Leading the 25 man VoA Raid

Hey folks,

So Sunday night I'm in wintergrasp looking for a 25 man raid, plenty of people are asking for 25 man, but no one's inviting to a raid. I even see shouts of "create one". Well, I was pretty eager to run 25 man, (for the chance of some sweet deadly drops). So i went ahead and formed one.

I'd like to take a minute to mention that I've never led a 25 man raid. I've never lead a successful 10 man raid, and only a handful of times have I bothered to lead a 5 man dungeon, heroic or otherwise.

Oh sure, I've joined enough in my day that I know what's supposed to be done to get a successful group going. But it turns out leading is a little different.

1) Instead of sitting around contemplating my own navel while the raid filled up, suddenly I was responsible for making sure it filled up AND making sure no one was saved to the instance AND making sure the proper amount of tanks, healers and DPS were present. I had to port to Dalaran TWICE before it was all said and done, to recruit enough players

2) I'm the one initiating ready checks and setting the pace of the raid (and for once people actually listen to what I'm saying)

3) I had to distribute the loot I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO DO THIS. I had to ask a member of the raid to walk me thru the steps. Turns out it was pretty easy, just select an item, have people /roll for it and then use a drop down menu that appears to manually give it to the person that rolls the highest.

One thing I never did wind up figuring out was how to do one of those yells that shows up in big letters to everyone in the raid... About 4 minutes in i wanted to encourage everyone to pour on the dps I just typed it in like regular.. if anyone knows how to make those raid wide announcements let me know!