Thursday, April 13, 2006

Postscript of a guild. Or?

It was bound to happen. The usual end-game guild on the edge of a meltdown, forced to respond to new conditions, unable to go forward wearing it's old clothes.

A "casual" guild meant too many had become too casual in their raiding. That's completely untenable. You can't be casual in showing up to raid Molten Core or Onyxia's Lair. "Ah, why bother with the sign-ups, I'll show up, if they got a spot, great, if not, meh, not a loss."

Enthusiasm goes a long way. In the heady early days where we first entered the Core and the Lair everyone wanted to come along. And they slowly got geared up, and then, what's the point? Better to sit a raid out, or three, to let other people get their phat lootz. Now it's a job. Now it's raiding to gear up other people. We're disenchanting Nightslayer gear now. We've got three Giantstalker Belts in the guild bank.

So attendance falters, the people that do show up have to work harder, to make up for a lack of people, or to make up for the lack of experience among the new people. And even the people willing to show up, their attitude changes. "Hey. Not 40? Let's call it and I can go PvP." Or "Oh. I just discovered I have a family. I can't raid past the 2nd boss. You understand."

The new plan is to create a hardcore Raiders only guild. (With alts too. Huh?) But the old guild won't go away, it'll house the casual players. (Casual *and* raider won't be in the same sentence anymore.)

Collectively this guild rocks. The skill of these players is incredible. I sincerely hope our reinventing ourselves finds us successful in Blackwing Lair shortly.

This is the "make or break" moment. I'm curious to see how it will go.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The guild that I'm a member of has been experiencing the same thing. We were going to blows on the forums over raid attendance on both sides of the argument. You've come to the correct conclusion. Casual and raiders dont' mix. Their objectives are generally at odds in the end-game. We resorted to changing DKP rules and started providing a few added incentive for regular raiders. I hope this works out for us. I was on the casual side of the debate. :-)

Good luck! Soon the xpac will be out and we'll all return to grinding for levels.

Kinless said...

:)

It seems the new Guild, with members of the former Guild, downed Ragnaros twice in a week. Our first and second times ever! It seems to be a good thing.

Anonymous said...

Same thing hapened in our guild, it's just that time of the year. We like to call ourselves "casual" end-game raiders. But what does that mean? I try to describe it as raiding 110% on those few days we have scheduled rather then 80% 7 days a week.

Youre right, you cant be casual with your enthusiasm. But I do believe you can be casual with the schedule.

Anonymous said...

Hmm.

I quite WoW due to having no time to raid... but now I'm really contemplating jumping back in - either when new Aussie servers pop up, or burning crusade hits (new areas for 1-20? YES PLEASE).

I guess the problem I have with raiding is the demands put upon everyone. Sometimes I don't want to play every Sunday night for 6 hours, ya know?

Anyway, great post. Your writing style is brilliant!

Kinless said...

Thanks. :)

Things turned out well. Or seem to be for now. A new post tomorrow.