There are several available threads from last year regarding the holiday attendance drought for raiding guilds. However, I think this year is different enough to warrant a new thread, because without the looming BC, and with the only potential pre-holiday patch to be a significant draw back to the game already released, the circumstances are quite a bit different. Essentially, my gut feeling is that raiding will have to be its own reward for people to continue doing it through the holidays, and for a lot of people that might not be the case. Anyway, if a mod finds that this doesn't warrant a new thread, I apologize for wasting space.

My guild has just survived a pretty rough period during which quite a few members departed, either for other guilds or simply to quit the game. Still, the officers and I worry that the upcoming holiday drought may strike the killing blow unless we handle it properly. Currently we're farming Vashj and working on Kael, so while there's some content there for us to farm, our primary objectives are probably out of reach while people visit their families and study for finals and whatnot. How can we keep people encouraged to keep raiding if we're essentially forced to return to farming easy stuff for over a month? And what happens when we run so short on raiders that we can't even do a 25-man raid?

So far I've proposed a couple approaches. For starters, we're going to cancel any raids on days when people obviously won't be there. We're aware of the obvious ones like Thanksgiving Day (US) this Thursday and Christmas Day (which, if I'm not mistaken, is a Tuesday). We're also going to cancel several raids that fall on days in close proximity to Christmas. This is a pretty natural step that I'm sure almost everyone's taking. But what about the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and some days where people just won't be there even though it's not necessarily a holiday? We're thinking about paring down our number of raid days, and also pre-scheduling raids with sign-ups (we don't normally have sign-ups for raids), canceling in advance any raids for which enough people don't sign up. This way we don't have a night where people sign on for a raid only to find out that not enough others signed up.

Another thing we're considering is pulling back from the more advanced raid content (which has more stringent group composition requirements) on some days and just running Gruul, or else farming Kara and ZA for badges. And while I'm sure this will help sometimes, I'm just concerned about whether it will suffice to fill in all the days where there will be shortages.

I'd be interested to see what other guilds are planning to combat the holiday drought, or whether it's even an issue to other guilds. My guild consists of about 40 raiding members, just enough where normal circumstances don't cripple us, but not enough to skate through the holidays unscathed. Is this normal or abnormal among raiding guilds? Does anyone have any solutions that they've used successfully in the past (e.g. with other MMO's)?

We're not scheduling raids for the holiday days and just planning to form pickup ZA/Kara/heroic groups, possibly a Mag/Gruul if we wind up with a ton of folks on. Not worth the hassle. Let people take the week off, come back refreshed.

Its a tricky one. I was hoping Sunwell would be out around Christmas but it seems they aren't even thinking about it yet from the blue posts over the last week. I have to wonder whether TBC is stalling for the new expansion, or if the expansion is being stalled by the fact 2.4 still has to be tested, released and then live for at least 3 or 4 months before they can honestly release another expansion.

But if you look at the timescales involved it paints WotLK at a Q2-Q3 release date next year rather than the Q1 that would be abiding by their one a year policy (that didn't go so well last time either).

On topic: I believe we'll probably still clear BT each week and maybe Hyjal and do the odd attunement batch for players we've got to replace players leaving in the future (military service etc...).

Zul'Aman will certainly be popular during this period though, and a move of Kara to a 3 day reset would help to keep people entertained too. For guilds still learning content it could be tough though to keep up some serious progress nights during farm nights, my old guild had the same issue in the summer.

But I tend to think that this is less of an issue during the winter than it is the summer. Its cold outside and people want to stay in. Last years Winter lull was in my opinion almost solely to do with TBC and the fact that PvP epics were changed to welfare epics a few months before it. Kind of made serious progress in nax a bit pointless for anyone but the hardcore, and few guilds had 40+ who fit that description.

This time around we don't have WotLK looming so large on the horizon as we know we still have the buffer patch of 2.4 that you have to let people experience for enough time at 70 before wiping it out with a patch. Theres also the fact there won't be any "gear reset" on the scale of TBC. TBC's reset was in large fact due to the re-evaluation of the price of stamina on items so that TBC items had like double the stamina of non-TBC items. This, combined with two years of experience learning what each class/spec liked meant that new items were far better itemised than 60 blues (cloth items with no heal/dmg for example). Also this year everyone who has an hour a week can get access to T5-6 gear from the Arena so theres no need to bump up casuals with very good, very early gear to make sure that they can balance leveling content appropriately this time like there was in vanilla to TBC. This will hopefully mean that people will continue raiding as they don't feel the need to mass honour grind to catch the Nax farmers in gear for leveling in the expansion. Most of hte players who raid for gear have been rooted out now because Arena offers such an easier and less time consuming method of attaining similar levelled gear.

I wouldn't be so sure about the Christmas day raid, last year we managed a guild ZG run on christmas day due to the fact people wanted to escape nagging relatives or whatever But in general yes declaring days you know will be a flop as off days is great because it doesn't look like a lot of people are just being lazy or slacking to those who do show up. We don't have the whole thanksgiving malarky over here so I can't say about that but I know you Americans are crazy for your holildays and do special things on each whereas Europeans, or certainly Brits, just tend to see them as a day off work except maybe Christmas/New years eve.

Pulling back from advanced raiding progress is a tricky and delicate issue. I don't know your progress level but regressing in content can be demoralising and depressing on those who are still raiding. Nobody wants to go from mid T6 back to gruul farming for a few weeks. I'd advise setting a level close to where you are at the moment and just step back one or two bosses to the ones you don't have much trouble with now.

Organise a couple of events like a ZA timed run. Two groups competing against each other for the quickest ZA clear. Balance teams (no officer/core group like our guild has ) and make sure no one has an advantage. The winning team gets free crimson spinels/bags of gold/guild ranks/[Delicious Chocolate Cake] whatever.

Theres also the question of recruiting and how liberal or cut throat your guild is in this regards. If you're a tight knit small guild this probably won't be an option unless you're happy just removing the applicants once the lull ends. For a bigger and/or more casual guild mass recruiting to the tune of one or two extra per class would be an easy enough way to survive the lull and maybe even find yourself some new core raiders. Unfortunately for those past the Kael barrier this isn't really an option due to the attunement. Then again, if you're having a lull you may find yourself back in SSC/TK.

Theres also the option of running server competitions or selling raid spots to fill up the raid. Attunement runs to SSC/TK can be very popular if you're capable of it, just make sure the buyers aren't idiots or they could cause a night of misery for you and the other buyers on Kael/Vashj. These can fill in 2-3 spots of your raid if you're short, not ideal but arguably better than not raiding.

Also alt runs aint a bad idea if you can get the man power. Two problems arise there though, one is that very few seem to roll tanking alts, probably as its the only role with no potential outside instance groups. This means your tanks must still go on their mains and you risk tank burn out which is gonna hurt your progression more than not running the alt run. The second is that if your guild is like any other guild i've been in, the level of alts will differ widlly. You'll get some players who've got their mage in full spellstrike/spellfire/S2 gladiator weapon etc... gear whilst some will be wearing quest greens to 70. This may be okay for Gruul but the harder bosses in SSC won't cut it as they'll get gibbed by stuff non-stop.

A very risky stratergy is declaring a no raid period where members have no attendance commitments and can chill for the holidays for 2 or 3 weeks. This is so risky if you aren't your server's top guild though because they'll be going through a lull and likely won't think twice about stealing one or two of your most hardcore players who really want to raid during the holiday period.

We did all of ZA except Zul'jin (since we had no hunter for the eagle phase) with 7 alts, 3 mains, including both alt tanks. But the spike damage was pretty intense. Our main tank had offtanked for Kael'thas and is only missing a few pieces of Kara gear, and he doesn't want to go back to ZA until he finished the Kara gear set. I don't blame him. If your whole group has mostly gear from Kara or better and your main tank is extremely well geared, then a ZA alt run is fine. If not, then you should probably be running Kara anyway-- it's not like you've run out of raiding options.

The week between Christmas and New Years is generally the worst one, we will likely just take that entire week off. Thanksgiving weekend (Thurs - Sun) is also going to just be off. The rest is mostly just do what you can with the time you have. The biggest thing I have realized from personal experience is, do not try to push too hard to make things happen during this time period. It is more demoralizing to always try and schedule raids, and constantly have to cancel them then just declaring the days you know will be very short as off days. The best thing to do is start a discussion amongst your members now about their holiday availablity next month, and set your raid plans accordingly.

The most important thing is to set expectations in advance. People get upset and discouraged when they show up ready to raid and then it doesn't happen. If you tell them in advance you're taking the night off, or even that they can expect that might happen, they'll be much less discouraged.

For this week, Thanksgiving, we don't schedule any raids on Thanksgiving day, and make sure everyone knows the other days could be dodgy and we'll do ZA or Kara (badges!) if nothing else. For Christmas, we'll probably just cancel raids during the week, its not worth the trouble with everyone traveling etc. We did that last year and had no issues w/ top guilds poaching from us or anything, they all canceled as well.

In general we just put up an advisory stating that raids will be done on an Ad-Hoc basis for the period of the Xmas/New Years weeks (22nd to 3rd this year tho varies). If there's enough on we'll raid but its probably just as well there's ZA to do as many make the most of the holidays and dont log on much but thats something we're used to now over the popular holiday times anyway. For those online there'll be the usual PvP, alts, heroics and the occassional raid but its not really something we force.

We close up shop (from a raiding perspective) with the last raid being on Dec 20 and start raiding again on Jan 2. During this time folks can pretty much do whatever 10-mans or pickup 25-mans to their hearts content. We're doing the same with Thanksgiving by having a similar schedule. Christmas/New Year's is usually just really bad for trying to schedule any raid, so why bother? By the time people get back from holidays, they'll be itching to raid.

We are closing raids for the holidays as well.

Sure, there will be guild members online. That's why ZA's release timing was perfect.

For a guild trying to progress past Kael and onward, though, the holidays will present problems. I'm more concerned about New Years and the resolutions people make regarding them.

I agree with everyone that said to cancel raids instead of hoping people show up. Also, if you can, try to get people playing other games together during the break like TF2. Social ties are what keep people in your guild, not just your progress.

I saw this problem coming a couple weeks ago and decided to tell the other officers that we need to get Kael down, and people keyed up before this lull occurs. We dropped every other raid and just hit Kael hard eveyr raid night. It was rough but the result is a dead Kael last Thursday and we are now planning attunements out for the thanksgiving week. By the time Christmas rolls around, our raid force should be completely keyed so a couple people missing here and there won't cripple our raids (throw finals into that mix).

Attempting any serious raid on a holiday is a bad move for a lot of reasons. Let people go and have fun with friends and family so they come back happy and refreshed for more progression .