Apathy and Stress
Posted 08-31-2009 at 04:18 AM by Pitstarter
Not quite such a happy post this time.
We had our first cancelled 25 man raid last night and I for one am livid about it. Out of 45 unique accounts in the guild, 32-34 of which are raiders, only 20 or something appeared for our continuation of Ulduar 25 last night. Since we left off on Hodir on our previous night, going into what is a dps check for us undermanned was folly, we cancelled our raid and went to ToTC10 instead.
What I don't get is why, when people apply to join a guild they say they can make the raid days no problem, then once they are in on trial they suddenly have commitments on one of those nights. I am trying so hard to bite my tongue since I'm not the GM any more so all I can do is look after my assigned classes.
We run our raid signups on the in-game calendar, we're looking at going back to signs on our forums since it's a bit easier to administer and people can leave notes if they will be 5 mins late or whatever. Even having a flashing calendar icon when you are in the game is not enough to get people to either accept or decline an invite, leaving us scratching our heads without a clue if they are raiding or not. Class Leaders have been instructed to pull the collective fingers out their asses and account for every single raiding member of their class for a main raid day from the 1st September onwards, not to mention looting penalties being incurred as well.
Do other people have guildies with the apathy problem in their guilds, and how did you deal with it? Sure we can recruit more raiders, but in a server with new guilds popping up every day and spamming trade, it's hard to get noticed.
I'm just very disappointed that we let down the raiders that did show up despite getting two new progress kills, if you call it that, in TotC10 by downing the 'pvp' event and the Twin Valkyrs.
Bleh. Was never like this in vanilla, even if we had to muster 40 people for a raid.
We had our first cancelled 25 man raid last night and I for one am livid about it. Out of 45 unique accounts in the guild, 32-34 of which are raiders, only 20 or something appeared for our continuation of Ulduar 25 last night. Since we left off on Hodir on our previous night, going into what is a dps check for us undermanned was folly, we cancelled our raid and went to ToTC10 instead.
What I don't get is why, when people apply to join a guild they say they can make the raid days no problem, then once they are in on trial they suddenly have commitments on one of those nights. I am trying so hard to bite my tongue since I'm not the GM any more so all I can do is look after my assigned classes.
We run our raid signups on the in-game calendar, we're looking at going back to signs on our forums since it's a bit easier to administer and people can leave notes if they will be 5 mins late or whatever. Even having a flashing calendar icon when you are in the game is not enough to get people to either accept or decline an invite, leaving us scratching our heads without a clue if they are raiding or not. Class Leaders have been instructed to pull the collective fingers out their asses and account for every single raiding member of their class for a main raid day from the 1st September onwards, not to mention looting penalties being incurred as well.
Do other people have guildies with the apathy problem in their guilds, and how did you deal with it? Sure we can recruit more raiders, but in a server with new guilds popping up every day and spamming trade, it's hard to get noticed.
I'm just very disappointed that we let down the raiders that did show up despite getting two new progress kills, if you call it that, in TotC10 by downing the 'pvp' event and the Twin Valkyrs.
Bleh. Was never like this in vanilla, even if we had to muster 40 people for a raid.
Total Comments 11
Comments
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This, I had to step down from raiding due to my work schedule getting crazy. My guild seems to be having the same problems you are describing and the threats and such has only made things worse. I'm not sure what the magic answer is on this topic. It might calm down once everybody gets settled into this years school schedule.Posted 08-31-2009 at 05:02 AM by Gromblee
- If some people suddenly have commitments on one of your raid days once they are on trial and did not mention it in the application they obviously lied. Sure, once in a while is not a problem, since you say you have 32-34 raiders. But if they have the same night/s every week then they should either be kicked or demoted to a non raiding rank for lieing in the application.
If out of 32-34 raiders only 20 show up you have a problem. I do not believe penalties would solve it. What I think you need to do is check who's there and who's not. And then either kick or demote the people that's not showing up enough and try to recruit. It can be hard I know but at the moment you don't have the people to form a raid either way.
And a final note. In my experience penalties never work. I see it coming up every so often, - dkp for beeing late, - dkp for making a mistake, - dkp for this and that. I'm always against it and so is my gm. It really does not solve anything. It only creates drama and make people insecure of themselves which will make them either not showing up or making mistakes or just playing worse. You will have to try other methods, like talking to people, see why they are not there, why they can't do this or that. Offer bonuses for the people who are there on time, offer dkp (or whatever system you use to handle loot) equal to a full night for the people who were there on a cancelled raid so they get atleast something out of it and things like that.
Good luck getting your guild rolling. It's always hard to start new. But once you have a solid raid it get so much easier both raiding and recruiting the right people.Posted 08-31-2009 at 07:04 AM by Tharr 
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You deal with it by recruiting. It's the only thing you can do.Posted 08-31-2009 at 07:12 AM by veneretio -
@ Tharr - the guild has been rolling for over 3 years now (with a minor break), but it's times of raider apathy like this that drive me insane. The penalties we are talking about are for repeated sign-and-no-show, or just generally not signing at all over a set period of time, without letting us know. Don't get me wrong, we're not all heavy handed, but asking for two nights a week commitment isn't that much is it? Sad that it seems to be for some.
@ Ven - True as always, but also easier said than done. We've got our post here, also realm forums, we're on recruit-gamers.com and our GM keeps an eye out for unguilded folk and occassionally gets herself dirty with trade chat. Seems there's new guilds popping up every day and for us to be relatively new-migrants here it's tough getting exposure.Posted 08-31-2009 at 08:33 AM by Pitstarter
Updated 08-31-2009 at 08:36 AM by Pitstarter (clarification) - "Do other people have guildies with the apathy problem in their guilds, and how did you deal with it? Sure we can recruit more raiders, but in a server with new guilds popping up every day and spamming trade, it's hard to get noticed."
That part made me think you were new aswell. Sorry for that.
If you've been around for 3 years you should be fairly well known on your server and recruiting that much easier. And really, if people say they can turn up for all raids then you should expect them to. If it turns out they have other things on a consistent basis one or more of your raid nights then you should replace them. There's nothing else to it really.Posted 08-31-2009 at 08:45 AM by Tharr - Here's an idea: don't have signups.
What? Yes.
They signed up for your raid schedule when they applied. Instead, have a no-show list on the forums where they post if they'll be late or not present. Too many of these or ignoring it? Boot em and recruit em.
I don't sign up for college classes and then email my professor the days I'll be attending, ya know? However, paper due and I'm sick? You bet I'm calling/emailing/faxing him/her.Posted 08-31-2009 at 11:39 AM by Prexie - This is exactly what we do.Quote:Originally Posted by Prexie
Here's an idea: don't have signups.
Those that maintain 75% attendance over a month are promoted to "Veteran" and get automatic raid invites and some loot prio buffage.
But the raid nights are published, if you show up and raid you are a raider, if you audit raids you are a casual.Posted 08-31-2009 at 12:20 PM by loquatious - People dislike repairs. If you are at a progression point, less people will show up. You have to tantalize them somehow to still go, perhaps with the promise of farmable content.
Good idea to punish those (maybe not publicly, but don't give them gear, make them last invite priority, etc) who don't show for progression.Posted 08-31-2009 at 12:54 PM by Ferag - Treat them maturely. If some folks haven't been showing up, you could just ask them individually what's going on with their schedules. You have to understand that real life needs to take priority for people (even though I'm sure plenty of folks ignore it).
You might have to recruit then, to fill out some of these spots and allow some of those folks to drop on priority when sending out invites.
Now recruiting, that's a whole other story.
Posted 08-31-2009 at 02:04 PM by Kalbitang -
We raid 3 nights a week. We only do 25 man content on those nights. EVERYONE is expected to show. If you don't you had better leave a note in our "Raid absense thread". Our guild is all adults. We have lives, kids, and such. Kids have homework, football games and such. We have only cancelled 1 raid and that was really do to about 10 raiders all living within 15 miles of each other and tornados coming through towns. We have a 75% requirment. If you can't make it you are demoted. Raiders are invited 1st non-raiders invited second. with 30 people logging in on raid nights if you arn't raider rank you prob arn't coming.Posted 09-01-2009 at 08:26 AM by Sylvaneart - @ Prexie and Ioguatious: Interesting idea. I might run it past our raid leaders and GM to get input. I don't see the raid leaders going for it though since they like to have an idea of who is attending. We do have abscence threads to post in however, so a bit of cajoling of the rank and file to use these might be in order.
@ Kalbitang: Our CL's approach each person individually if their abscence gives cause for concern. The majority of times a reason is given, though I do think some are just making stuff up to get out of it.
@ Sylvaneart: The idea of raid ranks could work for us, though I suspect the lynchpin roles (healer/tank) for raids would get invited regardless of their rank. Good tanks and healers are very tricky to recruit on this realm it seems, not to mention commitment.
I've suggested reminding the CL's 24hrs before a main raid night to check the status of their classes. So it's a 25 man raid night tonight, let's just cross our fingers and hope for the bodies and the kills.Posted 09-02-2009 at 04:43 AM by Pitstarter
Updated 09-02-2009 at 04:43 AM by Pitstarter (Me fail English? Unpossible!)
