Starting a Guild - Progress & Recruitment

[Renilan]

Hello Everyone,

I happened to stumble upon Ciderhelm's Guild Relation's Podcast series yesterday, and have been hooked since! This post is a bit longer than I expected, so please bear with me.

Anyway, here's a little background info that will help this all come full-circle later and may help give more accurate advice. I have been playing WoW since TBC was released as a Blood Elf Warlock (Renilan). Up until 2 weeks ago, I was with a top 3 guild on the Dunemaul server and raiding MH/BT exclusively. However, I got a new job and thus had to switch my schedule and transferred to an EST server (Shattered Hand).

In doing so, I have started my own guild entitled <Outrage>. We are only about 1 week old at this point and have about 14 members (mainly people who stuck around from signing the guild charter). I think I have made a few critical mistakes, up front and want some advice...

- I appointed friends/family to Guild Officers immediately (One long-time friend, one is my cousin)
- I did not confirm my goals/desires for Outrage with them or seek to find out their long-term goals before making them officers. I have done so now, but it's after the fact.
- In addition, one of the above said Officers does not have a character on Shattered Hand, and cannot transfer one to the server so he is leveling a Druid. But currently is only level 40.
- This same officer (the Druid) plans to "try-out" WarHammer when it is released. If it is good, he will stick with it.. if not, he will come back to WoW.

With that said, it appears the said officer leveling a druid see's this as more of a casual guild, and think's my goals are completly unrealistic.

My goals for the guild:
- Reach BT content by the time Wrath debuts, and do so quickly.

I have not started recruiting as of yet, as the said officer's want to wait on raiding until they are 70. Which I assume, will roughly take another month or so.

Thus, my questions really are.

1. Do I move ahead start recruiting and running Kara ASAP?
2. Do I demote at least one, if not both of the officers and in due time promote those who share the same goal, and motivation for that goal?
3. Do you think my goal of reaching BT, or getting part way through BT is even realistic in this time-frame?

Any other advice is welcomed, and appreciated. Thank You.

[Krashtork]

1) Start raiding ASAP. Yes it may suck for your buddies, but you wont reach BT in the time we have left without being able to recruit for a month. And I am sure the recruitment of raids will be a waste of time until you start raiding. Your buddies can get geared up easily enough outside of raids or in a couple of T4 farm runs. You have at MOST 4 months if WoTLK comes out when it's said to. You can't waste 1/4 of your time waiting.

2) I would start asking your buddies what their vision of what the guild is to become. If it isn't what you envision, inform them of YOUR goal. If they don't like or aren't willing to help you reach said goal, tell them politely that you need officers who share your vision, and demote them to some kind of Veteran rank.

3) If you burn a hole in Kara, waste Gruul, shank Mag, ignore Hydross, (resist sets suck and take a long time to create, plus Hydross drops shit loot), and skip Vashj, ignore Kael, probably skip Al'ar, start MH/BT then yes, you could potentially get a decent way into BT before wrath.

[Renilan]

Thanks Krashtork. I was really thinking the same thing, and probably should have mentioned so in my original post.

I guess I wanted someone elses opinion.

Any other advice is welcome. And i'll report back in a few weeks to let everyone know how things are going!

- Renilan

[minrog]

You will probably need to raid a lot. Krashtork was pretty on target with the kill list but I'll add my .02 as well.

Easy mode bosses (if you can kill gruul/HKM you should be able to kill these):

Lurker
Voidreaver
Rage Winterchill

Tank gear check bosses:

Fathom Lord Karathress
Morogrim Tidewalker
Hydross (resist gear)
Leotheras (resist gear)

Tank skill check bosses:

A'lar

Raid awareness bosses (note: these are probably going to be the hardest fights for the raid you described):

Solarian
Leotheras
Hydross
Anetheron
Supremus

Stamina Gear/Healer/DPS throughput checks:

Naj'entus
Kaz'rogal

I'm sure I could go on an on, as many people here could. :P If I were in your place I'd highlight which areas the raiding players are strong and try to focus on encounters that play to that strength. If you have stellar tanks try to hit that list of tank heavy encounters; if your tanks are only so/so then farm the easy mode bosses until you can improve them. Someone else mentioned on tankspot that in Tier 5 you need well geared tanks but for T6 you start needing them to be good players as well as being well geared. In my experience that seems to be the case. Good luck.

[bludwork]

Raiding requires a time commitment. You need to check with the existing members if they have the time to be there to raid, and to recruit players who share the same time aspirations.

[Andenthal]

Raiding requires a time commitment. You need to check with the existing members if they have the time to be there to raid, and to recruit players who share the same time aspirations.

This is very important!!!! (and often overlooked when recruiting)
If your raid schedule is Wed - Sun, 4pm - 8pm your applicants need to be able to play during those times. Recruiting players in T6 gear does you no good if they can only play Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

[Bonerot]

Demote your friends and family, recruit people to be officers based on skill and ability. What you did is a road map to drama imo.