Saw this thread and liked your story, wanna share my way into raids as well.
I played this game almost since launch, mainly as a wvw and later pvp player with the occasionally pve on the side though mostly fractals.
I played in various WvW guilds especially before HoT expansion and is still in the one which slowly died during HoT as we stopped raiding in WvW.
Since then us few remaining players of that guild have been playing together.
We were 3 guys which decided we wanted to raid, 1 guy which pugged the raid w1-w4 back when those raid wings came out, another which had killed a couple of bosses and me which had done VG twice.
We didnt want to pug the raids and wanted to create a static where we could progress on the raids, so we put up an advertisement for a static, stating we were 3 guys wanting to create a static raid group. We stated that we were mostly new.
It didnt take long before we got some ppl joining (a week if I remember correctly), and we quickly starting raiding. The first few weeks we pugged since we werent full yet, and even found ppl through this pugging which wanted to join. We looked up guides on the bosses and then went in, as we got going we have 1 day where we trying to clear wing 1-4 and then a second day where we mainly progress on especially wing 5-7.
The only bosses which we havent killed is Dhuum and Quadim 1, we are still in a learning process on wing 5 and 6.
We have had to replace various members during the time. Furthermore not all who joined the static was completely new which also helped alot.
Lastly I enjoy raiding in a static and probably wouldnt have begun raiding if we didnt create a static group to do it. Afterall in my opinion thats what a mmo is all about playing together.
