A motivational bump won't last forever in casual guilds, but it can last long enough to get you over that "hump" where you have the recognition to attract solid recruits instead of inviting any warm body because you need to fill raid slots. Once there is competition for raid slots, people have the motivation to perform better.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, in truth I didn't really hope for much more than a short term bosst from our new system, but since 'new' guilds either take off and become well established fairly quickly, or founder due to lack of progress - so a short term kick in the rear while we're still finding our feet is something I value quite highly. We had considered making it quite a bit more stringent, as you describe your system when you first started, but on a server where literally every guild, even those with better progression and recognition than ours is literally crying out for members, we decided there was a limit to how many demands we could set and still have enough people for the weekly Gruul clear.
I also take the point about there being a difference between enforcing a standard upon people and having them volunteer to meet a higher than expected standard, but from our point of view, the members this is directed at have been recruited within the last three weeks (very new guild) and the criteria we're focusing on are the bare minimums of what we asked for in our recruitment posts anyway.
I suppose we'll just have to keep an eye on how it pans out, but extraordinarily, after posting those yesterday we has an excellent turnout today and were able to go kill Hydross, so yay for slowly clawing our way back to where we were before our old guilds imploded. As an aside, does anyone get the impression that non Bleeding-Edge guilds on PvE servers are inherently cursed? Ah well, as I say, thanks for the feedback - it's especially encouraging to hear others have done similar things with positive results!
To combine casuals and hardcore raiders in the one ands same guild, is very hard. Just recently, my guild split just because of that issue. The "core" left and made a "better" raiding guild, and is now clearing SCC/TK and will probably start Hyjal Summit soon, while we who stayed only have downed Karazhan and Gruul.
Sure, you can probably recruit more people, but then you suddenly end with a bit too many raiding groups, maybe. I mean, let's say you got two 25-man groups, one casual and one hardcore, you would have like five 10-man groups. Isn't that a bit too many for one guild?
If you have a casual RAIDING guild that is different than a CASUAL raiding guild. If you have more casual members who you can't rely on to have good mix of classes for 25 mans then everyone needs to know that progress will be slow and hard. If you have more hardcore raiders everyone needs to understand that the hardcore raiders will get burned out of same content and be prepared to slip in progression if any of them don't show up for raids.
If raiding is going well then you need to be prepared for seasonal breaks, burnouts, loss of members to hardcore guilds wanting to see more progress, and normal wow turnover of leadership. So if you recruit and up front tell ppl we will be doing or trying to raid these times it will work better, but the main thing is don't string members along or be ready for some drama.
So plan ahead by recruiting right ppl, keep hardcore raiders happy since they are the core of the team, and make sure you have realistic goals. No one likes wiping an instance for a month straight so evaluate and take a step back.
My guild has maintained some level of progression (6/6, 3/4- soon to drop SSC and focus on KT) while being a 3 night a week raiding guild. When we got to Vashj we really hit a roadblock, people got frustrated and we were having trouble filling SSC raids. I was on 'elemental killing duty' and it was really soul crushing hearing "It's a wipe" in vent during phase 2 over and over again when from my perspective everything was going fine. I couldn't help but thinking others were fucking up and wasting my time on unfocused half-assed attempts.
Ultimately, we had to open up recruitment and simply not allow below-average players to become permanent members. We also personally spoke to players who were underperforming on raids. One example that comes to mind is a survival spec hunter who was only maintaing ~500-600 DPS. In a raid force that is light on rogue and warrior DPS that hunter is dead weight. So, we spoke to him and he respecced BM, got an autoshot timer and made an effort to improve. He now is top 5 DPS on many enounters.
My point here is that you simply have to demand a certain level of performance. It takes a great deal of patient leadership and communication skills to motivate people. A lot of times you have to get someone in vent and explain that unless they reach a certain level of play, they will not get a regular raid slot. I don't see it as a casual vs. hardcore issue- rather it is just opening their eyes to expectations and showing them how they can be accomplished. WWS is an excellent tool in this regard. If the person is intelligent and motivated to continue raiding, they will rise to the challenge. WoW isn't that hard.
One final thing: I really believe Blizzard made a mistake with the Vashj and KT difficulty. When we killed Vashj we were 2/4 in TK- Solarian took 1 night to go down and now we are stuck on yet another gateway boss. Combine this with the lackluster T5 sidegrades and easy-to-obtain PVP gear and people lose motivation after 5 hour wipefests. Maybe a better approach would have been to lower KT's difficulty and require players to only kill Vashj OR KT to complete Hyjal attunement.
The difference even among people who consider themselves 'raiders' is vast.
Some people don't like being sat out, missing certain bosses or spending money on consumables or doing the unpleasant things that are needed to raid. These are the more "casual" members among your raid.
You have other types that are a raid leaders dream. They don't whine about consumable costs, they'll sit out when the raid needs them to, they show up on time and do anything it takes to help the raid run better.
I prefer the types that are focused on the guilds progress as a whole rather than their own individual raid needs. When the guild succeeds, that individual player wins by eventually having access to a new level of content.
So back to the original question - I don't think you can. You have to set out a goal or a philosophy about your raids. Some casual guilds that raid multiple days or hours work because sloppy play is compensated with more attempts.
We did a 5/6 SSC clear in about 3.5hrs the other night. To get it down that fast, you need to constantly push people to be ready, rebuff, grab targets and not to break sheeps or wipe the raid on trash. Minimizing deaths, 1 shotting bosses, and other things of this nature require more focus than usual. It creates stress because you don't want to mess up. Casuals don't like it. They want to be able to wipe the raid and not be held accountable.
So I guess my version of a casual raider is not how often you raid, but how you behave when you raid. I never understood why people who are good enough to ignore friends and family for 3.5-5hrs a night decide its a time to goof around and waste other peoples time.
We have several people in guild that will show up to a raid, bring everything of consumables etc and be totally shit, completely useless. People that do the dumbest thing in the game and then wonder why they are not taken to Kael'thas or Vashj.
We have tanks that prefer +hit rating gems over stamina, tanks that can't stancedance, tanks that max out at 600 TPS and still expect us to take down bosses and blame healers/dps when it's a whipe.
I can't even count how many times we've done progressionraids with people that don't show with full consumables. How about a person for three weeks in a row manage to die to spazzy things, someone comes inn and does it perfect from first try.
We have 6 raidnights a week, had vashj on farm a couple months and have KT down and we still need 2 full nights to clear SSC. We have raidstarts at 19:30, most often the raid doesnt do first pull until 20:45 due to slow people, especially on SSC raids or anything that isn't ZOMG WTF KT/HYJAL.
We have people that only raid 2 days a week and expect to get into any raid they want cause they are the best geared and some of the best players. Players that reappear after 6 months and bitch at officers for not going straight into KT/Vashj and so forth.
Sometimes I wonder how on earth we've managed to get into Hyjal to be honest. In KT in the end I just had to be almost nazi about it, strict raidstart, ninjainvite people 1 hour before raidstart, push push push push push. Set raid on a friday from 19:30 to 03:00 even though it didnt start until 22:30 due to late people we did get it done in the end. Sometimes it's a hell of a lot of redundant work due to idiots though.
One final thing: I really believe Blizzard made a mistake with the Vashj and KT difficulty. When we killed Vashj we were 2/4 in TK- Solarian took 1 night to go down and now we are stuck on yet another gateway boss. Combine this with the lackluster T5 sidegrades and easy-to-obtain PVP gear and people lose motivation after 5 hour wipefests. Maybe a better approach would have been to lower KT's difficulty and require players to only kill Vashj OR KT to complete Hyjal attunement.
The problem isn't their difficulty. The problem is that they didn't realise players would rather kill easy bosses in another zone than finish a zone first. We aren't suppossed to be putting the two hardest fights in the game (for their relative positions) next to each other - you're suppossed to do Vashj and then have a few easy bosses to learn before killing Kael. Same mechanic they have always used with bosses and gateway mobs - after going over the hurdle, you get an easy run for a while.
This time however, with the zonesplitting, there's no easy run - you just exchance nights of wiping on Vashj for nights of wiping on Kael. That burns guilds out extremely fast. No-one ever gets to relax, and your constantly being pushed to learn a very hard fight.
The problem isn't their difficulty. The problem is that they didn't realise players would rather kill easy bosses in another zone than finish a zone first. We aren't suppossed to be putting the two hardest fights in the game (for their relative positions) next to each other - you're suppossed to do Vashj and then have a few easy bosses to learn before killing Kael. Same mechanic they have always used with bosses and gateway mobs - after going over the hurdle, you get an easy run for a while.
This time however, with the zonesplitting, there's no easy run - you just exchance nights of wiping on Vashj for nights of wiping on Kael. That burns guilds out extremely fast. No-one ever gets to relax, and your constantly being pushed to learn a very hard fight.
I'm sure they knew what players would prefer to do - look how many guilds moved on to Naxx without killing C'Thun. In fact, I remember reading that this was explicitly their intent - if you get cockblocked at one boss, focus on another instance for a while to prevent burnout. In principle, it should work well - we're not at KT yet, but I know that making some progress inside TK has certainly taken some of the sting out of wiping to Vashj.
Where they've screwed up (IMO) is at the T5/T6 transition. Instead of smoothly transitioning between instances, it's set up for you to drop everything and then take on two new instances. If they were aiming for a proper "double ladder" approach, then Vashj should let you into Hyjal, and Kael should let you into BT.
Back in the day though, content could stand on it's own because of "that one item" or, like ZG, the enchants.
The current T5 content's only right to live lies in the attunements. We're working on T5 to get attuned to T6, not for the loot (which, for all intents and purposes, will be an upgrade albeit marginal). It's a bit strange.
If they were aiming for a proper "double ladder" approach, then Vashj should let you into Hyjal, and Kael should let you into BT.
Bravo. God, yes. The fact that TBC came out of the box with two full-fledged dungeon crawl 25-mans (if grossly out of tune to begin with) that BOTH ended in fiendishly difficult encounters that would keep most guilds busy for weeks each was a very pleasant surprise to me. I do, however, see a flaw when natural progression will likely lead you into both major cockblocks almost one right after the other while offering no mid-term reward to slow down raid burnout other than the loot itself.
The double ladder you describe is a genuinely awesome concept. But as it stands, it's incomplete. I can only hope they carry it over into WotLK.
One final thing: I really believe Blizzard made a mistake with the Vashj and KT difficulty. When we killed Vashj we were 2/4 in TK- Solarian took 1 night to go down and now we are stuck on yet another gateway boss. Combine this with the lackluster T5 sidegrades and easy-to-obtain PVP gear and people lose motivation after 5 hour wipefests. Maybe a better approach would have been to lower KT's difficulty and require players to only kill Vashj OR KT to complete Hyjal attunement.
Making KT easier won't solve anything. Raids with to many paint eaters to down KT will just complain that some other later boss is too hard. I personally think it's a great gateway encounter.
Originally Posted by songster
Where they've screwed up (IMO) is at the T5/T6 transition. Instead of smoothly transitioning between instances, it's set up for you to drop everything and then take on two new instances. If they were aiming for a proper "double ladder" approach, then Vashj should let you into Hyjal, and Kael should let you into BT.
Prior to dropping the attunements there was transitioning more or less. It was a lot easier to get attuned to SSC and work on that while getting attuned to TK. I disagree on attuning to 2 instances at a time though, it should have been Gruul attunes to Mag attunes to Vashj attunes to TK attunes to Hyjal Attunes to BT and they should have held the release of Hyjal/BT for a couple months to allow for T5 farming. As it stands now a raid just now killing KT for the first time will likely not kill him more then 2-3 times (a shame, because it really is a cool encounter) and even then only for attunement purposes.
Sometimes I wonder how on earth we've managed to get into Hyjal to be honest. In KT in the end I just had to be almost nazi about it, strict raidstart, ninjainvite people 1 hour before raidstart, push push push push push. Set raid on a friday from 19:30 to 03:00 even though it didnt start until 22:30 due to late people we did get it done in the end. Sometimes it's a hell of a lot of redundant work due to idiots though.
It sounds to me like you have a problem with raid discipline and are trying to compensate by raiding longer, instead of better. Secondly, with 6 raid nights a week, some running 'till 3am, I'm not surprised people won't always make the raid, and you're also not leaving them much time to get the gear upgrades/farm gold to fund it all.
My suggestion to you would be to reduce your raid nights, bring them back to set hours, and instead of trying to do everything each week, just get a sensible distribution between farming and progress (We have 66% farm, 33% progress). Don't exhaust your raid by trying to do all farm content every week and get every item from every boss - practice and focus will help you more than gear. We have to make do with 10 raid hours a week in total and found that by getting ruthless about start and end times and not worrying too much about missed farm content, progress suddenly went a lot faster. If your guys are sick of SSC, and it sounds like they are, just drop it or don't go every week anymore.
Also, put your foot down on start time. If you're in the habit of never really starting until 20.45, that's when people will log to avoid having to wait an hour for their fellow guildies to show. If you make a point of either starting on time or not starting at all, they will make sure to show earlier to get their invite.
Well, I have watched this thread for a while now, and I now turn to you all and ask for help.
Some background first: our guild has been around for a long time (close on 6 years), previously as a EQ guild, and in WoW since European launch. Although few of those old members are still around, the ethos and mentality of the guild has survived. We are a mature guild (average age probably close to 30) with a fairly casual raiding approach: 3 nights per week for 3.5 - 4 hours per time. Having said that, our raids are pretty disciplined – everyone uses consumables, only raid leader speaks on Vent, etc. There is no minimum attendance requirements for our raids, although we try encourage minimum two per week, added to the fact that “if you are online then you raid” (assuming you are good enough and/or there are raid spots available). Generally, when we raid, we try to do it well.
Raid progress as a whole is to some extent slowed by the fact that as a rule, we never ever use strategy guides or walkthroughs. Yes, this may slow our progress somewhat, but we do have some cool stuff for working things out and its usually only 2-3 raids until we have figured everything out. I guess that our mentality is that its about the journey, not the destination. The only problem is that the destination seems to be getting further and further away, hence leading to some frustration in the guild.
Some raiding history: early Karazhan raids were a bit hit and miss, so we create an "elite" team that proceeded to clear Kara quite quickly. If someone wasn’t performing, we asked them to leave raid, and replaced them with someone better. Our progress speeded up considerably - nothing ground-shaking, but we ended up about 12th on our server. Slowly we allowed more members to join in our Kara raids.
We added mentorship programmes, where our best players helped the weaker ones, only to see those members go inactive. The time and energy was not paying dividends in this regard.
Since first killing Maulgar end July, we have only killed a further 5 bosses: Gruul, Mag, Hydross, Luker and Kazzak. Excluding Kazzak, that’s on average one boss per month, which is terrible by any standards. For the avoidance of doubt, on 25 man raids we take the best players available each night.
I would say that we have a core raid team of about 15 players that are really excellent players - they know their class, they tank/heal/dps very well and understand the game mechanics. They could probably hold themselves up with the server’s best. The rest of the raid team (around 25 players) are either fairly inconsistent or average / below average in skill. The problem that we have is that this massive gulf between the best and worst players in any particular raid – things like some members doing +1000 dps and others from the same class languishing at 600 dps (with similar gear) on a boss fight. Some healers doing 3 times as much healing as others. We coerce, we cajole, we encourage, we threaten. But either they are unable or unwilling to play their class properly.
The frustration comes in 3 parts:
(1) Skill/gear difference: Our best 10 players can clear all of Karazhan in 3.5 hours, yet our worst 10 probably wouldn’t get past Curator.
(2) Inconsistency: On a raid night we can down Hydross and Lurker, and then fail 3 times at Maulgar. On one raid we one shot both Hydross and Lurker, on the next raid it takes us 3 hours to get Hydross down. We have now been trying Leotheras for a month, and yet people still get hit by WW, despite the fact that the raid leader calls for DPS to stop and people to run away 5 seconds before.
(3) We do not have the luxury of a stable raid team – it seems like each time we try again on a progression raid, we have new members who have to learn the encounter.
Now, if we had access to a better raid pool, then we would most certainly replace our weaker raiders with better ones – but as most mid-tier guilds are finding, recruitment is incredibly difficult. All around us we see guilds struggling, folding, disbanding, reforming – in almost all cases because the difficulty of the content is killing them. I have no doubt that if we had 25 players as good as our top 15, then we would probably have done 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK. I am aware that we could be choosing easier raid targets (VR and Tidewalker), but that just delays the next inevitable block. The fact of the matter is that as a whole we are just not good enough.
Its at the stage now where raiding is just not enjoyable for most of us. People are extremely close to burnout at the most senior level. If one or two of our best players (or RL) had to quit or leave, the guild would probably fold.
We are finding out that "NO", you cannot have a guild with casual and hardcore raiders (depending on your definition of hardcore ofcourse). The casual raiders are killing our guild and there is nothing we can do about it.
Various solutions have been discussed, including leaving the 25 man content to concentrate on ZA, having a raid break, etc. Fact of the matter is that we are a pretty close knit unit. Despite the constant flow of people quitting and others joining, there is a very strong community bond in the “older” members, most of whom have now been with the guild for at least two years. I should add that its mostly these “older” members that are the better players.
We have discussed this issue ad infintum in the guild, with no suitable outcome achieved.
Any thoughts or ideas that any of you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
If you can't have a stable group, there's no way to do it fast if you're planning to learn the bosses from scratch. And if people are bad and want to progress, the good ones will have to be babysitters and that is terrible. You need to have priorities; is your priority being a babysitter or doing progression with your best? The bad guys can stay around, get together and make their raids, since if they fail will be their fault. Name the bad people and show them they're the reason for the guild being the way it is, and that if they don't get better they'll not have the chance to raid.
The leadership must be harsh. If the person leaves the guild after receiving harsh criticism, what type of guild mate is he? Living is about working to be the best, if you can't put some effort on things you do you're not worth living.
Having recently experienced a similar fall out with my old guild I can completely agree that this game is very much polarizing the casual from the hardcore. The only difference is that they keep nerfing older content to allow "casual's" to feel like they are progressing.
My old guild was the same deal. 15 dedicated raiders being held back by 10 unreliable players that may or may not show up if they feel like it. The answer you always hear was "just recruit more/better people". The trouble is that those people are few and far between. Every server has 3-4 top end guilds on each faction that have siphoned off the cream from most guilds.
I guess the issue I see is that most guilds have a core of 10-15 people who are actually friends, and those people are always resistant to move to other guilds because they enjoy their friends. I know some guilds have had sucessful merges to help solve some of these issues, but at the same time I know numerous examples when mergers have gone nova.
There really is no solution for what you are saying. You can keep recruiting and trying to gear players (further holding yourself back) in the hopes that they become reliable and quality members. You can try to pull top players from smaller guilds. None of these are guaranteed, and my experience shows that you will find one good player for every 8 bad ones.... and by the time you have them geared and raid-ready, you probably had 2-3 of your experienced guys quit the game or move to a guild that is progressing.
My solution was actually to move back to a guild of friends and cut back my playing time. I'm slowly resigning myself to the notion that I will likely never see Hyjal or Black Temple unless I move to a guild with people I don't know (which will likely not be as enjoyable). I still enjoy my time in WoW, but i guess we should just enjoy what we can access rather then dream about what is just out of reach.
I think the guild my Warlock is in pretty much sums up much of what the original poster is experiencing. We have been on Vashj for 2 months now with significant turnover in raid make-ups. Between people getting kicked for low attendance and people quiting we cannot maintain a steady raid. Our raid leader is very hard on healers (he formerly played a priest and is now main tank) and is very judgmental about their performance. To a large extent he is right, there is no reason for anyone to die in phase 1 of Vashj for any reason after your 3rd pull. Our best attempts have been a solid 20 people making it to phase 3 and to wipe at 19%. As a hardcore hopefully type B and not type D it frustrates me to have a SSC clear to vashj on Tuesday with 35 people on line, then on weds Thursday have 25 people and only 4 healers show up. Our raid leader has actively been recruiting realm transfers and has gotten 3 pallys 2 shaman and a few new priest but all these transfer barely ever show up for their first raid. It puts me in an uncomfortable spot because every week that goes by my dreams of seeing BT/Hyjall slip away with them. I feel like it will be Naxx all over when Sunwell comes out, I will get to see 1 or 2 easy bosses and the rest of the zone will be limited to videos
Well, I have watched this thread for a while now, and I now turn to you all and ask for help.
Some background first: our guild has been around for a long time (close on 6 years), previously as a EQ guild, and in WoW since European launch. Although few of those old members are still around, the ethos and mentality of the guild has survived. We are a mature guild (average age probably close to 30) with a fairly casual raiding approach: 3 nights per week for 3.5 - 4 hours per time. Having said that, our raids are pretty disciplined � everyone uses consumables, only raid leader speaks on Vent, etc. There is no minimum attendance requirements for our raids, although we try encourage minimum two per week, added to the fact that �if you are online then you raid� (assuming you are good enough and/or there are raid spots available). Generally, when we raid, we try to do it well.
...
My guild is almost exactly the same, except we're working on Vashj atm. I don't think there is a solution really. In this game you're either in a guild that raids 5-6 days a week and has 25 great players in every raid or you're in a casual raiding guild with the 10-15 crap player problem.
We are finding out that "NO", you cannot have a guild with casual and hardcore raiders (depending on your definition of hardcore ofcourse). The casual raiders are killing our guild and there is nothing we can do about it.
...
Obligatory disclaimer first: I know nothing about your guild, so my opinion could be wildly off target.
I see basically three options:
- Continue as you are, and accept that progression will be slower.
- Establish more "hardcore" rules for your raid group.
- Split off and form a new raiding guild, or merge with an existing smaller but hardcore guild.
1. I don't really see your raid progression improving much if you continue as you are. Switching new raiders in all the time slows down learning new encounters, and it's very painful to expend teaching time and gear on your below average members and then see them stop raiding. It's certainly possible to raid as a more casual guild, but it's going to be slow.
2. One alternative would be to establish a more hardcore raiding group within your guild. Just state that people will not be invited to the 25-man raids unless they can demonstrate x attendance and y performance, and then adamantly stick to that rule.
There are a couple problems with that approach, of course: First of all, it will leave out guild members that were previously able to raid. Depending on your guild, this could cause a large amount of strife and resentment. Keeping the 10-man raids open for all while reserving the 25-mans for the steady raid group could help somewhat with that. You could also use the 10-mans as mentoring opportunities to allow people to work on their performance and eventually get into the 25-man raids.
Secondly, there's the problem of how you are going to fill those newly empty raid slots. I think you are underestimating recruiting here. The cross-server recruiting forum seems to work well; if you state clearly what your current status and raiding goals are and keep your recruiting post aggressively bumped, I think you will see some new recruits. You are still at the beginning of SSC, so even recruits that have only Karazhan gear should work out. You also mentioned that guilds on your server are disbanding - that seems like a good opportunity to pick up new members as well.
An alliance with another guild to fill out your raid group with raiders that meet your attendance/performance requirements is also an option, but depending on the other guild, this can be risky and drama-prone.
As an anecdotal example, I have friends in a guild on my server (PVE, non-progressed) that doubled their guild size via cross-server recruiting to go from barely clearing Karazhan to killing Magtheridon. They are definitely not cutting edge progression, and at 2 nights of 25-man raids per week won't be, but I've been very impressed with their ability to recruit new members and integrate them into their guild. I think being realistic about their goals helped them - they stated ahead of time they wouldn't be able to raid for 2-3 weeks until they got their membership sorted out, and then were able to stick to that schedule and even cancel a couple raids without getting impatient. They had a few bad recruits that ended up leaving the guild, but overall recruiting worked out very well for them and they've made some very nice raid progression considering their late starting date.
3. The third raiding option for you would be to have all the "hardcore" raiders split off into their own guild. You'd have the same recruiting problem as above, but a bit off an advantage in not having to deal with any resentment from the old casual ex-raiders towards the new raiding recruits. The downside is that you are likely to lose touch with old guild members that don't make the switch to the new raiding guild, and you may have some initial problems filling out raids. Running 1-2 Zul'Aman raids with your elite team until you have enough people to go back into SSC would be an option. There is also some risk that you won't be able to recruit enough members to go back to SSC - it sounds like you are fairly unhappy with your current situation though, so it may be a risk worth taking.
I don't think there's a correct answer as such - any approach is going to have benefits and tradeoffs, you just have to decide what will work best for you. I think it's important to decide firmly on the direction you want your guild/raid to go and have the guild leadership back up that decision. One of the things that I think hurt my old pre-TBC guild is that we were trying to do both friendly, inclusive raiding and top-end raid progression, and that put a lot of strain on the leadership when those two goals didn't mix too well. (That guild switched since then to have some minimum performance requirements for a raid invite - they are doing well with that change, are currently working on Kael and seem quite happy. I switched to a pure raiding guild and I'm also happy - I love that everyone in the guild takes raiding as seriously as I do. Anything works, just depends on what you want out of a guild and raid group.)
Finally, a couple random other thoughts:
Working on one boss at a time is good, but if you are getting frustrated with the lack of progress on him, don't be afraid to switch to a different boss for a change of pace or an easy kill to reassure yourself that your raid group doesn't suck completely. Don't be afraid to take breaks.
With the holidays coming up, raid scheduling is going to be extra hard. This could be a good time to scale back a bit and use the free time to plan your raids for next year or start exploring recruiting options.
To answer the original question...It doesn't work very well at all.
Our history. We have always been behind the curve progression wise. Started SSC the end of may and had 5/6 at the end of July (2 months or so, also got VR and Kazzak in that time). Hit Vash'j and wiped for 2 weeks. Spent 2 nights in TK and got Al'ar and Solarian no problem. Back to vashj for more wiping. After another week of this, attendance started to take a dive and we had to call several raids due to it. All of a sudden we had our Warlock class leader server transfer to play with his friends (Who just HAPPENED to have Illidan on farm). This was the beginning of a mass exodus at the start of September that saw us lose our hunter, priest, rogue and mage class leaders in the same week to server transfers or just plain quitting all together. It hurt doubly bad because they were also the top players of their class. In total we lost probably 25% of our raiding core.
At this point we scraped together what we could and pushed on. We lucked out and got a group of 5 really good players from another server that have all had 100% attendance since they have arrived. About this time another of the mid SSC raid guilds broke up and we scooped up half a dozen of their better players as well, getting us the gear we needed to progress. First week of October saw Vashj dead for the first time, and 2 days later we got her again no problem. Over the next 3-4 weeks we worked our butts off on Kael, eventually getting better and better, until the night BEFORE 2.3 we finally got him...and rage. They next day we managed to get him again. At this point we had 45ish vashj and 36 kael vials.
Now we have a new problem...all the people that were bailing and ducking raids in September are suddenly back, and are demanding we run them through SSC/TK for attunements so they can join us in Hyjal/BT. Mage class leader, a shadow priest and shaman have all come back in the last week ALONE.
We now have a pretty solid core of 20+ people nearing 100% attendance, and another 8-10 casuals that don't raid every night and show up when/if they want.
What did i learn from this? It's hard to say. I suppose people like to be handed things instead of working for them. Also, I'd take someone with good attendance over gear into the guild any day. You can gear up someone with good attendance, but you can't force someone with good gear to show up. The more solid your "core" the easier it is, and nothing attracts "core" quality raiders like progression. (Catch-22 for the lose).
You can gear up someone with good attendance, but you can't force someone with good gear to show up. The more solid your "core" the easier it is, and nothing attracts "core" quality raiders like progression. (Catch-22 for the lose).
Thats one of the most apt statements I've seen specific to our situation for a long time.
Generally though, thanks for all your comments.
We have made our raid rules more "hard-core" but its of limited use when we have too many people that dont cut the mustard in any of our raids - we unfortunately have to rely on them to fill the gaps. Truth be told, I wish that we had more players that would fit into the "raider" category....I have no doubt that we wouldnt be much more successful. We certainly do reward consistently good players that are appropriately geared, and they generally get automatic shoe-in into our raid team on the night. Its not quite as harsh as seperating people into "raider" and "non-raider" ranks, but the reality is pretty much the same behind the scenes from the raid leaders' point of view.
We generally do pounce on guilds that have recently folded on our realms, but this has been met with limited success at best.
The suggestion of using cross-realm forums is not one that we have explored before; but certainly worth an avenue of attack.
Switching focus to another boss is also worthwhile, and will certainly be borne in mind.
Thanks again for the all comments - certainly some useful insight to dwell upon.
I think the guild my Warlock is in pretty much sums up much of what the original poster is experiencing. We have been on Vashj for 2 months now with significant turnover in raid make-ups. Between people getting kicked for low attendance and people quiting we cannot maintain a steady raid. Our raid leader is very hard on healers (he formerly played a priest and is now main tank) and is very judgmental about their performance. To a large extent he is right, there is no reason for anyone to die in phase 1 of Vashj for any reason after your 3rd pull. Our best attempts have been a solid 20 people making it to phase 3 and to wipe at 19%. As a hardcore hopefully type B and not type D it frustrates me to have a SSC clear to vashj on Tuesday with 35 people on line, then on weds Thursday have 25 people and only 4 healers show up. Our raid leader has actively been recruiting realm transfers and has gotten 3 pallys 2 shaman and a few new priest but all these transfer barely ever show up for their first raid. It puts me in an uncomfortable spot because every week that goes by my dreams of seeing BT/Hyjall slip away with them. I feel like it will be Naxx all over when Sunwell comes out, I will get to see 1 or 2 easy bosses and the rest of the zone will be limited to videos
Many guilds experience this, either at Vashj or at Kael.
My current guild took 6 weeks on Vashj which lead to poor attendance, turnover (tanks in particular) and the usual griping. Fortunately, once we passed that cockblock Kael died three weeks later and we are in the middle of getting the guild attuned for both Hyjal and BT currently.
As it stands we are doing SSC clears in one night and showing over 40 online most nights again. This is very promising considering Crushridge is far from a bastion of PvE goodness.
Sticking it out is about all the advice I can offer. For me the idea of being more or less current when Sunwelll goes live is a huge motivator.
Before going HC raider, I spend alot of time in a casual guild, which was stuck time and time again. Here are some of my thoughts that might help casuals.
1 - Raiders vs. Fillers
Most casual guilds have an amount of players, who both really want to raid and who raid well, while at the same time having players, who raid infrequently and thus lack both gear and experience. In order to raid progressively, the ratio between raiders and fillers needs to be high. A 3:2 ratio (15 raiders / 10 fillers) is what many posters have said they have, but IMO instances like SSC/TK require at least a 4:1 ratio (20 raiders / 5 fillers) in order to be consistant. I hear this from many casual guilds, that they on one night down Lurker in first try, then wipe on him for hours the next week; the reason being the amount of fillers, who lack experience and focus.
So a first rule of thumb should be, to work towards a 4:1 ratio between raiders and fillers to eventually all become raiders.
2 - Create a progression plan
In order to progress, you need to have previous bosses on farm status. If you wipe on easy bosses, you spend the time that should be allocated on progression on wiping on such, hence no progression. A very common mistake many casual guilds make, is to assume that once you down a boss its on farm, and once you enter an instance like SSC, you give up instances like Gruul or Magtheridon.
To progress gear is secondary to skill. As such, the training of ones skill as tank / healer / dps is more important than getting tier5 shoulders from Void Reaver. If you have tier5 shoulders and fail at healing on Gruul, you lack training or skill, and as such will contribute to slow progression down.
Many guilds are caught in the evil circle of raiding Karazhan to gear up players, who eventually will stop playing or leave for another guild with faster progression, then spending more time gearing new players up, only to lose their routined players, and so forth.
If you have 4 days of raiding, as many casual guilds do, do NOT spend time on Karazhan. Karazhan is an instance that you should put behind you, if you step into SSC. You can get leggings, bracers and head par tier4, and great necks, cloaks, boots from heroic badges, so farm heroics when not raiding. The sooner you drop Karazhan, the sooner you can begin to practice 25 man raiding.
Spend one day with Gruul / Magtheridon, as those are 25 man raids, then 3 days on building up skill in SSC. Expand raiding from 19-23 to 18-00. It is 50% more time and will add more experience. While its tempting to get free tier5 shoulders from Void Reaver, focus on SSC until you can do Gruul / Magtheridon in less than 4 hours, and then throw in Void Reaver on that day.
Make a progression plan and stick to it. For instance - Day 1: Gruul / Mag. Day 2-4: SSC. This will allow the fillers to get to know encounters and actually build up skill.
3 - Set a standard
A comment you hear in many casual guilds is, that some players can't be bother with whiping again and again, or they can't be bothered with going Gruul, when they have been on Leo. Such players needs to be either kicked from the guild or put outside raiding. They only hurt the guild.
Even though you are a casual guild doesn't mean, that you should accept players who hold back other players from raiding. If you do not want to raid accordingly to the guild progression plan, then you won't raid. Period. If you are willing to raid, but lack experience or gear, then you raid.
It is the attitude of players who bring you forward, just as it is the attitude of players who can stall the guild, even kill it. So set a standard for what you find is acceptable from a player.
If you use a sign-up system, and players frequently cancel before a raid, exclude them from raiding. Do not allow a player to prevet 24 players from raiding. If you have players who refuse to respec if needed, exclude them from raiding.
Set standards - be tough on those who refuse to follow them - award players who do.
Many guilds have strict systems of veterans 1, veterans 2, etc. My advice is to drop them. Create a minimum requirement for raiding in terms of hp, attack power, spell dmg, healing, etc, and then build upon that. Excluding a good player just because he has 71 less hp than veteran rank requires is counter productive. Treat all in raid equal.
4 - Discuss failure
Everyone fails. No one is perfect. Learn from it.
When you wipe, do not spend time yelling at people, but rather calmly ask them what went wrong. Progression is about 25 players who work together, and if someone fail at their task, find out why and find a solution. It might be that he has too low hp, too low spell damage, was out of range, and so on.
Failure is an option for improvement. So embrace failure, figure out why it happend, and turn it into experince.
Ultimately it all boils down to how you define casual and hardcore.
I personally am time poor but when i raid i do it properly. I am the GM of an endgame guild on Arthas. We recently downed Archimonde and Bloodboil and are progressing pretty quickly through BT. Unlike every other endgame guild on our server we only raid 3 days a week. In order to progress this fast we have been incredibly logistically organised, my advice would be as follows:
1) Set achievable goals for each week and try to set at least 1 day aside for progress. If you have Gruul/Mag on farm and are working on Lurker, then make sure you set aside at least 1 day for Lurker even if your regular farm content isn't down.
2) Set a standard for raider attendance and consumable usage and enforce it. If raiders maintain that Flasks etc are too expensive then loot all gold to the guild bank and give out DKP for herbs/Lotus and provide Flasks for the raid.
3) Over-recruit where possible, and rotate based on performance. Encourage raiders to analyse their own performance and understand why they are being sat for certain encounters. WWS is invaluable for this.
4) Stack raids where possible for performance, AoE for Hydross/Tidewalker, Warlocks for Magtheridon etc etc
5) Enforce discipline within raids when performance is not up to scratch, allow jokes etc when bosses are dying.
Your raid ultimately is dependent on your raid leading / officer team. If they aren't performing then your raid won't perform. Logistics are the key to effective raiding, 75% of our success is due to discussion of strats, WWS analysis and recruitment polices outside game.
Of course some players play more then others, but as long as the difference between what is considered 'casual' and what is considered 'hardcore' isn't too large then you should be fine. Banging your head against certain encounters is fine as long as you are making progress, if you aren't then change your focus to another boss. Kael / Vashj aside there is generally somewhere else to go. Killing something is generally better than killing nothing, morale is vital.
This week we had first kills on Archimonde, Teron and Bloodboil, the guild currently feels like we could take down anything, it's an amazing feeling. Persevere with it.
I started this thread because there was significant tension in our guild between the hardcore raiders and the casual raiders. When I say hardcore, I mean the guy who love to raid 7 days a week. Not that they will raid, but they WANT to raid every night of the week. The casuals for me are the guys who love to raid ~ 3 days a week, and don't want to or can't put in more.
I took the advice of people in this thread, and what I tried to do was push a more aggressive raiding schedule, but work on a good rotation of skilled "casuals" so that we always had a strong raid every night. So we went from raiding 3 nights a week to 4 nights a week. I also drafted a document with our mission statement and timeline. Writing my thoughts was a big morale booster to both the hardcores and casuals.
This worked at a mechanical level and got us a few more boss kills. But the hardcores got more frustrated. The more we raided, the more they felt like they were being held back. And the longer the raids went, the more mistakes happened and the hardcore players started to resent the casuals who would often shut down after 3 hours of raiding.
The casuals were getting stressed too, because now they were having to sacrifice RL obligations, sleep, etc. to raid more. They didn't want to do it, but they didn't want to be held back in gear, progression or experience.
Eventually the hardcores split off and server transferred, quit the game, or joined another guild. I'd say there were probably about 6 of the hardcores, and only 2 of them still play the game. I think the stress was too much for them, and they were going to find it hard to be happy with any guild because they had so much angst built up.
Right now we raid 4 days a week, around 3.5 hours a night. It works for most people, and our goal is to cut down to 3 days a week of raiding. We are 4/5 MH and 4/9 BT, and the pace we're making is something most people are content with. A few of my best players want to cut down one night of raids, but they're willing to put in the extra effort until we get to Illidan.
We no longer run Kara/Mag/Gruul, which makes a lot of people happy. There's a lot less conflict within raids. While we have a few hardcores left, they're now in the silent minority.
Unfortunately, I think the launch of the Sunwell will put a craemp in our effort to switch to 3 days a week of raids.
The suggestion of using cross-realm forums is not one that we have explored before; but certainly worth an avenue of attack.
There was a thread in these forums a couple months ago that drifted into talking about cross-server recruiting - you may find some of the posts there useful.
A shortage of qualified raiders seemed one of our worst problems when I was in a more casual guild - we couldn't really recruit enough people that met our requirements, so we ended up using some very casual people as raid fillers who then in the long run ended up disappearing and leaving us with nobody at all.
10/05/07, 10:46 PM
Similar Threads
