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Explaining End-game to a Social Guild (long) | 3/25/2006 10:49:45 AM PST


I have a guild whose leadership is mainly comprised of folks that reached their 60s on other servers and came to our server as re-rolls. For the most part, we felt we now have a better understanding of the game and how guild management could be more effective, particularly understanding the need to transition a ‘social’ leveling guild into an end-game raiding one.

I threw up a link in my officer’s boards to: forums.worldofwarcraft.co...#post11390 and was posed the question

Q u o t e:
Since I have no end-game raiding experience whatsoever, I find this stuff very interesting. How different can it be when you turn 60?



I thought I’d work on my response here in hopes of being able to help others answer the same question to those who have not been there. I’d appreciate responses so I can help tweak this into a better answer.

My Response:

Pre-end game revolves around the levels more than equipment. Equipment is nice, but a group of level 55s with too many squishies can go in and take Princess in Mauradon and still get full XP. A level 28 can take out Mor'Ladim if a couple others come out and help. Neither a group nor their equipment has to be perfect to achieve a goal.

The game almost becomes a new one at level 60. It becomes one of training, equipping, strategy and tactics. Your social RPG becomes a game of tactical warfare. This has a myriad of effects on a social guild.

The Changes:

Loot
Loot becomes important, when before you had most folks happy enough with their quest gear. The basis for proper distribution of loot has nothing to do with greed. You MUST equip your core raid participants in the proper gear, or you will be unsuccessful in moving on. Period, you’re not making it to Blackwing Lair if you haven’t got those people equipped from previous raids.

Failure
Having been in a guild that had a serious problem with this concept previously, I find it is a key one that people have a hard time grasping. Most social guilds have a ‘can do’ attitude… we’ll head back into Gnomer 5 times to get Thermaplugg dead.

End-game instances are more about steady progression. You’re not necessarily going to nail that boss the first time or even the second, or even the third. You’re going to have lots of deaths, super-expensive repair bills and go through a fortune in potions.

And you’re going to fail… a lot.

Attendance
If you scheduled a 5-man instance and 2 people that signed up didn’t show, you grab a couple other guildies to help or find some PuG folks to fill the gaps. Not a big deal. Not so in a raid. If you’re short of the wrong classes, you may have to call it off for everybody. If you invite PuGs, you have a higher risk of failure, or you run into loot issues.

Officers
The Officers that run your social guild are not necessarily the people who will be selected for raid leadership. In a 40-man instance you have multiple leaders. You have an over-all raid leader, but you also have sub-leaders who direct different groups within the raid to make sure everyone is doing their part.

Training
In pre-raid end game, you put up with the one warrior who always went charging in trying to bash everything in sight. Your party may have admonished him, but from the perspective of your friendly, social guild, you let it go and laughed it off, ‘Ah, that’s just Joe’. When you start in the lower instances like Strat and UBRS, the kid gloves for ‘Joe’ come off. You are now training your guild to work together well as a team and how to be effective in their roles.

Strategy
You have to work together to create effective strategies for taking out a Boss (you can of course use the knowledge of others or a guide, but I’m going from the assumption that the guild is facing something brand new to everyone, without such aids). Stuff isn’t going to work and people are going to die. You’re going to have wipes.

The Solutions:

Loot
You have to go into raiding with a well thought out loot strategy that benefits your guild style and members, as well as ensures your core raid group is getting geared up to move on. You need to make sure all your members understand your decision on how loot is to be handled and the reasons behind it. If everyone understands the reasons, they can better aid in helping to tweak it to something that is even more beneficial to everyone.

Failure
Prepare people for failure in advance. Make sure that the attitude is all in fun. Let’s go have a blast doing this, if we all die… well, we’ll have done it together and have more experience for next time. Make your guild bank available to help cover repair costs and to replace potions. If you keep everyone light-hearted and excited, you have a better shot of heading back in again sooner, rather than later.

Attendance
Make sure people understand how important attendance is. Be sure you have alternate guildies ready to go to fill in slots. Real life stuff comes up… for everyone and you don’t want to browbeat your friends over it, but you do need to make it clear that signing up is a commitment (perhaps even loot-based) and those who don’t sign-up will not be guaranteed a slot in the raid, so people need to make a thoughtful decision when choosing whether or not to sign-up.

Officers
Start picking your end-game raid leaders based on the strengths you find in the lower raid instances. Keep your social officers separate from your raid ones (not to say one person cannot fill both roles, but that the roles are very different and shouldn’t mix). Give your raid leaders a place to plan and strategize that is separate from where your social officers have discussion over the basic guild structure.

Training
When you start doing your first low-level raids, make it clear that ‘training’ has begun. People who cannot listen to instructions will not be invited back. Make it clear who the leaders are and that they MUST be listened to at all times. If someone has a different opinion of how a raid should be handled, it can be discussed afterwards. The middle of a raid is not the place for folks to do things their ‘own’ way.

Strategy
Again as in training, figuring out your tactics becomes terribly important. If the raid leaders are trying one way, they must be listened to and followed. If a member has a better idea, it can be discussed after the first attempt fails, either right then if you didn’t wipe, or later in talking about how to handle it in the next raid. Keeping your members involved in strategy discussions really helps to make sure everyone is involved and contributing.

In Conclusion

The end-game can be a LOT of fun, especially if we can get there together with all our friends! But it will take more communication, planning and “following orders” than many of us are used to. This isn’t a bad thing, but it does require careful thought and an expected transition period. Hopefully, starting early like this will help us all get there sanely, and we’ll have a blast doing so!

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