If you have a DKP system, I doubt you're a "PuG".

But does it matter if people raid with another guild? If anything their members are getting more experience from raiding then they would be from their own single raids. Also, getting used to running with other people outside your guild is a great avenue to recruit from.

Personally I think its a great idea and I applaud them for being relatively successful.

I view a guild as a social contract - if I pledge to be there for the guild, the guild pledges to be there for me, and thus we are all one big happy raiding family. In a hardcore raid guild, and in a social one, while the presumptions were alternate - presumed attendance (post if you'll be absent!) versus presumed absense (post if you'll be there!), they were the same basis.

If you're in a guild, fulfilling your social contract to them and they to you, what's the problem? This is, in my mind, the definition of a semantic argument. "What is a PUG?" Cut it down a little and we're on, "Depends what 'is' is." The question boils down to if they both raid Wednesday at 8pm, which one are you going to show up to? That is your guild, and the other is an organized PUG. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but take PUG from "the streets" if you will - a pick up game. Doesn't matter if the pick up game is essentially scheduled every Thursday at 5 with the same 5 people, it's still a pick up game.

Moreover, it's up to the guilds in question and why they have those rules. If they believe multi-raiding will induce burnout, then "what is a guild" is completely irrelevent. If they're worried about retention, then in my mind they have bigger issues to which they can't legislate solutions.

Finally, it's a game. Make it unfun and people will stop playing (dealer's choice of: with you/altogether).

That is about on the level as loose/lose. I cringe every time I see the loose/lose mistake in someone's posting.

There was a pick up raid for Horde on Warsong that was known as PuGRaid but I didn't know much about how they operated due to being on the alliance side. From what I remember they progressed pretty well but I think eventually it broke up.

I do like the idea of the public raids but only had a short bit of experience with allied guild raids. Do they usually break up due to loot drama or folks getting enough people to do things on their own?

I would have been interesting to see how it developed if TBC were not so close.
Personally, I believe the TelePUG is conducting itself like a full blown raid guild, even if it is populated by many alts. As such given 2/3 months (and if TBC wasnt around the corner) I would not have been suprized to see it break away as a new guild.

I would agree that is it more of a cross-guild alt-alliance than a PuG. I think the PuG is relly thrown in to boost the egos of the participants:
"OMG we kileld Naxx in a PUG !!"

Is more of an ego stroke than
"I took my alt to Naxx"

This christmas will be the 18 month anniversary of our cross-guild alliance, AFAIK we are one of the oldest of such arrangements still going in WoW. We are too all intents and purpose a raiding guild, without a name over our head; to whit we take applications directly to the raid group rather than the substituant guilds.

How rediculous, ofcourse your overreacting if we let lose a few grammer errors.

Ahem.

To be honest, I don't see the appeal of re-entering MC either on my main or my alt. BWL? Well, the guild runs a trip on the off day I can't make, but I'd honestly rather grind for herbs/cash/alt than attend a PuG. Not had the best of histories horde side my server has PuG raids.

PuG Nax?
Good grief. I don't think my WoW bank balance could cope with that aside from a few easy Razu/Anub kills.

I'd like to subscribe to the principle 'as long as it doesn't hurt your main guild responsabilities, do what you like' philosophy, but I just don't think that's doable any more.

There's always something you could do to better you or your guilds NAxx performance. More repair costs, more consumables etc. Gone are the days where raiding wasn't a full time (WoW-time) occupation...

About 90% of the raid groups on Earthen Ring EU are not guilds or even guild alliances. They're just groups of people who've got together to raid with absolutely no guild affiliations (although certain guilds tend to drift towards certain groups). Sounds exactly like what this TelePUG thing is now. I jumped into TAQ last night to see 10 people from 10 different guilds. It's not an uncommon sight but we're certainly not a PUG. I recently switched groups, I didn't switch guilds. This is the norm, rather than an exception on ER.

A social guild would not care if the hunters did not know what an aimed shot rotation is, or how agility compares to RAP/AP on an item.

They will be necessarily separate until the end of time for that reason.

Whether you want to say everyone is pals in a hardcore guild and thus, "social", is a semantic argument and using the wrong context of the word.

No, we are still around on Warsong (www.pugraid.com) we have 3 Naxx bosses down, and have ouro down in aq40. We operate independent of guilds, there is a optional guild you can join that is only affiliated with pugraid, but if you stop raiding you are removed from the guild. We Raid 4 times a week so no one in pugraid is an alt, unlike telepug. I personally enjoy it since my guild isn't interested in raiding, but I have no interest in leaving them for purples.

Ah, thank you for the clarification. Interesting to look up what you folks have done as an alternative to a "all one banner" raid.

Has keeping pugraid going gotten more difficult as time has gone on?

As a side note: Is Xarxet an all warlock guild? That's all I ever saw carrying the tag.

There is something fairly similar on the Malygos server (US-Central PvE), though we only do 20-man content. Basically, a group of folks tired of not being able to raid during their preferred times decided to band together and take on Zul'Gurub. We have members that range from Tier2 Rogues, to PvP-Grind Warlocks, to people that arrived in blues but now wear purples just from ZG and AQ20. Everyone has their own reasons for being there (challenge, fun, rep, gear) and we get along very well. We recently scored our first kill on Ossirian - completing the content in the current game.

Because we haven't had our own /guild channel, we have been able to go through growing pains that usually kill raiding guilds. We had to hammer out an alt policy (which is the most reasonable and flexible I have ever seen), switch from free-roll to DKP, had key players transfer to other servers (we raid with oceanic times on a US server), and even had the dreaded tier-jump agony (ZG -> AQ20 is something of a rude awakening). Because we all have our own guilds (some raiding, some purely social, some in between), our disagreements never boiled over.

We've enjoyed raiding with each other so much that we're very excited about the new TBC content. As of now, the 20-mans are not really progression level stuff, even though both have quite nice gear and are somewhat taxing on raid skills (for us at least). But with KZ being 10-person and the biggest raids being 25, we're looking to recruit a few more people instead of hoping people leave of their own accord.

That said, ZG and AQ20 have minimal farming requirements and even when working on bosses, we would rarely net more than 10g in repairs (blue gear and Tier1 ftw!). I have no idea what would happen if we were working on stuff that required MASSIVE farming to sustain. At that point we as individuals might have to make some decisions about which raid is our focus.

Yes, when we had MC on farm and were learning BWL (before naxx/aq) we would turn over a lot of people as they would use us to gear up then apply to a farther progressed guild. Now since all the major guilds have left we have had a difficult time finding skilled English speaking raiders. For those that don't know Warsong got adopted by the Brazilians and Russians as their unofficial server. A good portion of Warsong is Brazilians and Russians and many don't speak great English. This led to a major exodus of all the top tier Horde Raiding guilds to Korgath and making our recruiting pool slim.

You are thinking of Xeque which, yes, is an all warlock guild. Xarxet is an old AC/AC2/SWG Guild.

Its wierd how bad speling effects people, even when its not relavant to the sitiuation!

This does lead to some interesting consequences. Much like ER, AD raiding consists mostly of guild alliances and "communities", the Happy Funtime Crew does not exist as a guild. Guilds turn into a disposable tag with an extra chat channel, so friends inside the raid community will migrate from one guild tag to another, as well as throwaway joke guilds turning up (I saw the leader and main officer of another prominent community in Naxx running around with <and two stealthed rogues>). We've seen guilds housing significant amounts of members of several raid groups which can break up horribly if there's tension or competition between groups, as well as leading to a pretty intricate network of gossip, relationships and insiders.

The result is that people drift into dizzying arrays and constellations of subcommunities, which I haven't really seen to have any significant effect on raiding but find fascinating to watch.


As as amusing aside, back when we were having trouble with Anub'rekhan's evade bugging on Impale we paged a GM. He showed up and asked that we try to reproduce the bug (whereupon we proceeded to wipe several embarassing times due to stage fright), and when the evening was over, he left us with the parting note that we were "doing pretty well considering you're not a guild".

That had us staring for a while.

Is this an RP server thing perhaps? AD and ER were the original 2 EU RP servers and it sounds like the 2 communities are very similar (although I've not seen a joke guild with quite as good a name as <and two stealthed rogues>).

I think it is. I think guilds on RP servers can either be hugely important social groupings for people (I've been in the same guild with one name change since release), or entirely trashy throwaway devices that let you put amusing and sometimes witty remarks under your name (<floorwarmers incorporated> is my favourite on ER at the moment).

In the former case, the effects of people leaving can be quite dramatic. Way back, not that long after EU release, and just at the point where there were enough level 60's around to start raiding seriously on our server, the currently most progressed Naxx guild on Earthen Ring formed.

I remember the absolute HOWLS of outrage that came up from members of the smaller guilds when their two or three level 60 players were "poached" to join that raid guild. There were literally people who refused to talk to former guildies who they felt had betrayed them and their original guild. Even to this day, now approaching two years on, there are people who look down on that guild because of how they formed and because what sticks in the memory is how some of their guildies left them to join a 'non RP focused' guild. It's really quite bizarre to observe sometimes!

*waves at Googles and Darchrys* :)

It's true that there are a lot of raid groups on Earthen Ring (EU), it seems to be a RP thing. On RP servers people are into guilds for roleplaying reasons which are formed when they're leveling (I used to be in an undead only guild that fought for reclaiming land for example). Usually those who play on RP servers wants... RP :) to a varying degree.

I'm now in a raid guild (the old raid group folded) and RP mostly with alts every now and then, I used to be in a raid group that cleared the whole of BWL and had started at AQ40 (we had a bumpy ride with starting over in MC because of various reasons, hence why we were so behind). There's really no difference between group and guild, except the different guild tags. We have the same organisation and progress as guilds. Guild is just a tag associated, it's not a requisite for raiding.

On the server (horde side) there was one guy that organised Naxxramas raids across raid groups. Most of our raid groups didn't focus on Naxx yet as we were busy in BWL & AQ40. Those of us who wanted progress and new content all the time signed up for his runs and it was a lot of fun. I agree with Googles above that it's not a PUG. PUG is standing around Orgrimmar saying "LF39M Naxx!".

Goggles damn it! I wear goggles, not multiple search engines! :D

The odd thing is that while it seems to be an RP server thing, very few people actually roleplay actively (me wearing goggles whenever I'm not in an instance is about the only concession to roleplaying that I make).

Even the Horde group that organised the cross raid group trips to Naxx could only partially be called a PUG. No dkp or anything as far as I saw but they did have forums (I've also got a character in PI(E) if you were wondering Tanoh). An impressive feat still to get Razuvious given the nature of the group.

Hehe. Sorry! :>

WoW isn't really suited for roleplaying, it's so static and well at this point I'm mostly playing on an RP server to get less mindless "lol", "k" etc.. I do however implant some quirks in all my chars, like my orc warrior is dumb as a brick (not something unique but fun to play at least), he always wears a cool hat when he's not tanking and never remembers names on people or even races. Things like that. Going around fulltime RP:ing is not something I'd want from WoW.

It's highly annoying seeing those that doesn't care one bit about RP though, I'd never do things in /say like "Oh the server is so lagged tonight" like random people in Orgrimmar does. I wonder, why are they on an RP server if they don't even try the least to refrain from such comments?


No DKP, but forums and you signed up for the raids. Which in my book is not a PUG. PUG is emphasise on the PU part (pick up), ie you pick them up as you go along or as you're about to login. If you signup in advance etc, you're not a PUG...

Oh, and did you raid? I was in some of the Horde groups adventures, but then my raid force started doing Naxx so I couldn't go anymore. :)


I assume you replied to Goggles and my discussion about ER (eu) horde group.. Why do you assume that those there sucks? It was people from other raid groups on the server that at the moment didn't do Naxxramas but certain players in those groups wanted to try it. So we all had good raid experience and adequate equipment. Not like we stood around in Orgrimmar "/2 LF29M Naxx! must be 60! whisp me plz!!!".

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if our hunters had no clue of what an aimed shot rotation was, and I'd consider us pretty hardcore. Its not the little details that define a guild. If anything, being hardcore is a guild mentality. My alt was in a slower progressing (around half a zone behind the top guilds of the server) guild for a couple of months back in the day, and the biggest difference I picked up was that they didn't really care if they killed a boss for the first time this week or next week. While we'd do everything in our power (granted its reasonable) to take him down ASAP. That usually leads to more time spent raiding newer, unbeaten content per week, which is probably one of the best ways to separate the "hardcore" from the "casual".


Also...

Does it really make you that mad that I missed a space? Seems like your loosing your mind over a typo. :(

It isn't. People hear the grinding of machine gears and start drama or jump ship. I do enjoy the social contract idea of guildhood, and I am thinking the analolgy can go a long way, since in either hypothetical or actual social contract theory the following characteristics emerge that one can see in guilds:

1. "Sovereign" placed above populace to rule, be it a President, GM, or King.
2. A chief good such as security, regular phat lootz, property, or human rights is protected by the institution. Maybe all at once. (That would be a special guild)
3. A "natural" state which occurs before the contract: Guildless. The game certainly does not ship with your character in a guild.
4. A concept of distributive justice, what WoW gamers would equate to a DKP or points-by system, although conceptions of justice vary (see: officer distribution)

This is an interesting point. In most of the raid groups I've seen on ER do not have defined leaders but are usually led by councils or similar. The raid guilds on the other hand tend to have more definitive leaders. In the group I'm in at the moment decisions are mainly made first with a forum discussion and when the possibly options have been defined, a poll is made to decide the matter. There is no defined leadership or even council as such. Raid leaders are voted in by polls too. It actually works surprisingly well although that's likely more down to the people than the system.

It's not the case on ER US, but raid groups/coalitions are certainly part of the landscape. I think it's precisely because RP servers see more social guilds; there's the motivation to guild up for RP reasons as opposed to game reasons, which you simply don't get on non-RP servers.

SASU is around 500 people right now, which I suspect is one of the bigger raid groups in WoW. If you're thinking it's unwieldy and probably a bit of a mess -- yep. It's way behind other cross-guild coalitions I'm aware of in terms of advancement, with no Naxx progression and only Skeram in AQ40. But that's because there's minimal screening in terms of membership and raid roster creation, not because it's a coalition.

There are a number of smaller coalitions on ER with varying degrees of success. I don't think any of them recruit outside the two or three guilds which comprise them.

I'm putting together a coalition created with progress in mind for BC; there won't be automatic membership for any particular guild, although there are a couple of guilds that'll be at the center of it. We'll see how it goes.

I've actually been writing an essay about the guild as a social contract. >_> Stop stealing my ideas! :)