Wowhead posted some new information about the upcoming expansion, Cataclysm.  While I’m disappointed in the “Path of the Titans” loss, and not completely sold on their take on “Guild Leveling”, I was very happy to find this little nugget:

Raid Lockouts

Here’s another big change—they’ve added a great deal of flexibility to raid lockouts. Rather than being locked into a particular raid ID, you can now join any raid, as long as it doesn’t have any bosses up that you have already killed. Basically, as long as you’re not killing the same boss twice in one lockout period—you have total freedom.

Fantastic news!  This could be what I was asking for, explained in a much simpler and clearer way, as long the “ it doesn’t have any bosses up that you have already killed.” part checks the character status of kills and not the last raid the character was in status.

What I mean is I want to:

• Join a raid on Wednesday and kill boss 1 of 5
• have that raid runs without me on Thursday and kill boss 2
• Then allow me to join a new raid on Friday that has only killed boss 1.

If that is how Blizzard expects things to work then WELL DONE Blizzard.