guild co-op 25 man runs

[ceffo]

Well recently our guild co-op ran with another guild to do gruuls (2/2 now) and have moved onto (ssc/tk).

We never had enough geared people for 25man hence this co-op runs.

Can anyone point out some cons against this kind of union between 2 guilds?

Neither GM's are willing to merge guilds btw and form a new entity. Which i guess is fair enough.

[Crommi]

If your Co-op runs are succesful, it's pretty much guaranteed that there will me some sort of merge. Usually the larger guild takes in the raiders from smaller one because this kind of raiding is really difficult to do in a long run. To be efficient you would have to syncronise your recruiting so you both are not looking for same classes which ends up in having too many of them for 25mans. Also some kind of loot drama is unavoidable unless you have both guilds in same DKP list, but would it then make more sense to have just one guild for your raid core.

[Ylun]

On my server the normal case is to join a raid force, not a raiding guild. I am in a friend's guild, but I raid with a raid force (that originated in another guild). We use a custom chat channel instead of the guild channel. But otherwise it's just like any raid force, with dkp/skg, forum, recruitement and progress.

[Leytur]

If it's successful now why would it turn bad later or force a merge? If everyone's cool I say keep it up.

[Marn]

Well, loot could become an issue, if people from one guild get more even if the recipients are more often than not the logical choices for gear decisions. Also, there's always going to be a handful of ego's in every guild who could bring some instability to this kind of thing.

[Leytur]

But if loot isn't an issue in T4 why would it be an issue in T5?

[Tybalt]

The biggest issue we had when we were running a guild raiding alliance was discipline. When it's just your guild in the raid, correcting players' mistakes is much more tolerated because you're their raid leader or guild officer. When you're in an alliance, and a member of the other guild keeps screwing up (think Lurker's spout), you're not really in a position to tell them off on teamspeak. So unless the leader from each guild is going to enforce discipline equally, you'll likely have problems.

[ceffo]

we had that isue with disclipine already with one of the healers just forgetting where she stood 5min earlier after a wipe on a new boss to get ito position again.

But we couldnt say anything due to her being from another guild

[Rayne]

We failed to generate the bodies in house, so ultimately allied with another guild to do T4. It worked for a while in GL, but ultimately failed at Mag and the tension on both sides grew. Once the finger pointing started, I informed them that we were going to try some different content for a while. We ultimately created a raiding force in which the leadership and core is provided by our guild, but picked up interested folks from a few other guilds. Our first run was in late February and now we're 5/6 and 3/4 (2/5 and 1/9 =)).

We raid 5 times every two weeks, so we're not hard core, but we do try. It's not at all fast progression, but we do make progress, and the casual schedule is much easier for a lot of us.

I often wonder if we'll pick up any of them with the expansion as that's a time that seems to generate a fair amount of guild churn, but I don't know that we'll require it.

[Honorshammer]

I think you will see less of this in the Xpac as you can 10 man your way through the entire endgame.

[Vissara]

We ran into issues with this even back pre TBC. We ran co-op MC and Ony and we ran into factions forming within the raids, especially in MC when we got close to having a HoR crafted. One group (french players) felt their war should get it, the other guild felt their war should get it, and we felt that our war (who was the raid MT) should get it. No one could come to a reasonable compromise and the raid fell apart. There's still some bad blood to this day between a few people.

[ceffo]

well looks like the guild co-op runs are a success. We have downs gruuls/mag and first boss in ssc (lurker and moving to hydross)

The advice here i read works wonders good work guys now we have people all the time joining the guild.

[gilthanus]

About 5 of us moved to a new server because of drama and bad leaders/players on an old server. We are almost up to the 10 man stage, but not quite. We have pugged a couple from another guild recently that has about 14-15 people and we are going to ally with them to start making 25 man progress, have more than 1 kara/za run a week, etc.

And if you are raid lead, why would there be an issue with having someone from another guild in the raid? Your in my raid, you will do what is asked of you, and if you want to complain or wipe the raid, you can be replaced. I'll spend 1000g a week on talented, dedicated players working towards downing new content, but wouldnt spend 1c for an incompetent whining player that doesnt want to do what they are supposed too.

[Soupa]

I hope I don't get too wordy, but as an Co-Founder for a raiding alliance, I feel very strongly, and positivley about the subject. The MAIN CORE IDEA, is you need good MATURE people. They can be kids, but if they are mature about their playstyle, and play well as a group, then as long as they don't say "poopoopeepee" into vent 24/7, they are probably a good addition.

Pre-TBC, after getting tired of running Scholo for the 48th time for helms, a buddy and mine started to form an alliance to hit the 20 mans. Our INITIAL succesful move was to create a community of excellence and a standard of skill.
The very first piece of this was to create a custom chat channel. As raids, or 5 mans were succesful, we would ask these great players to /join channelX.
The people we ran with knew what we were looking for and the types of people we wanted. After a few weeks of this and scraping together raids for ZG, we finally setup a website in order to track things a normal guild wants to track. A raid scheduler, a DKP tracker and discussion forums.
Cut to over a year later, there was only 2 hordeside guilds killing Rags. We were the third. I'll also never forget the night in trade "Wait, I thought GuildX and Guild Y already killed Ony this week..." To which we were able to respond, " And now, The Raiding alliance Z has come out victorious as well!" 12 Pugged Quel'Serrar's later :P ....
At the high point, moving into BWL, our total raiding population from our RP server had over 500 people , pretty much on the same page. Boss fight strats and "Raid Alliance" rules coupled with the Raid scheduler really put us in a position we never expected.
Nightly, we would have people standing outside the raid instances listed on the scheduler, some up to 45 minutes before raid start time. When TBC was announced, we decided to move towards more of a guild format as many of the "Scratch and claw(TO BE LIKE US )" guilds, and some of the more premier guilds started "poaching" our players. We kept the same systems such as DKP rules, raid requirements and the likes when we moved foward to guild status eventually.

Oh, did I mention we've been raiding at MIDNIGHT to FOUR AM SERVER TIME :P That in itself had it's challenges, but definatley gave us a consistent core of people to play with and choose from. RP Server, Midnight raids, and still, we manage to 4/4 , 6/6 , 4/5 and 4/5. Acheiving the #2 horde side spot wasn't easy with the factors running against us, but it sure has been fun!

The simplicity and truths are such...
- You MUST have a core of "leaders". This includes ( and probably most importantly ) Human Resources people to handle issues, ( Basically , someone good with conversation skills).
- You need a raid leader, Someone who knows the bosses and can concisely run down fights. As an alliance, you will almost ALWAYS have someone who "Doesn't know what this boss does"( Pref two leads so the one doesn't get burnt out ).
-Finally, you really should have an IT guy, who handles a website for tracking information. If anything, this helps players feel a stronger sense of community outside of the game, and makes them looking forward to getting back into it.
- Stick to a schedule. Consistency is king, especially without a guild tag to hang up. ( Example, AQ scarabs and Idols. Any time people would scratch their head as to why I or so-and-so was getting ALL the scarabs and idols on a run, they would ALWAYS be ENTHUSIASTIC when they heard why. " We're saving them for players who loot the items from the bosses AND have the required rep. As soon as both conditions are met, BAM, Idols and Scarabs in the mail" This was a HUGE boost to our player pool when they saw these items on players and confirmed that we weren't just in it for ourselves )
- Reward greatness, make people aware (thru attrition) that mediocrity will always be bottom rung.

Once you start playing like this, you will appreciate the flexibilty and communication that comes with a setup like this. If anyone has any questions, I would be glad to PM or answer them here.


Soupa-Fly

P.S. A LOT of guilds who thought they were advanced or all that, began with initial laughs snickers and /points. " That'll never work" " Your people are scrubs". I wonder where those feelign went when they were poaching our players, or better yet, when we surpassed them and their guild walls came crashing down. How does it feel to hang your head in shame and ask to be let into a house you were gunning for months earlier :P