When times are slow and people just aren’t logging on, you might recruit a few new faces to fill in the gaps. Then when new content arrives and everyone decides to log on, you are left with one major problem: Roster overload. In this post I’ll be going over my exact strategy for recruitment, raid invites, and how I handle this particular issue.

In Fury Untold we don’t have a raiding requirement. I don’t want people to look at WoW like a job, so they have freedom to show up when they want or not when they don’t. The other side to this coin is they have to understand that I am going to keep a “healthy” enough roster to ensure that even if a few people don’t show up, we are still likely to be able to raid. Its the give and take of this type of system. I try to keep a few extra of everything: tanks, heals, and dps. This mostly sorts things out, but if everyone isn’t so understanding of why they aren’t getting into raids then you can have a problem.

How you handle raid invites, and making the process clear to everyone is very important. In Fury Untold, I value attendance and dependability over pretty much everything. If someone is putting forth the effort to show up to every raid, even after they out-gear it, I give them extra special brownie points. For the people who just gear their toon, then stop raiding till the next content patch take bottom of the list in my book. We are a guild and we need to operate as such. Just because you don’t need anything from the last tier’s raid instance, doesn’t mean everyone is in the same situation.

One thing that comes up a lot is integrating new members into a roster when there may be a little overlap. When I’m doing invites for a raid I consider new players as a sort of “clean slate”, whereas they don’t have any marks against them. So if I’ve got a guy that has been in the guild for a month, but has shown up to 3 raids a week every time, and a guy whose been in the guild for a year, but only shows up once in a while, I’m going to take the new guy with a good record. What this accomplishes is encourage the things I’m looking for in a raider: dependability, consistency, attendance. If your raiders are going to throw a fit and cry about not getting a raid invite when they know your invite policy, and what they’ve done to deserve being benched, then they might as well take their attitude and go cry in another guild. I have a very short patience for people who are self centered and do nothing but cause drama with it.

My last point for this post is what to do after the invites have gone out, and how to encourage people to show up each time, even if they didn’t get an invite this raid. We use EPGP and I offer a % of EP awards to people on standby. They have to be online (on any character, alt are ok) to sign their main up for EP gains, and they have to do so after every award. My point here being that you need to make logging on worthwhile, even if they aren’t included in the raid.

In WoW there are 3 main categories of people you will encounter. There is Casual, Hardcore, and a group that tries to ride the middle, I’ll refer to them as the Semi-Casuals, as they often refer to themselves.

There are many subcategories in these groups, but for the most part there mostly the same. The one I’ll disect today is the Semi-Casual.

Futher in this post I’ll refer to the two opposite ends of the Semi-Casual group as Raiders and Casuals. I’ve been a part of multiple guilds that claimed to be Semi-Casual. All have had a serious flaw in their raiding structure. I think I’m getting a head of myself.

A Semi-Casual raiding guild is generally one that wants to raid a couple times a week, however with the determination and focus of a Hardcore guild.

That said they are usually built of a core of raiders that truely follow the ideals of the guild. They flask for farm content, bring full consumables, and research to push their class.

However, with the ease of WotLK raids (and was also prevalent in BC 25 man raids) it’s not an east task to fill a raid with 25 of these players. What usually is the case is that 10-15 players of this guild are raiders while the other half are true casuals.

I don’t mean to sound condescending here, however I’m a little obvious as to which side of the arguement I’m on.

The casual half of the guild, could be a little more effective in their time management. They don’t spend much time investing in their character. Either farming for crafted gear, running heroics for drops, rep, or emblems, or a multitude of other things that are prime examples of a persons effort.

This is a bit of a blurry line. Some people know they need work. They know where the drops come from. They just might have a hectic work or school schedule and not have the time to run things. Although I wish this was always the case, it unfortunately isn’t usually.

Most people come into this game with a big ambition, and little more motivation than that. They think that “raid guilds = epix” and that they’ll be able to come in and snag some of that uber loot. They don’t realize that these raid guilds are built on the shoulders of people that read strategy guides, watch videos, farm for gear, and take that extra step to be the best they can.

When they see the term “Semi-Casual” they think they’ve found a perfect home.

However there is a lot of tension in these kinds of guilds. They usually have to recruit a few of the casuals to fill the gaps in the raiding roster. The raiders aide of the guild will feel a sense of resentment as they put money in for flasks, food, and repairs. While the other half shows up a few minutes before the raid and holds their hands open to catch any loot they can.

As you can see, I’m personally against Semi-Casual guilds. It comes down to the old saying “shit or get off the pot”. You need to stand up and push yourself and your guild to reach it’s highest potential.

A common objection is that you can’t have a serious raiding guild without a lot of time invested. As I said earlier in my post, it comes down to time management. Effectively utilizing your time, your guilds time, and your raids time can allow you to accomplish all your goals and have time to spare.

I normally would break off into a how to on time management however I’m going to save that for my next post! :)

In the World of Warcraft, there are varying degrees of players. The variables are many and not really of our concern, but you will come in to groups with people that are better than you, and worse than you. Again obvious, but people pay to play. This makes them feel entitled to play the game the way they want to play. So when you get in a group people are expecting you to play the same way they are, so that they can accomplish their goals. However, as I stated, players don’t always play at the same performance level.

This is a major issue in progression content (large raid PvE). I will touch on this in my next post!