Casual vs Hardcore?

BBB and his wife are raiding 5 times a week, on a newly 'hardcore' guild. Here's my thoughts. You can raid casually and have fun, and not go anywhere. Or you can raid seriously, and go somewhere, but not have fun (because at that point its a second job).

Basically I'm in the same boat as BBB. My wife hates when I raid, and I pretty much hate when I raid too. My raiding guild has finally reached Gruul, and downed them last night. We were overgeared so once we figured out the strategy it was easy. Anyway, let me think straight.

1) Priorities. I don't have time to spend raiding 5 nights aweek. I'm 34 with a job and wife (no kids yet), so i choose my priorities. I would strongly recommend against raiding 5 nights a week, pretty much everyone is going to get burned out.

2) Focus. The problem with raiding is the coordination is so critical, you have to show up on time, with the right stuff. Once I switched to my hard-core guild, suddenly we were doing 3-4 hour kara clears. Our first gruul was two hours. I'm sure next week it will be an hour. This, however, isn't all that fun, but hugely time efficient. If we do gruul and kara this week, that's 6 hours max of raiding time. Since gruul is so short you could combine that with kara or what have you. You could get most of your raiding done in a night if planned well and everyone knows what they are doing.

3) Fun. All about fun. Unfortunately my raiding guild isnt' fun. As sono as gruul was down, all 25 members split. Hardly anyone does heroics. My new friend and I do 2v2 arena, we're lucky to get 10 games in a week (usually its every other week). So i go back to my old guild alot and do fun stuff on my char. there.

4) Guild differences. My old guild is a 'raiding casual' guild that has yet to fully clear kara after...6 months I think? They typically spend 20 hours a week in kara, pretty much every night of the week. That's a heck of a lot of time. But they are alot of fun. I think its almost an inherent trade off, if you want to progress and do 25 mans, you need the serious business attitude. If you don't care and enjoy hanging with your friends, then the 'raiding casual' guild is for you. Just don't expect to make much progress.