Can you have a guild with casual and harcore raiders?

Valjean · 08/24/07, 5:01 PM

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.

Harwin · 08/24/07, 5:05 PM

Have you tried seeing if your type A raiders can be scheduled more for progression nights and less for farm nights? My guild raids 3 nights a week and due to work schedule I can't make 1 of the first 2 nights - but I can pick which - so I ask our raid leader which he'd rather have me for.

Not sure how long it takes you to clear but... having the As be there for Vashj and Kael should be at most 3 nights a week (if you spend 2 nights on Kael)

edit: I meant type A, fixed.

Valjean · 08/24/07, 5:31 PM

Originally Posted by songster

Do we need yet another thread on this topic?

Casual Progression
Raid Sizes and The Future of WoW Raiding

And at least half a dozen others.

I saw those threads, but after reading them, I did not believe they apply to my specific situation.

The first was more of a how do you go from casual to semi-hardcore. Do I play more or should I be happy with less. How do you make mediocre raiders into good raiders? Then it goes into a discussion of what is casual vs hardcore, and how do you create content for them.

The second is more of a discussion of what works for building a strong raid today, as well a discussion on how the instances are tuned. And finally how do you create instances that can appeal to a wide variety of players with different interests.

My situation is related, but not identical. My guild is trying to do both, raid hardcore and raid casually. I have very good players, and I don't need to teach them to play better. They also all want the same thing, but the intensity of their desire is different. I'm not asking on how to build the perfect raid, or wonder what instances we are ready for. I want to bring the 3 day raiders to Black Temple without alienating the 7 day raiders who got us there.

Right now I've stealth-hardcored us by raiding a little longer without people noticing. But I don't know if this is a sustainable option. My first thought was to recruit more players so no matter what night it is, we have 25 on. But my concern is if I do this, I'll start treating people as interchangeable commodities. So I'm looking for advice from people like Harwin, and his idea of restructuring our raids around some of the raider's schedules.

Gadz · 08/24/07, 5:52 PM

I agree this thead is very similar to the ones Songster linked, but this is a topic that I don't believe was discussed in any detail. I would probably fix the spelling error in the title for a chance of this sticking around at all.

My answer would be yes they can, but it is not ideal. I suspect most 3-4 night raiding guilds are in situations very similar to what you just described. In many cases the hardcore players are needed to ensure the guild doesn't stagnate.

Unfortunately, it can also be a huge source of frustration for a guild. It is much easier to ask someone to raid less then they want vs. trying to force someone to play more then they can. This is where people make decisions about what is more important, quicker progression or the relationships they have developed within the game. Sometimes the hardcore players will leave, sometimes they stay. I remember trying to push casual players into adding a raid night and it failed miserably.

From personal experience, having everyone on the same page from a progression and time commitment standpoint makes things a lot easier. This doesn't mean that hardcore and casual can't play together.

Quigon · 08/24/07, 5:54 PM

I think it is worth additional and specific discussions as opposed to merging everything into monster threads that no one can possibly follow indefinitely.

lairpie · 08/24/07, 6:05 PM

This has always been the largest issue for our guild (day 1 of the game, no major leadership changes or mergers ever, so fairly consistent). We've always believe firmly that it shouldn't be a job to play a game, that you shouldn't be unable to hang out with friends because you have a raid. We also felt that even when playing, that not everyone had to raid. We've always had a decent number of people that almost never raided and just pvped with us and did 5 man content, along with a lot of our core raiders that have always been very active in pvp. At one point we realized that almost 1/2 of our 40 man raid had the word marshal over their heads. For reference we killed c'thun and about 1/2 of Nax before the pre-expansion 'who cares, its all useless in 2 months' thing kicked in too hard to progress farther.

We've always said that it shouldn't be a job to raid, but it wasn't ever really true. Our raids were always carried by people that even while defending the idea that it wasn't a job, were every bit as committed as they would be to a job. Pre BC we probably had 15-20 people that were the same in almost every raid, probably another 15 that made 2/3 or so of the raids (so like 10 spots) and the rest people that made about 1/3 of the raids. We completely relied on that core of people that were always there for everything, even to the point of having them swap to alts full time to have people in each role and class that were consistent.

It was always a struggle to balance the need for consistency with the desire for being casual but we had enough people that were voluntarily consistent and 20 good people was all you really needed to keep pace with content release. We killed Nef less than 24 hours before aq was released. We killed cthun just after nax came out, and would have finished nax before the expansion had raiding not died off because of a lack of interest in gear that was soon to be replaced with greens. When 25 man raids were announced we were thrilled. I'd like to say it wasn't true, but i know everyone of our best players thought to themselves about how well we could do with 25 of our best 30 in every night and hardly ever seeing your C and D people in a raid.

Unfortunately the expansion didn't end our problems, mostly because over time that 15-20 good players that were always there has dwindled to may 5 players with 90% or so attendence. We're now around 5 people at 90%, probably another 10 over 2/3s and working our way down from there. Most of that 15-20 that we saw being the core of our 25 man raids are still with the guild, but its been almost 3 years now since I had to run all over the map getting money from people so we could pool our cash for a guild charter. Single college kids have become married guys that have to get up at 6am to get ready for work. Almost all of our original officers are the same, but once we were all living within a mile of eachother, now we span 1/2 the US. We never used to have social conflicts because 2/3 of our RL friends were in the guild, it'd be stupid to plan something for a raid night.

This has led us to having wildly varied success from night to night. One night we'll fly through bosses setting record kill times with no deaths. Doing the same content the same night the next week, we'll wipe to void reaver because we tried to do it with one dps warrior specced prot for the night and 1 feral druid as the only tanks and the damagers just couldn't hold back enough. We killed alar back when only the top guilds had because it was something we could get to easily in one night when we had a good raid, but have had trouble putting together enough solid raid nights in the same week to get time on vashj without completely ignoring the need to gear members by doing gruul, mag, and alar/VR. This forces us to balance the need to gear up our members with farmed bosses, with the need to kill new bosses, and the fact that for the most part you can't get to the new bosses anyway if you suck and kill the old bosses too slowly.

Last week we had 3 really solid nights, group wise, killed karathress for the first time, killed leo in just a couple pulls, sauntered up to vashj thinking we'd be killing her within a week or two. This week we wanted to just ignore everything and just focus on killing Vashj, but come 8pm on night 1, we had a raid that would be wasting it's time to try anything in SSC or TK. We wiped twice on gruul mostly from where people that were casual enough to have only done the fight once or twice murdered healers. We finished him up and called it for the night. Night two, still missing too many people to take SSC seriously including our main NR tank and our paly murloc tank so we head to TK. Killed VR with a dps warrior specced prot for the night and our normal druid tanking after 1 wipe, then alar, again with not the usual tanking setup after 1 or two wipes. Odds of getting any real time to work on vashj, pretty slim.

I think this is a lot different than the discussions of casual guilds where they're looking to know if they'll be able to move from karazhan to ZA, or how hard it is going to be to pick up enough additional people or an alliance to do early 25 man content. This is a guild just slightly ahead of my own and facing the same problems. More specifically its not an issue of everyone being casual, but rather balancing the progression that the more committed want with the freedom the more casual want.

Is anyone in a guild like mine or the OPs where there's a large disparity in raid attendance, and a decent disparity in skill across your raid that has managed to make it into and do much in BT or hyjal?

sovelis41 · 08/24/07, 6:07 PM

Originally Posted by Valjean

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.

I really think you might be thinking about it too much. You've already accomplished quite a bit so far with your casual/hardcore raider split. In my opinion, just keep doing what you're doing, and you'll be in BT/MH soon enough.

Digo · 08/24/07, 6:12 PM

Originally Posted by lairpie

Is anyone in a guild like mine or the OPs where there's a large disparity in raid attendance, and a decent disparity in skill across your raid that has managed to make it into and do much in BT or hyjal?

Yes, but we ended up elbowing out the people who couldn't hang by virtue of the fact that there aren't enough raid spots to go around. It was extremely difficult having to exclude long-time members simply because their DPS or situational awareness wasn't where it should be.

I'm completely sympathetic for the guilds that aren't able or willing to abandon friends who may not be quite up to par. However, that's not to say you can't make progress -- it will just be slower. Ultimately, you'll have to decide what level of exclusion you're comfortable with. For me, this been the hardest part of being a raid leader in TBC.

Playered · 08/24/07, 6:20 PM

It depends to what extent your ratio is between each type.

We have had quite a few 'casual' players whom have been a perfectly good asset for the guild, they come when needed and help out but dont expect or demand raid spots or loot.

They are perfect 'fillers' to allow the hardcore people to have a day off without ruining the raid.

Lord BEEF · 08/24/07, 6:24 PM

I deleted a couple posts about whether this thread should exist, such that it can more easily stay on topic. No offense to anyone whose post I removed.

lairpie · 08/24/07, 6:32 PM

I really think you might be thinking about it too much. You've already accomplished quite a bit so far with your casual/hardcore raider split. In my opinion, just keep doing what you're doing, and you'll be in BT/MH soon enough.

We were never expecting to raid casually and be the best, but we made it our goal to keep pace with content release: finishing one instance as the next was released. It had the upside of never really being without a goal like many of the top guilds are where they have to sit and wait for content. In the expansion we find ourselves falling farther and farther behind. We won't see all of the burning crusade before WotLK, we may never see an entire instance worth of content, and that sits very poorly with the raiders that are as skilled and as committed as many of the people in top guilds.

This is compounded by the fact that we're on a somewhat dying server to which we free-transferred shortly before the expansion to escape our vastly overpopulated first server to escape hour long BG queues and rampant server instability. Not to be arrogant, but we were a very well liked guild on our server. We almost completely avoided interguild drama and while i can't say we never had any, it was almost always kept away from the people that just wanted to enjoy the game. We were a well known and respected guild and even still there are threads on our guild forums and our realm forums from both the alliance players we played with, and the horde we fought against to transfer back regularly.

A couple of our veterans, amid tons of recruitment from guilds both horde and alliance from our first server have transferred back. The top 1/2 of our raiders get probably 2-3 tells a week, some of them multiple times a day by several guilds. We get recruited by people that only knew of us but need a particular class, and old friends that would want us back not just to fill a gap, but because they want us in their guild. All of us know that by not transferring, we're choosing to miss 1/4 of the content of the burning crusade when we know we'd be seeing it if we went back to skullcrusher, or really to any server in a more focussed guild. I'm actually really pleasantly surprised that only 4 of our core raiders did ever transfer back. Wiping in SSC or even on a bad night gruul where 1/2 your raid knows that for $25 they could be collecting tier 6 isn't an easy thing to do.

Lord BEEF · 08/24/07, 6:33 PM

Valjean, I would first set proper expectations of raiding time. If you want to raid 5 nights a week, let it be clear to your members. If they can't do that kind of attendence then aim for 4 instead.

Then work it out on a class by class basis. In EJ we have three resto druids. One has 90+% availability, I'm about 40-70%, and the other is closer to 30-40%. We typically raid with just one resto druid (there are exceptions like archimonde) and work it out each night so the 90% availability guy doesn't actually have to raid every night and doesn't get burned out.

Neone · 08/24/07, 6:41 PM

While we do have some of the same issues as the OP (though we can only get Tidewalker to 8%...sad), I'm intrigued at how EJ manages to schedule people such that you rotate consistently.

If you wouldn't mind elaborating a bit more Werebeef, I'd certainly appreciate it.

So far in TBC I've counted on a core of about 23 showing up for every raid, and then hoping 2 others make it on. Having some sort of rotation would be really nice and make it easier for me to plan ahead for more consistent raids, rather than the feast or famine situation I have now.

Copernicus · 08/24/07, 6:48 PM

I think your biggest issue is going to be handling Kael and BT/MH attunement. Unless something changes in patch 2.2, you're guild is going to be split between people who have killed Kael and want to be in BT/MH and those who are still learning the fight or just missed a night.

Galred · 08/24/07, 7:02 PM

A previous guild I was in went from 3 nights per week, to 4, and at the very end unsuccessfully tried to do 5 nights. Forcing the issue didn't work out for us.

Basically, the question I think the OP needs to ask is whether the players who raid 3 days per week CAN spend more time raiding. Do they have RL conflicts? Get burned out by more raidiing? Are they uncomfortable with more nights per week raiding than not raiding? etc.

The description of the guild's overall ability suggests that the issue is time as opposed to skill. I wouldn't start recruiting until you knew for sure that your A and C players simply aren't going to try raiding 4 days per week.

To Neone:

A bit OT, but my experience with raid rotations is that players (or class leaders) are tasked with filling a raid spot. For EJ, it might be the 90% attendance druid. If the person responsible for filling a spot is going to be absent, they need to both let the raid leader know AND find a replacement. So it comes down to communication, and hoping that most absences aren't truly a surprise.

Edited for clarity. Kinda.