World of Warcraft’s Patch 1.11 (.0, heh) is available for play on the test realm, INCLUDING the new 40-man playground Naxxramallammledingdong, complete with the Tier 3 armor sets.

Things are never as easy or as simple as they seem, so before your guild noobs start yay’ing about a new area to explore and new thingies to equip: there’s some prep work to be done, namely keys/attunement and frost resist gear. Because that’s content too, nagging an entire guild to get ready.

Does anyone ever go through that whole rigamarole and then experience a long-lasting sense of accomplishment? Isn’t it more like: thank god that’s over? And, where the hell am I going to put all this frost gear?

Anyways, the Naxxramahamma attunement is controlled by the Argent Dawn, the World of Warcraft faction group that is the HARDEST TO PLEASE. God, I hate those bastards. I give and give and give, they begrudgingly call me revered. All the work I’ve done for them, they should be kissing my exalted ass, BUT NOOOoooOOO … revered.

Attunement costs as confirmed by some dudes you don’t know on the forums:
Neutral/Honored: 5 arcane crystals, 2 nexus crystals, 1 righteous orb and 60 gold.
Revered: 2 arcane crystals, 1 nexus crystal and 30 gold.
Exalted: The Argent Dawn gives you 100 gold and a kick in the ass, because that’s how they roll. (P.S. I made that up. I wouldn’t doubt the kick in the ass, however.)

(WoWWiki and What About PP‘s info differs slightly.)

Personally, I don’t care. Other than the 30 gold fee, my key/attune will be free, courtesy of the guild bank. Thanks to months of disenchanting Molten Core crap, we can probably key our entire guild, even the raid slackers and overeager alts. We won’t, however, provide attune materials to applicants. We’ve been pretty generous in the past with our applicants, assisting with attunes, keys and resist gear — technically, we require all that of apps, but we’re not without heart. We assist.

Few months back, we had this applicant warrior hot to get a guild tag. No more warriors, we told him. He could not be deterred — he’d run the small instances with our alts, he completed all his attunes/keys and resist gear in PUGs, he would sit outside our raid instances every night hoping for an invite. NO MORE WARRIORS, we repeated. The next night, we’d fly, run, hobble to the raid area and there he’d be, waiting already.

Well. After a few weeks, we couldn’t take it anymore. It was so damn pathetic … and yet, who could resist his persistence. Not us. We tagged him. He has one of the worst connections on the planet, but his guild loyalty is without peer.

That creaking sound you hear? That’s the ever widening gap between those who have been raiding for-fucking-ever and those that haven’t. We still have the wherewithall to suit up a green raider and have him join us the next night, but guilds a few steps down the food chain do not.

It pains me to think we’ll miss out on quality raiders because some day that gap will be too wide. That’s how it is and that’s how it’s always been.