While this is good in theory is doesn't work well in practise, well at least for us.

You end up having more dedicated people mixed in with "lesser" dedicated people each week. Certain people make sure they are online, with consumables ready to raid on-time and to a certain agreed finish time ... whereas others are not as prepared.

So you have two groups getting held back from progression ... people getting frustrated with others etc.

This is from my guild who seems to somehow have mixed together hardcore and semi-casual raiders together. Pre-TBC it wasn't a problem if you only ever logged on during raid nights and 1 night a week to farm. Apart from some mid/late-Naxx encounters you never really needed more then a few flasks for your tanks for raiding.

But TBC raiding required more dedication ... you have to work and work HARD on your gear from the 5-mans before stepping into Karazhan/Gruul's/Mag or you will get pwnt hard. The Hardcores with many more available hours of playtime have all their 5-man gear and enchants and rep's for heroics and badges etc. The casuals, who only play 3-5 hours a few nights a week are no where near this level ... not soo much because they are bad, they just don't have such a high playtime.

I'm wondering if any other guilds have found good solutions to this. We've got an A-team B-team situation going on right now and I'd really like to contain the problems, though not being an officer(I'm a class captain) I have somewhat limited control. Essentially the A team has styled themselves the "hardcore" group, and has stated more or less explicitly that lesser geared or skilled people will not be accepted into the group, that raid times are just "when everyone gets there," and having flasks and full buff pots on hand should a wipe occur at some point is mandatory. Then you have the B team, headed by a rl friend of mine, who is desperately trying to catch up with "suggested" requirements and set raid times. Our guild has a (very) wide mix of skill levels and playing amounts and we pride ourselves on having multiple couples and family members, and in general the "friendly" environment. I would consider myself a hardcore player, but since I leveled my paladin to 70 before my new main shaman, I was essentially "stuck" with the B team, which is called the orwellian "option 1."

To give you an idea of the disparity, option 2 cleared Nightbane first on the server, and option 1 is currently on Shade. I've been pleading with the officers to set up some sort of rotation but the response I get is that option 2 is mainly made up of friends and don't want to be split up. I was searching through threads here to try and find some support, maybe a good quote from a far-progressed guild, "rotate your kara teams or your guild will die."

I tried to switch teams last night, as my personal frustration is growing and I decided the best way to introduce churn between the two teams would be to set an example(I was essentially "trading" spots with our top shadow priest). I was met with lots of resistance from both sides, from option 1 who saw it as "losing a MVP" (the implication being that I was too good for them) and option 2 who just seemed to be fairly resistant to letting anyone join despite the fact I've busted my ass to level two characters to 70 and still match gear with some of the "elite" people(not too hard with shabby raid itemization, I suppose). Personally I'm either getting choked by the lack of new content and the swirling drama. I know many are in my position due to the bad funneling system of 5man heroics(hard, big time investment) -> 10man (kinda hard, small min. time investment)x2 > 25man(harder, medium time investment).

Has anyone manage to scrape a guild this deep into it out of this situation?

I'm curious--given that your team did not want to allow you to switch another player in for yourself (I assume this player is of equal caliber to you since he's on "option 2," the more far-progressed group), does anyone but you see the current situation as a problem?

I'm not trying to be rude, just thinking that if both groups are fairly happy with the situation, you're gonna have a hell of a time changing the status quo.

I don't think there's much you can do once it's so blatantly clear that some guild members are prioritizing present advancement in a 10-man over future advancement in 25-mans. Once that priority shift has taken place, they're effectively a 10-man guild inside a larger one. My roommate's guild on Gilneas was in that situation as of last week; their B team actually caught up with the A team, but the A team still refused to rotate members. The guild has since splintered, with members of the B team being kicked for starting trouble and the others following.

At this point, playing armchair guild master, I've advised my roommate to start a guild focused on fielding a single Karazhan raid, no more than 10-15 raiders on the roster. Once they have Nightbane downed in a month or two, they'll be able to rejoin a larger raiding guild for 25-mans or expand on their own without the necessity of getting everyone into Karazhan.

Oh, they had no problem with gaining the shadow priest, it's just that though I don't lead the raids, I usually help explain the pulls, and frequently am given leader to mark targets, etc. Someone on the team whispered they were disappointed I was "abandoning" them.

As for contentness, I am not the only progression minded player on team B. There are many frustrated people at the moment; most of which doesn't necessarily come from the lack of progress in kara(as they are catching up, somewhat) but from the disparity and the perceived indifference to it. Team A's players have frustrations too in the substandard dps on Gruul(we haven't downed him yet, though we just started our first "serious attempt" last week; the slow start due to having 12-15 well geared people and the rest not so much).

There are plenty on the A team who are geniunely concerned about the schism, but for the most part I think their view is that it will all be sorted out once the B team clears Nightbane. The guild GM(who is mildly concerned about the issue, enough to where he has been trying to switch to the B team, but due to friendships, etc, has only succeeded once) insists upgrades from 5 man heroics/crafting are comparable to karazhan epics, which although being a mostly true statement, doesn't really help the "jealousy" factor. Plus the fact a lot of us are hungry for further content.

Have you tried actually sitting down and hashing this out with your guild? Would your officers view a forum post in this vein as going over their heads, and get upset with you for it? If you've conducted this in one-on-one conversations in-game thus far, it might be time to bring this out into the open for an actual all-around discussion. If you guys can keep it calm, at least.

Obviously I'm not in your guild, but reading your description of the situation leads me to believe that there's a lot of confusion as to who wants what for what reason, not to mention people missing the point in general. It would probably be for the best if you were to sit down and really figure out where things are, and then have a calm and constructive discussion of it with your guildmates. If it were me, before coming to them with this, I would an

1) Identify the problem. Why exactly is Team B performing worse than Team A? Do you need to improve DPS? Is it healing? Is it bad tanking? Is it general inability to work together?

2) Identify the preferred solution to the problem. I.E. "I want one of the healers from Team A and two of the DPSers to switch with members of Team B this week."

3) Identify the roadblocks to the solution. You say that "because of friendships" people don't want to switch teams. What exactly are these friendships? Do you really have ten people who have sworn eternal allegiance to one another, or is there more of a core of 3-4 who are finagling the others into going along with their desires?

4) Figure out how to convince people that you're right. If those who are "geniunely concerned about the schism" really ARE genuinely concerned about it, they sure don't seem to be showing it if they're not willing to do anything about it. Demonstrate to them that it's really an important matter to resolve, because it's affecting you guys as a guild. If they aren't really concerned about the schism, but are concerned about progression, explain to them that progressing beyond Karazhan will be far easier if you have two groups that can complete it.

5) Be prepared for failure. :P In the end, your arguments may fall on deaf ears. Unfortunately, nothing says that the "haves" MUST help the "have-nots" if they're content with waiting for their progress beyond Kara until the "have-nots" catch up on their own, or even recruiting to expand their team.