8.03.2007

Some Thoughts on Guild and Karazhan


Warning: The following is my obligatory worry post. Feel free to ignore it as it really doesn't have much in detail on what to do when healing Kara or healing in general. However, it is an excellent post on how to worry yourself into early ulcers.

You have been warned. :P



So, it happened. On Wednesday, AC fielded 2 whole Kara groups. We started raiding on June 5th. August 1st, 2 groups.

Group 2's Raid Leader was late, then it turned into no show. Damn Real Estate agents. But with some shuffling, two people who previously didn't think they could make it did and Group 2 was able to roll on through a half an hour late. Group 1 cleared through Opera (BBW), Group 2 had to stop after Moroes since the healer had an OH SH!T IRL emergency. But they were back yesterday to finish off Maiden and Opera (BBW) while we had to nab two extras for Group 1 to get through Curator/Chess and get eaten by Aran (he's such a bitch, more on him later).

On the one hand, I'm excited, thrilled, ecstatic that we can field two groups into Kara. But the other hand is terrified of all the headache that comes with it. We're just barely sqeaking out those two groups. We have the tanks, between our Prot warriors/feral druids/Prot pally, but we're just barely getting by with healers. There's 4 exactly, with a possible 5th (he's 70, and he's 2 PMC's from his set, just need his last two frags and BM) but he's got a really tight schedule, so I'm not sure when he'll ever be able to start raiding.
Plus the DCoE is one of those 4 Healz of Awesome on her Shammy of Doom and as ecstatic as I am that I'm raiding with her, we need more healers so she can play her Face Melter. The Shammy is awesome, but she is the DCoE for a reason ;)

Kara is my first raid experience. Fio and I are brandy spankin' new to this whole raid world. I don't want to get people upset or pissed that they didn't get a chance to go raiding this week for this or that reason, but that's why we're trying the two groups. The big disadvantage to that is trying to sync schedules.

We're not hard core, we're casual. So we're not raiding 5 or 6 nights a week. More like 2 to 4. And we've got multiple time frames to deal with. I know, probably every raiding guild has to go through the same schtuff.

So how do they deal with it? How do other casual guilds deal with raiding so that they don't have officers who's heads about to implode because they're worried they're going to leave someone out and then that person is going to make a stink and be unpleasant and AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!

So yea. Those are the thoughts for today. Tune in later for my tips on healing Illhoof: Rat Bastard, but a Lock's Bitch.

5 comments:

Dick said...

yes as the guild grows you are going to get people who bitch and moan about anything. In order for yall to be able to run multiple kara raids a week, the guild has to get larger and sometimes you end up with bad apples. You should worry too much about it. I used to get so worked up over morons in the guild that it drove me away from playing. I finally realized that they weren't the reason I was there, and I now I just log to be with friends no matter what we are doing.

Doogie2K said...

I sympathise with your problem. As a newly-minted officer in my own guild (/cheer), I'm seeing the other side of things now, and realizing that the biggest downfall of a casual raiding guild (hello oxymoron?) is getting consistent attendance. We had, in theory, eight healers, which is perfect for two groups, because that gives you room for substitution. However, two respecced, two are away for RL stuff, and another would actually like to play his Mage more than once every three weeks (much like DCoE and her face-melter). That's just one example, too. And the trouble with being on an RP server is, progression is not exactly Job #1. So trying to bring in new raiders is not a simple task, because most of the useful ones are already in other guilds, which are in turn further along.

Another thing we're seeing is a culture of entitlement among the second generation of 70s. Like, they just expect that they can hit 70, get keyed, and start smacking Shade in the face. (BTW, first guild kill last night!) They don't necessarily want to put the effort into five-mans that we did; they just want to be run through for their keys and a few blues and that's it. But you can't learn your job if you don't struggle. Spending an evening getting molested by Bog Lords or dismembered by the Mortal Strike bastards in SH is not fun, but it teaches you the value of knowing your shit, and you get that sense of elation when you can finally down them. Plus, if you haven't had to run the Naked Priest Trick to reduce some of the large pulls in SL (tell me we're not the only ones that did this), you're missing out on some comedy gold, especially when the tank's AFK, and comes back and starts sputtering and grumbling in shock/frustration.

We'll see how it goes in the weeks ahead, but with school starting for most people in two to four weeks, our raiding schedule is gonna get turned on its head. Definitely be interesting come September.

Tami Parker said...

Firstly, congratulations on getting two groups!

That's a huge accomplishment. Our guild still has only one team, and we've got a few people ready to join a second team, but not enough to run two.

It really sucks for the people not on the first team, but we don't have a solution yet. I'd say running that second team a little early beats having to deal with a lot of grumbling and unhappiness from people who want to come but can't.

It's a tough decision.

Kara's my first real raid experience too. I went on two Ony runs and one UBRS back in the day - and I hated them. Love Kara (mostly). Watched my hubby do some of the 40-mans back in the day and felt not one whit of desire to join him.

Also, your hardcore vs casual is interesting to me - we're raiding two nights a week - Saturday and Sunday. Four hour runs (we voted to increase from the original three) and that's it. Anything we don't get done by Sunday night doesn't get done. (Second full-clear of the instance this week though - except Nightbane, whom we can't summon yet)

Raid leaders go through a lot of crap. How do you balance the need to recruit a second team so that you can move on to 25mans without totally gimping the guild and raiding team by allowing Doogie's aptly-described Entitlement generation in?

I've seen WAY too much of that attitude, and I wanna pop some heads for it. (And that, my friend, may become an Ego post this week. Thank you. /salute)

My personal solution? I raid with the people that I enjoy playing with. If there's someone that I absolutely refuse to raid with, I let the raid leader know and I only get scheduled with that person if it's an absolute emergency.

But four healers isn't enough for two teams, you'll end up with aborted runs more often than not. We have three healers and two subs on call - and that's just for a single team.

Especially as the newness wears off, you'll find that people show up less and less - hopefully by then, you'll have a few more people recruited to help you fill the gaps.

The biggest trick is to keep it fun. =]

Tami Parker said...

Also, if you'd like to discuss some tactics for Aran, I might be able to help. =]

And Illhoof IS a hooker. I'll be eagerly looking forward to your recap!

Malva said...

Our guild recently grew really quickly as several of us started getting exalted with the Violet Eye and we had to recruit madly to get ready for the 25 man content.

So we took in a smaller guild which we had taken to Gruul a few times. Their leader wanted us to run two Kara raids each week. We refused. We are too "casual*", and can't guarantee the same people can be around on night two and with people locked out of each other's instance... it gets messy. That, and if you manage to run two raids and get mostly the same people on each team each week, you end up with an A team, B team problem (Who wants to be on the B team?).

It turned out that raid leader (from the smaller guild) and two of his buddies /gquit (after spending a month getting easy gear in Kara) because we weren't progressing fast enough for them... Talk about a sense of entitlement! And he left most of his old guildmates behind. Not cool.

Learning new fights is time and gold consuming. It's also a lot of fun!

*A casual player is someone who plays less than you do, a hardcore player is someone who plays more than you do. Where do you fit in there?