The change from a casual to a hardcore guild can be hard, and whatever changes made to improve guilds performance in raid instances are bound to be difficult to make. As many guild leaders, raid leaders and officers read these forums daily, I'm interestid to hear what experiences you had by making changes in your guild towards the more Hardcore environment. [Note, changes and decisions in my guild have already been made, and therefore im not asking for help]

1.Every guild poses sometimes a decision to whetever kick the less Hardcore* Oriented members or just replace them by new ones. The decision can be hard to make, but it has to be made. [*Meaning people who concentrate on raids, are interestid in progress and willing to sacrifice for guilds progress]. In my guild, we have got rid of the real "worst" of them, but still kept a few old time members who don't really share our working methods.

The result of removing these members was actually quite positive, for my happy surprise no one actually protested about it. So this was maybe the easiest decision to make, as we wanted one common thing and the others didn't.

2.A]All guilds will at some point come to a lack of members, usually due to not realizing or predicting the near future with enough expertise, or then just for the simple lack of people. This mostly results in very spontanous invitations of people just to quickly fill the gaps and get the raids going again [especially if your not the top guild who doesn't have trouble finding good people]. This again brings trouble, as you will most likely need to kick half of them [are you going to?]

2.B] If part 2.A is due to lack of activity, might you be raiding too much and simply burning out people ? If it's this there might be another way than recruiting more people, perhaps taking a break, but upsetting the core of active raiders ?

3. If activity starts lacking, and especially if loot raids are filled but wipe raids are empty. Are you going to find new people to fill the empty spaces, or are you somehow miraculously going to track attendance and award loot raid spots for attendance to other raids? The problem with attendance tracking and awarding spots on loot raids can be hard though, and might result in drama which can also be stressfull to handle with.

Basically 3 options I came up with [hope this might help someone about to make decisions]

Option 1. [Semi Hardcore due to high amount of raids]

Keeping up a large amount of raids per week [6 of them for example], running loot instances regularly due to quite much time and leaving 2-3 nights for progress in a week. If your not bleeding edge of your server, get ready for people to burn out and having to recruit way undergeared people. But, this is why you've got the extra days for the loot raids, in order to gear them up.

+: The good thing about option 1 is that you will have lots of raids per week, keeping the really hardcore people occupied even if these were mostly loot raids. And ofcourse, gearing up also the more HC people with new epics, for sure if you quit doing a loot instance some of the true core of the guild would still need items from there.

-: The bad things about option are that people can really get burnt out more than in option 2. This includes the core people. The other negative side is reduced amount of time to for example grinding herbs for potions and farming money for repair bills etc. Keep in mind that people who work daily [even if they attended all raids] probably don't have the required free time during day to farm. You might not have the same raiding team for the wipe raids either.

Option 2. [Hardcore due to high amount of Wipe raids compared to loot raids]

Having 4 nights of raids per week, all dedicated for the newest instance might be a viable choice if you wan't to maintain good progress [better than progress than in option 1]. Basically, you don't do weekly loot raids to any instance.

+: With less raiding days the core people and more casual people will become closer, and also burnout occurs alot less. The raid team will most likely keep itself the same through the raids giving a chance for a smaller and tighter guild.

-: There will for sure be lots of whining about loot, people will want loot for PVP and their Epeen. If you can't stay firm in your decision and if most of the guild seriously loaths the idea of leaving behind epics, this might not be your way to go.

[- Addition to option 2. Assigning of loot or some other system than DKP will most likely work better for this system, as it takes in account the benefit of the item to that certain person]

Option 3. [Hardcore to the bone]

This is what most of the bleeding edge guilds have, as i understood it. About 4-6 nights of progress [Maybe 1 or 2 loot runs done in the week or not at all]. This will drain your members if they aren't HC and willing to sacrifice alot. Great if you can get it working, but managing this might be the most stressfull of the options, youll really need to piss on people to make it work :p

+: Well, as expected "bleeding edge" progress. Atleast this provides the tools for it, the one who uses them in the end determines the progress. Tight knight environment, as you will need people who share your mentality [Getting these people is the biggest challenge though].

-: Burnout even if your HARDCORE. Having to leave out some people [I guess it doesn't matter as much since you took option 3]

My Opinion: In my honest opinion, id take option 2. Though my current guild runs with a mixture of option 1 and 3. I think option 2 would be the best as it still leaves 3 nights free to do whatever the fuck you wan't was it ingame or not but still concentrates heavily on progress. THOUGH gearing up new recruits will be hell :F If you will ever need any

In Burning Crusade:

Though I don't like speculation, I guess most will go for option 3 as you'll only need 25 people to make a raid work. Alot easier to find the amount of HC people for the spots.

And comment on the options I presented and the 1-4 challenges of making your guild work. Those were just to get the conversation started really.

EDIT: I wrote it without reading it again :P So I'll check my spelling and correct any mistakes when I get home.

Progression is a multi-dimensional problem.
To defeat an encounter, a lot of factors play in.
Some are simple to manipulate, others are harder to control.

Skill
This you can't do much about, everyone can learn, but some have more talent than others. You might try to figure out who is struggling, and help them out, though not everyone is willing to learn...

Preparation (consumables)
Consumables is farmtime, doing content that requires a lot of them constantly will make raiding expensive fast.

Gear
This one can go up and down, whenever you clear farm-content, you improve it, whenever you lose a core member, it goes down.

Experience
Learning time spent figuring out your guilds particular way of doing an encounter. This is typically what you are working on, on wipe-nights.

Luck (and lag)
Nuff said, sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you get laggy. Make sure you have people willing to give it another go, when luck is against you.

Focus (and motivation)
This is arguably the most tough one. People are motivated by lots of different things, knowing what makes them tick is the real trick to leadership.

The sum of all these things(and possibly some other i missed) is what determines if you will bring home the loot. While spending 6 week-nights wiping on the same boss might seem like a good idea, you might be better off clearing mc, bwl, aq, taking a day "off" to farm consumables, and then spending 2 nights of trying to get the boss down.

For each week you spend, not getting a particular boss down, you will still be improving the overall gear of your guild, improving your chances of getting him down.

Personally i'd go for a mix of option 1 and 2. The focus being on keeping people happy, and therefore keeping burnout to a minimum, allowing you to progress further. Remember, when you are progressing faster than your relative gear levels, you are simply making it harder for yourself.

I agree with grub. Farming promotes ability to progress.

Be a little bit less concerned with keeping up with the bleeding edge Joneses - bleeding isn't everyone's idea of fun.

Keep at least one day open for trying ONE new boss, and give yourself time to learn and celebrate your acheivements.

Farm all other worthwhile content, and don't be afraid to let instances slip to "completely optional, bring your alts/friends/whatever" status when on farm. That keeps them farmed so your mains can fill in gaps in their gear with solid items and your alts can pick up "trash loot" and keep everyone engaged and happy.

Just remember that mains have priority over alts, and let main healer classes pick up toys over alt DPS classes - they patiently passed them to your DPS mains, don't shaft them again.

Please fill out a profile. Also, subject to the usual "I know English isn't your first language, and that's a good effort" caveats, reviewing your post for formatting would improve it significantly -- when you have a lot of 1-2 sentence paragraphs separated by line breaks the whole thing kind of blurs together.

These are only valid if progress is your #1 goal.

1. Don't let seniority affect your decision on who to invite to raids. Do not let anyone be able to continue raiding when there is a more dedicated/skilled player able to take their place. Even if that person is your wife/father.

People who feel they need to perform well to continue getting invites always perform better. No one should be exempt. you don't need to kick that co-founder from the guild just because he shows up to 50% of the raids and afk's on trash all the time, but you also don't need to invite him to raids. If he shows up and you do not invite him, tell him why. Be up front about this policy, but don't back down.

2. Surround yourself with good advisors, but keep dictatorship. Be sure to delegate well and often, but keep ultimate power for yourself ( as long as you're not a stupid asshole).

Before :P you :P do that :P you'll also :P fill out your :P profile before :P you :P get fucking :redhammer:.

You're lucky Gurg got here first and gave you a reprieve. I'm much less tolerant and have been giving automatic 2-day bans to every level 1 alt I run across.