What price victory?

Last night we went into Ulduar. Just the 10 of us. Not much in the way of guild leadership. A couple of what I'll call incidental officers. But mainly, some of the best players in the guild.

The experience was eye-opening, to say the least. By eliminating the guild politics which would dictate loading the raid either with officers or with scrubs that need gear and simply taking a bunch of guys who play well, are geared, and like playing together, we downed 6 bosses, 4 one-shots, 2 hard modes, and a few hard mode attempts. This is unprecedented in our guild, or at least in my experience in my guild.

The only downside was that we had to disenchant almost every piece of gear that dropped because no one wanted it. But even that was better than having to deal with 10 people rolling on every item and having no chance of winning the trinket you need after 4 months of raiding because 9 new people in greens are in the raid contributing their 600 dps vs Gluth and thereby earning the BiS trinket.

The lesson here for me was that you have to make decisions in life, and come to terms with what you have. In this case, it's that we(the guild) can field a really solid 10 man team, and even have a few extra people. Or we can field a 25 man team that can only run easy content because we are carrying 5-10 raid members. On ten man, we can one-shot bosses in hard mode, even though some guys haven't been into Ulduar before. On 25, we run hot and cold, and depending on who shows up one night, we either one-shot everything or we wipe all night.

For me, this is a no-brainer. I would rather take on the hardest content in any format and down bosses, run hard-modes, etc. Sure, it's a drag there's no gear in it for me, but whatever. As much as I'd like to run 25's, i do not want to spend my time on fights i already know, passing on loot I don't need or won't win, and collecting emblems I can't use. I also don't like paying the opportunity cost of missing dailies, VoA pugs(the stuff that is easy but we don't run as a guild), oh, and going out with my wife on weekend nights, for the benefit of others.

It seems like there is a decision to be made.