Our guild has some enterprising individuals who want to organize their own ZG/AQ20 runs with some selected guildies and some out-of-guild friends (call it 12 guildies and 8 friends). They also want to organize some 25 man Onyxia runs with half guildies and half others.

There is a lot of concern that if guild members attend these runs they will be locked out for the scheduled guild run - thereby causing the guild to not have enough people to do a ZG/AQ20/Ony farming run that night. This is causing some guild drama.

Have any other guilds had this problem? How did you resolve it without splintering the guild?

(note as a guild we nearly have BWL on farm and do a few AQ40 bosses)

Our guild runs our main BWL/AQ/Naxx runs and then several people run alt MC/BWL/AQ40 weekly on the weekends. It hasn't been a problem yet.

At least for my guild (which raids frequently) the problem with the 20 mans is that they are scheduled around the 40 mans and are thus often at inconvenient times. We rotate the schedule but that still means that I cannot go at least every second week.

If your guild is in a similar boat, there is in my opinion nothing wrong with having people go on PUGs. Since guild runs are generally faster there should not be an incentive for guildies to skip the guild run unless you use stupid loot rules on the guild run. If people are dodging guild runs to go with PUGs that would be a sign of deeper problems.

Alt AQ40 runs? That's pretty hardcore.

I organize a Molten Core PUG every weekend. Our guild doesn't run the instance anymore, so anyone who wants items just comes to the pug. No player conflicts to worry about, there.

We also have a couple folks who run off-peak ZG and AQ20 runs. We haven't had any trouble with conflicting runs here, either. People generally take their main to one run, and an alt to the next. Usually, the guild runs are just for ZG Idols, or a chance at an enchant drop in AQ20.

You should not have to worry about people wanting to do 20 mans out of guild. Why not bring some of your own friends to your guild runs instead to fill in the blanks? Surely these 12 players aren't the only ones with friends outside of the guild.

Depending on how far you guild is in content I can't see anyone ever being upset over having people locked out of aq20/zg, onyxia could be a different situation. We have people that organize semi-regular 20 man content around the 40 man raids schedule, its never been an issue.

The alt/pug AQ40 run got Emps got 10% this past weekend, I was impressed.

This totally depends on your guild's progression. My guild is beyond needing most loot from these instances, so it's hard to get a guild-only raid going. But, for a guild which can still use a large portion of the loot, I could see where it would be a problem. If was in your shoes (assuming you still need a large portion of the loot), I'd make a simple statement. Run those instances with your friends, all you want, unless it conflicts with guild runs. When it does conflict, then don't.

Is there some other issue making non-guild runs more appealing to them?

I ask because we had a similar problem in the past. We had problems with people who wanted to use ZG to gear up their alts, but wouldn't get them any gear between hitting 60 and trying to get into ZG runs (level 50 greens and SM blues don't quite do the job). A group of guildies decided it was more fun to mow through ZG with non-guilded friends than to wipe to Bloodlord Mandokir because their healers were in SM blues and their casters had +40 spell damage.

Look at your current ZG raids, and ask yourself if they're fun. If not, you probably have alts and undergeared players. Fix that and ZG will be enjoyable again, which will bring back your guildies.


edit: In retrospect, I projected my own bad ZG memories into your post. If you have enough interest in ZG to fill in for the missing players while still keeping ZG at the same level of farm status, there's no reason to be concerned. Multi-guild runs like the ones you're concerned about help you keep good relations with other guilds on the server. It also helps you know who the best choices are if you need to recruit more raiders.

In a past guild we basically had a Catch-22 in regards to ZG

1) People only wanted to run ZG to gear up their alts
2) No one wanted to run ZG with a bunch of shittily geared alts
3) Goto 1

Eventually we restricted the alt slots to very few but told people if they geared their alts up (best blues, etc) they could take a main spot. Worked pretty well.

Not allowing people to run 20-man pugs/out-of-guild runs seems draconian. But, I also suspect that what others have said may be accurate: There's a reason these guys want to organize separate runs, and it's probably because the guild runs are lacking in some dimension. Correct that problem, and you win.

My old guild had the basic rule of: you aren't allowed to lock yourself to someone else's instance unless we consider it to be no longer important. 20 mans went off when we were working on BWL, MC and Ony went off once BWL was on farm and we were working on AQ40, BWL will probably go off once they down C'thun a couple times in a row since they're already killing a boss or two in Naxx. Also, if the guild instance was cleared for the week, you could lock yourself to someone else's after that (which basically meant Ony prior to restriction being lifted, since rarely would anything be both cleared and not off restriction early enough in the week to matter).

In practice, I wound up running a lot of late-night/off-night ZG PUGs filled with mostly mains and a few alts from the top 3-4 raiding guilds on the server (and occasionally a friend or two). It worked well enough, and it definitely builds goodwill.

The question is better answered with, do you consider those places (ZG, AQ20, Ony) progressions zones? If the answer is yes, then you should be concerned with people being locked out from other people's runs. If the answer is no, then let people run the zones when it's most convient to them (main reason I look to go on non-guild runs).