SWotH introduced a new ranking system for raiders fairly early on in the Burning Crusade expansion. The intent was to create a relatively objective way of determining whether guild members' characters (and their players) were prepared for the challenges involved in raiding. We feel that the ranking system was critical to making SWotH a successful raiding guild, while also keeping the casual feel that we had built the guild around. Nobody is forced to raid if they don't want to, we don't have required attendance, and we try to give everyone we can a fair shot at pursuing raid content (and a fair shot at loot). We wanted to keep the bar low for people that didn't raid much and just wanted to experience the content, while also putting a high bar on the quality of play we required to attempt new and challenging raid encounters. We feel that our system did a great (if not perfect) job of this for Burning Crusade, and so, with some new requirements, we're going to carry it forward into the Wrath of the Lich King.

If you'd like to discuss the new ranking system in the forums, you can do so at this (stickied) thread under General Discussion.

The raid ranks that will be present in SWotH consist of the following (in increasing order of ability):

The intent of the ranking system is to match up characters in the guild with a level of raiding appropriate to their skills and experience. A secondary intent is to help codify the more "intangible" aspects of raid preparedness and effort that are expected within SWotH, which was (we felt) lacking in the Burning Crusade rank descriptions.

Thunderfuries are intended to be entry-level raiders with some Heroic experience and should do OK in Naxxramas-10 or Obsidian Sanctum-10 (although an entire group of Thunderfury-ranked members would likely have difficulty getting past the first few bosses in Naxxramas).
Mindblades are intended to be fairly seasoned raiders who can more than pull their weight in Naxxramas or Obsidian Sanctum. A group of all Mindblades should be able to clear Naxx-10 and be capable of clearing the four wings of Naxx-25, but will probably not have such an easy time on Sapphiron-25, Kel'Thuzad-25, or Malygos.
Warglaives are intended to be some of the best raiders in the guild, given gear from the content launched with Wrath of the Lich King. It should take some effort to reach this rank, especially early in the expansion. A group of all Warglaives should be able to easily clear Naxx-25 and Malygos, and should do fairly well in upcoming raid content.
Frostmournes are our most skilled, knowledgeable, and high-performing raiders. It should be extremely difficult to reach this rank from content from the launch of Wrath of the Lich King; most guild members should not be able to reach this rank until they start gearing up in Ulduar and other future raid instances.

Please take the figures here with a grain of salt. We are not experts on every class and every spec, and it is entirely possible (in fact, likely) that some of the target numbers we're aiming for are not achievable for certain classes. It's also possible that some of our figures are too low. So we welcome feedback on the ranks in the forums, and reserve the right to adjust these figures as we go along and gain experience and expertise on the new WoW raid game. In particular we'd like to avoid the situation that came about near the end of Burning Crusade, where our guild was delving deep into Tier 6 content with characters sporting the new 51-point talents, and people were performing 2-3x as well as our ultimate raiding rank required. Ranks stopped having any useful meaning at that point, and trying to completely re-work the ranking system for that two months of sudden change was not feasible. So we'll be keeping an eye on things as time goes on to try to keep things level, and if we do need to make changes, we'll make a point of stating those in the newsletter. Nobody likes being demoted because the bar was suddenly raised, so we will try to minimize those sorts of changes if at all possible.

What are the benefits of having a rank?

Characters that have achieved a raid rank will generally have raid spot priority over unranked or lower-ranked guild members. We will be using raid credits to give lower-ranked members a chance to attend raids if there is not room for them in a given week, using a system very similar to the one we used to use for Karazhan invites. This will work out as follows:

Thunderfury:
Eligible to roll for open spots (and receive raid credits for the next week if they lose out) on all Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum runs. Naxx runs that are targeting Sapphiron and/or Kel'Thuzad give higher priority to Mindblade and up. At the raid leader's discretion, if there are more Thunderfuries in a raid than there are Warglaives, the number of Thunderfury spots may be limited (this is to allow the raid to get past gear-check bosses like Patchwerk and Thaddius).

Mindblade:
Get priority on spots in 25-man runs to Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum. Eligible to roll for spots (and receive raid credits) for 10-man Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, and Malygos.

Warglaive:
Get priority on spots in 25-man raids on Sapphiron, Kel'Thuzad, Malygos, and any Obsidian Sanctum run that is attempting to leave one or more drakes up. Eligible to repair using funds from the guild bank.

Frostmourne:
Priority on spots for upcoming raid content. Eligible to repair using funds from the guild bank.

What are the general requirements for ranks?

The requirements for ranks are divided into several different areas. Some of them are common to all raiding roles, while others are specific to a particular job in the raid (healing, tanking, or DPS). These are summarized as follows. Specific requirements are detailed in the sections and ranks below.

General Requirements:

Raid Attitude - Before anything else, you need to have an appropriate attitude for raiding in SWotH. We're a casual guild, but we take raids a bit more seriously. Being intentionally rude or offensive to others, making a nuisance of yourself, being consistently unprepared, and abusing Ventrilo are all behaviors that are unacceptable in a raiding context.
Effort - In order to qualify for any raiding rank, we must have evidence that some minimum level of effort was expended getting ready for raiding. The new Achievements and Statistics reported on the WoW Armory pages are an easy way to estimate how much effort a player has put into gearing up a character for raiding.
Preparedness - Having appropriate mods, items and specialty gear to do your job in the raid are required for certain ranks.
Gear quality - You must have sufficiently high-quality gear for your rank and role.
Raid knowledge - You must be able to demonstrate some level of knowledge of the instances we're raiding and the specifics of the encounters within.
Class knowledge - Higher raid ranks require good awareness of your class, and knowledge of what talents, gear, and abilities are appropriate for your role.

Role-specific Requirements:

Performance test - Like the Burning Crusade-era SWotH "Trial of Blades", there will be role-specific tests to gauge where your performance falls in respect to the raid ranks.
Role-specific gear - For tanking and healing in particular, ranks will require a certain level of key attributes from gear.

How do I rank up?

Generally, attending raids will give officers a reasonable idea of how well-prepared you are for raiding. For getting initial raid ranks, we can either look at past performance or bring an unranked/low-ranked character in to a run to get some raw figures (though if raid spots are tight, you may need to show the raid leader that you meet the other requirements for the rank you're gunning for in order to get a spot for trying to meet the performance test).

We use WoW Webstats extensively to look at raid performance, which is easiest to gauge from a DPS and utility (i.e. decursing) standpoint. We look at how easy tanks are to heal, and how smoothly encounters go when certain healers are present. Most of the requirements for Thunderfury are easy enough to meet for people in Heroic-level gear, and it should be a relatively easy rank to attain even without specifically requesting it. For Mindblade and up, we will ask people to carefully read over the rank requirements and indicate (in the forums, at this stickied post) that they believe they meet the requirements for a promotion.

Detailed Rank Requirements

Each raid rank has specific criteria that must be met to qualify for that rank. Higher ranks also require all of the criteria from lower ranks.