The Karazhan exchange program
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 10th 2007 at 11:30AM
Krystal is a guild leader over on Skywall, and she's got a cool idea for how to get all of her guildies geared up and knowledgeable about Karazhan-- a "Karazhan exchange program," where Team A (the veterans) trades a person with Team B (the newbies) every week, which gives both teams a chance to learn and show more about what they know with each other.It's an interesting thought, and I'm curious-- do a lot of guilds do this already? To tell the truth, I've been kind of absent from my guild's Karazhan runs lately, but from what I've heard, we pretty much keep things separate-- Team A has their progression, and Team B has theirs. But regularly mixing up the teams seems like a good plan. Sure, with one newb on Team A, their progression might slow a little bit (and there might be a little drama coming out of forcing a certain veteran onto Team B), but by switching things up, it seems that overall both teams will benefit, and especially when you're headed for a 25 man instance (where you'll need both teams and then some), that's an ideal situation.
What's your guild like? If you have two Karazhan teams, do you mix them up periodically, or does Team A stick to themselves, and make Team B learn the bosses on their own?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Instances, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Hollywood Ron Sep 10th 2007 11:42AM
After awhile, shouldn't someone have all the gear they'd want/need from Kara? Surely, after a few hundred runs, shouldn't someone already have pretty much everything they'd want?
Gungolf Sep 10th 2007 11:44AM
We have two groups and have completely different groups compositions every week. Both groups had parallel progression and are equal.
ashlov71 Sep 10th 2007 11:45AM
I try to balance my teams out. So far, it's worked out for me. I have 3 strong dps, 1 strong healer, 1 strong tank, and it works out fine for me.
Naitachal Sep 10th 2007 11:47AM
Sounds good. But I wonder - why should Team A be all veterans and Team B just newbs?
In our guild both teams were nearly equal and we just mixed the two teams on occasion, mainly to switch in 10 other people from our guild.
If you really do have a veteran team and a newb team, you should react immediately as otherwise you will face a horrible drama as soon as you want to give Gruul or Mag a try...
you will need 25 good guys for them, so you'd better mix up your teams and train the newbs appropriately.
Whats the sense of having 10 super guys together with 15 newbs? Gruul will eat your 10 veterans with pleasure...
CthulhuCalling Sep 10th 2007 11:48AM
We run two Kara teams in our guild. Team B just recently started and it's composed mostly of people who haven't been in Kara before, apart from myself and the other raid leader.
Team A has been going at it for a while, and has actually done a full clear.
We are swapping out a few veterans from Team A to lend some pewpew-ness to Team B, and putting some Team B players in on Team A runs to see how bosses are further in, and give them a chance to get some phat lewtz to use on other boss fights, since A has pretty much geared up.
The whole purpose is to get the maximum number of people geared, and experienced in raiding in the shortest amount of time so we can begin raiding, as a guild, on Gruul and SSC.
As it stands right now, Team B is progressing faster than A did, getting to Chess Event on our second day in Karazhan.
Rommon Sep 10th 2007 11:49AM
If your plans are to step up to 25 man content any sensable guild leader would divvy out the A team players at some point- usually after they are easily farming the content. You don't go into Gruul or Mag with 10 vets and 15 undergeared and inexperienced nubs.
A good guild leader will find a way to split up the teams with minimal backlash from guildmates.
Leshrac Sep 10th 2007 11:50AM
Why kill yourself raiding if after the first week LotLK is released all that loot is pretty much obsolete? Ok, maybe not a week since Kara epic loot will prolly beat lvl 80 blues, but still, why bother?
And prolly less then 3% of the guilds in WoW will ever see these uber dungeons, so why does Blizz neglect other game balance issues in favor of more dungeons?
I swear, once Rob Pardo left the WoW team its gone downhill - all Jeff Kaplan wants to do is create more PVE grinds and incredibly difficult dungeon instances.
WoW didn't get to 9 mill subs because ppl wanted to play these hardcore/grind PVE instances, prolly a large majority of that population played WoW because it was so accessible. But once those casual gamers see that none of this high end stuff is for them they lose interest.
I for one did Ony/MC for a year - I'm not going to spend 3-4 nights a week in a dungeon for nothing. PVE is static and once you learn the scripting of the events it becomes mechanical:
1 - Ony phase 1
2 - Ony phase 2
3 - Ony phase 3, here come the kins........
You could train a circus monkey to hit keys to do this shit.
I just PVP now, I'd rather vomit blood then run another 2-4 hour dungeon.
Urthona Sep 10th 2007 11:52AM
ORIGINALLY, when my guild was finally getting attuned and geared enough for raiding, I came up with a plan to get the best foot inside Kara, as well as dispel any resentment among the guild about team A versus team B elitism.
Basically, it was supposed to be an announcement that our best geared and skilled 10 players would enter Karazhan and learn the encounters. After Curator is on farm with the "Top Ten", the team splits into 2 fives and each recruits 5 more from the guild to replenish their team. Learn, Loot, Rinse and Repeat.
That system depended on firm communication and planning from the leadership, but the GM sat on his thumb. The priests gquit because Kara turned into first come first serve, and I followed shortly.
Four months later, the old guild is struggling with Moroes and Maiden.
Tridus Sep 10th 2007 11:52AM
Why have dedicated teams? We mix it up every week, letting everybody do Kara with everybody else at some point, so there is no "second best" team.
I think the person here has the right idea, but they're doing it to cope with a problem that doesn't have to exist in the first place.
PyroAmos Sep 10th 2007 11:52AM
this was a bigger issue when ppl first started running kara, before epics were buffed and it was hard. Most guilds made their A-Team to clear it, geared up the off tank and a couple healers, and made up their new team with them. With epics buffed the way they did though, and most everyone has kara experiance, theres not really many groups that would have trouble clearing it i think, unless your massivly unorganized, undisciplined and unskilled.
gwarf Sep 10th 2007 11:59AM
This is common sense guild leadership, do we really need an article for this? Any guild leader should know this by now
Lummox Sep 10th 2007 11:54AM
My old guild did this all of the time in the pre-tBC days. We ran two Molten Core squads for several months with our prime raiders also running BWL (we dropped MC1 to make room for AQ40, etc.), and all of our newer/less experienced players in MC2 as well as alts, friendly guilds who needed some guidance in how to run an MC, PUG, etc. Needless to say, we were a BIG guild in those days.
It was intended to give the newly 60 members an opportunity to raid while also having to learn the strats with some effort and not just easy mode let the pros walk us through it. People would inevitably get called up to MC1 to backfill when a normal raider couldn't attend (I ran the B-team as MT and raid leader, but was also an OT for the main raid squad, and this was quite an orchestration of roster management between two 40-man raids). For some classes rotations were essential to not waste loot as we were blessed with constant priest and hunter drops. Promotions to MC1 were common, but this started to be the downfall for the second raid as their best players would be seconded to the A squad leaving a gimped B team. Then the animosity starts growing when you cancel raids and they feel left out, the burnout sets in for the players running in both the main raid team who pushes through new content and carries the B-team as well, and the general guild frustration grows.
This very well might be easier with Kara as the team sizes are MUCH smaller and you would likely have more parity between teams. Heck, in my old guild if all things stayed the same (they clearly did not :), we would have faced the prospect of running like 7 Kara squads.
Ryan Sep 10th 2007 11:54AM
@7 Because that's the game. If you're just playing for loot, well you'll never get the 'best' loot because there will ALWAYS be something better coming out with the next patch.
I play to beat the encounters, or as Herm Edwards said, "You play to WIN THE GAME!!!".
Olaf Sep 10th 2007 11:55AM
Our guild does something similar to this. We usually do Kara in two nights. The first night we have a few of our veterans (tank, a dps and a healer or two) take newer people through Huntsman, moroes, maiden and opera. Then the next night we raid all the vets go through curator, aran, nightbane, netherspite chess and prince.
Stix Sep 14th 2007 3:47PM
Ya we'v been doing the same..
Except theres no A and B .. or 1 and 2 can lead to drama as stated..
so we have PeanutButter and Jelly
and when we combine for the 25 mans (much like captian planet)
Its PeanutButterJelly Time!
Leshrac Sep 10th 2007 12:19PM
@11 - but isn't it silly that we all read the guides for the dungeons, we have RL that know the instance inside and out, after several trips we know exactly what to expect - where is the element of surprise? How is it winning if you bang your head against a wall 10x, then finally "win" because you knew every little nuance?
I did maybe 3-4 Kara runs and I dropped out of my raid. I was watching the screen, hitting the same 3-5 keys and I was like "no damn way am I doing this again for 3-6 months".
Maybe if I hadn't been playing MMOGs since EQ day 1, or WoW since beta I'd have a little more tolerance for the grind, but at this point to be playing video games as long as I have and to not truly see anything innovative in these encounters is draining.
Karl Sep 10th 2007 12:21PM
Our guild does a Team A, Team B structure for Kara. Team A is our strong team with nothing but stronger players. Team B is made up of 1-2 stronger players and the rest are the newer Kara raiders. We try to keep our 1-2 stronger players on thier alts, so it isn't like slicing through with little effort. Most of our raiders are pretty good anyways, for a casual guild, so it comes pretty easy. People pick up quickly when the Team B leader is so experienced, and usually is our Off-Tank or Main Tank depending on the group makeup. It doesn't take a casual raiding guild long to gear up in Kara as long as people are willing to stick to a raid schedule.
Freehugz Sep 10th 2007 12:22PM
Any guild that runs one advanced group and one group with just new people will never progress. They will see the geared players getting frustrated with waiting for others to get geared up and gquit.
IcemanNorth Sep 10th 2007 12:23PM
My guild specifically created a new group every week.
We were a 40 man guild in Classic, thus had 2 group from the beginning. We didnt want to foster an A Team versus B Team mentality, so new groups were formed every week.
It worked very well. The guild had enough experience with raiding that learning the encounters was the only issue, and once that was done, both group were always relatively even in terms of bosses down.
First Kill of Nightbane actually occurred for each group within the same hour.
Overall people were happy. We did a lot of switching though, and later on with Kara on Farm. Prince loot became a minor contention, but that got worked out as well.
Still, you need good raid leaders to pull this off.
Epiny Sep 10th 2007 12:38PM
We usually have around 12-13 people on a night for Kara, small guild all RL friends. Our "vets" can 8 man most bosses and we can run 6 vets and 4 n00bs rather easily. We clear Kara in one night and have assisted another guild on Gruul's Lair once, since we don't have enough members to do it. I'm happy with our progression.