My guild is currently on Fankriss in AQ40, we recently had a large number of players take time off due to school, and other RL situations, so we recruited, and recruited, and now we're back to where we were a month ago (fankriss).

I'm not the Guild Leader (he is currently inactive), but I preety much run the show, I'm the MT, Raid Leader, all that stuff (which I wish I could pass off to someone else, but I'm the most experienced, and everyone always looks to me for questions and advice. Tell hell ftl :(.) We're have the issue now of choosing between being a hardcore raiding guild, or just being a casual guild who tries to complete content when we can.

The past 2 weeks, we've had 40+ people on every raid night, which is what we've wanted, my question to you is, how can the officers go about pushing the guild to be more "hardcore" and not becoming "elitist" at the same time (in the members minds anywyas.) Example: We had eight warriors log on for BWL last night, I could only bring 6 (as we don't want to 1: stack our raids, and 2: have a balanced raid group for Chromaggus and Nef (we still have a lot of people learning the latter BWL fights, due to our large influx of members). I had the warriors who wern't invited calling me "elitist, and other such words, when really, there was nothing in my hands I could do, I could give them my raid spot, but the raid wouldn't complete content then. I had to tell them (the lesss geared warriors that they are not "raiders" so to speak, they are 'social" members.)

Here were our thoughts on what we should do:

1: Make ranks in the guild of Raider, and Casual. If you are a social member, you can raid, when we don't have our raiding members on, if a raiding member comes on and A: we need that class, or B: it is your class, you have to step out for him/her. My issue with this is someone who's been at all of BWL, and a raider who has to work untill 10, logs on for chromaggus and nef.

2: Basically tell people, if they arn't doing their job the right way, they will be removed (from raiding) untill either they improve enough where they are benefical to our raiding roster, or B: they leave.

Legend has always been a non-elitist guild, there are a good number of us (25-30) who want to progress, I'd love to do some naxx before expansion, right now though, that won't happen. I'm just looking for some advice for those of you who have had to deal with problems like this, and to make it as harmless as possible on the memebrs of the guild.

(wrong account ftl. Zellias is my main account)

option 2 sounds like it should be your policy anyway? Casual does not have to mean incompetent.

^^ (real account now. sorry.)

True, but most people will say "I'm doing my best"

Frankly, If you best is sucking, then you're not going to raid anyways (you see what I mean)

As far as a raider who has to work until 10, if your raid desperately needs him, grab him. Don't ever gimp your raid if you dont have to. Sure getting that one person experience is good, but those 39 other people can use the experience as well or 10, whatever.

I would simply ask your guild, What do they want to do? Do you guys want to be hardcore raiders? are you fine with being semi casual? Lay it out for them and let them decide, im assuming you have a forum so put up a poll and let them chat about it.

Going with Option 1 I am going to assume you will have a lot of in-guild drama. Seperate ranks never work in my understanding. Keep it simple.

Guild Leader
Officer
Member
Applicant

If people suck, keep them on applicant until they improve or you find someone better.

For easier raids (MC, BWL farming runs), you can probably be a bit more lenient on raid invites. Mix in a few more casual players with your core raiders to keep everyone happy and to prevent too much stuff from being disenchanted.

However, for non-farm raids (like AQ40 raids for your guild), you should give the more dedicated players some preference. The guys that are always on time, come prepared with consumables, and don't miss key raids are the guys you want in the raid when you're hitting new content. These guys will naturally have the experience as well. In due time, the casual raiders will have access to this content when the core raiders have fleshed out strategies, gotten a few kills under their belts, and feel comfortable explaining the fight to others.

We've had to deal with waitlists for a while in my guild alliance. We prioritize the most experienced and geared people for 'progression' runs - the latest and most dangerous stuff - and then we start letting the more casual people give stuff a try in less dangerous runs. They understand they'll see a waitlist some of the time, there are more raiders interested than there are available raid slots.

Just say you'll try not to waitlist them TOO many times in a row for a given instance, that's all you can really do, IMO.

You may want to start spreading out the leadership experience too, it's not good to always be the RL/MT 'cause if you have to do something or you're out sick, things will just go to heck.

Our guild started doing this about a month or two ago. You can solve the issue of raiders stepping in at the last second by only letting them take priority if they are:
1. Online at the same time as a casual when the invites started
2. Desperately needed for a gear-check fight that the casual guy just isn't geared up enough for.

Be very careful about letting Raiders just step into/out of a raid whenever they feel like showing up - it puts a huge chip on their shoulder and pretty soon they're pulling crap like not logging on for C'thun trash (because who wants to deal with that shit?) but suddenly logging in just as you're finishing the last pack, and they just "happen" to need/want in the raid for the C'thun kill.

This sounds so familiar. I'd say hundreds of guilds have gone through it. My recommendation, if you want to stay in the guild at all, is to redefine the guild the way the majority wants it.

You are likely better off reforming and only bringing the hardcore with you, and recruiting more hardcore people.

If you just recently recruited a bunch of players, then this is an extremely easy fix. Don't treat them like kings, make them work for it. Be demanding of the consumables they bring, the time they invest. If they're not on-time to a raid make them sit out weather you need them or not. The dedicated hardcore players will begin to shine through, I'll let you decide what to do with the casuals, but for sake of guild stability i'd say just attempt to be as diplomatic as possible in your conversations with them, and restrict them to the lesser content your doing. My guild recently recruited quite a few players, and we've gotten more first kills in the past two months than we have since the guild started it seems.

Finding a solid roster involves alot of luck, in my opinion at least. Most times a guild becomes successful because of strong leadership, and just dumb luck at not getting a bunch of recruits with down syndrome.

G'luck Reach :) If you wanna talk more about it you know i'm willing to help in anyway I can, you know where to find me.

If for some reason you don't have this already in place either, make sure you allow people waiting outside of an instance able to gain DKP on a waitlist. This becomes very handy in later fights, where you can min-max encounters a bit better. Depending on how your dkp system works, let the people who are waiting outside get in for fights where they want and are eligible to win loot. You do get some troubles with people abusing the waitlist system, but when your raidleader needs to fill a spot and someone on the waitlist isnt ready to go, punish them justly!

There's really no way you can combine casual and elite players in the same guild w/o falling apart after awhile. I've seen two guilds disband this way, one of which I tried to save myself. And I really don't see a good solution other than reforming in the direction that the majority wants to go.

Everyone in the guild needs to have the same basic goals and ambitions with the game, otherwise it just won't work in the long run. It's as easy as that really.

Our guild looks pretty equal to yours, although we do are lucky to have a pretty stable raid core these days.
I must also add that we have a very devoted officer team who spends alot of time in 'making' rules yet at the same time making sure this guild is focussed on improvement. They had an important officer meeting this week where they added some DKP/raid planner changes which largly improve our capability to improve. (we are learning the Emps now)

The way we do it is both option 1 and 2. We have a grunt and a raider status. Raiders get prio on signups, on certain loot (depending on dkp cap) and on reserve invites.

I think its easier to quote our guild rules regarding ranks (a decent amount of guildies lurk in these forums, so I'll get slapped by an officer soon enough if I wasent supposed to paste them):


We do sometimes have issues with the raider/grunt thing, but that is usually easily solved by officers. As said, our guild focusses on improvement on a semi casual level and raiders are the hearth of the guild.

From reading the OP.
The problem is that you have more people online than there are slots in the raid and you have no way to decide which people get in other than your decision. And that system will always cause problems because no matter how kind or fair you are, the people who dont get in will be pissed off and blame you. We use a simple rotation, everyone in a class is in a list and there is a pointer, invites start at that pointer, and the pointer moves after each raid. That way noone can be accused of being unfair during invites.

Find a simple and fair system, that will avoid any arguments over who gets in.
The downside its that some night you might not have you"A Team" or your main tank in, but I consider this makes for astronger raid force. Beating a fight with your "A Team" will only lead to frustration when your "B Team" get in and you wipe a ton on content you have already beaten. We used to be overly reliant on one tank, to the point that even with BWL on "farm" we coul chain wipe on firemaw without him. I made the decision at the time to not use that tank in BWL any more because the other warriors had to learn for AQ and the rest of the raid had to learn not to give up just because that 1 warrior wasnt in the raid.

Happy raiders make for progresss, if you continually tell people they are a "B Team" player most will react by continuing to perform badly, instead try and make sure that everyone has to carry their own weight, in a good raid the pressure to perform from piers will cause the weaker players to step up their game when they are in the spot of that rogue who always comes number 1 on the damage meter.

Ill take an example from recently for us.
We were learning Maex and I had one DPS warrior contiunally complaining that she was impossible. That night we had 4 rogues 6 warriors (3 prot) and 6 warlocks, and he argued that we would never beat maexx with that dps. So I pointed out to him that we didnt have any other DPS classess on standby, we had two choices. One was to give up and go home, the other was to pull our finger out and find the extra DPS. The next run we got our first ever kill on Maex.

I think this all kinda depends on how many people you've got on standby.

We have right at 50 accounts at the moment and rarely have more than 3-4 people on the wait list. We have a zero-sum system and we just roll the waitlist into the pile for dkp distribution. If anything the waitlist is a coveted position- you get to play alts or farm herbs in the zone we're raiding next to (You have to either be logged out at the entrance or in the same zone as the entrance if you're called in or you're not given dkp for it and we get very very grumpy) while still getting points.

We generally run things first-come first served as for who gets into the instance. We do invites 30min before the raid starts and fill up as we go, slapping applicants (if we have or need any) into the last few spots 5-10min before we pull. If we have a major imbalance though- we ask for volunteers and if we don't get volunteers, we appoint someone to sit (this is actually pretty damn rare). Last Patchwerk night we had 2 dps sit out for a 16th healer and our main tank. No fuss. Mosty the people who volunteer aren't interested in the loot off the boss and/or aren't in a position to win the loot if it drops.... or they're not feeling well or want to study or want to farm, or are jsut feeling less inclined to raid.

Not only does this encourage people to show up early, it rewards people who sit out for progression, and gives us a means of controling the balance if it gets out of hand.

We generally pull off the wait list first come first serve, although we make exceptions if we need a specific type of person (an extra hunter for tranq, an extra healer etc). The only person in the guild we force in even if he's running late is the guild leader who also runs raids. He doesn't generally like it (and is rarely late anyways), but people get cranky if they don't have thier pet raid leader o.o

If you have more than 10 people waiting on any given night though, this probably wouldn't work. =/

As far as choosing between casual and hardcore- the guild leadership needs to know where they're going. With a clear idea behind rules, recruitment, and general decision making- you will be much better off. Talkit over with the other management and nail down your goals and go from there.