Keep on keepin on!

- Hawkwind

*hugs*

May you keep having fun killing big things with your friends as well!

We’ve had our ups and downs, people leaving or not being able to raid, but we’re hanging in there. Most of the leavers who had gone for raiding guilds have actually returned, because while they could get more raids, they found those guilds to be ‘cold’ and no fun. So they returned to us.

Roll on ‘casual’ guilds who raid! There should be more of us, the World of Warcraft would be a much more enjoyable place that way

I usually just lurk, but I’ve found these last few posts about managing raids in a casual guild so incredibly useful I thought I’d try to contribute my 2c :).

My guild is in a somewhat similar situation, we are mostly real life friends who happen to play wow and most of us want to see the raid content. Until very recently we didn’t actually have 10 members with level 80 toons and so we had to pug people to fill in the spots. This brought us both good and bad experiences, but since we always advertise the fact that we won’t be clearing it we usually manage to miss the real asshats.

recently we had 2 changes in rather quick succession. Basically for about 2 weeks we actually had the people to form up an all guild 10 man, it was great. now we’re down 2 members for the happiest possible reason (they just had a little girl, Yay).

So, after all that rambling, we’re back down to 8 people that can make it to raids. We talked about it as a guild and decided that rather than go through the hassle of pugging 2 more, we’re just 8 manning the content. it means that some fights, like patch, are basically off limits for us in the meantime. But these runs have been a pile of fun for us.

Long story short, you may want to consider modifying your Rule #2:

If we end up one short to fill a raid, and none of us have good, known friends online that can come join us, we won’t go.

to

If we end up one short to fill a raid, and none of us have good, known friends online that can come join us, we’ll just go 9 man it.

All the best and thank you very much for such a fun, informative and well written blog

It’s a statement in the SD’s guild charter, on the front blurb of the guild web site, it’s a philosophy that is lived.

eg: I was offtanking a SD guild Naxx run, my wife was at work, my daughter was on her computer, I had a 4 hour block of time to devote to the raid. Phone rings; the computer system at my wifes work was down with no fix in sight, she needs to be picked up. I quickly explain this in vent, and soz gtg, bbs (20-25 mins). The response was “If you have to go right now, then go man”. I run out of the instance so they could replace me and off I go to get wife rep (she lets me play this game way too much and I do what I can to keep her happy).
I get back 25 minutes later fully expecting to be out of the run, and wondering if anyone would need a hand in any group quests or something.
I’m still in the raid group, and there isn’t an 11th.
What they’d done, I guess, is down the boss we were at with 9 players (dual spec dps stepped into ot I assume), had cleared the next trash and were at Heigan.
(I suspect they left me in the group and waited at Heigen just to annoy me, as I really don’t like tanking that dance /lol)

Now what sort of self-respecting raiding guild would do that? (and I’m sure there were more than enough people on to have any number of choices to replace me).

You are right that the reluctance to bring pugs to raids might be frustrating if SD were a raiding guild with a “raid night” and expectations of what we would be doing on a particular night at a given time. But nobody in the guild sees it that way. It is rare these days that a scheduled raid doesn’t go ahead for want of numbers – not least because if it becomes clear that we don’t have numbers, it is no longer a scheduled raid and nobody is sitting outside the door of the raid waiting for people to be pugged. It is almost unthinkable that a confirmed raid wouldn’t go ahead because people don’t turn up – but from time to time people have RL issues come up. In those cases, if a quick guild call doesn’t earth up the required peeps, then the raid heads off to Onyxia or to farm mounts in some instance or other or to race two heroic teams against each other or just otherwise goof around having fun.

Some people might get frustrated and move on to other opportunities, which is great. Hopefully they find what they are after (ie more consistent raiding and progression) and we maintain our system where everyone can have opportunities to see content together and have fun at all levels of the game. Interestingly enough, those that see eye to eye with us on our guild’s ethos and have reluctantly chosen that it is not for them are often some of those same people Bear refers to on our friends lists who occasionally come along to stuff with us.

A 9/23 man raiding team with no bench is an alarm signal, isn’t it? that’s one major illness and a vacation to hawaii from 7, which is also known as not a raid at all. Benches are hardly the most stable things, so a reasonable flow of people that you can put up with sounds essential to any raid for weathering unavoidable attendance issues from time to time. People might put up with poor progression to be in a fun stable raid that they have a standing spot in, but I would be worried about expecting ANY raider to put up with no raid going on raid night. Maybe that’s just me, but you can’t be on the bench for a raid that doesn’t exist, and if you find you have spots you need to pug for, finding quality people for those is important if you want to still be raiding a couple months from now.

I Have done some very satisfying day time runs with guildies, be it quests or instances. We don’t have a
“You Must attend at least XY raids a week to remain in good standing” kind of rules. It is all about having
fun. Many of the newer SD’s have high level toons on other servers, but decided to try the SD way.
3B is picky about who comes here, which is a good thing. You won’t find some mindless 10yr old asking for a
summons for the instance run, directly from the PVP grounds, still in PVP gear, no pots, no FA, no gold for repair………

Seriously, with all the focus sites like MMO-Champion puts on who killed what first and how quickly, it’s easy to forget that there are a ton of players out there who have different goals. My guild is small and we’re still trying to find a balance between hanging out and working on fishing while also finding the time to go into Naxx and enjoy everything that grouping up with 10 people has to offer. Add to that challenge the additional challenge of finding 9 other players who are online at the same time, with a good, healthy attitude towards raiding, with the right raid composition and… well, forget clearing Algalon in one hour, that’s a pretty ‘hard core’ encounter, too, for some of us! :D

Thank you, BBB, for the additional perspective and thoughtful response. It’s always good to know that my guild isn’t the only one out there with these challenges!

I’ve been reading your blog for a long time, and last time you put out a call for recruitment my desktop computer was MIA. But looking through your Armory, you have around 80+ characters that are over level 70, so I can’t see that you would be looking for anyone else. But just figured I would ask.

Thank you for a great blog, its always been a great read no matter the content.