So the ICC raid buff was released in today’s patch. Ugh. Too fast, too fast, too fast.

I HATE the new raid paradigm of making raids easier and pushing them out faster. It lessens the sense of accomplishment when you kill a new boss. I have written rants on this before, but WotLK has been all about messin’ with the middle-of-the-road guilds like mine. I can’t enjoy killing normal mode bosses, because it’s not “real”. And I can’t enjoy killing hard mode bosses, because we’ve already done 70% of the fight on normal mode, so it’s not “real” either. I bolded that because it really deserves emphasis. What exactly motivates me to keep raiding?

This system is just stressing out dedicated raiders, and most guild leaders I know are tearing out their hair. I feel under pressure to make us progress faster than ever before so we can “keep up”, and yet people are burning out and quitting faster than ever before because farming four versions of Jaraxxus each week (back when ToC was the top raid) is boring as hell.

Not to mention Blizz has completely screwed over guilds in so many ways in LK. I see so many posts that say, “Why should I bother getting a guild? I can pug raids and groups.” Even more so with this buff and the subsequent versions! (True, we can turn this buff off, but will most guildies approve? A quick straw poll this morning showed that most of my officers want to keep it, seeing as we’re “behind” and there’s no tangible benefit to removing the buff aside from some pride. Argh.)

Sorry, I know I’m ranting, but MAN this expansion has just made me really angry at WoW. Guilds are, I would argue, the number one source of player retention. How many people keep logging on for the people they play with, instead of logging on for the sheer joy of the game? I see folks say all the time that they would quit except for their friends online. And yet Blizzard seems pretty insistent on making running a moderate raiding guild as difficult and unpleasant as possible.

Stop rushing us, stop nerfing our team’s sense of accomplishment. Take your pity buff, Blizzard, and shove it up your collective bottoms.

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Guild Management, Raiding Ruminations, WotLK guildleading, raiding, rants

(Note: this is a rant. It is not meant to be a comprehensive look at an issue, or even-handed in the slightest. It is me feeling cranky and sorry for myself and venting.)

Dear Guild,

AUGH, where did you all go? Three weeks ago we had 35+ signups for Tuesday and Thursday raid nights, and this week we BARELY have 25, and that includes a totally excessive eight healers*. Here I was thinking that once the holidays were over we had at least four months of good solid raiding before the summer bullshit starts again, but I guess I was wrong.

Over the past five years I have had to just accept that occasionally a quarter of our core raid signups will disappear into the mist. And honestly, every time it becomes more and more difficult to be motivated to fill those spots. Why should I bother? People will just disappear again. And again. And again. It starts to feel a little infinite and depressing after a while.

This time it’s particularly painful because we were doing SO WELL. You are all pretty damn amazing players, when you’re actually THERE. At some point around the holidays we had a kickass raid group and we were .. not a world first guild, but we were going to be pretty dang competitive. It felt really good, like it was time for the casualcore nerds to shine! And now we’re back behind the pack, plinking at Professor Putricide.

My favorite part of this dance is a month from now when y’all come back from where ever you are and find the raid is partially staffed with New Guys. New Guys who are in YOUR spot. And man, quite a few of you will not be pleased about that, and then you will send me cranky PMs and I will make a very squinchy face when I read them. Finding new people is a lot of work. I have to advertise, respond to questions in-game and on the forums, conduct interviews, get feedback from our people, help the new dude get settled with rules and culture, analyze performance logs, and then conduct the Membership Discussion should they make it that far. By the time they’ve made it to their second or third raid with us, I am not very inclined to push them aside for the guy who disappeared without warning for a month.

Seriously, what does it take? We had progression, we have a pretty damn awesome guild culture, leadership with open door policies, limited time commitment (6-9 hours a week!). All I need is for people who said they would come on raids to.. actually come on raids. I’m not paid to do this, remember. I’m a volunteer, just like you. Sure, I get the benefits of being guild leader, but I also do a lot more work and am expected to care a lot more than anyone else. That’s fine, as long as I’m also getting what I want out of the game, and one of those things is progression raiding.

This morning, when faced with yet another round of real life events and apathy and frantic recruitment posts across the internet, I am not sure why I bother.

Love, Cranky Liore.

* Dear healers: you sign up for everything, and I love you for it. I wish we could kill new bosses routinely with 8 healers, because I would take you all on every run.

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As discussed previously, I am really picky about who I invite to the guild, and my methods are possibly equally mysterious. For me, gut instinct has the greatest weight in recruitment decisions, even more so than previous experience or gear or even application personality. If I think something is off, then 99% of the time that person is completely sunk for an invite. And if my gut is telling me that they’d be right

So given my fairly arbitrary recruitment standards (”Do they make Liore happy?”), it might be surprising that there are a few things someone can do to not even be considered as an applicant.

1. You have a stupid name.
“Stupid” is defined as borderline offensive, horribly misspelled, or with an excessive number of umlauts. Yes, this probably isn’t fair, but there you go. I am a big English Major elitist bastard, and I would be really sad to see “XxDeathNightxX” running around with my guild tag. It should be noted that really awesome people can overcome this barrier to entry. In fact, a long time ago I reluctantly invited a fellow who was amazingly nice but.. oh.. that name. He’s been a guild officer for at least a couple of years now, so I think it worked out in the long run. /grin

2. You ask me what our website URL is, or something that is obviously on the site.
All guild leaders like to think that their guild is a unique and special snowflake. It doesn’t matter if it’s a raiding guild or a leveling guild or a PVP guild or whatever, we all think ours is the best around (or we wouldn’t be running it, right?). I certainly don’t want or ask for obsequiousness from apps, but I do like to see a basic acknowledgment that you want to join MY guild in particular. This means you shouldn’t ask me what our website URL is, or any information that is plainly listed on the front page of said site. You want to know our web address? Go type “Machiavellis Cat” or even just “Liore” into Google. You do know the name of our guild, right?

3. Don’t immediately launch into an angry story about how you were mistreated in your old guild.
I like to assume that most guild leaders are reasonable sorts who mean well. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but there you go. If you introduce yourself to me with a tirade about how you were never invited on raids because of the stupid core clique, or how you left when you didn’t get a drop that you deserved, or whatever, I am probably going to wonder how much of it was your fault. Also, weird questions like, “Do you have attention-seeking girls in your guild? I hate those,” while possibly genuine, will likely induce concern on my part. (If you have been burned by guilds in the past and want to avoid that, try asking positive questions instead of ranting. “What is your raid roster policy?” or “Are initiates eligible for loot?”.)

4. I don’t care about your GearScore.
I really, really don’t. I’ve never installed the mod, and I never will install the mod. I even have no idea what the GearScores are for Liore or Lunedi. So when you start your app with, “Recruit me, I’m a 5100 DK,” it means absolutely nothing. Your collective item level doesn’t really tell me whether you can choose your gear intelligently, what previous raid experience you have, or what kind of person you are. It does tell me that you’re possibly one of THOSE guys who is absurdly fixated on numbers and inclined to be a jerk about it.

5. “App? I don’t like filling out apps. Can’t you just invite me?”
No.

Most of this stuff is common sense, and I’m sure some of it is more important to me than to other guild leaders. Be polite, be genuine, and remember that guild leaders are human and just as prone to snap first impressions as everyone else.

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Guild Management guildleading

So yesterday I wrote a little mini-manifesto to the guild, although I don’t think it was very shocking. It was just basically reminding people that 3.3 is here, and it was time to buckle down and knock this last raid instance out of the park.

The raiding in 3.2 was so terrible that I felt bad marching people through achievements and hard modes. I stood in that room three nights a week at least (25s and 10s), and even my infamously unlimited resources of guild cheerleadering were being taxed. It was pretty easy to just wipe out ToC, Ony, and VoA in 90 minutes and then tell everyone to go do something fun. Plus, some people don’t really dig achievements, and get a little shirty when they wipe for an hour to get some flashing lights and a noise that they don’t care about anyway. (Side note, but to those people I say, “Suck it up, buttercup.” You don’t like it, go talk to Blizz and tell them their new raiding paradigm is stupid.  Bosses don’t matter any more, per se. It’s all about achievements and hard modes. Personally, I like it.)

Anyway, previously the time requirement was a huge block to our competitive progress as a guild. As it stands now though the time demands of raiding are greatly diminished. After the holidays we will be raiding 9 hours a week (three nights at three hours) which should handily cover farming, progressing, and achievements. And no, server ranking isn’t everything, but it’s somewhat satisfying to see your guild name in lights, and it DOES help a lot with recruiting.

Without that time limitation, competitive progression relies upon player skill, teamwork, gear, and proper motivation from the gal upstairs… oh crap! That’s me! Hence the manifesto. So we started off our new achivement-happy stance by picking off “On A Boat” and “I’ve Gone and Made a Mess” on our second clear of ICC. The latter took a little strategy and a few wipes, and the former was chaos and madness and chanting “shootit shootit shootit shootit” at the cannoneers. The result of our little adventures?

Which, you know, doesn’t actually MEAN that much, except that we are a guild of determined spazzes with a rocket pack fixation. As a pally said, “WTF are other guilds doing right now? Underwater basketweaving?” All it took was a little motivation and 45 minutes of patience from the team, and we saw results unlike those we’ve ever seen before.

So to all you other ‘casualcore’ guilds out there: You don’t need time to be recognized as badass! This is kind of the dawn of our era. Knock that 3.2 lethargy out of your head, go forth, and achieve. As Newton — or was it Ghostcrawler? — said, a guild in motion tends to stay in motion.

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Achievements, Guild Management, Raiding Ruminations Achievements, guildleading, ICC, raiding

Well, okay, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here, but I started to feel a change in the wind last week and this week it seems to have fully arrived. We have at least 29 signups for every night this week, which means three viable rosters right out of the gate. We had 35 people sign up for Yogg-Saron night. 35!

And speaking of that giant hellbound head, we made some pretty sweet progress on him, finally, on Sunday. P1 just seemed to click for us, and suddenly we could complete it flawlessly. We had one tank at the top with most of the raid, getting the adds down to 40%. Then a rotating team of three tanks moved the adds down to Sara. Once in the middle, they were finished off by a group of four ranged DPS (and two healers to keep everyone alive.)

That same day we also had some attempts with 2 or 3 successful brainroom trips, and P2 really came together as more of a .. strategic chaos, at least. And we did it all with 24 people! Yogg feels doable now.

Every late May I start to feel anxious. I hate slow summers. To be honest, I didn’t know if I had it in me this year to keep the guild rolling again. It takes a lot of patience, encouragement, determination, and a group of really awesome understanding guildies. And I was probably more brutally frank with the guild this year than I’ve been in past summers. Anyway, some tips that helped me survive summer doldrums:

Nag and Cajole
I have the contact information of a lot of guildies, and I try not to abuse it. However, if I’m staring at 22 people online and am desperate for a tank, you’re getting a text message. I also send out PMs and IMs reminding people to sign up, and post nagging messages on the forum with lots of smiley faces.

Make the Most of Things
So my texted threats ammounted to naught, and I still have 22 people online staring at me when raid time rolls around. Try to not just cancel everything! People logged on, they arranged their schedules around this time, and you can still get some value for those 22 folks. Break into 10 mans and do achievements or get gear for newer raiders. Have you done Vault this week? Sarth 2D and 3D still have some fine gear drops! You don’t have to go the entire standard raid time, but do something, get some upgrades, and be upbeat about it. Part of my job is PR, whether I like it or not, which means I have to be positive to those online even when I’m cranky about attendance.

Threats and Hissy Fits
Use this category sparingly. In fact, I don’t think I used it at all until this year. However, there was a point at which I felt people needed to be reminded that running 3 raids a week and killing YS is pretty important to me (and to others). I got a little tyrannical, for me. First, I reminded people that I can keep filling raids through recruitment, but when everyone is back in Fall it’s the new recruits who were there all summer long who would get first dibs on “their” spots. Second, I instituted a “roster bonus” system where people who signed up and attended our least popular night (which was also YS night) would get first crack at the other two more loot-laden rosters. This was not a popular decision, and caused quite a bit of handwringing. It certainly got people’s attention focused on the attendance issue, though. I have a mandate to run a casualcore guild, and that is what I will do!

Other Stuff!
Recruit people, but not too many or else you’ll have 50 signups come winter. Play with your raid days — are they optimal for summer? Talk to your core crew and let them know how things are going, and what you’re doing to get the raid back on track.

All in all, know that things WILL get better. Your raid group may not be making any progress right now, and that’s okay. It’s summer, it happens. Just keep things rolling, keep people moving and talking, and eventually this too shall pass. I hope.

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Guild Management guildleading, raiding