Guild life pre-Cataclysm: Surviving the end times
by Sarah Dunn 
May 15th 2010 at 2:00PM
Guild masters who haven't experienced the pre-expansion blues may find themselves overwhelmed with the task of keeping their once tight-knit community from turning into a ghost town. Some players may choose the months before an expansion to take an extended vacation from the game. Others may choose to focus on a favorite alt, and still others are chomping at the bit to farm the highest tier of raid content in order to complete their ideal gear sets. No doubt all three types of players are in your guild. How are you expected to funnel everyone's pre-expansion desires and expectations into group-friendly activities that keep them logging on night after night?
Keeping a raiding guild together during the months before an expansion can be a daunting task for a first-timer. Here a few tips and tricks I learned from the last expansion:
- Find out what people's plans are. Does your MT want to take an extended break from the game? Are your top DPSers begging to switch to their alts for raid content? Is your best healer logging in less and less as BlizzCon draws closer? Is the guy you just recruited bitterly complaining that raids are more and more infrequent? Talk to your guild as a whole and ask them what they want to do with their time. Often, you'll find that there are ways to keep burned out players interested in the game while pleasing the more active ones.
- Set an end date for raiding activities. Players often burn out at the mere thought of running the last tier of content forever. An end date gives a clear-cut block of time for relaxation before the coming expansion, and you'll find that a lot of players will thank you.
- Start an alt program. Whether it be an alt raid or rotating alts in on farm nights for a chance at gear, you'll find many raiders will tackle content with renewed vigor if it's from a different perspective. Be sure to be fair about it, though -- alts must be reasonably geared for the tier of content, and they must not be allowed to take gear over the mains that are carrying them through.
- Give sponsored nights off to players who are extremely burned out, or let them play their off spec for the night. Can you 24-man the first wing of ICC? Great! Give that healer who's been begging for some extra sleep a night off with no penalty. Alternately, let him DPS for an evening. Be sure to extend the offer to other players who are feeling run down.
- Set up some fun activities to shake up the monotony. The achievement system is a great source of ideas for your raid. Never completed The Immortal in Naxx? Take an hour and a half and go for it! Take an evening to grab your protodrakes from Ulduar, or go get A Tribute to Mad Skill on Heroic Anub'Arak. The possibilities are endless, but be sure to keep it low-key so that it feels more like a fun vacation and less like extra work.
- Speed runs became a fad in The Burning Crusade, during the incredibly long span of time between the releases of Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau. A 25-man can compete against their own or others' best times for an instance, or several 10-man groups from the same guild can compete for prizes. Find ways to make it interesting!
- Use an incentive program. At the end of each expansion, I liquidate the guild bank and split the spoils among the players who are still active at my end date. It makes everyone very happy to get a payout for their time and effort, and can often sway people to stick around for a cut of the spoils.
- If you absolutely can't keep it together, grab your active players and offer your guild's services to another group on the server that's struggling for numbers. By helping others, you'll get your raid fix, and you can be sure that the other group's leader will thank you.
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Filed under: Guilds, Raiding, Cataclysm, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tom May 15th 2010 2:20PM
I belong to a guild going right back to the early days of vanilla. WE've morphed various times under differetn names and into different things each time retaining a core group of about 20 something people.
With the coming of the Cataclysm expansion we're planning to once again metamorphose into something else, probably rerolling on a new server and once again begin our journey.
It's strange to have the end in sight. The guild gets on with each other very well, we never have drama, we meet in real life. It's one of the best group of people I've ever played with.
The simple fact is people are moving in different directions and it makes sense for us to shed an old skin and shape ourselves into something that makes works in the new world.
We're looking at the final days of the guild and it's bringing us closer together. It's a very unique, and rather emotional experience. Neither happy nor sad, just touching.
It parallels for me very much what is going on in Warcraft itself. We're moving away from something that has been very special for all of us as players. Old places and things we've got so very used to and enjoyed so much. But it just makes sense for things to change.
With the "end days" coming we're looking as a guild, and as a community at the last days, getting those things done you always meant to do. Really appreciating things you've had all along. It's a really special time.
Thank you WoW community
Tom May 15th 2010 2:21PM
Concentrating too hard on trying to express myself to spell check. Apologies
Amaxe-1 May 15th 2010 3:43PM
I really like the suggestions here. I wish my guild at the time had done these things back near the end days of TBC.
There is a point where it does seem futile to continue on the endless treadmill for soon to be obsolete gear
Hëx May 15th 2010 4:15PM
As the leader of a guild that is just starting to expand beyond friends and family, I am finding now an excellent time to recruit.
We are looking for the casual hardcores, players that can raid and have fun while doing so without the "u suk l2p giv phat lewtz plz k thx bye".
Maturity is one of the hardest things to find when recruiting, and with part of the population voluntarily taking a break it's easier to find players who love playing for more than just the highest end content. Last night we ran Naxx with 7 people, a few who had never raided before, got a ton of achievements and had a great time.
http://www.hex.ms
Reklaw May 15th 2010 4:24PM
What kept my guild together was blowing up AQ20 and AQ40 between BC and WOTLK, just being stupid in both places, and trying to do Naxx before it vanished.
Now, I think everyone will be trying to get achievements done. There's a lot of them to be had.
Manadar May 15th 2010 5:42PM
The plan in my guild is to just get LK25 HC down and then slack until Cataclysm.
clevins May 15th 2010 5:44PM
One thing I'm not seeing mentioned in these articles is that it's late spring and summer's coming up. For some, this will mean getting outside and doing stuff, for others it will mean they're going on vacation, for still others they might be forced to go on vacation or get outside by parents, etc. Combine that with the natural end of xpac stuff and I think you have a recipe for lower activity.
I very much like two things in the list above - find out peoples' plans and set an end date for raiding. I'd add one more - once beta comes out and people get keys, see if you want to create a guild on the beta servers and play together over there. You can, and if enough people who are interested get keys, it's something else to do around WoW that's not just farming ICC.
Kelz May 15th 2010 7:06PM
My guild has started doing this already - We spent a long time on Sindragosa and a lot of people were getting burnt out. We finally downed her when one particular person was out for the night. (Blistering Cold is hard)
Now we're on LK, but we've had issues with people getting lateshift-ed and the like, so we haven't had too much time on him. However, to help stave off burnout anyway, we're bringing in alts for earlier content, and Thursday is our old shit night. We've done ToGC a few times (getting annoyingly close to Insanity - IHU Faction Champs), and we're going back and doing Algalon as well. :)
I'd have to say it's definitely helping.
Bobfish May 15th 2010 7:35PM
Good suggestions here
Although LK might be a b***h the real guild breaking boss is burn out at the moment. I'm one of those people who frankly just can't be bothered to login, it's end of expansion blues, had the same thing at the end of BC as well.
Rob May 15th 2010 9:54PM
Couple suggestions.
1) Other raids besides ICC. Yes no other raid drops that good of loot, but all can be challenging (to some degree).
2) Hard modes. Alot of people are doing ulduar hard modes, they are still tough, but much more doable now. And you get a shiney mount. Same with TOGC.
3) GDKP runs. Not my cup of tea, but alot of end-game guilds are running these.
Alt runs are fine but become same old same old. Unfortunately there is only one raid at the last tier, not much we can do about that for now.
kordan May 17th 2010 12:55AM
Same problem at my guild. The hardcore remain committed to downing LK in 10 man but even I'm starting to vague out.
Have suggested cutting number of days from 2 to 1 but longer runs - people are happy to go once a week but lack of anything new means thats about it imo.
I also think those like my guild who havent beaten LK in normal mode may want to consider bringing in an outsider so they can do Heroic - lewt frenzy will refresh jaded appetites for a few weeks
I wonder at Blizzard;s approach to the expansion life cycle though.
Would seem smarter to launch only one or two new raids but lots of new zones at start of an xpac - but then pump out 3 or 4 raids that all give same tier but different gear at the end of each expansion;s life cycle.
The problem is that always - with only one raid of 'endgame' gear people get bored with seeing the same old content each week. It becomes a chore rather than something people do for real enjoyment.
Seems strange that they deliberately run the risk of having people sign off and never return in the last 4-5 months of any new product life cycle.
Teaser campaign for the new xpac will only work if there are still people online and able to be teased.