You don't want to treat pugs like second class citizens, however. I think it might be a bit harsh to hold them to staying for the entire raid, while guild members can leave whenever they please. What if they have a serious issue they had to tend to? Like if they had to go to the emergency room or something? Would they not be allowed back?

You might be short-changing yourself some really decent raiders in this case.

My number #1 rule for raiding, which applies to both guildies and pugs: Don't be an idiot. Really, that's the only rule you need.

If someone gets a piece of loot and leaves immediately, it's pretty obvious where their head's at. If they say "baby crying" or "bleeding" we obviously wouldn't be jerks about it. Also, in most real emergencies, you don't bother to leave group and hearth. If there's time to leave group, there's time to give a responsible reason.

99% of the time, raidquit with no message means it's just someone being a greedy jerkface.

"guild members can leave whenever they please"

Did I say that?

Guild members can leave, but they give a reason. It's expected of members and it's expected of pugs, simply because it's good manners. We care about that more than about skill.

Caring more about getting through a raid than how people treat each other is the antithesis of what we're about: http://wowfamilybusiness.blogspot.com/

I whole heartedly agree with this and have been working to get people to do this more on our server.

The biggest problem about adding pug people to a raid is how to give them loot while maintaining or using an existing loot system.

--> Looking for creative suggestions here please !!

For loot we use DKP. 1 dkp at beginning of raid, 1 dkp at end of raid.
Need items go to highest dkp and cost half of your dkp. Greed items get rolled for and cost 1 dkp. This works extremely well.

On top of this we use a ranking system. Trial --> member --> raider.

Raider requires attendence to 8 out of the last 10 raids. Attendence is being at the raid ready to go at start time, even if they dont end up getting selected.

Loot is done by rank first then dkp. So a raider needing beats a member needing.

This makes it attractive to people to attend raids to get to raider rank.

Summer is hard for guilds and guild masters. Here are my 2 constructive tips for guild masters. First, relax. The goal is to get more active raiders, not to start gkicking the guild members who havent shown up for a bit. Second, look at how you can fill the last few spots with friends of guild members etc. rather then cancelling raids.

Nothing annoys players more then turning up and having a 25 man raid cancelled because of having 22 people.

Happy raiding !!

We have specific Sunday 25-man runs and every other run of the week is 10-man unless we have enough signatures for 25. Also, consider breaking into 2 10-mans if your 25 doesn't get together. Just have rosters set up beforehand and let people know that's the backup plan (people get grouchy when they don't expect things to change and then they do). Even consider letting people bring alts. Everyone likes a fun alt run!

For the 25-man we have to pug, we don't use DKP. We have /rolls with a 2 loot minimum per person, no penalties.

Hierarchy of rolls:
/roll main spec
/roll off spec
/roll disenchant