Valjean

I lead a mid-size guild which has a mix of hardcore players and casual players. We used to raid 3 nights a week and Saturdays. Now we raid 4 nights a week and occasionally do Kara/Gruul/Mag on Saturdays. Our raids tend to last 4 hours a night.

For me, hardcore would be raiding 6 days a week, for 5 hours a night. I see casual as 3 days a week, 3 hours a night. That's just my own definition.

We cleared SSC last week and just got to Kael this week.

I feel like we're at a point where if I push a little harder, we could be in Black Temple very soon. But I'm also worried that if I push too hard it'll burn out some of the players that I've come to count on.

I have four types of people in my guild.

A) Raids 3 days a week, and are exceptional on those days.
B) Raids 7 days a week, and are exceptional every day.
C) Raids 3 days a week, and will never be above average.
D) Raids 7 days a week, and will never be above average.

I'd say about 1/3 of my raids have type B, the other 1/3 is type A, and the rest is a mix of C+D.

I want to see the end-game in WoW. I felt like I missed out by never downing Kel'thuzad or C'thun. Now that we have a stronger raiding group, I don't want to make that mistake again. While I would love to be #1, I'm content knowing that I'm doing my best, in a raid with people who are trying their hardest.

I'm starting to see the emergence of tension between the hardcore raiders and the casual raiders. The hardcore want to push the extra hour or extra day of raiding, while the casuals push back when the clock hits midnight. It's also tough because on certain nights when I really need this mage or priest, he won't be on because he doesn't like to raid that often. Right now, it's manageable, but I'm concerned that at some point it'll become too much. We won't raid enough for some people, or we'll raid too much for others.

The only way I could think of to balance these two desires would be to recruit more, so that the hardcore players still have the raiding opportunity, but the casual players don't feel the need to log on every night. Of course, what happens when these new "filler" recruits are so good they start taking the spots of the exceptional, but casual raiders?

I'm looking forward to Zul'aman as a way to balance these types of raiders.

There's also the possibility that I'm thinking too much about this, and I should just keep doing what I think is right and let the cards fall where they may.