Category Archives: Guild

Lately we’ve been having some problems with attendance in the guild, and for reasons beyond his control we’re missing one of our tanks. We don’t have a back-up tank (we barely manage to fill our raid team as it is), and so in the past I’ve jumped in on one of my tank characters on the odd occasion when we were missing one. However, one of our tanks has now been gone for a few weeks, and I’m finding myself having to raid on my Brewmaster Monk every raid.

This leaves my Warlock sitting alone and watching from the side lines. She’s been in to Throne of Thunder for the first kill on Jin’rokh, but that’s it. Every time since then, the Monk has had to step in since we’ve been short a tank. The latest bosses we’ve downed, my Warlock wasn’t there for.

I don’t mind jumping in on my tank now and then to help the guild out. If it’s between me tanking or us not raiding at all, naturally I’ll tank. That said, it’s getting a little bit much now that my Monk is actually getting more raid time than my Warlock. This leaves my Warlock behind on gear and progression, which isn’t nice for when she eventually can start raiding again. Because I could never take a piece of gear on an alt over a main character, my Monk isn’t really getting any gear either – and so I have two characters who are falling behind the rest of the raiding team.

Then there’s the question of dailies and Valor capping. Something I honestly don’t have the energy to do on two characters. The pressure I’ve felt (albeit only from myself since no one else expects me to), about this has more or less caused me to panic and in the end not capping on either character instead. Not the best solution!

Sadly there’s not much that can be done about it at this point. We’re not having any luck in recruitment at the moment, and I can’t simply say that I will play my Warlock and only my Warlock. If I do that, then until our second tank returns, there would be no raids. Which simply isn’t acceptable.

And so, at least for now, I am stuck on my Monk tanking. While my Warlock watches from afar.

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Being a mid-range guild progression wise we’ve always found recruitment to be a difficult task, but Cataclysm has possibly been the worst one. Our server doesn’t have a huge population, and so most raiders will join the higher end guilds, rather than ours or one of the others at our progression level. There tend to be too many guilds and too few active raiders.

Reading other blogs and forums, I see that other guilds struggle as well, and I’m curious about what most guilds struggle with role wise. For us, in Cataclysm we’ve mainly been lacking reliable tanks. We’ve had the same three healers throughout the entire expansion (with a fourth spot for rotation that’s had some turn-over), but we’ve switched tanks… I don’t even know how many times. Dps wise we’ve also had the same people, with a few extra on rotation that’s had some turn-over. But we’ve had at least five dps that have been reliable raiding members.

We now finally have a reliable tank who’s been with us for several months and is looking to stay with us in Mists. That said, we’re still missing an off-tank and I’ve been filling the role on my Death Knight and lately on my Paladin just to keep us raiding. When the expansion hits we may have to start looking for a new off-tank, since a lot of fights do require two tanks (especially early on).

In comparison, my friend’s horde guild had the same tanks almost the entire expansion. Healers were also fairly reliable, with just times when some couldn’t make it and so having a fourth on rotation was helpful. My brother’s guild (which is in the high-end raiding) had no problems with tanks either, but instead lacked healers.

This is a small pool to judge from, but it does seem to me that few guilds are lacking dps players, and are more likely to miss healers or tanks. I do wonder what the reason is. Are tanks and healers less fun to play? Or is it the stress of the role that get to people?

I personally enjoy both tanking and healing, but I will admit that I find them a lot more stressful than being dps. You still have a lot to do as a dps, but you making a mistake is less likely to wipe the raid. Most likely you’ll get yourself killed or your damage output will suffer, but the rest of the raid will still live. If you make a mistake as a tank people most often die. Same as a healer.

Has your guild lacked a certain role this expansion? And what do you think is the reason for the low amount of tanks and healers?

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Throughout most of Cataclysm I’ve been not only raiding on my Warlock, but also once a week with my friend’s guild on my Paladin. It’s been a lot of fun, but also a lot of work because she’s on a different server which means I haven’t had the support of my other characters in terms of gems, enchants and gold. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it though, getting to see the fights from a different perspective than a pure dps. When you heal a fight it’s almost like it’s a different one compared to when you dps.

It’s also been tiring though. Due to illnesses I’m not someone with lots of energy, and raiding the extra day (sometimes two) a week and doing the extra work to keep another character geared on another server has taken it’s toll. For that reason I’ve now decided that I won’t continue to raid with my friend’s guild. It’s sad, but necessary. They won’t miss me for the time being since their raiding is more or less stopped until the expansion it seems, and when it comes around I’d expect them to get new recruits.

My friend, whose guild I’ve been raiding with, isn’t going to continue playing in Mists. While I have grown fond of all the people in my horde guild, she was the main incentive for doing the extra work. With her gone, I simply don’t have it in me. There are several people out there among the bloggers that I know manage to raid with more than one guild, and I commend them. It’s a lot of extra work (at least for me), and can be quite tiresome.

It’s definitely been an interesting and rewarding experience though. The two guilds have been fairly close to one another when it comes to progression. This means that sometimes I have been able to down a boss in one guild and then come with suggestions to the other on how we did it. For most of Cataclysm my main guild was ahead, but we lost ground to the horde guild in Dragon Soul and they cleared it a week before us. We’ve since caught up again though and my main guild ended raiding with one more heroic boss down than the horde guild.

To be fair I’m quite tired in general at the moment, and I’m quite happy to take a part-time break from raiding. With no more raiding on the horde side, and raiding cut down to one day a week on alliance side I’m hoping to get some energy back. I want to have plenty of energy once Mists comes out, since there seems to be a lot to do!

I wish my horde guild all the best, and I’d have happily merged the two guilds together if I could. (Transfer costs aren’t really helping, not to mention I know several people who don’t want to be alliance, or who don’t want to be horde.)

Now I’m in the process of getting the money together to transfer my Paladin back to the alliance server. I’ve put too much work into her to want to leave her on a server where I don’t think I’ll be playing her. Bringing her “home” means that she can still join alt raids, or do heroic runs with guild mates.

Which brings me to my next decision… Should she be a draenei or a human? Draenei Paladin is something we need for the guild achievement, but I generally prefer humans. Then again, maybe I’d get used to the draenei. It’s a difficult decision. I don’t know about others, but how my character looks and feels means a great deal to me. So much that I deleted my 85 worgen Druid because I couldn’t stand her healing animations and re-leveled her as a night elf.

I’ve had two Paladins, and they’ve gone through a fair number of changes. Bringing this one back will mean I have to delete the other Paladin (which is fine cause I already had and was re-leveling her.. so she has nothing important on her person at the moment), and I’ll be back to having one Paladin. Now to decide which of her old incarnations will be her new one…

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Disclaimer: This is a rambling post which is just me writing down my current feelings. It’s not necessarily going to make a whole lot of sense, but sometimes writing about things make me feel better. 

You may have noticed that my content update is even worse than usual lately. The reason for this is that I’m struggling with finding things that I can write about. I still enjoy WoW and I’m logged in probably every day (even if some days it’s just for five minutes to check on the guild and read mail, scan the AH). I’m struggling though.

We’re having a hard time in my guild, and while it’s worse now than it’s been for quite some time I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve been fighting an up-hill battle for quite some time. Part of me wonders if I can deal with this for yet another expansion.

When coming back from the regular break around Christmas and New Year’s, we were less people than before. One of our tanks still hasn’t returned, and I suspect he won’t. Our other tank told us the other day that he is going to discontinue his subscription after this week. We lost another couple of members the past few weeks for various reasons as well.

This leaves me with a severely crippled raid team.

I keep recruiting people, but recruitment is slow and the people we’ve gotten hold of either has gone AWOL, aren’t active enough or have left again. Attendance is poor. I fully understand that people work night shifts, have families and what not – but sadly that doesn’t help our raid team progress.

I’m sitting here, looking at our sign-ups for the next raid. Six people accepted, a couple of tentatives. It’s just not doable. As much as I’d like to, I can’t suddenly drum up 2-4 new raid members. And it makes me tired. So very tired.

I also have this feeling, which I’m sure is a very unfair feeling, but I feel alone. I feel like I’m alone in this struggle. I’m sure the other Officers are working as hard as I am, worrying about it as much as I am.. But because we’re not talking about it, I feel like I’m the only one, even if I’m not.

Every time someone leaves the guild a small part of my desire to raid dies. Especially if it’s someone I’ve poured a lot of effort into talking to and trying to get things better. There are issues in my guild which need addressing, but it’s not things that will change overnight. People leaving due to those things I can understand, but it’s still a shame since we’ve not had the time to try to fix them.

Every time we have to cancel a raid because too few people signed up part of my desire to raid dies. I do my best to be there for every raid. We’ve cut our days down from three to two recently since for some reason Thursday just wasn’t working. Even with fewer days, we don’t seem to have the people available to get two raid nights going.

In the end, I’m just tired of the constant struggle. I pour so much into keeping things smooth and running, and yet it fails. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be happier not being an Officer, just one of the team. Let someone else worry about if we’ll raid or not.

What do you do to keep yourself going?

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Christmas and New Year’s, like summer, is a time when WoW slows down and your raiding will most likely be suspended for a couple of weeks, I know ours were. The key to a successful holiday period is planning and communication – from both the officers and guild members.

Both of the guilds that I’m a part of are starting to come to life again after the holidays, but are finding themselves staggering a bit as they’re trying to get back to full speed. Some members are noticeably absent even two weeks into the new year. A fair few are admittedly playing SW:ToR, some are claiming “family emergencies”, some are saying nothing at all.

What I would like to ask of anyone who plays a game together with other people who depend on them for completing tasks such as raiding is this; be honest. If you’re going to be playing another game, just say so. If you just want a break, say so. If you’re quitting, say so.

There will be no hard feelings, I just want to know so that I can know whether to start recruitment to replace you – or if you’ll be back next week. Not knowing what is going on puts your guild and guild mates in a bit of a bad situation. No one wants to over-recruit and then suddenly have an influx of people returning, and having to bench half a raid each night.

I discussed this with a fellow guild leader (from another guild) the other day, and they said that they had a fair number of people who claimed “family emergency” since SW:ToR came out. Usually of course you can’t know, and it may be completely honest, but in at least one case they knew for a fact it wasn’t true. The reason a lot of people will use the “family emergency”-excuse is because they don’t want to lose their raid spot in case they decide they didn’t like that other game and come back. No one will ever fault you for leaving due to “family emergency”.

(Obviously I’m not saying that no one has a legitimate “family emergency”, just that in this particular case there was a very large number happening at the same time SW:ToR was released.)

All I ask is for a bit of honesty. If not for me, then for the other 9 or 24 people that you play with. It’s completely all right for you to want to check out another game, but don’t keep everyone else on hold and possibly having to cancel raids while they’re waiting for you to make up your mind. They have to be allowed to move on, get a replacement, and keep raiding.

Have anyone else noticed a loss of people since SW:ToR or people just not coming back after the holiday season? How do you deal with it?

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A raid leader has a lot of responsibilities in a guild. They have to manage the raiding roster and invite list, read boss guides and device a strategy that will work for your particular group. Then of course there’s the actual leading of the raid which is no small task in its own.

In a raiding group you’re dependent on your raid leader doing all of those things, but there is one more thing that you may have forgotten. The raid leader sets the mood of the raid. If he/she is in a bad mood it will rub off on the group. If he/she is in a good mood it will also rub off on the group. Whatever mood you bring as a raid leader is most likely going to show in your group.

There are different styles of raid leading; you have the people who push and yell and you have the people who support and coach. Neither is right or wrong, you just have to figure out what works best for you as a raid leader and your raiding group.

What doesn’t work is bringing your bad mood into the raid.

I’m sorry, but if you had a shitty day at work or you’re in a bad mood for any reason – either find a way to set it aside for the raid or let someone else do the raid leading for the night. Having a raid leader who comes into the raid and immediately starts complaining or being rude isn’t helping anyone, all it does is aggravate the group and their performance will suffer.

If you act and sound like you’d rather not be there – and this goes for members as well – then maybe you shouldn’t be there.

Tonight our raid leader was in a bad mood. I couldn’t tell you why, but it rubbed off on everyone. In the end one of the raiders couldn’t handle it and blew up, leaving the raid. I don’t think that rage-quitting is the answer, because even if it may make your point – it leaves the other 8 people in the raid hanging.

Who’s fault is it? Well, I’d like to say both. Our raid leader should have left his bad mood at the door, but the member who quit shouldn’t have done so – but tried to discuss it instead. That said, it can be incredibly difficult discussing something with someone in a bad mood. In the end, we had a ruined raid which had to be cancelled only three bosses in because we had no replacement.

I think we all need to think about what kind of mood we bring to the raid, because this is not a single player game after all, but you’re raiding with another 9 or 24 people – and they most likely don’t deserve you taking your mood out on them. This goes for raid leaders, members and officers – it’s everyone responsibility to make a raid a pleasurable experience, but maybe the raid leader’s a little bit more.

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I think at one point we all ask ourselves why we raid, or why others raid. Is it because they want those shiny purples or is it because they like the challenge of beating new content? Perhaps a bit of both?

For me personally, I’ll admit that I like the purples. I think anyone who says they don’t care about gear isn’t being entirely honest. However, the gear isn’t a deciding factor for me. I love getting a new piece that I’ve worked for, but I love beating a new boss more.

In my Warlock’s guild we have a mentality of being kind to each other and passing loot if someone else needs it more. A lot of us will pass a second piece of loot if we already got one (except maybe if it’s a BiS – I think everyone gets a bit greedy about those).

In my alt’s Horde guild there is a similar pattern. I see a lot of the older members passing loot for each other, but they also have an enforced rule of only getting one piece then someone else should get one (unless no one else needs it). I quite like that rule, because I will admit that I often lose rolls on my Warlock.

I think a lot of people appreciate getting that new piece of gear, but I don’t think it should be your only reason to raid.

Do I have a story to share regarding this? Of course I do!

What caused me to think about this in the first place was an event that took place in my Horde guild. We had new recruits, a couple (can you already see where this is going?) who had joined a couple of weeks ago. They’d been in the guild maybe two weeks and were both still on Trial rank since they’d not been to more than two raids.

We had a long night planned after the 4.2 patch with going back for a final try on Nefarian (even if he is nerfed now) on a saved lock, after which we were going to go to BoT and if time try Firelands.

As a side note, I love raiding with my friend’s Horde guild on my Paladin. I’ve done all of the fights already on my Warlock so far (who knows, they might get ahead of us soon though if people don’t start showing for raids again), but it’s so much fun to see fights from a different perspective.

Back to my story though; we go in and we kill Nefarian on the second try. (Only reason we even failed on the first try was because the couple had not quite understood the tactics.)

The T11 head token dropped and the girlfriend rolled as well as a couple of other people in the guild. She won the roll, but because she’s a Trial the loot goes to a full member (a guild rule).

I personally think it’s a fair rule, because you never know if trials will stay or work out, and handing them loot (especially tier pieces) that full members need is a risky business. The couple however didn’t really agree, but didn’t kick up too much fuss about it.

We take a 5 minute break while people make their way to BoT. Just as we get inside and prepare to start the first pull the girlfriend says “I have to go eat, good luck with the raid”. At this point the raid has been not even one hour long, and we have another 2-3 hours to go, so obviously people are rather unhappy.

If you’re not going to be able to stay for a full raid, you’re supposed to say so beforehand. Obvious? I think so.

It’s also rather obvious that she hadn’t originally planned to leave early, but decided to do so when she didn’t get the loot she wanted. (And don’t misunderstand, it’s not like Trials don’t get any loot at all, they do – just not over full members, but even then full members are sometimes nice and pass for them.)

A couple of minutes later she puts a message in the guild chat that she has a new job and less time, and is losing interest in the game. So thanks and good bye. She /gquits.

A few minutes later, without saying anything, the boyfriend leaves the guild as well.

If she was really losing interest in the game, then she shouldn’t have rolled for a Tier token in the first place. But I will admit – I don’t think she lost interest until she didn’t get the loot.

There are a lot of things here that are a problem. People caring too much about loot, couples who leave together. I will admit though, I’ve heard about things like these – but this is the first time in my years of playing WoW that I’ve actually seen it first hand (both cases at once too, what are the odds!?).

I can see someone being upset if they’d not understood that full members had loot priority over trials, but to actually leave the guild over it? Ironically the officers had discussed promoting them before the next raid.

How important are purples to you?

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After my little rant about some of the problems we’re having in my guild I sat down and started to think about what I think is important in a guild – leadership and management wise. While I think there will always be some issues and problems in any guild, I think you can prevent at least the majority by having a good structure.

I find the idea of an officerless guild interesting, and I’m looking forward to see how it works out for Alas, Zel and their new guild. However, that’s not the way to go for everyone, and I know it would never be an option for my guild.

So what do I think is important for a guild to make it a good environment for everyone; members, officers, guild master and everyone else concerned?

Lay Down the Rules

Every guild needs to have clear and defined rules that dictate how situations should be handled. They should be as fair as you can make them, and put somewhere official like your site or forums where everyone can read them.

Rules I think are important (other than the obvious rules like treating everyone with respect) are ones that deal with:

• Who has priority on raid spots
• What happens if you’re late for a raid
• Who gets what loot (dkp, suicide kings, loot council, roll)
• What is expected of you as a member of the guild, by role in the guild
• The expectations on raiding members specifically, and how much attendance they need to meet the requirements of being a raiding member in the first place
• What happens when a raiding member suddenly don’t fill the previous requirements

And here’s the crux in some guilds; the rules apply to everyone equally.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an officer, if you can only attend 20% of the raids at any given time you should not get a raid spot! (Unless it’s listed in the rules, because then the members are at least aware, though I’d argue that’d be a really, really bad rule.) But if it says in the rules that you have to meet 75% attendance and yours is 50% on an average, you just can’t expect a raid spot, whether you’re a member or an officer.

Transparency in Decisions

There may be times when you make decisions that seem odd to the rest of the guild, or make an exception to a rule for someone for some reason. This is not something that should be done often, but if you are doing it, then make sure that you make it clear to everyone in the guild why you made the call.

You may be the Guild Leader Supreme with All The Power; but if you make decisions that the guild members don’t understand resentment may be born.

I’m not saying that you need the guild’s approval for every decision. There’s always going to be someone who doesn’t like something/doesn’t agree. My point is that there should be a transparency in guild leadership so that everyone knows what’s going on (then they can disagree or agree, but at least they’re in the loop and know the reasons behind why things are done).

Your Officers

I don’t think I can make my stand point on this any clearer, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; being an officer is not a perk, it’s a job!

You do not give someone the officer rank because they’ve “been in the guild for a long time”. Feel free to have another rank for that called Senior Member or Veteran (or Cuddle Bear, whatever you want really), but don’t flood your list of officers.

Keep the amount of officers to a decent level compared to the size of your guild. If you have a 10 man guild, even with social members making it twice that size or three times having your officer team make up 50% or more of the 10 man group seems redundant.

Officers should have duties, not honorary titles. If you’re an officer expect to pick up a few things to do in the guild, be it raid leading, managing website, dkp, loot management or recruitment. Don’t expect to just sit around and have opinions (though you should of course have opinions as well). That’s not what being an officer is about.

The “Us” and “Them” conundrum

I’ve discussed the issue of the “Us” and “Them” mentality in guilds before, and it’s something I think a guild should work against.

Yes, the raid leader has the final word in raids and in the end, whether we agree with them or not the guild master has the final say in guild matters. However, that doesn’t mean that people should be treated differently when it comes to the rules, and I think that’s what’s important.

I also think it would be wise to keep the Officer Chat/Channel (in-game/vent, ts) for actual officer discussions, such as discussing rules, raid management and other possible issues. I don’t think it should be used as a social spot for officers.

Not everyone wants to talk to everyone in the guild all the time, I understand this. In-game you can just ignore the guild chat, but on vent/ts it may be difficult to sit in a channel with lots of people who are chattering along. I have no problem with someone taking their refuge in the officer channel to get away from that, but if you’re having say four officers sitting chatting in the officer channel and six members sitting in the lounge it’s silly if you’re all just being social.

Keep the officer chat/channel to “official” business. For the rest use other forums like the guild chat, or one of the other rooms on vent/ts.

The “Us” and “Them” mentality of course also comes back to the previous points of everyone being treated equally. Don’t give Officers more leeway than you would any normal raiding member, that’s also going to build resentment and when it all comes down to it, it’s nothing but unfair.

What do you think is important in guild management/leadership?

Small note: Just to make it clear, in case anyone is uncertain – I’m not saying that my guild is failing in all these areas (we’re not quite that bad!), but this is rather a list of what I personally find important in a guild.

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