Ready Check: Breaking up is hard to do
by Michael Gray 
Dec 4th 2009 at 8:00PM
Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses.
It happens. It's a tale as old as Hogger. In the growth and progression of a raid group, there eventually comes a time where no amount of coaching or communication can possibly hold it together and keep it going. It's not even a matter of whether or not people are right or wrong, skilled or unskilled. It's just that when you put enough years behind a raid, the people who make up that raid can grow apart.
It sounds like a horrible break up letter doesn't it? "Look," the raid leader says. "It's not you. It's us. We want different things. I think it's best if we go and raid with different people. You know. As a trial. See how it goes." And then all of a sudden, half the existing raid group has suddenly swapped off to a different server, and the other half is left to wonder what the heck happened.
Why it happens.
If you scan Guildwatch or the Officer's Quarters, you'll see a few hundred reasons why raid groups split. There's almost always some kind of hurt feelings, and I would actually be surprised if those hurt feelings weren't in some way justified. We are talking about human beings on the other side of the computer screen, and those people get invested in the characters, the raid, and in progression. Having something shake that up kind of sucks.
Usually, raids split up because people want different things. (How's that for a vague statement?) Things that people may want (you know, differently) could include progression, raid styles, and even factions. Maybe I want a formal, well-organized raid that runs with military precision. Maybe you want a friendly, chillaxed raid where everyone's joking about politics and sports. Maybe I want raids where we bootstrap characters into PvP readiness, and then ignore progression in the face of upcoming Arena seasons.
So, you start off wanting different things, and someone's goal doesn't get met. This isn't a pejorative thing; people grow apart, people change. Not every goal can be logged into a spreadsheet, categorized, and obtained. Some goals are as simple as "casually have fun," and then happen or don't happen according to whim.
Stack enough of this kind of thing up between multiple people, and eventually a raid decides to split into two or more groups.
When it happens.
I have absolutely no proof, but I've heard it said that raid split-ups tend to be fast. Anecdotally, I feel like that's true. Someone says something off-hand on Monday, it builds a little steam on Tuesday, and by Tuesday night, the group has split apart. Sometimes it can happen even faster, if a specific, acute situation is driving the break. It could be slower, if an agitator or leader is trying to follow a new plan.
In the raid split ups that I've seen, one group of people feels like "this has been coming for a while." The other group of people feels like "this happened all at once." I think raid leaders should pay a lot of attention to the disparity in those statements, and ask themselves why such a problem went undiagnosed for so long. A significant raid split isn't going to be caused by something like loot rules.
Sure, a nice spot of drama will cause you to shed a few people. But a real, split down the middle raid break-up isn't going to happen because of a single Thunderfury drop. So, instead, something's been going on for a while, and somehow it managed to fly under the radar.
What now?
This is the single hardest part of a raid breakup. These massive splits are rarely equitable. Or, at least, they will almost never feel that way. One group or another will feel disadvantaged, like all the "best geared" folks, or all the good tanks, or all the available healers are now on the other side of the fence.
There's certainly a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that can plague a raid group after seeing half its members sweep away. "What do we do now?" is going to be the question on everyone's minds. Here are my suggestions if you ever find yourself in this regrettable situation:
1. Take stock immediately.
You need to find out who's still around, what roles they can fill, and start talking to folks right away. Get communication happening right now. Everyone's going to have a certain amount of panic and fear, and if you don't communicate that "we've got this," you could end up bleeding even more raiders.
2. Set up a meeting, a round-table.
Again, try and get that fear everyone's feeling under control. Don't let communication between remaining raid members happen solely in whispers and private emails. Everyone's got to know that a new round of raiding is about to happen, and now is the time for you all to take control of your own destiny.
3. Check your roles.
This is nitty gritty time. If your new raid leaders (or same raid leaders with new people) are going to push forward with any raiding effort, you need to know your assets. Check out how many healers, tanks, and replenishments you have for your raid. Are all of these three basic roles sufficiently covered? If so, then you can begin diagnosing whether you have sufficient DPS.
It might surprise you who starts coming out of the woodwork when this kind of traumatic issue happens. People will step up in ways you never could have expected; they never had to worry about tanking or leading before. Now that everyone's personal initiative will be the make-or-break point for the raid, they're (hopefully) going to shine.
You need to make sure you have people interested in healing and tanking. Not to malign DPS, but they tend to be the easiest role to pick up and train. Getting heals and tanks tends to be the lion's share of the pleas in the LFG channel. Get on top of that right away, or you'll be dead in the water.
4. DPS is what kills the boss.
Now that you have heals and tanks under control, you're starting to get viable. But the best heals in the world aren't going to kill the boss; get your DPS into a competitive, high performance mode. I just bring this up because it can be an easy thing to overlook when you're trying to rebuild a raid from the ground up.
5. Keep the faith.
Stay strong, folks. I know this can be a very scary time for people who just lost a lot of comrades. But you're going to be able to pick up and move on. People are creating brand new raiding efforts every day, sometimes with nothing more than a tabard and a bank. If they can do it, so can you -- especially since you still have the benefit of an existing raid format.
Ready Check is here to provide you all the information and discussion you need to bring your raiding to the next level. Check us out weekly to learn the strategies, bosses, and encounters that make end-game raiding so much fun. Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Felipe Dec 4th 2009 8:10PM
*shocked*... So... raid = marriage... ? Holy ####### s####... I hope I never that to this point.
PBoy227 Dec 4th 2009 8:37PM
Raid = Team.
You don't have to remember the anniversary.
Rai Dec 4th 2009 8:26PM
One of the saddest things about raidleading is seeing people come and go. Go when they're good, come when they're DPSing in tank gear.
Kaz Dec 4th 2009 8:33PM
I've seen guild splits before. Mostly it was due to a few core raiders having their schedules suddenly incompatible with raid times (usually due to work or military commitments), that lead to raids being frequently canceled, and eventually a lot of people just /gquit (No use being in a raiding guild that can't raid). Sad, but amicable.
I've also seen guilds where the split was caused because some person (usually an annoying loud-mouth with feelings of entitlement) didn't get what they want from the officers and then gets their friends to /gquit with them. Its usually not enough to kill most guilds, but progression (especially hard-mode progression) has a way of screeching to a halt while new recruits get geared up and used to the strats.
For people in either of those situations, try to stick with your guild through tough times like these and help the new recruits out. The faster they get geared up and acclimated the faster your back on to your progression attempts.
Remember if you leave your guild you may lose all your DKP/Raid Priority/whatever, and will start at the bottom of your new guild. So toughing it out is usually the best option.
As a side note: I can't wait for Cataclysm and guild achievements. Might help guilds stick together and not split over petty things.
Bronwyn Dec 5th 2009 12:42AM
This. Please, if it's just one or two people- stick around. Help recruit. The mass exodus because a few core people disappeared is the nail in the coffin.
Knob Dec 5th 2009 2:51AM
Agreed, Guild Achievements will hopefully add some much-needed incentive for guilds to tough out the bad times rather than throw in the towel.
Zinn Dec 5th 2009 3:18AM
"I've also seen guilds where the split was caused because some person (usually an annoying loud-mouth with feelings of entitlement) didn't get what they want from the officers and then gets their friends to /gquit with them. Its usually not enough to kill most guilds, but progression (especially hard-mode progression) has a way of screeching to a halt while new recruits get geared up and used to the strats."
+1
Seen this too many times, even in a guild like mine where raid-drama is relatively low (at least I think so o.O). Not only that - the cut between those who wanna raid seriously in hardmodes and those who just wanna do it for funsies a little now and then is a tough one to work around. We want to promote those who raid regularly, but we're just not enough people to keep it steady and are most of the time forced to rely on the casuals to get a whole raid. Casuals who've most of the time haven't had the time or wants to gear for hardmodes. Ah well, it's still fun most of the time, suppose that's what matters :)
Valt Dec 4th 2009 8:38PM
Also somewhat applies to job-life I guess I can say that. If someone leaves all sudden it should almost always be matter of discuss in guilds (and job too..). They must had reason. If the reasons are not known you need to discuss about it from him/her or others.
Depending on guild. Huge guilds are always with couple "comes and goers" but if people from core team start to shake..
And yes, strong leadership also goes thro "hard to fill spots" times where someone might be forced into role X Y or D but if the leadership makes it rather enjoyable all goes well.
Clydtsdk-Rivendare Dec 4th 2009 8:38PM
inb4 "DPS doesn't kill bosses, damage does"
Viper007Bond Dec 4th 2009 8:41PM
I've been through a few split ups and both times it was because group A felt group B was holding the guild back in terms of progression.
It all worked out in end (at least for me), but it sure is tough as it happens (losing friends, etc.).
Hal Dec 4th 2009 11:09PM
Sadly, I'm going through this right now. Our raid leader had to switch servers due to real life issues, and several of our best raiders left for the new server with him. Unfortunately, in the aftermath we've bled off a good deal of our raiders, and the fate of the guild seems to be up in the air.
Jeremy S. Dec 5th 2009 12:07AM
I'm pretty much a casual/crafter now, but I did a lot of raiding in the beginning.
I personally had no hard feelings but could feel them emenating from the other players.
We became fairly friendly over chat and voice and spent a lot of time together as people.
I felt it was something that just happens, but some of the others were a bit distraught and upset.
I really felt first hand what raid break up, that players talk about, is like.
It was a lot like this post, although for me personally, There was nothing for me to get over or come to terms with.
I did feel bad for the others taking it harder though.
mwahahaha10 Dec 5th 2009 12:20AM
From my experience, when guilds break down they tend to start the process slowly, either with a few long timers leaving for whatever reason or with some other sort of drama, but then eventually collapse rapidly. A lot of people don't tend to have much patience once people start leaving in droves.
I've seen a fair few cases of guilds in decline and admittedly I have been amongst the early leavers in some cases. The most recent for me was around the launch of 3.1 when Uldaur came out, but at the same time a handful of raiders had moved on in the weeks before. The guild had been among the better horde guilds on the (somewhat new) server in the time of naxx, but few players had experienced much high end raiding before LK. The problem was that a lot of the members of the guild, and particularly those that had just been brought in, were not capable of progressing very far into uldaur. This irritated many of the more experienced members of the guild, me included.
Furthermore, there had been a pretty significant change in the guild's leadership, where another member and I had previously been part of a small group of officers, but had since been displaced for newer, more active but less experienced members who had "applied" for officerdom. This caused more tension with many members.
Eventually, when the remaining officers had decided to go back to naxx rather than the new and fresh raid that was uldaur I, along with a number of other members, got fed up (having farmed naxx for about 5 months) and /gquit. From what I could tell, it didn't go well for the guild from there, the gleader became inactive, more undergeared, underskilled people were recruited and within a few weeks the guild had stopped raiding.
While it might sound like it was somehow selfish of myself and the other people who left to leave and herald the fairly inevitable collapse of the guild, I see our position as defendable. Given that we had been senior members of the guild from the beginning, and were being severly limited by new members who had been recruited by a hostile group of officers, none of us were willing to waste time grinding naxx when we could be enjoying the vastly superior uldaur. Some guilds, it would seem, just end up in spots where they can't survive. WoW is just a game, after all; and if you're not having fun why keep playing?
Bronwyn Dec 5th 2009 12:48AM
I have to say I agree with this. Usually it'll be just a few people over a course of a few months, and then something will happen and suddenly there is mass exodus of players, and at that point it just gets worse and worse. Maybe your raid leader leaves, or maybe half the officers, or whatever. Then you're left with not enough people to even fill a 10-man, and one by one they /gquit because, well, they want to raid, and really, can you blame them? They stuck around that long, and they get credit, but at some point it becomes fairly obvious that you're not going to get raids off the ground.
And I'm so with you on the getting new people in thing; it really comes to a point where you just want to raid and progress and it's impossible to do that when you have to keep bringing in new people; each person has a different threshhold for how much Naxx (or Ulduar, whatever raid you're falling back to at this point) you can take- and every time someone else leaves, if you bring in a noob, it just makes matters worse.
Anyway, I'm one of the people who tends to stick around but I think in the future I won't do that. It's really stressful for me, personally, to find a raiding guild, because I don't want something that is super hardcore- I Just want a guild who gets things done. I'm competent, I stay out of the fire, I do my job. I want to raid with other people who do that- what I don't want is to raid every day of the week.
Sky Dec 5th 2009 1:13AM
cool story bro
Heuer Dec 5th 2009 12:14PM
When my guild split I just started running pugs.. Progressions got a LOT easier. At this point I am 5/5 toc 10, 4/5 toc 25 and 2/5 TOGC 10 with pugs almost every week. Before my guild split we were banging ourheads against hodir =\. I'm thinking of starting a guild called "What's a Guild?"
rkaliski Dec 5th 2009 2:49PM
I disagree totally about dps being the core. No matter how uber the dps if your tank dies quickly due to lack of gear then all you will get is dead healers. Yes you do need a minimum level of dps in order to beat enrage timers but your tank/healer corp are the key.
I ran with a guild that had the DPS is king idea. Yes on certain bosses you could burn them down, but boy it seemed we took a long time to learn any boss Bring a lot of druids to battle rez those mages and locks because they will pull agro.
Beyond the simple agro holding problem a well geared confident tank who keeps his head on vent goes a long way to making the raid feel confident they can kill this guy. If he keeps getting killed halfway through a boss fight time after time, guess what, your dps will try to go balls to the wall, pull agro and die faster. Nope you need someone as MT who knows how to tank and has the tools to do it.
High power DPS without a good tank/healer combo is like putting a fuel injected turbo powered racing engine into a Mini-Cooper. You may be able to keep it on the road, but boy will it be a rough ride.