Update:
In the first raid lockout, our guild spent 34 hours in raid. That's almost 5 hours every day of the week. Such schedule is tight, even for a HC guild. I guess only World top 500 guilds spend that amount of time raiding.
How can I claim that we did not transform into a very dedicated HC guild? Because we neither have attendance requirement nor fixed team, therefore that 34 hours are not for 10 people. About 50 people raided. There were raids on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday attempting on Beth, killing her on Friday. The composition changed even within one raid. Looking up logs 19 people attempted on Beth. Shannox tries were on Sunday and Monday, with 15 different people. Rhyolith died on Tuesday, with another raid. There were several trash runs, 2 Argoloth runs and there was a BoT-BwD boost raid. So while 340 guildy hours were spent in some raid instance, the median was around 13 hours.
Of course some people raided more. I raided 21 hours this week, 4 in a boost raid, 6 on Beth, 5 on Shannox, 2 on Rhyolith and 3 on dedicated trash runs.
This is how non-top raiding should work. You log on any evening and if you want to raid, you do. However most "casual" guilds don't raid at all, or raid 3*4 hours on a fixed schedule with a fixed team. Why can't they do it like us?
Because our raiding system is supported by the behavioral rules of the guild. Boosting and "being nice" are unknown here. Anyone and everyone are subject of fail gold and raid kicking if he messes it up. We are discussing wipes openly and point out who messed up. This and only this allows us to kill things with random people. We can give a chance to everyone because if he fails, we can kick him without risk. No officer will whisper you that "HEY! X is my little bro be easy lol". If he would start a drama on /g for being removed, he would get his gkick in no time. You can take anyone exactly because you are not stuck with him. There is no more risk taking a new person than a few wipes, where the exact number depends only on your tolerance.
In social guilds such raiding is impossible as you are stuck with "friends" who constantly and irreparably fail. The "carry the failer" is a core social idea, so fixing it has nothing to do with any kind of gaming decisions. It can only be fixed by acting asocially.
People are also pretty tolerant on being benched, because it's mostly done by /roll and they know that the new gear the people inside got did not give them a tiny bit of priority getting in next raid. Just because X was taken instead of them, it doesn't mean that X is "more liked" ore "more in the favors of the leadership", because liking is not even definable in an asocial environment. Socials take "not being chosen" as "they hate me". On farm raids (on the second lockout Shannox, Rhyolith and Beth will be farm too), everyone who shows up prepared get spot to some bosses including one he chooses (so if you want Beth, you will get Beth).
In the first raid lockout, our guild spent 34 hours in raid. That's almost 5 hours every day of the week. Such schedule is tight, even for a HC guild. I guess only World top 500 guilds spend that amount of time raiding.
How can I claim that we did not transform into a very dedicated HC guild? Because we neither have attendance requirement nor fixed team, therefore that 34 hours are not for 10 people. About 50 people raided. There were raids on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday attempting on Beth, killing her on Friday. The composition changed even within one raid. Looking up logs 19 people attempted on Beth. Shannox tries were on Sunday and Monday, with 15 different people. Rhyolith died on Tuesday, with another raid. There were several trash runs, 2 Argoloth runs and there was a BoT-BwD boost raid. So while 340 guildy hours were spent in some raid instance, the median was around 13 hours.
Of course some people raided more. I raided 21 hours this week, 4 in a boost raid, 6 on Beth, 5 on Shannox, 2 on Rhyolith and 3 on dedicated trash runs.
This is how non-top raiding should work. You log on any evening and if you want to raid, you do. However most "casual" guilds don't raid at all, or raid 3*4 hours on a fixed schedule with a fixed team. Why can't they do it like us?
Because our raiding system is supported by the behavioral rules of the guild. Boosting and "being nice" are unknown here. Anyone and everyone are subject of fail gold and raid kicking if he messes it up. We are discussing wipes openly and point out who messed up. This and only this allows us to kill things with random people. We can give a chance to everyone because if he fails, we can kick him without risk. No officer will whisper you that "HEY! X is my little bro be easy lol". If he would start a drama on /g for being removed, he would get his gkick in no time. You can take anyone exactly because you are not stuck with him. There is no more risk taking a new person than a few wipes, where the exact number depends only on your tolerance.
In social guilds such raiding is impossible as you are stuck with "friends" who constantly and irreparably fail. The "carry the failer" is a core social idea, so fixing it has nothing to do with any kind of gaming decisions. It can only be fixed by acting asocially.
People are also pretty tolerant on being benched, because it's mostly done by /roll and they know that the new gear the people inside got did not give them a tiny bit of priority getting in next raid. Just because X was taken instead of them, it doesn't mean that X is "more liked" ore "more in the favors of the leadership", because liking is not even definable in an asocial environment. Socials take "not being chosen" as "they hate me". On farm raids (on the second lockout Shannox, Rhyolith and Beth will be farm too), everyone who shows up prepared get spot to some bosses including one he chooses (so if you want Beth, you will get Beth).
15 comments:
Congrats for your progress and for your ability to keep on raiding and PvPing etc. I still do not agree with your asocial motos but this does not matter.
I see though in almost every kill picture 2-3 same people. It is weird since you say you roll for attendance when there are more people than the spots. For instance Linq and Livia are almost in every kill picture you post here. Are these 2 so lucky at rolls?
Your Guild Project looks very interesting, I already thought about transferring an alt or sth to test it out. But i have a simple question:
Why do you cut off Voice-Chat? I understand your issues with drama-lama etc. but i don´t understand why your prejudices in this case overwhelm your concept of free markets. One Example:
I´m really interested in Speed runs. In my prime-time raiding time i spent many thaughts in speeding up Karazhan and BC Heroics (pre-nerf) which provided tons of marks within hours, saving much time for the members. Voice-Chat was muted for everybody & only available for raid-lead (not necessarily me...) to give out the pace & timings.
Why do you block such attempts? With your concept you should allow some kind of voice chat and say: let suppy & demand do it for you...
@anon
VOice chat is cut off because people become dependent on the voice that tells them what to do instead of thinking for themselves.
@liv
Livia is Gevlons Girlfriend, but when i was with the pug livia sat out as much as i did.
Damn Gevlon, you make it harder every post to not migrate and join the pug.
Two things that hold me back.
#1: Spending actual money, principle.
#2: How is your pvp/ arena scene? I mostly pvp and do aim for 2.2K+. Are there more of "me" or is it all around 1800?
Cheers
Paniek
@Liv: find Linq on Rhyolith kill photo.
@Joost: if you don't want to spend money on transfer, roll a lvl1. We do rated BGs a lot, I have no idea about arena progress as I don't do it myself.
Well Gevlon, time is money.
In the time I lvl and gear a character up I can easely make more then transfer money so ;).
What MMR did you have with RBg's?
The more I hear about your guild and the more I read the reasoning behind your approach the more I like it.
It does seem to address a lot of the issues that have led to the good players in my social/casual guilds quitting raiding despite having a more than adequate skill level to clear current raids.
The flexibility of not having to obey a schedule is attractive and not having to carry failures gets the thumbs up from me. The inability to remove an officer’s best friend for repeatedly underperforming and causing the team to fail was something that really used to de-motivate me.
I do wonder what your motivation and objectives are though.
Being asocial surely means that individuals care little about the teams success or at least care less about the teams success than social guilds or regular raid guilds where there is an element of team bonding and a desire to succeed together.
Whilst they have disadvantages they also have advantages over your approach. They will make individual sacrifices for the benefit of the team – I have passed on upgrades because they were a greater upgrade for a team mate (equalising the injustice/failings of RNG), or benched myself for someone that needed an upgrade from a boss that offered me nothing. Such acts for the greater good would be viewed with disgust in your guild?
I guess it is true that you care more about individual success rather than team success because by not maintaining a fixed roster you also spread your upgrades more thinly and weaken the team.
Furthermore, if you bench via /roll you may well be benching players on bosses that drop upgrades for them and running them on bosses that offer nothing. This would work if all the gear was BOE but with boss drops being BOP you will shard (or give for off-spec) too many valuable enhancements. How do you handle that?
That being said, your guild is considerably more successful than my social/casual guilds so when the positives and negatives are balanced out your approach must be superior. A dedicate raid guild may have more success but that type of environment (schedules) may not be suitable for a lot of the players in your guild – hence given the choice between your guild and a typical social/casual guild yours is by far the best approach.
However you personally (and no doubt a few of your core star players) given your extensive play time could easily join a dedicated raid guild and achieve more success?
Paniek it is mostly lower level arena at the moment but I think there are a few that want to take it more seriously (including myself, Reliana), if more pvpers reroll to join then we can play properly.
Hey Gevlon,
this may be a good post to thank you for your blog. I follow your blog for ... ages... and your points were interresting and got me to think (even thou I do not share all your views).
Why to thank you? Here is my story:
I am in casual guild that tried to do a 25 man up until 4.2, but had huge problems with M&S in their ranks. Usually the same 5-7 player failed a mechanic, did sub par DPS etc.
This went so far, that some of our serious and "good" player started the not show up to raids or quit entirely. All this time I had to think of your blog and how much I hated it that I could not kick out players because we had a round robin set up system (everyone gets to play).
Come Firelands the guild decided to do only 10man. And in 10 man you cannot carry a player. In 25man 2-3 dead DDs do not mean much, if you have above average other players, but in 10 mans one M&S will wipe your raid.
So first week firelands, we have a "fair" setup, including two M&S (stand in fire, fail to interrupt, etc)
We do not down a single boss. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Null.
Finally I got the guts and posted in the Forum that I will start a "progress" raid. I basically linked to your pug rules and said: how wants to play by these rules - sign up with me.
And lo and behold, we got a good group togheter. Lots of social drama ensued (mainly by the M&S who said we "abandoned" them or feared that they will never see a boss), but I just told them to fuck off (in kinder words).
Result: Two Bosses down on the first raidnight and a third at 27%.
And Raiding is fun again.
So thank you for your blog. It helped me to make that decission and created a better raid for the people who do not want to carry M&S.
@ Liv the last picture was first come first serve.
As for the other kills: Linq is tank. Linq could not join the Lord Rhyliath kill because he lost the /roll for the tank spot, from Jeho.
First RL looks at who signed up, then at utility (say, a kiter, or you need only 1 tank and max 1 melee DD), finally at role. Everyone who can perform that role /roll. This includes Livia, Gevlon's girlfriend. If you have various specs (or an alt which can perform a spec) you can /roll again for that other role.
Also, if you had experience with the fight before, you had a higher chance to get included the next day since you get priority. This only counts for progression (raid gets more pot if new people come).
why not sell raid spots? /roll may be unfair for someone hated by RNG, while "how much can you add to the pot for the spot" is more fair, imho.
/rev
@Coralina
They do have a raiding schedule, check their guild rules, what they don't have is attendance rules, someone correct me if i'm wrong.
About passing gear to someone else, I don't see any problem with it, as in being a small upgrade for your class and being BIS for some other class.
@anon
A bit surprised you had to read a blog to realize something that would be obvious to anyone that wanted to lead a raid with any modicum of success, that you cant take braindead players to any kind of progress raid.
About you saying there were drama in guild about your 10man team, best thing is to post in your guild rules (if you have any kind of authority, dont see how you could make a raiding team any other way) that says and i'll quote from the one I made on mine:
The team composition will be decided by the RL according to class, skill and attendance (you are not required to even show up at all, but ofc i will give prio to those that show up more consistently) and whoever he feels like taking, any drama or questioning of those decisions will only lead to not getting a raid spot for as long as the RL remais pissed at you".
I found that litle post did wonders to take care of drama and whining, well that a couple of GKicks when the message was not understood, but such is life.
For those that will say that is arbitrary and whatever, remember that those that whine/cause drama for one thing will certainly cause it for another and I would like to avoid having that kind of persons ( the other kind to avoid are the lootwhores) in the guild I am currently, the GM backs me up on all of this.
We have killed Betty, Shannox and left Ryo at 35% last week with about 6 hours total raid time (I hate the summoning of shannox mechanic).
@Gevlon
When did you start to roll for raid spots?
Don't remember any posts about it and if it's always been like that, why the hell was I convinced it was always at the person making the raid discretion?
I'm wondering how far can a raid constantly rotating people really get.
Granted, "we never raid with the same grp" easily might be another one of M&S excuses, there is still a lot to be said for constant practice and monitored improvement.
I know that the reasoning behind PuG is to prove that you can have successful raiding if you just exclude M&S, and i realise that a lot of ppl consider 1-2 bosses in heroic successful raiding.
However, if PuG is structurally incapable of clearing the entire heroic, that would severely limit the experiment's potential in identifying that "magic skill" you talked so much about.
I think that it is also important to mention that the ability to raid for that amount of time is also enchanced by the massive pool of 85's that are in the guild and meet the basic requirements to raid. A "HC" or even not so much, yet still scheudled guild, often has a smaller pool (related to sepcific recruiting strategies unlike the PuG) so to maximize time spent (i.e. - full raid) raids are scheduled. It is sure easier to fill a raid when the guild is made up of hundreds (I think) of eligible players. For pete's sake, you pretty much have a "mini-server" within your guild. You simply just guarantee a higher quality of player through your social contract. (and yes, I did say social contract, because at it's core, the rules of the PuG are the means by which all members agree to abide by to participate in, oddly enough, an asocial experiment).
could somebody from the PUG send me a RAF? mmanofwar (at) gmail (dot) com
I've played for a while on the US servers, took a break, and now i'd like to play on EU servers as I'll be moving to the netherlands in a few weeks.
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