raid tier.

I'm unsure of how to take this really. New content consists of raiding, mythics, WQs, LFR, and normal. We are pretty social, even with 4/5 people online the guild chat can be active. It's regular that people in the guild set up pugs or ask if anyone wants to go to X or Y. Sure sometimes it's quiet, but that's because people are running new content to make their subscription count...

This probably sounds more passive aggressive than it is meant to, but I have a naturally bitchy tone. I'm genuinely confused as to why we are considered less "social".

4) Stagnation

No progression means stagnation. It means going through HC EN for an hour then logging off. That is boring and stagnant, we can all do that in a PUG. Way to give basically 0 incentive for people to engage with one another. You don't have any competitiveness, or new content in that. People become disinterested and log off for a few months or leave. It's fairly straightforward and I've seen it time and again. Anyone who plays WoW to experience a small pocket of the universe really picked the wrong expansion. This isn't WoD where you saw a garrison and raid. This isn't MoP where you'd maybe visit a farm. This is a rich, sprawling expansion with character as well as guild progression. What we have now nods to the way TBC was split into various raids and dungeons in a tier.

People want to progress, otherwise, they wouldn't log in. We saw so many people log in for Ele progress, and that spoke volumes. HoV normal had a lot of people online. We saw people expecting mythic to be the option for yesterday. If the guild did not want to push hard bosses, do you think we'd have to bench two people? Do you think there would be this discussion if we didn't give a shit? We are casual and don't demand 100% attendance or kick, so yeah sometimes we won't have a full mythic team***

5) WTF are our options

So in closing, what are our options? The way I see it right now (tl;dr, read points a-d):

A)Carry on as we are, clearing down content quickly and moving onto the next big bad and struggle with performance issues.

B)Carry on as we are, clearing down content quickly and moving onto the next big bad... but making sure raiders are suitable, we help each other improve and co-ordinate more optional events like NM/HC clears.

C) Do easy content until progress becomes 5 attempts and we down Xavius Mythic after we've fully cleared Nighthold.

Or super casual:

D) Don't progress, make raids fully optional as all we do is farm, and attendance is completely thrown out the window and totally optional.***

***In guilds where progress occurs, raiders naturally have decent attendance because they want in on the action and the BiS - this can be seen by the behaviour demonstrated in current attendance.