I'm saying it's hard to find someone qualified as a leader if it looks like they are in it for themselves, especially when, very often, the hardcore PvPers find themselves in a high end guild's honor farming group or in already guild similar to what you are creating. Of course, I speak strictly from my eyes and my server, if no such PvP guild which uses raiding to supplement the gear curve exists, you are less likely to run into people disagreeing with your guilds ideals at face level.

But we're not aiming to be a successful, progressing PvE guild. I include that in both the subject of this topic and in my list of assumptions. The main activity of the guild will be around PvP, not PvE.

As far as PvE goes, we'll be hitting the 10-man equivalents to ZG and AQ20, farm them for gear as often as our timers will allow, and then get back to PvPing. When they nerf the 25-man instances to be as easy as MC is today, we'll farm 25-mans too.

If they want to be #1 at a PvE goal, this is not the guild for them. If they want to PvP, spend time with other competent PvPers, and win at PvP, then this theoretical guild which does not exist yet will be the one for them.

Let's put aside the greed and selfishness aside for now. You now know that I will not be lining my own pockets and that I'm interested in attracting and rewarding the efforts of raid leaders. Assuming that I mean this when I say this, I cannot see how this can be perceived to be greedy or selfish.


What are the perks of leading raids? Further, have led raids with any regularity? And assuming that I can express my looting system plainly and clearly at the front end, what perception of impropriety are you referring to?

The argument that raid leaders, by receiving some sort of bonus, is taking advantage of members holds no weight for me. I argue the reverse: it is a privilege for members to be able to just show up, not have to think about the big picture, press a few buttons, get their loot and leave.

The raid wouldn't happen without the members; I'll certainly grant you that. But raid leaders are harder to find than raiders.

I see your point. And this is why no guild today uses such a system because the people who lead guilds are often the same people who are leading the raids.

This is why I'm deliberately seperating out my role as guildmaster from the people who lead raids. It is also the reason why I'm exempting myself from any these modifiers. For leaders to have authority, they need to have authority granted to them from above and their authority affirmed from below. This is according to a class on group psychology I once took. By seperating myself out from the role of raid leader, I'm in a position to say "This is how we're going to treat our raid leaders." And then people, by agreeding to go into an instance with the raid leader, are affirming that leadership.

One of the assumptions I included was the belief that the are people out there who are capable of leading raids who don't do so now because it usually means they have to run a guild as well. By setting up these different roles, I'll take on the responsibilities of recruiting, maintaining discipline, setting direction. I'll be the bad guy, freeing up the raid leaders from those sorts of responsibilities so they can focus on defeating PvE bosses.

While there are PvE guilds that PvP as a guild, there are none that recruited for interest and skill in PvP as their prime criteria. As for the honor farming groups, they are cross-guild groups that farm honor together.

Does this address any of your concerns?

Wow, that strikes me as shockingly rude, both on your part and how you want your guildmates to act towards others.

Hey fellow BHer!

On the topic of modifiers - if it is meant as a way for raid leading then I personally don't agree with it much.

When picking a raid leader for one's guild, it is important to make sure they make every raid, and I probably don't have to explain why that is so. With the DKP system you are offering Time In = DKP Gained (via PvE or perhaps even PvP criteria met. If the raid leader in question makes every raid, there would be no point to reward him with more DKP than anyone else, since his time in would give him more DKP. One could reply to that saying that others who make every raid would then have just as much DKP to spend as the raid leader breaking his back leading every night.

Now that puts the Raid Leader in a less rewarded position, but the #1 priority of the raid leader and administration of a guild should always be progression. If the Raid Leader is a Priest and he has 5/8 tier 1 in BC he should perhaps allow other priests to catch up a bit (depending on the drop system that will be used).

Justify this, it's what your entire argument rests on. Raid leaders normally get the pick of the loot first anyways as they consistently attend more raids than any other member. They also get a guaranteed spot in the raid even if their class is overpopulated. There are perks to go along with the "enormous amount of work" that you claim they perform. Class leaders typically work harder.

That's exactly what I'm designing against. I respect people's ability to make decisions for themselves. And I'm not going to threaten them with penalties or /gkick if they want to do something else. I'm offering opportunities to raid and incentives to do so. Other guilds use sticks, pressure and threats to do so, I won't. As long as they know how to be respectful in a group, as long as they know how to PvP in a team well, I have no problems with them being part of the guild.

If they want to be first in a PvE setting, they are more than welcome to apply to another guild and not wear my guild tag.

Slight derailing of the loot system but felt i needed to say this.

This I find to be a pretty bad idea, With TBC's arenas, and your main focus on pvp a lot will hang in the balence on how your perform in a straigt up fight as a group against another group. Having lots of pvp experience from other mmorpgs that involved fighting each other and not capping flags, with DaoC beeing mostly relevant to this comparison, i'd say you should enforce your members to spec in a way that provides most benefits to your pvp team.

Everyone can attend a raid. Not everyone has the ability, will and prescence of mind to lead a raid. A flat system fails to recognize this uneven contribution. And if it wasn't for those raid leaders, raiders would have no raid to attend. By creating a position for raid leaders and freeing them from the other responsibilities, like administration of a guild, I'm interested in creating opportunities for a) PvPers to get PvE loot and b) raid leaders to focus on the joy of leading a raid without having to lead a guild.

First, the purpose of a PvP guild, as far as I conceive it, is to use PvE as a place to get purples. I'll leave server firsts to Bashers. They're in Naxx day in, day out and God bless them. I don't have any stomach for that. I'm all for farming ZG, AQ20 and then getting back into AB. So the purpose of this guild will not be PvE progression. It will be PvE farming. And we'll get instances on farm based on other people's strategies, skilled players and knowledgeble leadership.

Random group of skilled people hanging around in a guild chat channel. Without any external stimulis, you could wait around until the heat death of the sun and nothing will happen.

Throw a handful of raid leaders all able, willing and sanctioned to crack the whip and you can organize those people into raiding groups, spawn an instance, go in, take down bosses, get purples. Poof, wealth out of thin air. Wouldn't have existed without the efforts of the raid leaders.


Raid leaders also get burnt out a lot because they consistently attend more raids than any other member. They also feel taken for granted because others don't seem to appreciate their outsized contribution. The part about being taken for granted is obvious from the responses I've gotten so far in this thread.

It would be so much easier just to show up, be responsible for spamming a button, watching someone else's health bar or listening and being told what to do. Raid leaders have no such luxury. The success of the raids rests squarely on their shoulders. And if they don't feel the pressure of the need for success, I'll apply it myself: I will not stand for people to waste my time or the time of anyone else. If they fail, I'll talk to them about why they failed and if they fail consistently, I'll remove them from a PvE raid leader position.

The guild as a whole will never dictate "All druids must be restoration, all priests must be discipline/holy." However, there will be pressures within the guild to spec one way or the other. The raid leaders have discretion over who they invite. If you haven't specced in the way they want you to spec, you might not get in. That's the choice you've made, a freedom you enjoy and the price you pay.

Similiarly, I will probably require my Arena team to spec a specific way. However, this will come down from me as the leader of an Arena team, not as the GM of the guild. If people don't want to spec in the fashion I specify, they won't be removed from the guild but they won't necessarily be welcome in my Arena team.

I'm treating people as adults, providing people all the information I can provide and allowing them to make their own decisions knowing the consequences of each path. It's the way I want to be treated and so it's how I'll treat other people. As a hit, we won't be number one in PvE and so be it.

So I wholeheartedly agree with you. The guild will use competency, maturity, love of PvP as admission criteria, but not talent-spec. However, there will be pressures in the guild to spec in a certain way for a certain purpose. People will make their decisions and live with the consequences.

Well, everyone can attend a raid. It's a question of who can make EVERY raid, as well as lead. If the point of giving a DKP multiplier to raid leaders it to reward them for working hard, they will end up with too big of an advantage in DKP (even though, since they would make every raid, would have the advantage of more DKP).

Well since Blizzard says Arena Epics will be equal to top level PvE epics, there will be no point to PvE as a PvPer unless you are doing the very top content. Even though it comes to the point where one is finished with PvP for the week, and has capped out on standing and whatnot I would imagine the highest level of PvE in Burning Crusade will take the same amount of dedication and skill as it does now.

Basically my point is, is that idealy Arena Epics will be the same in theoretic value as Top PvE Epics, making doing PvE pointless unless enough time is spent to consistantly stay on top of the game is put in.

That being said, I wish you good luck with your guild and hope to have some nice fights against you guys in the expansion :)

There is no way it would be remotely acceptable for a raiding force to be held up because a few people are "locked" into a 5man group or something of that nature.


On the subject of loot rules for a PVP guild just make all the PVE focussed loot free and distribute it via loot council or just have seperate DKP for PVE items and PVP/selfish items. If you're only there to gear up for PVP how would it be even remotely fair to expect people to throw down points on PVE items? Also I don't like the idea of no restrictions. If you intend to be competitive about whatever you are doing then you should be putting the loot into the hands of the classes who would use it best in wherever you intend to compete.

As far as giving raid leaders more points that's the wrong way to look at it IMO. I love raid leading, and infact it is the only joy I get out of raiding the older instances (ZG/MC/BWL). You should be looking for people like that who want to lead raids because they are going to put a lot more energy into it compared to someone who is doing it for the extra DKP.

You're not requiring that they're specced in any specific way, but if they aren't specced how you want them to be, they might not get raid invites? What more you could do to force someone to be specced in some way?

Making 38 people wait because you decided to start a 5-man run at a bad time isn't rude?

Wouldn't have existed without the efforts, skill, and hard work of the people raiding with the person who said "Who wants to do Ony tonight?" either. You're attributing far too much credit to the raid leader for work that everybody does. Everybody farms mats for consumables, everybody prepairs their own equipment, everybody reads up on strategies or thinks critically about their previous efforts. The raid leader does that and...what? Tell us. You didn't justify your position at all, you just reiterated it. Yes, we know the raid leader is the one who started the invites. What other work is he doing? I'm not saying he doesn't do any extra work, but you're not giving me much to go on.

You're still not justifying your position. You continue to say "they do an incredible amount of work" bla bla bla. Quantify it.

Well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion.

The way I see it, if I want to be free to whatever/whenever I want then I'd run/join a "Friends and Family" type guild. If I want to PvP with and against the best players possible or as efficiently as possible (honor grinding) I'd run/join a strict PvP guild.

If I need 2 people to fill out 15 for AB, I don't see it any differently than needing 6 to complete 40 for a raid. In either case I would expect that missing minority to get their priorities straight or prepare to be replaced.

As my guilds current raid leader, i would whole heartedly agree with this. Raid leaders need to be leading because they WANT to lead, not for reward. The second someone is getting rewarded over others, you have a situation where people feel undervalued. If its you that picks the raid leaders, then you also have the potential for people to accuse you of picking favorites. If the raid leader is picking favorites from the guild (his mates in his clique) then you also run into the difficulty of people not only feeling undervalued, but actively being excluded. Why would they want to stay in that guild?

You have a few good ideas in your first post, but the modifiers for raid leaders area terrible idea. It creates potential for massive e-drama within the guild.

The best Raid Leaders lead because the game itself isn't enough of a challenge. Beating a new boss feels great for everyone. Being the guy who called the plays, made the adjustments, and drove everyone to suceed, you have more cause to be pleased with yourself.

Good Raid Leaders overcome the challenges of people at the same time as the challenges in the game. Clearly they do more work that most, but its a choice. Its usually not necessary to reward them further.

Since you're not the first to make this statement, I wanted to substantiate my point where I say that you'll have to gear up in both PvE and PvP gear to remain competitive. This is because our access to PvP gear will be limited.

You can go here for the full text (http://blue.cardplace.com/cache/wow-general/9552122.htm) or here for the three pertinent bullets (http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=8372).

What other items are strictly PvE besides resist gear? My answer is "I don't know" but now I appreciate it is something I'll have to consider. If I can't come up with it ahead of time, I'll figure it out once we get there.


PvE guilds focus on the progression of the guild. I'm interested in seeing to the progression of the individual PvPer. This guild is to facilitate the gearing up of the individual PvPer not to move the guild forward. So I'm not that interested in sacrificing the freedoms of the individuals for the sake of the guild, which I feel is an all too transitive entity anyway. If because of my refusal to do "what's best for the guild" we'll only ever manage to farm Hakkar and Ossirian and never down Cthun or Kel, so be it.


With the reduction in size raiding instances, we're going to see a whole lot of turmoil. Your energies as raid leader can only be deployed to 9 or 24 others instead of 39 and 19. With cross-server battlegrounds and PvE level gear, you're going to see a whole lot more people grouping to PvP where the leadership of one person can be leveraged to one other, two others or four others.

We're going to need leaders in the expansion and I'm interested in setting up a system which facilitates the opportunity for people to step up and lead. If you lead my raiders, I want you to know I appreciate your efforts more than you could know. I want you to know that I appreciate your efforts, I will stand as a lightning rod in front of you and absorb all the abuse that you might receive because of being rewarded for your efforts. I want to create an environment where raid leaders can focus on leading raids and not the other, less enjoyable tasks like the day to day minutiae of running a guild.

I don't believe there is an oversupply of people who are able to lead raids and willing to do so out of the generosity of their own hearts. Do you?

I could refuse to let them into the guild at all. Which is exactly how guilds work today.

In the guild I envision, no one is guaranteed raid invites. However, with multiple raid leaders, there will be no one guild raid. There can be a half dozen ten-man PvE raids in a given night. If you can't get into one persons raid, perhaps you can get into someone else's. And if no one will take you because you're a feral specced druid, you either have to suck it up as a cost to you choosing to spec feral or you can change your spec and get into raids. But at the end of the day, the choice is on you the individual not the guild itself.

It's a meritocracy.