This post is mostly directed at guilds who have already cleared all the content including Sartharion with three drakes, but others may find it useful. If your goal is to be as competitive as possible, you always need to keep an eye towards the future. The first trickles of information about Ulduar are starting to come out, and the patch schedule seems to be lining up for Ulduar to be in testing within 6 weeks, perhaps sooner. The 3.0.8 patch will most likely be released this Tuesday or next Tuesday and the turnaround for testing a large content patch following a minor patch is usually about a month.

Preparing Your Slaves…er Raiders

The first thing you need to do is start to whip your raiders into shape. Malaise sets in quick once you get on farm mode and peoples’ skills tend to go down the drain quickly. Don’t lower your expectations becuase it’s farm mode. Quite the opposite, expect your players to improve and play even better. Expect fewer deaths and faster kills. If everyone is paying attention and playing their best then farm content will go more quickly and smoothly and it won’t turn into the drudge that so many guilds are used to. This won’t come automatically; you need to constantly encourage and focus your raiders. Achievements are a good way to keep your raiders engages as well. Set goals at the beginning of your night or raid week as to what you want to accomplish. Prepare yourself by reading up on the achievements and any strategies associated with them, don’t just do it haphazardly. Stratsfu has some articles on achievements and soon will be featuring a detailed guide to every achievement in Heroic: Glory of the Raider.

People also get used to running on a reduced schedule and are slow to adapt to a full progression schedule when they have to switch back. In the weeks leading up to either the PTR or the content release you should seriously consider moving back to a full raiding schedule and filling it with any content you can think of. Clear all 25 man content, clear all 10 man content, clear Archavon, kill city bosses, whatever. Just get people used to showing up for raids every raid night. If you’re planning on raiding on the PTR then send out the word to your guild to be prepared to copy their characters and download the client immediately when it becomes available. Make sure everyone is well aware of the process and knows they need to do it.

Spying For Infos

Keep your ear to the ground and try to find any info you can. The first tidbits are just beginning to be leaked now and we will begin to hear more and more as Blizzard kicks their PR campaign into high gear. There will be a steady stream of info that widens into a deluge upon the release of the PTR. You will need to digest all this info and break out the most important bits to your guild and your raiding. I will be posting regularly on the subject here as well to help you out with the process.

What info should you be paying close attention to? Any bits on boss fights are the first priority. There will be a slow leak of information on the new boss encounters usually. My experience has been that a full 50% of the info will be wildly inaccurate so take it with a grain of salt, but the true bits of info can be very valuable when it comes to learning fights with no available strategies. Any details about the PTR: when it will be run, how it will be run, what limitations there will be, etc. This is important for guilds planning to try and utilize time on the PTR to get practice in. Potential release dates. This is a hazy topic because Blizzard very rarely gives indications of release dates, even up until the last minute. If you’re on the PTR or you have contacts in guilds on the PTR then you can usually get a rough feel for it based on the progression of the testing. I will also give any estimates that are possible on this site.

What We Know So Far

Over the last couple of days we’ve been given the first tidbits of info on Ulduar from the horse’s mouth which includes some important info on the way the testing will be conducted on the PTR. It seems that they will be expanding on the way they did the Sunwell testing. For Sunwell we were usually given limited windows to test an iteration of a boss. For example, Felmyst’s final iteration was only available for about 3 days. Eredar Twins were only available for a few days total, and their final iteration was bugged to the point of being untestable. A testable version of the final iteration was never available at all. Kil’jaeden was never testable at all.

For guilds who wish to be on the PTR, preparation will be the word of the day. Your raiders need to be copied over immediately. Prioritize PTR testing OVER clearing current raid content. You may only have a handful of nights to engage is a boss before it becomes unavailable, especially the final iterations of them.

Another important tidbit is that most encounters will have a hard mode similar to Sartharion. Not just an achievement, a hard mode which will reward loot and which will most likely count towards progression on the major progression sites. My guess is that the time spent learning the zone (achievements included) will be significantly increased over what a zone of that size normally would be. The difficulty for some of these achievements may also be extreme. Blizzard’s goal is to provide accessible content while still providing challenges to top guilds. To provide a challenge for top guilds that means it will be extremely difficult for average guilds. You should be prepared for a long, challenging learning process despite the relatively mild difficulty of the content (SSC/TK level difficulty).

The Sweet Conclusion

Ulduar is coming. Almost all of the current tier of content was basically a pushover and there was ample time to prepare for it. The progression stats for the current tier barely count for anything and most top guilds know this. Ulduar and especially the hard mode achievements inside will provide the first true tests of Wrath of the Lich King. If you’re looking to move up the ranks then this is the time you should really be preparing to shine. Don’t go into it half-assed, hoping that all will work out. Go into it prepared and KNOW that you’re going to do well. Keep reading Tardfactor, we’ll break it down for you and make sure you’re kept apprised of the important details! Also bookmark http://www.ulduar.com. We will be writing up detailed strats and providing excellent narrated videos shortly after Ulduar’s release to help you through the zone and all its wonders.