Our guild is quite large (>225 unique accounts with about 100 being active raiders) with several level 70 characters already. They decided to use Fixed Raid Teams for the end-game 25 man content to enable players to consistantly play together and progress as rapidly as possible. (each raid team having roughly 30 players) Currently they are considering allowing each raid team to maintain its own DKP system and bank also.

The reasoning for fixed teams is to ensure rapid PVE progression and the old method of using sign-ups (thereby constantly including new raiders via class rotations) would slow down progression. New teams would be created as more people reached (and attuned to) the end-game content.

Has anyone else ever used Fixed Raiding Teams? Were you successful? What were the downsides?

30 per 25-man team sounds like you're cutting it very close. I think it could work with 50 per team. We're probably just going with one group for 25-mans, but we don't have as many players as you.

We've always had fixed raiding teams. 25 man raids look like they will also be fixed. Only downsides were getting new people: you either have to persuade people to join for bench spots and rarely if ever actually get to raid if the mains have good attendance, or you have to scramble to fill a spot when a main quits and your bench is empty/absent. We were reasonably successful since release, although I've only been involved with the guild since Twin Emps. Killed everything between Twemps and Loatheb at about the same time as everyone else, spent too long on loatheb, had TBC/exams/holiday related lethargy set in around Sapphiron and never got past him.

The other downside I guess is that the people in the two 40 man raid groups we ran don't really interact much, and progress is very separate. But I expect this won't be the case with TBC raid teams, since the 25 man teams being formed will consist of people who already have long friendships with people in other groups from the 40 man days.

I suppose it depends very much on the people. In theory the 'first' team in a guild like the OPs will be the first people to reach 70 and show an interest in raiding - the hardcore of the guild, probably with 90% or more attendance, so it's unlikely you'd need more than ~30 people. Later teams might be comprised of slightly less hardcore players who may have sporadic real life commitments and can't be relied on to join every raid. Teams like that will obviously need more players than 30.

This is a slippery slope. Comprising raid teams this way gives a sense of "A team" and "B team".

I was in a guild like this for a little while. People from the "A team" wouldn't even group with people from the "B team" and world bosses like the green dragons? Hah! If at least 35 people from the so-called "A team" weren't online they would all say "Ok we can't do it, we don't have the people". Even if there were 50 people online at the time. In fact, they even called themselves the A team. "Not enough A team online". They wouldn't even attempt.

I was part of the "B team" and had significantly better knowledge of my mage than most of these "A team" mages.

It creates a rift in the guild that, in my opinion, is unavoidable.

Personally I do see a good number of guilds starting to split due to issues like this. A little while ago, probably the largest guild on lothar actually ended up splitting into 3 guilds because of the, I'm better than you attitude people on the A team have. If you manage to be a guild like goon squad and have multiple groups more power to you, but those guilds are few and far between.

I agree fully, I don't think I could be part of a guild using a system like that.

But you can't deny it's very likely the teams will be formed like that. It's unlikely hardcore players are going to want to sit around at 70 waiting for a load of other people to get to the cap so the guild can split players up into more 'even' teams before they can start raiding. I agree that forming more than 1 raid group is a recipe for disaster in a majority of cases.

I am no longer a raider but for a long time that was the only reason I played.

I led two raid guilds (poorly I might add, I'm too combative) but there seems to be very few ways other than luck to avoid guild rifts with fixed raid teams.

If you're lucky both teams will advance at close to the same rate (of course if you have a strong sense of loyalty and a lot of other things that people in the guild do together, other than raid, you can avoid it. A vast majority of guilds do not have this though and you're lucky if you're in a guild that does).

There seems to be a choice for raid leaders to make. Slow progression rates by rotating members between the two groups, or face the very large (nigh inevitable in my opinion) chance of the guild breaking because of egos.

Of course rotating members between teams faces its own hurdles. If progression becomes too slow people may get restless and move on.

There is one bigger problem I see though and it really affects rotating teams.

You need two sets of raid leaders/officers. Some people may just not trust or have confidence in one of those groups, while others think they are great.

I believe, though, that in the long run rotating team members between teams is a healthier option for a guild because the problems that may arise can be remedied much easier than the problems that will almost inevitably arise for fixed rosters. It's easier to switch out officers/raid leaders than it is ask A team member X whose been farming kelthuzad for a month to move to B team and help them learn spider wing so they can progress.

Interesting scenario. I am also concerned about applying the flip side of this equation. Both A and B want to raid on the same night (A doing BWL equivalent and B doing MC equivalent). Only 22 people for the A team show up and they then cherry-pick three key players from the B team to round out the A team. I am concerned this will hurt the chance of B team having a successful run of their instance, because I believe that naturally the B teamers would jump at a chance to go to the more advanced instance with the A team.

Is there any way this set up doesnt end in guild drama?

Perhaps if you had a rule that in the event one team had a surplus, and the other team was lacking, the short team could borrow members, but the team giving the members up would decide which members would raid help the other team out.

Having an A team and a B team ends in drama the majority of the time. How we handled two groupping is that the high attendance best geared people would be the "pioneer" group and would be part of the learning process of a new dungeon while the more casual players would have to sit out the majority of the time, and then once the place was clear we'd 2 group it with a good mix of the "best" players in each clearing group. This wasn't drama-free but it was less painful

Set raiding teams will be better than trying to force mix of casual gamers with hardcore gamers. You really can't worry about guild drama due to how raid group is made up. There will be drama in both scenarios. If you go with hardcore + casual raider then hardcore gamers will whine about how casual gamers are holding them back. If you go with 2 separate raid team made of hardcore and casual then casual gamers will whine about how other team is elitist jerks(no offence to EJ guild).

I rather go with hardcore raiding team so guild can make good progress in PvE contents. And later on that experience is trinkle down to casual gamers and all will benefit. Our guild had hardcore gamers run through MC way back when. When MC was on farm status we let casual gamers who are under geared joined. Same thing with BWL runs.

The problem I see it is with casual gamers. They want to only play and raid once or maybe twice a week. They will be behind gears, don't have good understanding of boss fights, and maybe lack the skills to play their classes well in raid groups. But they still want to experience end game contents as hardcore gamers and want same loots. You really can't expect hardcore gamers to help you hold your hand and help you get those purple loots. If you want to be part of end game raiding team then you need to put enough time and effort to become one

I think it would be far more accurate to say that the problem is with unrealistic expectations, either on the part of the time-limited players expecting bleeding-edge progress, or on the part of the guild leadership that expects bleeding-edge progress with time-limited personnel.

The trick is matching up the guild's goals, your personnel, and your personnel's goals.

Casual vs. Hardcore is really a totally separate issue.

Most of these guilds looking to continue raiding are now faced with having to make teams. The teams will consist of the people these guilds already had on their roster and were raiding 40 man content with.

In other words, if guilds were able to progress with 25 hardcore members who had 85% or better attendance and 15 more casual players who only had around 40% each they can keep that trend alive by matching up teams based on attendance with say 17 hardcore and 8 casual on each team. (Obviously these numbers are just for argument sake, you get the idea. I'm aware that 50 != 40).

They don't have to make one hardcore only team to continue their progression rate and I think that's a trap many guilds will fall into. It will completely alienate people who, until now, were able to raid and progress even though they did not play quite as much.

So do you risk your guild imploding because people get miffed at the A-team/B-team segragation or do you take progression a little bit slower and keep the guild alive to keep moving forward. Is it better to progress real fast up until Black Temple and then have the guild fall apart or progress a bit slower but in the end, still get to fight Illidan?

That's my take on the subject at least.

I really don't think advice on this subject is possible, except that as a guild leader, or officer group, the key is to communicate, be open to your members and especially to be clear on what you want to achieve as a guild. Ultimately, it is you (single or plural) who's leading the guild and it's your vision the members will follow - either that or they will leave or make you leave.

If you're in the process of making a decision, tell your members what you are deciding on, once you made the decision, tell your members why you made that decision. I've always found communication, or rather the lack thereof, to be the biggest source of unrest. Really, what the decision should be depends on way too many things for me, or for anyone else, to comment on. Does your guild have a history of quittings and recruiting sprees? How was your progress? Constant or with leaps? Is the core of your guild formed by ingame or real life friends? Does everyone even consider their comrades in arms to be friends? Has your guild recently merged or split off? The list goes on and each question ultimately affects the decision you want to make, fixed groups or open sign ups?

The way your guild is, or is going to be, setup sounds much alike a community. A group of players who share a common interest (Warcraft). Make sure you treat it as such then, by all means introduce competition between groups but do remind them that, with each group having their own dkp and even bank, you're a community, a group of groups sharing one green guild channel.

I'm going to repeat myself if I continue much more, what I'm trying to say is that the way you set up your raiding is equally important as making sure you have a reason to set up raiding as you do. If you are able to explain the situation, explain the reason for your decision, you will be succesful (at least, as succesful as you want). People may leave, but they will leave in peace because you will understand each other.

To answer your last few questions, for reference:

Pre-TBC, I was in a guild using more or less fixed raid teams. One for progression and after some time, the sign ups for the instance would open up completely. This group managed to kill up to Twin Emps and also down Razuvious. I don't want to go into too much detail about it, but I think that this setup was perfect for this group of people. With slightly different rules, we might have progressed further, with slightly different rules we might also have progressed less but have more people more equally equipped - in the end most people were satisfied with the situation.

What do people think of an AB/CD rotation system? Its something we've considered where you assign people to group A, B, C and D. Then you rotate through: AB raids together one week while CD raids together. Next week its AC and BD, then back to AB, CD and so on. The advantages should be fairly obvious (well, assuming you don't actually call the first group the A team :-): no single A team, you give people an opportunity to work together instead of running what amounts to two guilds under one name, you have an opportunity to cross-pollinate strategy and skills, etc. It avoids a situation where one team is 5 bosses into an instance while the other team is struggling to kill the first boss with the gap widening every week.