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The start of TBC was great for us, pre-TBC we were a decent mix of casual and hardcore players progressed decently into Naxx up to around Thaddius/Gothik prior to the "pvp" patch which basically killed off most interest in raiding. This became pretty evident when we started raiding in TBC, we blitzed through Karazhan quite quickly snagging up a bunch of server firsts etc which made a nice change as we were always usually 3rd or so. Then the problems started when we started doing 25man raids, the mix of Casual/Hardcore really started to show problems pre-2.1 and progress ground to a halt after killing Maulgar.
2.1 came and we started going well again though we consistently had attendance problems particularly on busy times such as the exam period as ofc a lot of our players are students. Basically we had a mix of casual/hardcore players but we never really mass recruited, our guys were largely a mix of A+B with some C+D's thrown in there as well but the problem ofc was we were reliant on the C+D's for making up the numbers. In 40man raiding this was fine but with TBC there is a much greater reliance on individuals in TBC and you really cant afford to have members there "just to make up the numbers" any more, the Casual/Hardcore guild mix is such a pain in TBC and really not worth the drama.
So we had to take some drastic action and tighten up the way we did things, basically C's(and some of the D's) were demoted to social members meaning they can still do the regular guild stuff but wouldn't be invited to raids. We recruited more, mostly via a mini merge with another raiding guild that had just had 3 of its tanks quit the game leaving them in the lurch but we also recruited more key classes/players which meant we have a lot more available each night. However ofc more players meant Rotation, something we weren't used to up till this point to a degree but it was either that or keep having to cancel raids now and then whenever enough didn't show up etc.
The main thing we implemented though was an organised and personally developed sign up system which allowed us to select people in advance for raids but also to make the whole thing a lot more transparent because up till then we'd basically always had "just enough" on to raid each night so rotation really wasn't something people were used to. Basically it works threefold, firstly people fill out what days they are available/want to raid, they can also indicate if they are unsure if they are available or are available but would prefer to be a reserve unless needed. We then add the raids for the week to the list, people can then tweak their schedules etc but we generally take into account how many are available etc when scheduling the raids (i.e. if we're low on AoE classes we'd do VR/Al'Ar instead of Morgrim or something). Finally each night prior we update the raid with the actual raid selection from the list of who's available etc.
The main difference really was the extra layer of organisation, it solved a lot of problems meaning the A's and B's both can be fit in well and indeed we organise the majority of stuff around when the people want to raid without them even really having to think about it. It's ironic in a way that tightening up things to strengthen our progress ultimately also allowed more flexibility for people to also play more casually as now we as we're a lot less reliant on "enough" people turning up each night as we know in advance how many/who we'll have etc and the side benefit is people can just plan trips to the pub without issue!
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