I was thinking about the issues that have been present on my server, sargeras, with respect to end game raiding and attendence.

It occurred to me that on some encounters it would be really nice to be able to fill open raid spots with priests (patchwerk), warriors (4h), rogues (loatheb), etc. However, you dont want to take just any old person. At the same time, people are quitting their guilds, or at least high end raiding (see the consumables thread), in what seems to me to be record numbers.

Whereas the expansion will take off a lot of the pressure (people will want to play again, raid size limited to 25), there will almost certainly be times when your raid group is one or two spots short (pally/warr/priest/whatever) and could really use some help, and at the same time there will be a lot of experienced raiders who'd love to see end game content but without the commitment of a full guild membership.

I would suggest that there is probably a "market" for a guild that has no purpose except to provide "temp" and "temp to perm" type raiders to better the end game experience for all involved. This would only work, of course, if members of said <temp> guild were verified as having been end-game raiders in the past:

Pros for guilds:
- wouldnt have to over-recruit classes as much if they know they can get a couple good temps for the night
- via the guild tag, a certain level of expertise is assured (including the temp having consumables, enchanted gear, good spec, mods, vent, understanding what raiding is about)
- can try-before-buying raiders without a formal app process

Pros for <temp> guild:
- low maintenance guild management. No bank, no dkp, no vent, no worrying about too many of one class, etc. Just a roster online somewhere.
- ability for the grizzled vets to see end game content occasionally (and pick up loot that would be sharded)
- ability to experience a variety of guilds, and perhaps even join one if they want to get back into raiding.

Members of this guild would be accepted on a basis of vouchers by friends, and /gremoves would be done by guild votes.

Just some musings I had today while reading through a couple goodbye posts on our guild forums, thinking about what went wrong in some cases, what could have alleviated issues, etc.

Sounds similar to my grandiose plan to recruit every healer on server and extort every other guild into paying our fees to get healers for their raids.

Didn't work out as planned :*(

Probably because you were all feral specced. ;)

Anyways, the "temp" guild does work, having had personal experience with it. Another guild on our server stopped raiding and those that wanted to see KT die before expansion signed on to help fill out raids, with some of them keeping their old guild tag. Most of them didn't spend any dkp, those that did just picked up stuff on rot status and one of them got the Staff Head for his bird stick. However, Merc (I like that term better) guilds live and die by the strength of their reputation (and of course, the reputation of their members). If they pull something stupid (lolninja) or are just outright bad (shocking people on Thaddius or otherwise causing the raid to wipe), well... at that point I hope your own reputation is spotless.

That's awesome and all, but how will they get loot? I mean, if you need a healer for Naxxramas, there's a certain level of gear you need.

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.

hm, perhaps Kolenzo. However, if I didnt have a great guild, had some random T1/T2 stuff, and could "only" pick up AQ stuff that gets sharded, that seems to be acceptable to me as a tradeoff for not dealing with the expectations of being a full guildy. And we definitely have started sharding some Naxx loot. More importantly, however, is that such a group of raiders would (hopefully) be there for the experience and fun as much as, if not more than for, the loot itself.

I think that such a guild could exist, especially on higher population servers, but I'm unsure if something like that would be feasible on lower population servers. Unless the guild does some kind of organized activity, or the members enjoy playing with each other in PvP or non-raid content, I don't see the guild lasting very long. If there isn't a large demand for the members in raids, it will either become a place for alts, or it will die. Maybe a guild which is based on something like PvP or small instance groups, but forms partnerships with larger guilds to supply raid members would be a better idea.

Yes but that removes the "permanent" part from your temp guild.

At the moment their is a large supply of well geared and experienced people not commited to any particular guild and who wont need much further gearing up as blizzard is doing it through TBC and PVP awards. But that is hardly a long term solution and is more a artificial situation caused by TBC.

We have these people in our guild already. They're called "casual members". They can go PvP if they want to on raid nights, they can keep whatever attendance % they like, they can get an invite to the raid if we have space/need of their class and they can roll on any loot no-one else wants.

I would've definitely joined a guild like this if it existed on Mal'Ganis. I already kind of fall in to this position, with real life friends in a couple different guilds, I end up raiding with different guilds on different nights, and also end up filling in spots for organized PVP. I do end up running a lot more of the stuff that's on farm status (anywhere from zg to aq40 depending on the guild) and usually only pick up gear that no one wants. Although I've actually been able to accumulate a fair amount of DKP with one guild because they thought it was only fair, so I've been able to scoop some Hakkar loot, and the occasional idol, which is nice.

I actually went ahead and started my own guild recently, <dliuG> in recognition of the fact that while I was online most nights raiding or PVPing with some guild or another, I didn't really have "main raider" status with any of them. It's also something of a game theory experiment in a "leaderless" guild (www.dliug.com for more details). If it wasn't so close to the expansion, and the break it brings from raiding, I might've tried to set up <dliuG> as a temp (or mercenary) guild instead, I bet there might be a few other people in a similiar situation that would be interested.

I suspect once we get to level 70 and 25 man raids there will be less demand for something like this because it will be easier to organize the smaller raids, but definitely an interesting idea, and something that would benefit people who are feeling burnt out, regardless of level.

At the end of the day when you break it down people raid for loot, I can't see there being enough incentive for a temp guild to last.

I was thinking of something along these lines once as well, and thought it might be possible to have a Merc-Guild DKP account with the other guilds. So basically the merc guild gets DKP for what ever spot/raid they help on, and the members of the merc guild themselves are responsible of deciding who and when to spend the earnt DKP.

With a tightknit group of mercs, I could imagine this to work. Only problem I saw are raid IDs, so one guy can not join ZG with two different guilds in the 3 day cycle etc.

But many many raids be it Naxx or below are constantly cancelled due to not enough of the right class or people in general.

These mercs would have to be very good skilled people, since reputation would be of major importance.

If getting loot becomes your overriding concern, you join the guild and raid with them. A merc isn't going to be running around with the best gear in the game, the whole point is that you are not bound by the regular rules of a raider. For example, you don't have to maintain a certain level of attendance, which in itself is a huge thing. However, since you're not technically required to be at raids, you are not given priority in loot (i.e. you get rot status loot, so in order of priority you'll probably end up ahead of apps but behind any other member). You might not find incentive, but an experienced raider who can't raid full-time anymore might.

Thats pretty much how it works in my guild.

We have 25 80%'ers and like 50 20%'ers

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.