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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsOfficers' Quarters: Casual raiding that works
by Scott Andrews 
Apr 28th 2008 at 4:00PM
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
This is it, folks. This is the final column in my four-part feature about how to take your casual raids to the next level. For parts one, two, and three, click on the purple words with lines under them.
I've noticed in the comments under these features that a few people seem confused about the difference between casual and hardcore raiding. One reader from last week, Ger, put it best:
The point of "casual" is to concentrate on WoW being a fun game more than a chore, but if you want to raid then be prepared to take some dang responsibility and not be a liability to 9 or 24 other people.
That one made me laugh. It's a bit of an exaggeration, yes, but I like that definition. Let's recap what I talked about previously, and follow that up with some more suggestions.
Here are the six suggestions I've already covered:
- Find a committed raid leader.
- Develop a fair loot system.
- Communicate your plan.
- Hammer home the need for preparation.
- Foster an environment of accountability.
- Take both success and failure in stride.
7. Never stop recruiting.
Sometimes I envy the hardcore guilds. In some ways they have it easy. Whenever I see a recruitment notice from a hardcore guild, they usually say something like "BT guild needs one Shadow priest" or "T6 guild needs one Protection paladin and one Resto shaman." For my guild, our recruitment ads are more like this: "Recruiting: All classes and specs."
That's because hardcore guilds have far less turnover than we do. Casual raiding means striking a balance somewhere between having no rules and having too many. Some people will always want fewer rules and some people will always want more. Some people will think you're not progressing fast enough and some people will think that everything is happening too fast. Factor in all the real-life stuff that goes in with a little bit of poaching and the conclusion is inevitable: You're going to lose members.
So for most casual guilds, the day you stop recruiting is the day you start shrinking.
The hardcore guilds also have it easier in that they can much more easily predict who is going to sign up and show up for their raids. They can get by with 35 to 40 members. My guild has far more members than that and yet we still have trouble filling out 25 slots on some nights because no one is required to show up. So we're constantly on the lookout for new people.
8. Never stop training.
One of the burdens of a casual guild is this constant influx of new membership. Unless you're lucky enough to get people who have already run all the raids you're working on, you're going to have to help them learn the encounters.
You'll also have long-time members who are just getting into raiding, and old raiders who just haven't been pulling their weight. Giving up on your own members is not an option for me. We have experienced raiders who know their class inside and out. They might get sick of it, but it's up to them to show these inexperienced or ineffective members how to excel at their role. A casual guild needs every single person who raids to be a genuine contributor, and there's only one way to get them there: personal involvement.
Evaluating raid performance is critical. You can't offer someone the best possible advice without knowing what they're actually doing during each encounter. I've written a whole column about this already.
9. Never stop having fun.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that hardcore guilds don't have fun at all. They do. It's just that, well, casual raiding guilds are better at it. The vast majority of casual raiders are not going to be on the bleeding edge of content. We're not going to be the best-geared on the server. We're not getting any first kills, other than our own firsts. So having fun is the only way we can compete with those hardcore guilds. Fun is a casual raiding guild's #1 commodity.
I judge the success or failure of our raids largely by how much fun people had, not whether we actually made progress or not. Sure, it's nice to down a new boss or farm an entire instance without a wipe, but not if the raid leader is making everyone's night miserable.
Like most casual raiding guilds, we've lost a number of members over the years to more progressed guilds. And some of those people have gone on to be very successful as members of the top raiding guilds on the server. Others have come back. They aren't coming back for the loot, that's for sure. They come back because, as they say, "The game just wasn't fun anymore."
/salute
Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas, and suggestions at scott.andrews@weblogsinc.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters! For more WoW Insider coverage of raiding, see our raiding directory.Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Birdfall May 5th 2008 3:35PM
ShafeNutS --
It seems like you're getting burned out. Are you the only officer in your guild? Perhaps you should delegate some of the raid work to your other hardcore members. We have a small guild but we need 4 officers just to handle 25-mans.
Set aside specific time to "help people." If anyone has a 5-man quest or instance or something they really want help with, start doing it at the same time every week and refuse to do it the rest of the time.
It sounds like you really aren't having fun the way your guild is set up. If it's between you leaving your own guild or putting the work in to make it more fun for yourself and everyone else, I'd say put the work in. Keep everyone in the loop, and give everyone the chance for input, but lay it down that you're stressed and tired and you aren't having fun, so some things need to change before you end up quitting WoW. If your guildmates are really your friends, they'll help. If they aren't, they'll gquit, which isn't the end of the world.
Talk to people privately to prep them for the changes, too.
And good luck.
Gormane Apr 30th 2008 9:09AM
There are a lot of different shades, when it comes to mixing casual with raiding.
Our guild (Rising, Aggramar, EU) was formed to be a home to those people who are raiders at heart (meaning they want to see the game's raiding content), but cannot attend as many raid nights as your average "hardcore" raiding guild requires. Our goal is to experience and defeat all raid content - so we only accept excellent players as raiders.
This walk on the thin line has proven to be successful. We are currently at 4/5 MH and 7/9 BT, and I have no doubt we will continue this success and at some point even venture into Sunwell Plateau.
We have approximately 50 raiders, some of those more hardcore (attendance of 5 out of 5 raids per week), some rather casual (1 or 2 raids per week). It is this mix which allows us to be rather successful, I believe, because it enables the more casual raiders to learn from the more hardcore ones (a process which should be very much encouraged).
Regarding recruitment: It is a good idea to "scout" continuously for new players (in semi-pugs). However, we don't recruit constantly, we have periods when recruitment is closed. The success of our raids makes people want to raid, and they become unhappy if too many new players are recruited (which would lead to fewer raid spots per week). I found that struggling occasionally to fill the raid is the lesser evil, when compare to over-recruiting.
Gormane (GM of Rising)
splot Apr 30th 2008 7:43PM
The article hits it about right. The issue that I had with last raid I lead is that they said they were casual, tried to behave like they were serious and achieved neither. I used the "casual" raid style, didn't keep the more serious members. I used the serious raid style and the casuals who think they are serious disliked that they weren't the centre of the world. There isn't much of a middle ground.
I enjoy leading a casual raid that is treating each other's time respectfully. What I haven't enjoyed with the last raid is a minority of people not treating others with respect and consideration. Healers doing 50-100k damage on a boss fight where their healing targets die. Hybrids coming to raids without an off set and being unwilling to use one even if they had it. People not showing the least bit of interest in getting a talent spec that supports the raid rather than their ego. People complaining about injustices and slights that were able to be read as intended differently, and rather than dealing with that at the time, stewing over it for days or in some cases weeks. 5-10 minute ninja afks usually 2-3 after each boss fight or wipe and 1 at almost any point in the raid. People loot whoring and ego loot linking. Players who think they are better people than others because they have collected every single miniscule up through weight of hours played. DPS who show absolutely no consideration to threat, tanks, healers, keeping themselves alive and kill order. The lack of support within the raid by those who identified themselves as leaders within the raid. Having to replace all heal leadership with an addon because nobody would take responsibility and actually communicate with the healers consistently across the entire evening and week in week out. People not even bothering to pay any consideration to very simple direction.
What I've been told by the people who I've spoken with over the last 3-4 weeks has been quite enlightening. They told me they didn't leave because of me, as has been put forward by a small number of players, but because of the preferential treatment of that small number of players. That raid probably won't die unless somebody steps in and creates something that will directly compete. That something would have to be very careful that it meets the goals identified in the thread:
Find a committed raid leader.
Develop a fair loot system.
Communicate your plan.
Hammer home the need for preparation.
Foster an environment of accountability.
Take both success and failure in stride.
I thought I was committed enough, but I became disheartened and in the end bitter. Our legacy loot system sucked. I hope I was able to get people to know what I was intending. The raid as a whole wasn't interested in preparing. People refused to take responsibility for their own mistakes and lack of preparation. Just once I wish I had have looked at the item query or buff query tools and seen full buffs going into a boss fight or all players with the consumables they need at the start of the raid. People who play hybrids shouldn't be required to be asked to bring their off set let alone go and create one. Tanks shouldn't need to argue about the strat for 20 minutes before a fight. DPS should know the kill order and not split DPS. Healers should keep their target up, and not cross heal. People shouldn't need to be told to keep doing their primary role for a fight rather than deciding to do something else (eg. dps when they are cc).
Raid leadership isn't a democracy where every decision is voted on by a committee. It isn't a malevolent dictatorship, but a performance based role. It is an autocracy though, but the autocrat is able to be replaced. The culture of the raid is driven out of the leadership unless people set out to undermine that leadership to establish their own sub culture that clashes directly.
I won't be playing with the sub group of 5 for a long time. I find them all distasteful for different reasons. I'm seriously considering whether I should cross post this to the their forum with a link to the article. I've changed to a different raid now where I'm not a leader. They are another casual raid, and I simply show up and do what I'm asked.
As a side note, for 2 1/2 years I raided with a top 1000 ranked raid guild that was doing Naxx prior to BC and was clearing T5 3 months after BC. I rerolled to play with friends.