25-man Difficulties

Due to real life issues, I've been away from raiding for a couple of weeks. My guild has gone on without me, the other officers taking over raid leading. Like many other guilds, we're experiencing a slump in attendance. Many of our raiders were absent this week, and last night, when I was finally able to be on and raid, we were short about ten people. People are busy with school, work, and end of summer vacations, or they're just bored and waiting on Wrath. We are, however, joining up with a "sister" guild to take down Vashj Sunday, if all goes as planned.

Now that Wrath is just a couple of months away, and I suppose because I've been away from the game, I've been doing some reflection. I've been thinking about the goals I've accomplished with my guild as a raid leader, and of the times we struggled. It feels as if I've had a long raiding career, and I can only hope not to repeat the mistakes I made in BC so my guild continues to accomplish and grow.

The guild leader of my guild created the guild with the intention at first of being small, and just a group of friends. But as they started to progress easily through Karazhan, they started to focus more on casual raiding, and that was when I was recruited. I had come from a small Kara guild where I was an officer, but I ended up leaving my original guild due to the immaturity of the other officers, and other issues. I clicked instantly with my current guild, and easily transitioned into another officer position.

As with my previous guild, I began initiating and leading Kara runs. The other guildies didn't mind at all, and even seemed to welcome it. By that time, I had raided Kara so many times, I could do the entire place with my eyes closed. But as we began to recruit more and more people, and more wanted to start raiding 25-mans, some difficulties began to arise. For one, I had never done a 25-man raid, and it's kind of difficult to lead people through something you do not know. Two, I didn't even raid before BC, so dealing with so many people at once was a bit overwhelming. I lacked confidence as a raid leader, and because I was leading the Kara raids, I felt under pressure to continue leading them.

As I became more familiar with the raids, the compositions we required, and whatnot, we experienced other difficulties. As a casual raiding guild, we only devote three nights a week to raiding, but for months we devoted two of those nights to Kara. Obviously, it's extremely difficult to progress through 25-man content, and as a guild, if you're only raiding them one night a week. If you're not progressing through content, it's also very difficult to successfully recruit. This was probably the biggest mistake we made as a guild, and one that gave me the most stress. We had too many people wanting to continue Kara, to get every single piece of gear they needed out of there, and then we had people who wanted to take their alts through, after they completely geared their main. And then there was a patched released, you know, the one that implemented badge drops, and that made it even more difficult for me to push the guild in the right direction.

We also had difficulties defining casual, and what it meant to us as a guild. We experienced attendance problems because most people wouldn't utilize our signup sheets, lacking a dkp system, there were no consequences. Many of our guildies, the guild leader, and officers had come from dkp system guilds, and were adamant about not enforcing one on our guild. So instead, we enforced no roll policies, no signup = no roll, and we started to use a mod, group calendar, so there was no excuse for forgetting to sign up. Lacking a dkp system, we also experienced some minor loot issues, and went from a free roll guild to more of a loot council, the other leaders and I having the final say on who got to roll on loot. Being a close guild, composed mainly of friends, we also failed to recruit often enough, unwilling to replace our friends who stopped showing up in hopes that they would return.

Then there's the problem of finding the balance between farm content and new content. Gearing up 25 people can be a bit tricky, you have to continue to progress while keeping gear flowing into the guild. Like Kara, we focused too much on continuing to kill certain bosses for gear, and some of those desiring more progression left. You have to accept that you'll not be able to get all the gear your guildies desire off of a boss, and continue pushing them on, so better gear starts flowing in. If you continue to do the same boss over and over again, people will get bored, leave, or not even show up. But then, if you don't do the boss enough, people will be lacking the gear needed to take the next down.

As I continue to write this, I can see where someone reading this would get the impression that my guild was plagued with problems, but we weren't, we were just learning to grow together. Transitioning from 10-man content to 25 man-content is just more difficult than it seems, and more people equal more problems. But we did work our problems out, and it was quite a journey along the way. We were a "late start" guild, we didn't start seriously raiding 25-man content until this spring, and I think we've progressed well as a guild, if not through content. These past few months we've recruited, gained some great guildies, lost a few not so great, and worked our way into SSC, TK, and Hyjal. We've taken advantage of other guilds who have stopped raiding completely, and picked up more of our friends.

And most of all, with the accomplishments we've made these past three months or so, I think many of my guildies have gained more confidence. We're friends who have fun together, but we also work well as a team, kicking boss butt, and taking their loot. Because we've done well despite our attendance issues recently, many of us have great plans for Wrath. And I think and hope, as a guild, many of us will stay together, and we'll be raiding our way more easily come the next expansion. Even with all the problems of bigger raids, I actually prefer them, I just can't fit all my Wow friends into 10 spots.