Core guilds vs others... own experiences and opinions.

What's you guys opinion on raiding guilds that has a solid raiding core of like 25 ppl and outside of the core; a network of other players, let's call them socials, vs other more casual guilds that still may be hardcore or semi hard core but still let their socials in for their raids.

It's my experience that core guilds usually can have lots of progress, but as a follow up - never ever ever ever (this goes on for a long time) ever let anyone in the social network accually enter the guilds raiding party, even if they don't fill on raiders.

Ex:
"Hey mate, you guys only got 20 ppl in naxx. Can I come along?" "no sry, we're full on tanks." "np, I have a neat healing gear" "full on healers too dude", "ok let me respec and i'll go retri." "Full on dps too" "..."

As you might have guessed by now, yes I was once a social of a core raiding guild - I was in the guild for a f***ing long time, hell - a lot longer then most of the raiders were. From around the middle parts of tbc I guess to up to around Wotkl and the ulduar patch. They didn't let me raid anything with them in tbc, and I thought - well, kinda understandable, I don't have as good gear as they do. However, even when Wotkl came out and I accually got to the point when I got equal or better gear then the others and tried to get into the raiding core, they didn't accept me. Apparently, they were all full on, and get this, both tanks, healers and dps, while they were recruiting others, worse geared then me.

Now, unless you really, really like the social network in the guild, hell if you've been there a forth of the time I was you will have pals there (and most of them will still like you though you leave), I'd recon that you leave and find a guild that lets you DO stuff with them. Hell I would have left sooner if I had known what I do today.

So. Do you guys have any of these heartwarming stories? Nah, just joking, but seriosly. I'd love to hear your experiences with core guilds vs non-core guilds.

P.s: I'm new here and have no idea if this has been up before but I'll post it anyway.

My old guild had plenty of socials become raiders. It was actually a back-door way in that would get around the app process. Most of the time it was fine.

It works best for guilds if the core-group has standards. If the socials meet those standards, I don't see why they wouldn't get in. If they don't meet the standards? Well, too bad then. That's been my experience, and social players are great to have and make for a nice atmosphere, but in progression content there really isn't a place for them unless they are able to perform to the standards of the content they are raiding.

was in the same situation as you, great bunch of guys, but a core raiding team, I hadn't seen any content past ulduar with them as I got left behind after a short break, I only ever got in on 2 toc 10 alt runs, now I've finally bite the bullet and left to a more casual kind of guild, we set some events and sometimes just see who's online and get to it :) I've cleared 6 bosses in Icc and all of toc, My gear is quickly getting better and I'm loving wow again, and the best part is, If I miss a raid, or don't raid for a few weeks, it's not going to be a problem, I can just join in on the next raid, + being a tank helps as we're pretty rare, but still I'm loving it!

That's my take on it at least :)

The last guild I was in had a no socials policy. Basically if you couldn't meet raid attendance you were out. It was a policy I never agreed with, but the reasons from it stemmed from the failings of the guild's predecessor guild, in which raiders were frustrated by having a lot of socials online at raid time but still being unable to fill a raid. I don't really see how socials are a problem myself, if they get on with the general atmosphere of the guild, are generally nice and helpful and understand that they aren't entitled to being carried then I can't see an issue. That's just me though. I'm 100% bias'd because I problably wouldn't be effectivly guildless right now if my former guild had different ideals.

Was kind of in the same situatons. Was in a Hardcore raiding guild, thought that's what i wanted. There was NO social anything in there, only business...Was pretty boring, and when i noticed a trend, they would bring me in ToGC for the first 2 Bosees ( because some players would arrive late or whatever, this without saying it to me first ) then they would drop me saying, they needed another class..... Yeah right... So i jumped. It's pretty bad when a group of people exploit other ones like that, shows what kind of people they really are. Not easy too, to find a good place to fit in, but it is worth looking for.

We've got socials who pal around with the guild (though for them to get in they need to actually know a raider). We don't really serve them with any sort of guild function though. They're welcome to gear themselves up and apply as a raider if they feel like their app will be accepted, but this isn't something that happens too often. More often than not the socials just log in a few times a week, run heroics or 10mans with their friends, and then joke with us in guild chat.

You have to understand, by most raiding guilds' defenition, a social is someone who is just there to.. socialize, and has no business in the guild raid. If the player wanted to raid they would apply as a raider. As I mentioned before, people don't apply as a social, they just get a social invite because they are a friend of the family or something like that. That is just how it goes. You can't really expect more than gchat and the occasional pug invite when you join as a social, just like you can't expect to become a trial lawyer by working the mail-room at a law-firm. In order to step up and get into raids you have to gear yourself up, build your own experience as a raider, and most guilds aren't willing to make the long-term investment in someone who hasn't proven themselves.

We have social members in our guild who are either friends or ex-raiders who don't have the time to raid any more. They still get invited to raids if we're short someone or the comp isn't right and we need another player, and in general that works out pretty well.

When I was in a position of guild management I didn't mind people who had to stop raiding because of problems and such but wished to remain with us as a "social", if we had space and they were on we might have taken them, but we never strictly worked around them. We worked around the raiders people who could meet the requirements we desired. What used to bug me were people who would be "i want to raid, I want a break, now I want back, now another break" kind of takes the pee and really gives you a headache organization wise.

I think each to their own (or guild) really some just want a no nonsense type of playing, others want progression yet have a social side, some just social ect

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bowen

What used to bug me were people who would be "i want to raid, I want a break, now I want back, now another break" kind of takes the pee and really gives you a headache organization wise.

I think each to their own (or guild) really some just want a no nonsense type of playing, others want progression yet have a social side, some just social ect

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Double agreement from me. And as for that first type of player, we've got an unofficial rule that raiders who go social can re-apply at any time, but if someone repeats the process (apps, gets back in as a raider, and then goes social again) they cannot re-apply unless 100% of the officers agree that it is acceptable (hasn't happened yet).

This is only an issue in progression raiding guilds.

The goal is to keep progressing at a steady pace. To do that you need roughly the same people at every raid working together as a team. The team then gets better over time and thus progresses at a better rate. This also means loot distribution works best when it goes to raiders who will bring that loot back to the raid each week. It hurts progression when you have casual/social guys come in, because they don't raid with the team all the time, they need to be brought up to speed, and they have a high possibility for doing their job wrong while learning how your team does things and wiping the raid. They will also typically be lacking in the gear department, because these casual players don't have a prayer of getting any unless its about to be a shard. Progression raiding guilds weigh their options, it makes far more sense to put in the above time and effort in a raider applicant that can have high attendance over a casual/social that will only be around once in a while.

Simply put, in a progression raiding guild casuals/socials are not worth the investment.

If you don't have the availability to meet the attendance requirements of the guild your in and still want to raid, you are better off moving to a more casual style guild.

I am an ex-raider social in the top progression guild on my server (or at least it was the first to down Anub 25H by a fair margin; gated instances and relatively easy bosses do odd things to progression rankings so I'm not sure mathematically how it worked out these last few weeks).

In my experience, being in the guild is very worthwhile because a lot of the raiders have alts that they will run raids with. Needless to say, these don't necessarily get as far as the ones the main raid does, but they still get farther than pugs and most guild runs. My current 10 man group is composed of 5 ex-raider socials and 5 main raider alts; we have yet to run out of attempts on any boss and consistently been able to down bosses the first week we have time to work on them (which, due to main raid schedules, is usually the week after they first come out).

So basically what it comes down to is, being a social in a raid guild can definitely have benefits, but you need to be capable of performing at the level of the raiders (or at least the level of the raiders' alts) for it to pan out. Otherwise, you will most likely be excluded from groups because progression raiders tend to get upset at people that don't merge their oozes right etc.

/agree with Bowen and Proletaria

It's very difficult a good raid team from "socials" wanting to raid one night a week, or on again off again types.

Here is a good example. We raid four nights a week, three hours per raid. We had a 85% attendance ret pally, he's going back to school and will only be able to raid 50%. We also have a "social" ret pally, who said he'd pick up the other 50% attendance. The officers were faced with a decision, let two ppl fill one spot by "sharing" it, or just recruit a full time ret. Recruiting a full time ret was the obvious answer.

One problem is that you're having to gear up two toons to fill one spot. The other is, who gets to pick what nights what gets run? Is one going to start complaining cause all the farm stuff gets run on the "other guy's" night?

The more "social" or low attendance raiders you have to bring, the more it diliutes the gear pool, and it will slow down progression. A consistent group will work better together, as our attendance precentages increase, our raid has improved significantly.

Lastly, and I'm not saying this is true of the op, some social raiders seem to be only interested in raiding AFTER most of the encounters are on farm, and everyone geared, so they get defaulted gear no one else needs. Easy epics for less time invested.

Our guild has had several "social" players move into the core raiding group. We also have nothing like the division in the guild that Proletaria and others mention, but we do have a regular invite list, and generally people don't get progression raid invites unless they have the gear and have shown some motivation to actually do so.

That said, our system has also caused social problems. Because there are many groups of friends (sometime even family) in the guild, and naturally the degree of skill/time is not distributed evenly across members in those groups. So there have certainly been some hard feelings by people who want invites to progression raiding but don't have the gear, etc for them. Since we are casual enough to want to do occasional fun runs, or clears of older content to gear people up, some people have formed the expectation that we should pull them through lower content in order to gear them. All of this can cause social strife even if it doesn't impact your raiding (which is has at times also). For that reason I suspect that some more formal division, even if it's a baseline of GS/DPS/HPS/HP etc. should be made explicitly available so people at least have targets to shoot for. Of course if your core raiders were trying to not expand the raiding core on purpose (in the OP's case perhaps) then you don't want to provide a target to shoot for, as then you are creating the expectation of a chance to raid. Personally, I'm happy to see us form new raids (even if they are a previous tier or two) that let more people raid, as for me raiding is the most fun part of the game. It's just that the guild officers have to figure out a way to manage expectations, provide target numbers for gear and specs, etc. And that's more work than many people want to do.

Only sort of a side track = one interesting problem left over from Naxx 25 was that was it was actually easier than Naxx 10 from an individual performance PoV, so once your guild had it on farm you could often drag a large number of undergeared or underperforming people through it, including pugs (not saying this necessarily all applies to my guild). That means that players in half ilvl 200 blues sometimes got to raid the biggest, baddest content available (more or less) and get lots of gear quickly while sort of "learning on the job". I've seen several players who base their expectations for current raids around this; not that you can be in ilvl 200 gear, but that you can show up slightly undergeared and just sort of learn the encounters as you go.

We have a progression core, but also have many social members.

Our social members are usually ex-raiders, or friends and family. Our socials are welcome in our alt raids, many even get in for our 10m main raids (3 groups, need 5 more warm bodies) especially if they are ex-raiders with current (251 or 245 +) gear. They are often occupied by PvP. The best part is when our ex-raiders come back to raiding, and they're always a better pick-up then someone new (of course they have to earn a roster spot). Often times they fill in a role that's vacant for a raid due to a absent regular.

Now I have a diffrent kinda story. The best guild I've ever been in I actually joined at level 30. These guys were already raiding and we good at it. I would sit and grind away listening to the raid in vent. One of the raiders, who played my class at the time, took me under his wing and worked with me every step of the way. Now, I did not get to jump right into the raid as soon as I dinged 70, but I was pulled into constant roics with the MT and healer. I learned class mechanics from my CL, I made kept contributing to the GB with food and pots, and one night it happened. They needed someone to help fill in Kara. Now, for a month or so when raid time rolled around, I parked my hunter outside Kara and jumped onto an alt. Just left him there just in case. (This was before lock sumz into instances).

I was pulled in, WAY behind on gear but ok for the content and I ran 3rd in dps, my misdirects were where they should be, I floated my threat at 105% if the tanks ensuring not to overrun him and pull aggro, I didn't die once to the infernals, and I knew my stuff. All of my stuff. I became a perm part of their raiding team and an officer in the guild after a while... Being with this guild is my best memory in WOW.

This is what I'm saying, if a socal wants to raid they have to put the time in. Show them they are ready, show them they are smart, show them that they want it badly... If a socal does this and puts their time in (my time in was nearly a year), then damn right they should be given a spot.

The problem with many "core guilds" are ego. Many progressive guilds which are very successful at the completion of many hard instances e.g. TOGC 25m think that they are the upper eschalon of "human" on a game. Of course in many instances nobody can blame a core guild that puts its time in to be successful but one thing many don't understand is that wow is a game. I understand the concept of "serious business" however, one thing I like about social guilds is the laid back mentality. With respect to raid spots unfortunately if you haven't been in the guild since day one, or if you are an average player you may lose a raid spot even if you sign up on the calendar. Fortunately for myself, I've never had this problem since I have a very good reputation as a tank on my server. With core raiding guilds a very good thing about them is consistency in raids and the gurantee of experience. The bad part with social guilds is the lack of consistency or if consistent, its often at times raiding with pugs instead of memebers within the guild (there are reasons for this such as low population of members etc).

If I can recall, I was once on a PVE server which the guild I was in turned from social to progressive raiding guild and was eventually the second on the entire server on raids (prior to the release of 3.2). However, because we were so good at raiding many members who were laid back lost the "chill mentality" and started treating raids like a 9 to 5 job.