Entered Black Temple

I think the goal of most raiders is to down Illidian. When i first started playing WoW, the Black Temple (BT) wasn't around. It came out a few months after, and I thought to myself "gee, I want to see that". Then I thought "i'll probably never do it, because raiding is too hard, etc". So... a year later, I'm in the BT, doing progression raiding in one of the best-progressed guilds on the server. Now, granted on most servers, there are many guilds that have downed Illidan.

However, our server is new, our guild is new. The guild was formed 4 months ago. I've been playing with them about 3 months. We started in kara and quickly geared up (most people were in all kara gear at that point). We then got enough people to start 25 mans, doing Gruul twice, Mag twice, and then entered SSC/TK. After downing most of the bosses there once or twice, we decided to move to T6, since at that point everyone had the patch 2.4 badge gear, making the T5 stuff sidegrades at best. Now we are in T6, and everything is a upgrade.

Two nights ago two hunter loot dropped, a fellow hunter and an idiot warrior got them. Last night was my turn. I'm now the proud owner of Wraps of Precise Flight Nice upgrade for me, and the first useful upgrade since ZA.

Unfortunately, being in a BT guild is a sink or swim situation. Everyone is gearing up via DKP, which requires raid attendance. For example, I was gone from two raids last week. Because of that I had no DKP points, I couldn't bid on the two hunter items that dropped on Sunday, and I'm way behind on DKP for other things (doubley so since I just got a piece of gear). If I were to leave and come back 2 months later, the guild may be disbanded, and my raid spot will certainly have gone away.

Raiding guilds are constantly hemorranging people and acquiring new people, due to burnout, etc. Its a huge time sink. I am in one of the very few guilds that doesn't screw around and takes raid time very seriously. Almost all guilds at this level of progression are doing something like 3 nights progression a week, 5 hours each. 2 nights farm stuff like SSC. 1 night whatever, ZA or Kara. As it is, we do typically 4 raids a week, 3 are guild raids and you get DKP for. Essentially we do ZA to get gear upgrades easily (which isn't readily doable in 25 mans). So even though my WoW time is completely consumed by 3 nights of raiding, its what I'd consider a bare minimum to stay in a BT guild.

My goals are as follows. I'd like to see Illidan. I'd like to get my netherdrake (need about 7 more rounds of SMV dailies). I'd like to get my Champion of Naaru name (need to finish two quests and Mag). And..that's it. I dont' want to see Sunwell. I don't really want to raid on my druid. I imagine i'll have this stuff done in a month at our current rate of progression.