Out of the Ashes, a pheonix rose

So, been reading some other blog sites and there seems to be a reacurring theme when it comes to raiding and social guilds. Why is it so difficult?

Guilds are incredibly difficult animals to control, unless ofc you are in a hardcore raiding guild, players ideas and 'wants' from the game can be very difficult to merge in to a cohesive group where everyone is happy.

I'll start with my history in guilds and maybe along the way, some answers to questions may be found or at least some advice for those trying to keep everyone happy may be found.

I started playing in March 2008, and very quickly ended up in a 'leveling guild ' with my girlfriend called the Pandion Knights. This was a pure social guild, infact so social that several of those players from over 2 years ago are still my friends today. The PK were eventually swallowed up by Ashes Of Serenity in a guild merge, as Karlton the leader of PK had passed on the leadership to my girlfriend, and AOS was run by members of my family it seemed to make sense to join the 2 guilds together.

AOS was a casual Raiding RP guild. We had regular meetings, regular RP events and would raid Karazhan twice a week. In that guild I quickly made it to Officer level as I was running classic raids for the guild through vanilla material. Being an officer in a guild is good training for a political career and tbh most players will never know or understand how much work officers and leaders put in behind the scenes even when they are not on the game themselves.

In March 2009, My Girlfriend (GF) and I left and we set up our first guild of our own, Rebellion. The idea at the time was a social casual raiding guild that would progress through Naxx and be ready for Ulduar on release.

Back then recruitment was a case of spamming a macro in trade and inviting anyone who responded to the guild, we ended up with a very diverse group of members all wanting different things. Some had returned to join my GF and I whom had previously been in PK, one server transfered back to us after finding out we had set up the guild. His name was Meka, and he became our first raid leader. Like I said we were an odd bunch, thankfully it was pretty drama free and to aid that we enforced a policy of team work or you're out. (Many people have come unstuck by that little rule over the months!)

We raided Naxx with anyone online and anyone else we could get back then, it was fun and exciting doing things for the first time. We had plans for guild events and RP but never quite had enough people or the 'right' people around to really get things moving.

The problem with 'Social' is that people believe that they can log on if and when they want. Never come to meetings or raids and just use the guild as a social network to chat. This is a reoccuring issue in every guild outside of hardcore and one that we still struggle with today to a lesser extent.

4 months in to Rebellion we had 14 solid raiders in a guild of 50 people. The rest were just casuals who may or may not raid if they were around. Meka and I wanted to move in to harder content and through chance we teamed up with Forgotten Dawn for some raids. We hoped that we would be able to complete 25 mans with combined forces, alas that never happened. But we did end up guild merging, to form a new guild, Auroras Promise, with them which took the number of players in guild to close to 100! That was July 2009.

FD had some great players and to this day we still have 3 of the most awesome people in Peter, Joe and Grondyr. We had a competition and set up a new guild for both guilds and became Aurora's Promise. Sadly as always happens in life when things change, players tend to come and go and this was very much the case as people got to know each other.

We did however end up with a formidable 10 man raid team that not only knocked over Naxx10 and 25 (with some pugs) and cleared Uld up to Yogg. This era in Guild life was probably the best I have ever known, good players always on, always at raids. Socials stayed social and the raiders raided and socialised. Like I say one of the most happy times in guild life.

Meka then stepped down as raid leader as he was suffering burn out, and a couple of others took breaks too. At this point we had a former hardcore guild leader join us, he would lead us to some dizzy heights but with it the harmony in the guild began to crumble.

So our new hardcore raid leader got us to a Yogg kill on his first night! He is an amazing player, he knows every class inside out and to give him credit he did say that raid leading us might be something we would end up not liking. Hardcore raiding is very very different to casual raiding. For a while things were fine, we knocked down ToTC 10, we started knocking down Uld hardmodes, we were rading 4 - 5 nights a week. But as successful as we were, (and we made it to number 5 on the server in strict 10 man achievements) it slowly became less fun as we were insulted or yelled at when we made a mess of things. It all came to a head the night ICC was released and he left.

So Meka who had returned found himself raid leading again, and the guild found itself still growing with social members and alts but still struggling to get a solid 10 man out. We changed or recruitment ethos, now people would have to apply on the website to join and at least give us some information about themselves but still people get though in to the guild and all you're hopes of them raiding go to pot at the weekend when you trying to put together a run.

Then you get people who claim they didn't know about a raid, despite the guild website, calender, sign up procedure etc etc. We have players who might raid but don't sign up cos they want to make there mind up on the night. And ofc we still have a lot of socials who are the life blood of guild chat and heroic farming.

You see things more in a constant circular motion, between lots of socials not enough raiders to enough of both and then back again. The only thing that you can do is recruit raiders and make this clear in your recruitment process, this way you can build a team, keep the socials and everyone gets what they want. We also encourage people to pug25's as we only do one 25 man raid on a thursday night.

Unholy is our new raid leader and he's really nice guy, and works incredible hard behind the scenes. With him we finally cleared the 2nd wing in ICC last weekend, and move forward with continued confidence. He also has recruited 3 -4 raiders to help balance the raids needs with in the guild and now when someone is away there is someone there to replace them.

Its been a long road since we began, we are 2 months away from AP being a year old and we have accomplised more than many people expected. My final advice would be to decide how you measure you're guilds success, is it in boss kills or the strength and numbers of players. Ultimately this may well make up your mind on how to deal with the problems of trying to raid in a casual guild.

Tru