would a permanent temp guild add value to your server? - Page 2

Evert · 12/20/06, 11:30 PM

A merc Guild would work much much much better with no instance reset timer. In fact it would probably work out as members of leading guilds selling their services to guilds that are progressing behind them.

Also A merc guild would proabably flourish only on a high pop, highly competitive server.

Kalman · 12/20/06, 11:58 PM

Originally Posted by Kolenzo

The problem there is that how much loot in nax is going to get sharded? Members of the merc guild would have no shot at any competitive loot, and while raiding to experience high end content is fun (if some KT guild invited me on a run while telling me i wouldn't get loot, i would take them up for sure), eventually they will have done the same thing over and over a few times and want some payment for it ie loot.

Meaning that all they will want to come is earlier runs like BWL and AQ40.

We've killed KT twice.

Everything but hat/legs/chest for war/rog tokens is on rot for us now. I think we *might* have one DPS warrior who'd like DN boots for his tanking set, but, meh.

Tokens go to rot *very* quickly. They may not be able to pick up weapons or trinkets, but if a pool of not dumb players were around that we could fill raids from, I can't see why they wouldn't be able to get enough T3 to be reasonably competitive as subs.

Eej · 12/21/06, 12:26 AM

Originally Posted by Ngita

Yes but its not a long term solution. Your in partial t1, You merc several guild in BWL. You pick up say two peices of t2.

3 month later those guilds are in aq40 and looking for mercs with say 50% t2 which you dont have.

I am not saying it doesnt work for individuals ,in the dieing days of bwl , we invited a non guilded warlock who runs with our pvp group and he went from 2/8 t1 to 5/8 t3 in 3 weeks.

But between that factor and cherrypicking ie "Wow this guy is good lets get him guilded with us" I doubt a "permanent" temp guild would survive.

MC->BWL is no longer really an applicable transition. Say you were brought to AQ40 by a Naxx farming guild, you could easily score 3 pieces, or maybe 5 pieces of Tier 2.5 just in one run. Then when you go to Naxx, you're probably going to pick up a few pieces of Tier 3 as well. As Kalman said, things go on rot status very quickly with the token system (which is a Good Thing™). Gearing to meet the demands of an instance won't be a huge problem, really.

As for the cherry-picking thing, there are two things that address that in the first post. First is that a Merc may not necessarily be able to commit to full time guild membership (i.e. doesn't want to raid regularly or schedule does not allow it). The other thing is that Merc guilds could be used as potential recruitment grounds (no formal app process), but without the commitment that being an actual recruit comes with.

Oaken · 12/21/06, 12:47 AM

Originally Posted by Kalman

Everything but hat/legs/chest for war/rog tokens is on rot for us now. I think we *might* have one DPS warrior who'd like DN boots for his tanking set, but, meh.

Tokens go to rot *very* quickly. They may not be able to pick up weapons or trinkets, but if a pool of not dumb players were around that we could fill raids from, I can't see why they wouldn't be able to get enough T3 to be reasonably competitive as subs.

What was Blizzard thinking when they split one token (Rogue/Warrior) between only two classes but made it the same drop rate as the other tokens? Important to gear your Warriors up first? Check. But was this the only way?

Zagzil · 12/21/06, 1:03 AM

Originally Posted by Oaken

What was Blizzard thinking when they split one token (Rogue/Warrior) between only two classes but made it the same drop rate as the other tokens? Important to gear your Warriors up first? Check. But was this the only way?

Warriors / Rogues were probably 1/3 of our raid force, if not more, so it worked out okay.

A permament temp guild would be great if it could actually work, the problem is if the 'temp' guild players were actually well-geared and good enough to be in a 40 man, they'd get recruited by somebody.

Also as far as rotting loot, I think we were up to 1 token slot on rot status after 4 KT kills, and after you're on "farm status" its a lot easier to flexible with your raid then progression nights, when you need temps.

Bekah · 12/21/06, 1:35 AM

Idea was tossed around by our guild many months ago to possibly start a sister casual guild or status for people who were family and friends or perhaps who just couldn't raid enough- we'd get to cherry pick the best of them for full guild membership and they'd have a nice shelter guild with a solid reputation and an acknowledged allegiance to one of the top guilds on server. There were a lot of convincing arguments for it, but when it boiled down- it takes a certain kind of mindset to be satisfied with always being the B team or brought on in case of emergency. Being relegated to the back seat isn't appealing for most folks. It generally leads to splinter guilds and dissatisfaction. All the sorts of things we simply don't want to deal with. Of course the biggest hangup for us was that a lot of the people in this sister guild would be family members or friends of questionable ability... and cherry picking people out of the sister guild one at a time, by it's very nature, would lead to the kind of "but I've been waiting for MONTHS and she was only here 2 weeks!" drama that I absolutely despise. Suddenly you've got a responsibility to people guilded in the sister guild who would never make it through an outright trial.

Best proceed with caution.

A few thoughts.

1) I don't think this kind of guild would survive on Skywall. As it stands we've imported anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of our current guild members from other servers. I love Skywall, but our population is hopelessly casual. I don't know how we manage to get queue'd on week nights- most people aren't raiding much past BWL that's for sure. the longer I play the fewerguilds I see who are progressing past ZG. We must have a million UBRS runs going.... We've got 4 Naxx guilds- the farthest is only 11 bosses in- next farthest is another 3-4 bosses behind. Rebirth is really considered an exception on our server. 6 day a week raiding? LOL. Crazy people with far too much time on their hands. Other servers have double the Naxx guilds and several guilds with large time commitments. Then again, this kind of solution would be perfect for us- a merc guild full of experienced people who only want rotting loot... Then again we'd probably spend half our time trying to convince the mercs to give up their merc ways and join us full time. Solid raiders with okay gear? Quick Ma, get your stun gun- we might have to beat this one senseless before it'll accept tagging.

I'm serious- if it's a solid raider with halfway decent gear on server it's either tagged within a week by Immix (the only top end guild that tags thier apps immediately, and damn them for it- makes it hard to convince people to wait out the 2-3 weeks of trails for our guild when they can get tagged RIGHT NOW by #2) or they're chilling out in front a Naxx waiting for a Rebirth/EU trial run... or they're waiting for their transfer off server because they've blackened their reputation so badly they can't get tagged. The only other exception are the rare folks who've retired from raiding or the night owls working to get into the only serious aussie raiding guild on server.

2) (and somewhat off topic, although it relates in general) I've never heard of other people mentioning Shelter guilds before- but it's a fairly common thing on Skywall. A guild that exists solely to shelter people apping with other guilds from guild invite spam or harassment from thier old guild or random guilds that see a highly geared toon. It really came to my attention the first time we managed to recruit a forum troll- who then had to find a shelter guild to get away from the dozens of guild invite offers while they had their (incredibly short for us) trial. We actually had to remove our requirement that all our apps be totally unguilded because we couldn't make half of our apps abandon their shelter guilds for 2-3 weeks. It was considered pretty cruel and we had to rush people through before they simply gave up. Do all servers have this kind of harassment problems? A transfer logs in to IF and by the end of the night the top guilds know their name, their gearing, which guild they intend to app to, and generally whether they're ebay'd or not. There's really not much room for free floaters atm- we've got the "hardcore" population to support 2 generously sized high end guilds and we seem to be trying to man 3-4 (depending on whether you count the aussies who have a very different recruitment pool) out of the warm bodies available.

Honestly with the kind of tiny barracuda pool of high end guilds on Skywall- I can't see a merc guild surviving more than 2-3 months before it's better members were siphoned off and it was left with whatever no one else wanted. =/

It'd be really convenient to ahve though.

Aphyrax · 12/21/06, 1:36 AM

The biggest sticky point is probably your requirement of a temp having a raid spec and bringing their own consumables. Those are arguably the least fun parts of raiding. If you are OK with those requirements then you can probably find a home in a raiding guild full time even if you do not raid that much.

Farming for consumables without the promise of loot is probably not going to be a big seller.

Aphyrax · 12/21/06, 1:40 AM

Originally Posted by Bekah

Do all servers have this kind of harassment problems?

From personal experience:

Step 1: Get an unguilded level 60 druid
Step 2: Spec tree form
Step 3: Pop tree form and nonstop healbot in BGs for a day
Step 4: Watch masses of guild invites from random servers roll in.

• Shalas · 12/21/06, 3:07 AM

Originally Posted by Bekah

2) (and somewhat off topic, although it relates in general) I've never heard of other people mentioning Shelter guilds before- but it's a fairly common thing on Skywall. A guild that exists solely to shelter people apping with other guilds from guild invite spam or harassment from thier old guild or random guilds that see a highly geared toon. It really came to my attention the first time we managed to recruit a forum troll- who then had to find a shelter guild to get away from the dozens of guild invite offers while they had their (incredibly short for us) trial. We actually had to remove our requirement that all our apps be totally unguilded because we couldn't make half of our apps abandon their shelter guilds for 2-3 weeks. It was considered pretty cruel and we had to rush people through before they simply gave up. Do all servers have this kind of harassment problems? A transfer logs in to IF and by the end of the night the top guilds know their name, their gearing, which guild they intend to app to, and generally whether they're ebay'd or not. There's really not much room for free floaters atm- we've got the "hardcore" population to support 2 generously sized high end guilds and we seem to be trying to man 3-4 (depending on whether you count the aussies who have a very different recruitment pool) out of the warm bodies available.

I'd never want to spend any more time untagged than nessesary. The last time I was untagged for more than a few minutes (due to the GL discovering that /gdisband != disband group), I had pretty much every raid guild on the server ask me if I was interested in joining -- despite a post on the realm forums where we made fun of the GL for his nubbery. When the guild later transfered off the server (with me not going with them), I had multiple people asking me if I was interested in joining thier guild, despite still being tagged.

When I transfered to Cenarius, I spent slightly under 2 minutes untagged in IF. During this time, four people asked me where I transfered from, and if I was looking for a guild. Cenarius is not a server lacking in raiders, with 16 alliance guilds that have killed a boss in Naxx, and I'd imagine it'd be worse on a server that was. As a result, I'd never app to a guild that requires I stay untagged for the duration of the app process (I was actually about to submit an app to a guild when I noticed they required that), as there's plenty of guilds that don't have that requirement. As someone who is not a bad player, not badly geared, and not terrible at writing, there's a huge number of guilds I could apply to with a decent chance of getting a trial (pretty much every alliance raid guild that needed priests and was on a US-PvE server (which would be 86 if there's one guild per server needing priests I'd want to be in)), there's no reason to app to the one that makes the process less pleasant, if I think they'd otherwise be equal.

Thelyna · 12/21/06, 3:43 AM

I spent a week or so untagged between guilds about 6 months back (so this is before the Naxx healer-feeding-frenzy and before server transfers), and in that time I got 16 distinct ginvite offers from guilds on server. Of which, approximately 4 actually knew me, rest were just "Unguilded paladin in half T2? grab it!".

@Bekah - have you considered making your own app/shelter guild? Sounds like the simplest solution to an arbitrary problem.

And back on-topic, I think with Malygos' current server population, a temp guild would get raided for decent members fairly quickly.

Bekah · 12/21/06, 5:54 AM

Originally Posted by Thelyna

I spent a week or so untagged between guilds about 6 months back (so this is before the Naxx healer-feeding-frenzy and before server transfers), and in that time I got 16 distinct ginvite offers from guilds on server. Of which, approximately 4 actually knew me, rest were just "Unguilded paladin in half T2? grab it!".

@Bekah - have you considered making your own app/shelter guild? Sounds like the simplest solution to an arbitrary problem.

And back on-topic, I think with Malygos' current server population, a temp guild would get raided for decent members fairly quickly.

Tossed around the idea and decided that it was simply more work than it was worth. With the limited number of high end raiding guilds on server pretty much any guild not raiding naxx/aq can be a shelter guild for our app process. If they're having problems we generally point them towards a few of the more well known ones with nice folks. Most either just sit through it untagged or go with a mom and pop guild for a week or three and help them out with MC/BWL strats.

I will say this, when our apps are done with trials I'm pretty certain that they're dead serious about wanting to join us, rather than any guild available. 2-3 (sometimes as much as 4 if we're having a bad month for app runs) weeks of being unguilded and taking the trials when they come is rough. Limits the app numbers a bit, but we do tend to get better quality.

Forgive my ignorance ^.^ I started when skywall was formed and at less than a month in- me and my level 38 druid play partner were courted heavily by DoN. Aside from the initial splinter off (it was a multi game clan that abandoned Skywall before we made it to raiding) from that guild to become Rebirth, I've never been unguilded at 60, much less with decent gear. =P

I like the idea of a merc guild- I think it would have to be very careful to keep a separate identity form the guilds that it contracts to. Reputation is a fickle thing, it'd be awful to have a bad rep reflected back on you from some asshat you contracted a few players out to though.

jano · 12/21/06, 6:56 AM

Leftovers is doing it (successfully!) since June 2nd, 2005: http://leftoversraiding.org/groupee

One thing that you may have noticed by now is that Leftovers is not traditional raiding "guild". There are NO requirements made of the members of Leftovers to do any of the following:
Leave Current guilds
Change to a specific Talent setup (respec.)
Undergo a "trial period" before getting loot
Sell your soul.

Except that for high end instances they use more stable groups called "strike teams":

Strike Teams are created every time that a group of public raiders reach a point where further progress in the tiered raiding setup that Blizzard uses discourages the dynamic grouping that public raids function under.

I give these guys an A+ in management for keeping alive such a raiding community. ^^

Lok · 12/21/06, 7:21 AM

One very solid idea is to form an alliance of guilds. The idea here is one big guild sponsors an alliance with a ruleset for raiding. They put signups on a web page, and agree to a sensible DKP system. Then what you do is play with a few other smaller guilds to get a sense of the quality of players that are there, and if it is up to par, offer their guildmaster an invitation to join the raiding alliance.

The beauty of this is you can retain the super high quality standard you set for your own guild and go about guild growth however you like, and still raid. If you have a problematic member of the alliance of guilds, you deal with it by either withdrawing the invitation or letting that guild deal with it.

There is a very large pool of small guilds which do not reach critical raiding mass, and people for one reason or another do not want to abandon those small guilds and get absorbed.

Nora · 12/21/06, 11:50 AM

We are using a merc/temp guild at the moment.

It first started out as a guild half-capable of farming MC. Sometimes they did it fast, sometimes they wiped stupidly. It was the usual scenario of about 15-20 comitted, mature and skilled players dragging a similar number through encounters. The slacers were loot-hungry, wipe-shy, didn't bring consumables, etc...

We offered the core people positions on our raids, one per class guaranteed in BWL and the others signing up where we had empty spots for AQ and Naxx.

(in the end, they collapsed due to drama, formed a non-raid capable guild and the deal continues. However, some people have left and are unguilded, we treat them the same as we treat the rest when it comes to priorities, etc... Trying to keep the lid on any drama and bruised egos is the hardest task at the moment but we are handling it)

It works pretty well, as long as you treat them well and nobody stirs up drama.

♦ Gid · 12/21/06, 12:22 PM

As has been touched on already in this thread I think that any mercenary player of the calibre/equipment necessary to successfully fill a place in a decent raiding guild would be offered at least a trialist position if not outright membership in some of the guilds they have helped out. Unless the shortage was a very temporary one or there were other special case circumstances surrounding it I can't see any guild passing on a good quality member that they have already seen can fit into their raids.