Hello druids,


I am sad :<
I am sad because I am raid leader in a struggling guild, I do my job to the best of my ability and we have excellent infrastructure in place, but we simply don't have the numbers to field 25 man instances.
We've had moderate success in TK and SSC in so far as we've figured out exactly how to kill Void Reaver and The Lurker Below, and we already have tanks for Hydross. But without a full 25 man raid I don't see how it's possible for us to actually make the kills.

It feels like I've been farming karazhan for nearly a year. The guild I'm in is full of real life friends, and I don't want to abandon them. However I do want to see late game content, and my burning desire to try to "be the best" at my game is being forcefully repressed.

I know of a couple of other guilds that would probably take me on instantly if I did decide to leave, and to be honest I really want to, but my (real life) friends would be mad at me and it would leave my old guild in serious turmoil.

So I feel dutybound to stay, even though I don't really want to. What do you druids think I should do? :|


-Annikk

In my guild we had the exact same problem.

2 solutions came to mind:
- We find ourselves a partner guild to fill our raids
- We create an external raid group, independent from the guild and find people willing to join that group.

We went with the second solution because it is more flexible. It was pretty easy to find people from guilds that do not raid 25-mans to join our group. The group is very success oriented and takes the whole raiding pressure out of the guild itself, which really improved the climate in within the guild.


If these solutions do not work for your guild, you can find such a group for yourself, to be able to raid without having to leave your guild.

Hope that helps you.

- We find ourselves a partner guild to fill our raids.

We do the same thing.

We also open up recruiting to everybody.

Take people in as much as you can, punt the dorks.

It's much better than being overly selective about your recruits. Just invite them in, if they suck, kick em out.

You'll typically find that out of every 10 people who join your guild, you'll find 2 or 3 that really mesh with your guild and you want to keep around.

Now if you partner up with another guild, you have to establish a couple things before raiding.

1. How Tier Tokens are handled. (In Gruul we usually have the 2 leaders from each guild roll for first choice of tokens, then they are distributed)
2. How many people each guild will bring to the raid.
3. Who leads the healers and does healing assignments.

Best thing to do is keep the pace up.

With 2 guilds downtime can be a big issue...just keep them moving and motivated and you'll be ok.

Good luck.

Cross-guild raiding and raiding with pickups are things we've looked at repeatedly but resolutely voted down every time. I alone don't have the authority to make such a change.

I found out today the recruitment officer hasn't been raiding or recruiting new members for the past 6 weeks because he is "levelling his warrior". And there was me thinking he had cancer or something..
./sigh
I am tired of this guild and I will keep repeating the reasons why until somebody just tells me what I want to hear. :P Humans do this sort of thing, so that they feel they have been persuaded, like sharing the guilt. But actually I already know fine well what I intend to do, and it would take something really big to change my mind now.



-Annikk (emo)

I completely hear you. Honestly I'm part of a raiding alliance and we can't get enough people together. Well not enough of the right people together. I'm actually a raid leader for one of the Kara runs and I'm always struggling to keep people motivated and moving in the right direction. There aren't enough healers to go around.... so we fight for them, we pray for them, but mostly we have to ask people to bring their healer alt because its either that or we don't go.

For me, I'm working on implementing some changes in our structure that will hopefully help, but its hard for most people to accept that raiding in BC is hard work. The days of MC are gone where 10 people were afk, on follow or whatever else they were doing. For me, its going to be one of three options:
1. I get the changes in place and we move forward.
2. I give up raiding entirely.
3. I move on to a larger raiding guild.

There aren't honestly many other options for me.

I feel you Annikk ... a few months ago I moved from my old guild into another thinking that I can get to more of the end game content and guess what? ... I ended up to where I was ... the same old drama. I have every loot from Kara ... for every form (Moonkin, cat, bear, tree) that I can use. But because we are always short of a 25-man ensemble as a guild we are stuck running Kara to death.

For a personal solution I hooked up with a RL friend and got lucky and he drags me along with his guild doing lower 25-mans, Gruul and Mag... which fulfills my t4 gear set.

All the options that you have mentioned has been proposed by many members but our officers are just not taking responsibility and making a decision that will benefit our guild.

Lately I have found taking my druid to just BGs and arenas so I wish you luck ...

Our guild is right about where you're at now, too. We're doing Gruul's now and trying to push into TK and SSC.

Our biggest problem right now is the number of people claiming things they need within Kara. To be honest, most of the items aren't much of a need, but people and loot -- go fig.

First off, you need to get the people and get people committed. Do you have a raid signup? If not, get one setup, too. That way you can schedule a raid. Then people can plan around that, if they are really serious about moving forward.

Next week, too, you'll be able to play with Zul'Amin. So, if all else fails, just start going into there.

I feel for you also, but in a different way. I was raid leader in a guild of people that I really liked, at least the "core" group, but we would try to get through Kara by walking people through the key process and then expect to be successful in Kara in sub-par gear. The ones with good gear would leave for bigger guilds and we'd start the recruiting process all over again. This last time it was me that left.

Now I'm in a guild that's much more successful. I'm seeing things that I would NEVER have seen in my old guild, but I also miss my old guild and my old friends. I hurt some feelings when I left, and I hate that, but I was just sick of the same old same old. I'm sure I'll get to know the new guild, but for now it still kinda smarts. Just make sure you're prepared for that before you upset your RL friends, because you can't ever take that back.

Wow, I wasn't expecting so many responses. It seems this is a pretty common rut to get stuck in.

ayhaps we should just all reroll in a new server and make an all-druid guild. Now _that_ would be awesome :D


-Annikk

We can't do that though...then our secret would be out.

We must keep the uberness of our class to a select few.

We don't want *everyone* rolling a Drood.

:D

Yeah, it is a run nearly everyone but the "hardcores" get stuck in.

You just have to make a decision on what your $15 a month is worth.

Do you want to experience end-game raids?
Do you want to run with a group of friends.


If you can find both, you have the Holy Grail of WoW.

We can't do that though...then our secret would be out.

We must keep the uberness of our class to a select few.

We don't want *everyone* rolling a Drood.

To cite Trixtaa:
"THEY'VE DISCOVERED OUR POWERS! QUICKLY, ROLL OVER AND PLAY DEAD!""

:D

I'm a guildmaster and raid leader for one of the rarest things you'll find... a raiding RP guild. >.>

We don't have enough to field 25-man content by ourselves, but we have formed a raiding alliance with folks we know from other guilds and have been having a great time.

So I would say.. if you want to stay with your guild, you might need to look outside it fro more raiders to join with you. If you're really unhappy with your guild and feel like you want to go elsewhere.. do that. Just know that those you leave behind will feel left behind no matter what you do. Some will keep in touch and remain friends regardless of guild tag. Others won't. You just have to decide what is more important to you.

Well, I guess it is my turn to chime in, and if you do a search here on the forums I think you'll find I posted something very similar about....18 months ago.

I started very casually, and slowly got hooked. Once I got to 60 I was intent on seeing some "other" stuff. My guildies ( we all met in game, and became close ) were content with leveling alts the moment their previous character dinged 60 ( or even before getting to 60 ). Frustrated, I went to pvp. And I started to do that, and only that. I began grouping with people with similar interests and was invited to their guild ( little did I know the drama that guild would contain *sigh* ). Unsure, I went back to my friends, the people I had leveled from 20+ to 60 with and talked to them about it. They told me to go. That I wanted more out of the game than could reasonably be provided by our guild and that as a guild we didn't have the time nor the man power to do anything beyond LBRS ( LOL @ remembering 10 manning that ).

So, I went on to PvP, eventually the PvP grind of the old system broke my PvP spirit ( and while I still enjoy it, I can only do so much before I must FLEE! ), I looked for a raiding guild. The GM of the PvP guild I had joined was none too happy went I left for a different aspect of the game, but *shrug* you can't please everyone.

TBC brought a lot of changes, and my gf ( at the time ) and I left for a different guild ( personal differences ). Leaving there, left many of the people I thought were friends, content with not speaking to me and took my leaving as a sign of I didn't want to associate with them anymore. *sigh*

I've since found another guild where I'm quite happy with the raiding ( it's done, but done lightly...we just killed HKM on our first night in Gruul's ^_^ ) and with the people. It just feels homey, much like my very first guild.

I am still friends with everyone from my very first guild, and we often talk in and out of game. My first raiding guild, I talk to very few people from there anymore, most have scattered of onto other servers now.

Hardcore raiding just wasn't for me. I was able to do it for a bit, but it just took too much out of me, just like the PvP grind. I now enjoy the game a lot more at a slower and more social pace. :)

I was in the same problem recently. Basically, attendance used to be good, but we were a third tier raid group on the server, so the better raids would 'farm' us for healers and dps occasionally.

Well, the raid leader got where you're at. Stuck at Lurker and VR. tanks were ready for hydross, we were trying a couple other bosses, but no real progress. Attendance was just ****. We were recruiting everyone and everything we could, but the quality coming in was generally poor and attendance never improved.

So, the raid leader made a capital decision and brought in another guild. This precipitated a huge fight among the officers, split the raid in half, half the raid left and it was the death of the raid group.

I received an offer from a second tier guild to get into face Kael'thas and Vashj. Can you guess what I did?

Since then, the drama in the new guild that came out of the split resulted in a total implosion while the remainder of the original raid group continues to muscle on, although only rarely having the players to enter the 25 man instances (maybe once a week).