There's a difference between actively recruiting someone, and waiting for someone to come to you asking questions - which doesn't really make sense to discuss in this thread. :)
One of the nice things we've got on Kilrogg's WoW boards is a stickied Guild Listing thread with classes they're all recruiting for.
A thing that I'd like to point out is that the difference between the "top" and the "medium" guilds is not very sharp, there are probably many mix formes between. On my server for instance, there are four guilds which progress quite well, (all of them have 8-9 Naxx bosses down and are able to kill C'thun), but the mentality of their members seem to be entirely different. Our server (and probably all the german servers) were shaken heavily due to the Football World Cup, my current guild (Pain and Pleasure) was the only guild that was deep in AQ which was able to keep itself alive, but we needed as well much new recruits. All the other guilds broke down and reformed, what lead us to a couple of server first kills, including C'Thun. However, many of the guild members stuck with a mentality you described as typical to a mediocre guild. And thus, we fell back. The guild was able to progress, but only with a very low pace. Guilds that were month behind were able to catch up, solved problems that could held us back for hours within a few minutes. (For instance, we wiped far more times at the Twin Abominations before Thaddius than on the boss himself). Many members didn't care, perhaps because of lazyness, others because they were - as you described - content. The few that did care often haven't had any audience at all, and they grew more and more frustrated. Thus, members started to change the guild, not the recruits, but many of the core members, even officers that were around for more than a year switched to other guilds, many of them far behind in progress.
So, to sum up, I'd say my guild shows quite a typical behaviour for a medium guild - but what a medium guild can hardly be described by progress, the attitude of the players, the friendliness of the community and their reputation are out of my point of view the far more important factors.
I agree mostly with the spirit of the post. But some things like the top guild always do zero dkp and are egalitarian and the medium ones dkp inflation heavy and such seem to be overgeneralizations. I've seen plenty of top guilds on the servers with the core = great mentality that favored them over new recruits. Having DKP leads that are almost insurmountable for anyone new to overcome. As well some medium guilds might have a hardcore philosophy but only a limited time in which to do their raiding, which will inhibit their ability to be the top guild on the server. So yeah you have some good points, but I think you generalize a bit too much in where the split between medium and top guilds are. There are so many other factors such as random luck, drama, time invested, health of your server (especially if horde) and so on.
I originally typed the post in mind to describe only my own server ecology (for which this is true), but as I went on typing I thought I might make it more general, and hence more interesting. That bit there is kind of just a leftover of the description of my server.
Thanks for all the posts guys, I wonder if this information could be synthesised or organised better? The scientest in me senses a boring model of server ecology coming on :P
Its interesting what the reduced raid sizes will do for this phenomenon - those medium sized guilds with a "core" + a rotating recruit pool will be able to see comparatively a lot more content. These types of guilds will be the real winners due to the lower numbers of players required for PvE content.
Medium guilds have shitty DKP systems that punish players for being new so it's harder to loot and boot.
I had a discussion about how much our DKP system sucked with our medium guild leader 8 months ago. He brought up the fact that if it were easy to get items as a new player, your ties with the guild would be weak, and more likely than not, you'd app to a more progressed guild.
I've since left the guild but yeah; being in a medium guild is no fun.
I am trying to not get too personal here but perhaps you are biased based on your personal experience. Their are a "lot" of medium guilds, I am reasonably sure my guild for example would fit into that criteria, Not at the top, a long way from the bottom, we lose people occasionally to guilds further in progression and the people we recruit are normally from other raiding guilds. I am replying because what your are saying about dkp & progress reflects what some of the newer guildies have been saying to me.
The old guard in general don’t want to be "the next top Guild" we raid the hours that are comfortable with, we trundle through progression now and then killing a new boss. Because their is always a fair bit of turnover we have to run older instances longer than is ideal, i.e. we still do mc once a month and onyxia whenever we have a spare 30-60 mins (including travel). Lack of items? Most of bwl is freely available, but the consequence of that is they are a long time negative. Is for example going into bwl for your first time and getting 5 drops so bad? The complaints I hear are but it will be ages before I can get tier 2.5/3 because everybody else has so much more dkp. Complaints that they forced me to take DFT(as a rogue) and it means I cant get a decent weapon for months. I used a blue neck for 9 month before a good epic became available and here a fellow paladin who wants to go from the exact same blue to the exact same epic is complaining because they didn’t have the dkp to afford it for 2 months.
Enjoy the content; even if you cant get access to every item you desire.
I think a lot of that rings true. I played horde before rolling my current character, and was in exactly one of those guilds. The DKP system was shit, and though it wasn't as bad as some that I've heard of in terms of keeping new members out of loot, it wasn't easy to get new stuff early on.
The other option is when the progressed guilds aren't recruiting heavily, you see a few go on to the better guilds and a few just quit the game and stop playing becaue the guild is simply not doing well.
The biggest problem, and the reason why these guilds penalize new members is that you really don't know how good your recruits are until you have played with them for a while. Of course some players you can assess within 5 minutes in the "can't play" category, but the rest?
As discussed elsewhere, healing/dps meters are not an accurate measure of performance except in extreme cases.
What happens in many guilds is, I suspect, the same that happens in mine. People pass loot for players they respect, regardless of dkp/loot distribution order but no-one has the balls to come straight out and say "you suck" to the also-rans. Naturally there's a self-perpetuating gordian knot here (is that a valid simile?). If you aren't prepared to sort out the chaff because you are trying to stay "friends" with your recruits then resentment builds against those who are perceived as not up to the standard with the result of drama and frayed tempers.
Speaking from the perspective of an officer of what was once a 'medium' guild (we finally became faction lead after the top guild stalled and the new top guild exploded), I would like to say that the job of the officers of a medium guild is an extremely tough one few people appreciate enough to give credit for.
In some cases, the guild is mediocre because the leadership is mediocre, in which case the mediocrity is well deserved. However, it might also have gotten there because it started late, or the new leadership inherited the job from a missing or departed leadership. My guild was one of the latter, and looking back, its hard to imagine how we overcame those challenges.
1) The biggest challenge is recruitment and retention. You don't have the progression needed to easily recruit the best players and you're constantly in danger of having your best players poached by guilds ahead of you. As a result, you're forced to lower your recruiting standards to make numbers, and many of these will be unsuited to raiding for one reason or another, be it ability, availability or personality. Awarding loot to these players before they proved themselves would be foolish(unless no one else wants that particular item).
During this painful starting period (about 3-4 months), we had fairly high attrition (1-2 players a week), and we intentionally made the DKP system inflationary. When that became insufficient, we implemented a tierred-bidding system, where you could not outbid players above you on the 30%/60% cutoffs for 30/90-day raid attendance. The system has since become redundant, since we have had near-zero attrition for months now, and we're trying to stop the inflation, but its not easy. (took some effort to push through a monthly 10% DKP tax on current DKP balances)
Incidentally, giving loot to new players as an incentive never worked. If they cannot wait 3-4 weeks (about how long it took to reach the highest member rank if they attended all raids) for loot, a likely reason is that they don't necessarily expect to be around in 3-4 weeks. What does work is recruiting hard enough to bolster numbers to the point where you can start being more selective.
2) The next challenge is drama control. Its easy to say 'No Drama' and kick offenders when you're a stable top-end guild with 1000 applicants waiting to replace offenders, but its not so easy as a 'medium' guild. You would quickly run out of numbers for 40-man raids, unless you wanted to lower recruiting standards even more and bring in the scum of the earth.
Also, some of these drama risks tend to be the 'important' players in your guild. It could just be my experience, but 'drama' players have a tendency to be high-playtime, high-profile, influential, intelligent players in key roles. As a result, removing them often comes at a cost which is scary to contemplate, so most people would delay it, even knowing the consequences. Our initial MT, OT and hunter lead were all drama risks that have since left us - that it was done with almost no collateral damage is a testament to my GM's skill and patience.
Naturally, being less able to get rid of in-guild drama makes the guild a less pleasant place to be, further hampering retention.
3) The final challenge is player skill and attitude. We started with all the usual suspects - people who randomly afk, avoid progression raids, mysteriously do less than half the damage of their peers etc. And theres no quick solution to this. We observed, teached, encouraged and took more extreme measures only if all else failed for a long period. I've found that peer pressure works wonders, but thats a culture that takes ages to build.
In the end, the most important thing about a guild is the quality of the leaders and how much effort they're willing to put in. And you cannot judge that based on a superficial look at their loot systems, raiding schedule etc.
Incidentally, the guild on my server-faction that aggressively culled their players and marketed themselves as the 'next top guild' was the one that exploded when we caught up to them.
I am trying to not get too personal here but perhaps you are biased based on your personal experience. Their are a "lot" of medium guilds, I am reasonably sure my guild for example would fit into that criteria, Not at the top, a long way from the bottom, we lose people occasionally to guilds further in progression and the people we recruit are normally from other raiding guilds. I am replying because what your are saying about dkp & progress reflects what some of the newer guildies have been saying to me.
This post isn't meant to describe my experiences with any one guild or even on one server. I myself have been in five guilds and know players in many more. Everyone knows I'm an upstart and I love to analyse guild drama, so people from a lot of guilds have talked to me about their experiences in guilds. Obviously my own personal experiences have coloured me to some extent (how can they not?) but I still like to think that my post is, at least, an attempt at objectivity.
In any case, that's why I posted here: To see if others have shared my experience. A lot of people have, so I personally don't think I'm too far off the mark on this one.
Originally Posted by Ngita
The old guard in general don’t want to be "the next top Guild" we raid the hours that are comfortable with, we trundle through progression now and then killing a new boss. Because their is always a fair bit of turnover we have to run older instances longer than is ideal, i.e. we still do mc once a month and onyxia whenever we have a spare 30-60 mins (including travel). Lack of items? Most of bwl is freely available, but the consequence of that is they are a long time negative. Is for example going into bwl for your first time and getting 5 drops so bad? The complaints I hear are but it will be ages before I can get tier 2.5/3 because everybody else has so much more dkp. Complaints that they forced me to take DFT(as a rogue) and it means I cant get a decent weapon for months. I used a blue neck for 9 month before a good epic became available and here a fellow paladin who wants to go from the exact same blue to the exact same epic is complaining because they didn’t have the dkp to afford it for 2 months.
This definetly rings true, but it tends to be something that applies moreso to recruits who are a fair distance below the gear level of most of your raid. It's a much, much more difficult situation when you're as geared or nearly as geared as the "medium" guild you are trying to join. If you're trying to help your guild progress, equally geared players are exactly what you want.
My opinion on this is that I really don't see why any guild would want to go through a constant process of re-gearing new recruits over and over, or stumbling over content. Raiding 4 days per week is a "guild decision"; as I've clarified, this isn't about how many days a week you raid. But if you're revisiting Molten Core when you're in Naxxramas, and you have players in blues joining the guild, that can only be a problem. Raiding less often doesn't doom your guild to mediocrity, and there are many examples of said guilds wherever you look.
Incidentally, giving loot to new players as an incentive never worked. If they cannot wait 3-4 weeks (about how long it took to reach the highest member rank if they attended all raids) for loot, a likely reason is that they don't necessarily expect to be around in 3-4 weeks. What does work is recruiting hard enough to bolster numbers to the point where you can start being more selective.
Firstly, your whole post was really good but this struck me as interesting.
I don't think it's a problem at all if guilds bide their time when promoting trials. The problem with many seniority based guilds is there is a constant distinction between newer and older member, and no degree of time, effort, skill, or attendance can make up for the "you haven't been here long enough" gap. Guilds where class leaders get first dibs are a key example, even if hunters #2-3 have the same attendance and have been in the guild nearly as long.
Incidentally, the guild on my server-faction that aggressively culled their players and marketed themselves as the 'next top guild' was the one that exploded when we caught up to them.
I don't think it's a problem at all if guilds bide their time when promoting trials. The problem with many seniority based guilds is there is a constant distinction between newer and older member, and no degree of time, effort, skill, or attendance can make up for the "you haven't been here long enough" gap. Guilds where class leaders get first dibs are a key example, even if hunters #2-3 have the same attendance and have been in the guild nearly as long.
Incidentally, the guild on my server-faction that aggressively culled their players and marketed themselves as the 'next top guild' was the one that exploded when we caught up to them.
What made them asplode?
I guess I slightly misunderstood your opening post. I am also against any form of permanent DKP Gap, though admittedly its very hard to work inflation out of your system once you've worked it in. And of course you should never give special loot priviledges to players in leadership roles (except guild MTs).
They exploded from drama last week. If you visit the K'G forums now, you should still be able to find the 10+ multi-page threads filled with veritable walls of dramatic prose. Their turnover was too high to build loyalty and identity, their leaders were too cut-throat and the raiding schedule was brutal. If you visit their website now, you will see a cartoon drawing of a sexually explicit act.
Now that I think about it, I suppose the smarter strategy is not "cull and recruit" but "recruit and cull". The #2 (Progression) Horde guild on Frostmourne was jokingly referred to as the 'zerg guild' for a while, but their core raiders sort of just appeared out of that and now they're very successful today.
Does anyone think that having a difficulty setting on raid zones may be Blizzard's way of addressing this issue? Having been a frustrated player in a medium level guild, I know that alot of the heartache in the guild would have been alleviated if we would have actually continued to make progress at a reasonable pace. Just simply accepted our lazy, or average players for who they were and have everyone understand that the guilds is going to progress slowly because of these players, but yet still progress. Having a difficulty setting somewhat allows these guilds to tolerate a fair share of very casual players but still keep everyone happy as new content and new rewards continue to flow in at a reasonable pace.
The problem right now is that medium level guilds are fine for a while as they pass into Raid zone A and then B, but eventually they hit that wall where suddenly many of their players skill or committment just isnt up to beating the next challenge. This is when the sh*t hits the fan. Accomplished players get angry and look to move on to a better guild. Drama ensues either due to people being constantly browbeat about one thing or another or because players are forced to be removed which begins the endless turnover, recruiting, and 1 step forward, 1 step back dance that is often the death knell of these guilds.
I think guild hopping and step laddering your way up is always going to be a part of the game and some people will want to do that, but with the difficulty setting, maybe it wont be the inevitable end situation for alot of players once they get so far. Thus allowing medium guilds to keep a much larger base of their 'core' and in a wider sense stop something like the spiral of death that kind of happened to Horde raiding guilds on alot of servers.
For the guilds that actually have issues with class numbers, previous experience dictates that it's a helluva lot more effective to only ever cull players from the roster when you've found their replacement and are already taking them on raids anyway. This has the dual effect of making it very clear why the worse player is in danger of getting removed ("If new guy A can outperform you after a week in the guild, you can do better otherwise you shouldn't be here") and giving him an impetus to pick up his game if he so chooses, but also at the same time protects your guild from unneccessary harm. Never remove a player and then hope to get a new one, unless the guy is actually so bad that you're better off with an empty slot.
As for how you treat recruits, the OP makes some very apt observations. The key imho to breeding strong members is to make sure that they understand what is expected of them, but to make it equally clear what they get in return. Telling them they have secondary priority on all loot while an initiate will only work if you clarify that they still earn points like everyone else, and upon promotion, will suddenly be on a par with everyone else, especially the officers/gm's (it should never be any other way, frankly). If people understand their trial period as an investment, as opposed to casual slavery, they tend to be more enthusiastic. Making sure they have a 'mentor' of sorts, whether it be a class leader or a veteran, also goes a long way in ensuring that they feel like a member of the team, as opposed to just another slot filler.
Frostmourne(US-AU) is the most progressed Australian raiding server, although there are more progressed guilds on Blackrock. It is for all intents and purposes an archetypal ideal server to describe the phenomenon I’m about to go through. I’ll focus on FM-Horde here, since I am a Horde player myself. Player turnover on Frostmourne has been significant due to server stability issues and a periodic addition of new Australian servers from time to time, causing reroll. Combined with this outflow is a strong inflow of geared & skilled transfers looking for ideal raid times. Throw in typical interpersonal dramas and you have a pretty rich and dynamic server environment.
This post is very interesting for me not just because of the overall content but because of the specific FM content as well. I was on FM Alliance and rerolled due mostly to personal reasons (the guild I was in is currently 2nd in progression and has always been roughly there, most of them friendly people, etc). I'm now in the top guild on Barthilas, which was ironically put together by ex-FM horde from Carebears (the second guild currently was put together by Ex FM horde too... these ones from Purge). They've always said that FM horde had a terrible culture and they had to get out and reroll on Barthilas because of it. It's also interesting how you didn't mention Despise/Purge as one of the top 3 guilds, I'm assuming they merged/renamed/whatavered (again) into Rage.
Does anyone think that having a difficulty setting on raid zones may be Blizzard's way of addressing this issue?
What if you can't beat it on "Normal" difficulty? As I recall, the difficulty settings only got harder, not easier.
All signs point to the opposite being true. They might not call it 'easy' or whatever because that would be bad for a guilds morale :), but I dont think zones like AQ40 or Naxx could be tuned 20% harder at release and still be beatable. In that case they would just all be beat initially on Normal and then later attempted on Hard when the guild was sufficiently geared and skilled in the encounters. I dont see that happening and expect that Bliz feels the top guilds will naturally play the hardest setting from the get-go. If you consider the infamous qoute from the New York Times that 25% of the playerbase had seen Ragnaros and only 15% Nefarian (as of many months ago) it stands to reason Bliz wants to get more customers into the zones where most of their work and development time are going into.
They've always said that FM horde had a terrible culture and they had to get out and reroll on Barthilas because of it. It's also interesting how you didn't mention Despise/Purge as one of the top 3 guilds, I'm assuming they merged/renamed/whatavered (again) into Rage.
Yeah, Rage is essentially Purge without Rise (the GM, if you recall) who sold the guild gank and quit the game.
I see allot of similarities in my own guild, now I run or trying to run it as smoothly as possible but we are victim of slow progress because we have newer recruits who don't wish to raid higher end content with sub-par gear and the higher up people are tending to leave not just to be with other friends in other guilds but our progression has slowed considerably in the last 2 months (we took from downing rag to downing nef less than 4 weeks total).
So we are recruiting members to replace the lost ones who are lesser gear so we are stepped back in progression which disheartens the 'core' as you call it giving them more reason to move onto another guild and the cycle continues till we boom or bust. Our turnover is outstriping our recruitment leaving us with less and less players till the point where we are starting to cancel raids because of lack of key classes leaving/quitting/getting bored.
We do have an aging dkp system that is based on raids attended which is one of the points you suggest as a alienating factor for newer recruits but most of our older members have basically everything they need with 10+ being full t2/t2.t parts weapons trinkets and just few items remaining from the mobs we can kill still, which means the newer recruits are getting stuff really cheap even in AQ40 (where we are up to C'thun) most of the stuff is going for minimum bids so it's not a lack of being able to gain gear, infact in BWL we shard a fair amount of items where the core players are big on (paladin/rogue gear) and the rest is snapped up at minimum bids.
I dont understand how to keep our members satisfied...
I'm no hitler when it comes to raiding, I'm supportive but firm when leading and allot of the ideals put forward in the 'how to lead a raid' thread somewhere else on this forum I take as standard for leading raids. We don't fail allot on easier stuff except the occasional Vaelstrasz where people are asleep or lag out when BA hits (explosive paladins are nasty), on our progression raids it doesn't degenerate into a bitch fest, we analyze support and try work around why we failed and carry on. We are not elitist from core to newer members and treat them as anyone would be in the guild.
The guild I belong to is by all means your average WoW guild: Average rate of progression (3 weeks from Razorgore to Nefarian), average level of progression (Huhuran), and average size (raid force of ~55).
The number of people that have left our guild since inception is still in the single-digits. I can also count the number of members we've recruited over the past 3+ months on one hand.
And the strange thing is, we get the majority of our applicants from guilds that are way further than us in progression (Naxxramas+; two new members' previous guilds have recently killed the Four Hoursemen).
I can't explain it, but we've been very fortunate with very, very low turnover, extremely high quality applicants, and a very dedicated raid force. But I think a major factor in the quality of a guild is the people you recruit. A guild's greatest asset is it's members. :)
I'm no guild doctor or anything, and in many cases I'm sure guilds are just victims of circumstance.
Sometimes I think you have to cut your losses and say: Okay, we've got forty people here tonight. They're not as geared as our past raid crew, but if they're skilled and willing then we'll still progress well and catch up to where we were in a month or two. Given our past mistakes, what can we do to ensure that the players we do have are retained? What can we do to make sure we only get skilled and capable players? What can prevent history repeating?
As someone else said; strong leadership and infrastructure. Take your new lot of members as a new beginning, maybe.
The guild I belong to is by all means your average WoW guild: Average rate of progression (3 weeks from Razorgore to Nefarian)...and average size (raid force of ~55).
That actually strikes me as being a really good guild... 3 weeks from Razorgore to Nefarian is quite strong (5-6 seems more normal) and 55 regular raiders is actually a fairly conservative number.
Maybe your guild is a top guild that just started a bit later? ;). One of my past guilds is a bit like this - they formed later on in the raid community and developed fairly strongly quickly on, progressing so fast they were soon undergeared for the content they were tackling. They've had very low turnover although lost some due to burnout as they had a very heavy raid schedule. It sucked for me to leave them but the hunters (and the hunters alone; seemingly not the rest of the guild) had the mentality I described earlier, but they were otherwise a "top" guild. I'd say this might be the type of guild you're in, except hopefully without problems within your class =)
Our BWL push was pretty strong. Our raiders tend to dislike sleep or something and have no problems staying up until 4 AM on weekdays for the sake of raid progression. :) In fact, our major "firsts" were in the wee hours of the mornings: Ragnaros at around 4 AM, Nefarian at around there, Ossirian at around 3:30 AM, and so on.
As a longtime member and officer of a "Medium Guild" this dissertation is right on target. My guild Well of Souls belongs to an alliance that Raids MC/BWL. We have suffered significant attrition due to "Top End/Hardcore Guilds" poaching some of our best geared players. I personally dislike intensely this activity. We as a group have worked so hard learning MC/BWL and it hurts alot to see the people you geared up and learned content with leave because of "add a myriad of reasons here" and the fact that the higher end guilds have BWL/AQ/Naxx on farm. I am a well geared Rogue for MC/BWL and I know my class. I disagree with the OP that because I choose to stick with my orginal guild that I am a medium level player. I have open offers to join hardcore guilds and could do so at will. But I have a oft ignored or downright scoffed at reason for not leaving. Its called Loyalty. This may sound trite and old fashioned. So be it. Like honor and integrity it is something I adhere to and many people in our guild whom I have played with now for almost two years share this same ideal. I suppose maybe I am being naive and many here will have a field day with this post. But loyalty is what keeps a guild together.
I'm no guild doctor or anything, and in many cases I'm sure guilds are just victims of circumstance.
Sometimes I think you have to cut your losses and say: Okay, we've got forty people here tonight. They're not as geared as our past raid crew, but if they're skilled and willing then we'll still progress well and catch up to where we were in a month or two. Given our past mistakes, what can we do to ensure that the players we do have are retained? What can we do to make sure we only get skilled and capable players? What can prevent history repeating?
As someone else said; strong leadership and infrastructure. Take your new lot of members as a new beginning, maybe.
Past experience would tell me that's an extraordinarily tough sell. Can you imagine running MC an extra 3-6 months getting people geared because you lost 1-2 guys and it snowballed into 15+? That's usually what happens when have to start telling people they'll have to wait. In addition, it starts to cause huge dkp issues unless you institute a zone cap (which has other problems in a smaller guild). The expansion adds extra pressure in this regard. The good players will want to get as far as possible so they can get geared up for post 60 content.
While the merger of my old guild into the one I'm in now wasn't a rousing success (well over 50% attrition of old guild members), I still think it was the right course of action (I'd chalk the attrition up to us not managing the transition well and personality conflicts). We managed to go from razorgore to downing nef within 2 months which wasn't too bad a pace. Your best bet in this situation is to consider a merger of some sort with a comparable guild that is facing similar issues. Even with a low retention rate, it still gets you a ready-made group of people who are used to working together and who have gear. At a minimum, I think that sets you up to attempt to make progress, rather than regress. The biggest problem you will face is eliminating divisions between the "old" and "new" guild and making sure the transition is fair for both sides.
Usually the biggest issue is that negative momentum for the guild is incredibly hard to reverse. You need to take some dramatic action or else you'll never reverse the slide. Even your most loyal guys will chafe at running the same content continuously.
Originally Posted by borat
the difficulty level for expansion is only for 5 mans, not raids.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in a lot of the middle-tier guilds. I know I can think of about 5-6 solid 5 man teams we can assemble in my guild, but the skill level will start to drop off noticeably after that point. What's going to happen is that you're going to have a lot of "have's" and "have-not's" because the gear that drops will be determined by the difficulty setting of the instance. This may be the thing that culls people out and reduces our initial raid size to 25 as some people won't make the gear cut.
It also begs the question of how attunement to the raid instances might work (hardest setting of a prequel instance is the only way to get that onyxia talisman-type item?) They could use this as a way to keep the skill/gear level comparable to the requirements of the raid instance.
My middle-tier-just-starting-progression guild underwent the same sort of thing shortly after server transfers became available. We had a bunch of folks burn out from our raid schedule and supporting the lax raiders who were just there for the purple train, then the top guild on our server moved away (server transfer). Some guild drama ensued and suddenly we started getting our top players moving cross-server, and went from starting AQ40 to barely beating MC anymore, much less Nef, which led to more of the better players disappearing. The players leaving just kept snowballing into more players leaving, which led to the appalling play of the bad players becoming increasingly obvious. The guild disbanded this week, so we'll see what happens from here.
09/25/06, 11:34 PM
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