The unwritten rules of raiding
by Mike Schramm 
Jan 16th 2008 at 9:00PM
I really like this post over at Mystic Chicanery. Every guild, when raiding, has its own unwritten rules of play. You just know that by the end of your raid, the MT will be drunk, the priest will have died about five times, and if you insult the healers, you might or might not get healed. It's these little quirks that make raiding so much fun-- sure, the game is a good time, and downing bosses is definitely an achievement. But it's having fun with the people you're raiding with that make the game worth playing.So what are your guild's unwritten rules? I find that they usually revolve around people-- someone does something that gets them remembered, and then everyone knows the joke after that. Guildleaders tend to set a lot of the unwritten rules as well, since they're there at most of the raids anyway. And some of the rules just plain have to do with etiquette-- who belongs in group 1, who explains which fights, who runs the tasks of main looter and calls boss phases.
None of this stuff is programmed into the game, obviously, but of all the hundreds (and thousands) of guilds out there, each one, I'd bet, does things their own way.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
znast Jan 16th 2008 9:16PM
We used to run a secret game in MC... 200 gold to whoever blows up the guild/raidleader in the geddon fight...
sure it caused a few wipes.. but was definatly worth the laughs hehe
seamus Jan 16th 2008 9:20PM
Back when my old guild first started running Karazhan (and we still did the Animal boss), our Warlock would announce over Vent, "I'm going to Hellfire the spiders" and proceed to run into a pack of them and would invariably die as the healers desperately tried to keep up with the double whammy of the self-inflicted damage coupled with the immediate aggro of 7-8 mobs on a clothie.
Mainstay Jan 16th 2008 9:24PM
Huh, I need to start drinking more when I'm tanking during raids, that'd probably make all the wipes a lot more fun :D
Charlie Jan 16th 2008 9:39PM
Sacrificial Boomkin.
Our boomkin must die during pulls, or else we wont down the boss were working on.
Keylogger Jan 16th 2008 9:46PM
That's funny, I know of 3 separate guilds who purposely let their Boomkin die for good luck.
feadin Jan 16th 2008 9:54PM
lol... its our priest who has to die for us to get good loot
Siggy Jan 16th 2008 9:57PM
If the Retadin body pulls, then he has to sit in the corner.
If the Rogue makes a sarcastic remark, he gets DI'd.
Milktub Jan 16th 2008 9:59PM
I'm happy to have created one unwritten rule:
Claim to be dating the resto Shammy's mom.
BillDoor Jan 16th 2008 10:00PM
If you wear cloth, don't taunt someone who has a Misdirect.
BigBear Jan 16th 2008 10:04PM
Our guild has had a few different quirks over the years.
On progression nights, the ones where you might spend 3-4 hours wiping on one boss. After each wipe, we would all random 100 and the highest had to apologise for wiping the raid. Sorry would not do either. You had to give a reason as to why you wiped everyone. By the end of the night they got pretty creative and were a good way to relieve stress (and also meant that the often maligned healers wouldn;t be taking the brunt of the blame).
If there was a particular person to blame - usually because they did something stupid (the amount of times I have seen mages run forward to sheep their assigned add and blink into the middle of them is amazing) we had a special outfit that consisted of a white wedding dress (more or less) and a some grey hat we found that looks like a dunces cap. If you did something stupid you wore - and raided - in that outfit until someone else "earned" it from you
At one stage, one of the mages was constantly putting rank 1 AI on our rogue officer. This eventually drove him to scream out on vent to stop it - end result, every mage in the raid started casting AI on him.
I could go on but there is way to many to really mention. Such things include the normal drunken wipes/boss kills to someone putting on benny hill music over vent in phase 1 of razorgore to one of our members (who is the lead singer of a band) playing his guitar and singing inspiriational music to us while we raided. Its all the fun of being in an active guild where you treat each other like family.
stevens.ce Jan 16th 2008 11:07PM
Man, I wanna be in Big Bear's guild...
Erskine Jan 19th 2008 10:56PM
WTB Your Guildies, plz.
Cailleach Jan 16th 2008 10:07PM
I blame Nova. Actually, everyone blames Nova. He had this habit, see, of blinking INTO bosses prematurely instead of sheeping them. Moving his icons would so have helped.
For a long time in ZG, we'd have the DDD - designated dead dorf. Seemed like one of our dwarven raid members would get killed like.. 15 times a night. Oh, and berserkers and moonkin are evolutionary enemies - if they are both in the same instance, the zerker will go straight for the moonkin every time, even if the moonkin only insect swarms him.
blitzkrieg999 Jan 16th 2008 10:33PM
Thought nobody ever really points it out, our priest class is the first to die in almost every fight. Trash pulls, boss fights, doesn't matter... somehow, even if he's in the very back of the raid AFK, he will die before everyone else.
We also have a couple of Vent jokes (and I feel bad for the new members that weren't around for the inception of these). First was the originally-innocent-but-now-illicit command to "pack it in tight" from our old raid leader for the supression room in BWL. During the same era, we had a warrior named Noct who died a lot, leading to another originally-innocent request to "Get Noct up".
Aichon Jan 16th 2008 11:17PM
I remember back in ZG one of our Rogues died on the exploding bats when we were first learning the place. Eventually he figured out how to survive, so our tanks started dragging them to him. They could generally take him down at least once a raid. We also blamed everything on him, since he tended to die pretty often. Even though he's more or less dropped out of the game, there are still cries of "I blame Tophire" on Vent every time something happens.
Later on, a guild I was in ran PUG MC so that people who had never run it before could get a shot at some epics. There's a part on the wall behind Golemagg that will damage you like lava if you stand on it. We'd tell first-comers and newbies that it was a window and that you could see Ragnaros if you looked through it at the right angle. By the time they figured out that there was no angle to see him at, they were usually dead. We used to see how many people we could kill each night.
Greg Jan 16th 2008 10:43PM
In karazhan its our priest dying before a boss fight is good luck...In gruuls its me wiping the raid now cause the first attempt at gruul i pulled him by accident and killed everyone, but next attempt we downed him. So i cant wait to see who it will be in TK
Erika Jan 16th 2008 10:52PM
I havent had the chance to do kara yet but It seems that the only way we can kill the final boss with our secondary guild tank is when i die. And i have to step into the long hall in Mech while everybody is mana-ing up.
I like the idea of rolling to see who has to make up a reason why you wiped.
Jayus Jan 16th 2008 11:12PM
Whenever something goes wrong, about 5 people yell "It's Akantin's fault!", he's one of our hunters, one of the youngest in our guild, there is no maliciousness in it, but its a tradition now, and it takes it well, and even says "yep, my bad", even when its something like me DCing on a pull, leading to a wipe, or a healer walking into a pat.
Anathar Jan 16th 2008 11:30PM
For those of you who have XPerl or a like addon.. In our raids, it's common that when you get mind-controlled, that your "number of people targeting you" changes from 0 to 15 in a split second.. followed by a flurry of instant attacks. Hooray!
hoviboy Jan 16th 2008 11:48PM
before every boss pull, a warlock from my guild /yell "hey *insert_boss_name* we are going to kick your f**king ass" (in a more aggressive way of course ;) ).
usually when she forget to say it, we wipe :p (it may not be the true reason but hey)