This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, Garreth -

I don't think adding more days to the raiding calendar is going to help, not in the way one might think anyway.  Instead of adding more days, we need to begin asking for more from our raiders.

Hear me out.

We have it set up so that under ideal circumstances, everyone is in raid and at BT at 7pm *sharp* for first pulls.  Invites start going out at 6:30.  However, many nights invites aren't out until 6:40 and people start getting la-dee-da on us, asking us to wait for them to finish dailies, they need something crafted, etc etc.  While this is all well and good, it delays the start of the raid even further than normal.  Eventually enough people trickle in to raid at 7:30 for us to actually START raid - now a half our late.

Once we do start raiding, people aren't paying attention during trash or on "easy" boss fights (Supremus, for example) and so they die in silly ways that end up costing us MORE time.  Then a number of people have to go afk because of god-knows-what (for the record, going afk to vomit or what not is totally fine).  THEN someone d/c's and we have to wait for them (even if just for trash).

In short, we've gotten really relaxed.  Which is fine, from the standpoint that a lot of us just got off work and would rather be chill and groovy than uptight.  However, from the standpoint of wanting to kill bosses and *progress*, this isn't working.

What I propose is this:

1)  When we say invites go out at 6:30, they go out at 6:30.  Finish your dailies before raid starts, or after raid is done.  Get your pots/stuff made before raid starts, or after it is done.  Don't ask the raid to wait for your health pots.

2)  When we say pulls start at 7:00, they start at 7:00.  We won't wait for you.  If you missed your summon, too bad - get here faster.

The above video is one of the coolest things I ever learned about in Materials Science classes. Basically, you make this awesome little drop of glass that cannot be broken by typical means, but as soon as you so much as scratch or damage the tail, the whole thing explodes.

Read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert%27s_Drop