Getting People to Show Up....

[Fealthas]

I am the raid leader for my guild and we've been running into a problem that I have seen in every guild I have been in except two. People will show up on reg ToC 25 tuesdays (yay loot pinata) and then maybe again on wednesday... but after that we seem to generally have 15-20 ppl on in guild for invites to the raid. Ive talked this over with the other officers and my ideas were disagreed with. I wanted to just make it clear that we have no set schedule, that we will run content appropriate to the people that show up (ToGC) and then on days when we're short, do ToC and bring in some casuals to fill spots. The other officers seem to think that by not having a set schedule, I would be "tricking" my raiders. Is this true? Im not actually saying we're going to kill the loot pinata and then switching the raid to something else. Id like to see what other raid leaders think and some tips on how I can get people to show up.

Just a note, we do use DKP and it seems that 100 dkp for showing up isnt enough to get ppl to show up after wednesday.

[Bishoptwo]

I recruit and help manage a guild that has remained top 100 USA and steadily gotten better.

There are many options you could use here or better yet a combination of both.

I'm not exactly sure what your guild's goals are considering what type of content you focus on and how hard you want to push Heroic/Hardmodes. So any of these suggestions could possibly not apply.

1) People expect "Free Loot Tuesday"? Everyone you would like to have on for Heroic is on? Then do Heroic. If it is your direction as a guild to push Heroic/Hardmodes in some fashion then people shouldn't be dissapointed when they show up Tuesday and find out they are doing ToGC instead of ToC.

2) Don't give people DKP for farm content. Give them DKP for your "progression". Yes I understand that the basic definition of DKP only grants points based on the bosses you kill but you could make this modification. It would be as easy as calculating how much DKP each person usually gets from "farm nights" then dividing that by your "progression nights" then give everyone that amount of DKP even if only 20 ppl show up give them the DKP and don't give any to the no shows. Better yet you could dock DKP for the no shows. Again this is dependent on what your guild wants your attendance rate to be etc.

3) If people just don't want to make an effort to show up and wipe on new stuff when they could get "free loot" then this is a problem. Again I'm not sure how much you want to push progression but even if it's only a couple of hours a night you need like minded raiders that have the same ambitions as you do. YOU NEED TO RECRUIT TO REPLACE. Either do this in private between officers or do it publicly. I tell my raiders in Vent when I'm unhappy with someones attendence or performance. I make it known to everyone that I am actively recruiting to replace them if things don't change. This might be overkill for your guild but it works for mine. EVERYONE CAN BE REPLACED NO MATTER WHO THEY ARE OR WHAT THEY DO. This fact has been proven multiple times. We lost a dozen core raiders on Brutallus and rebounded from it. We lost our main recruitment officer and half a dozen core raiders after killing Firefighter and rebounded from it. As long as the officers are all on board you can replace anyone there is always someone better out there. Even if it's an officer you are replacing there is always someone that would be a better officer in your guild ready to step up.

Again as stated, I have no clue what your guild culture is like, what you expect from your raiders and what they expect from you.

From my personal experience in my own guild, I have a "for the better of my guild" mentality. This obviously is NOT how most guilds are run. This was in place before I took over recruiting and co-raid leading. It was what my members responded to so I had to adapt to this mentality in order to take over when a main officer quit.

You should sit down with your officers and decide what you as officers want. Then go from there. It basically rests on the officers shoulders whether the guild succeeds or fails. Your definition of success and failure is also up to you all.

I hope this isnt TLDR and I wish you the very best of luck. Again I can not stress how important recruiting is. You must recruit. You have to recruit or your guild will die. If you all want to do ToGC and don't have enough people on you have to make it happen and recruit.

[Fealthas]

We currently kind of do what you said in point #2, working on progression and downing a progression boss is worth alot more dkp than the farm content. We just downed 25 H Beasts after far too many 0.2-1% wipes and the people who showed up got I think 500 dkp instead of 10 for the kill and the hour or two we spent working on it that night (oddly enough we got it on sunday). We recently re-opened our recruitment because our GM was fed up of people not showing up and wants to recruit people who will, but Im a bit worried about this. We have a semi-large group of raiders who joined the guild together who are for the most part, all major players in the guild and some of the people who arent showing up are lesser players in the group.

[Bishoptwo]

If I understand you correctly quite a large group of people came to your guild (possibly from a dying guild) and most of them are good raiders and show up while a few dont show up.

You are worried that if you recruit to replace the few that do show up then this might influence the ones that are good and show up?

Any group deals, couple deals are always really sketchy. I always assume that if I have to gkick one of them that the other one will gquit on the spot or shortly after and I plan accordyingly. I don't take more than a group of 2 for this very reason and rarely take people that want to come over together. The exception to this is if I'm in need of a certain class/spec and I feel like that this person will help us kill this boss before I have to gkick his/her friend. lol, harsh I know, but like I said in my earlier post that was the mentality I adopted and that my guild members perform well in. This is just from my personal experience and obviously doesnt really work for you. But you should always be wary of recruiting couples or groups and realize the possible fallout that could occur.

It really just comes down to what the officers/core members want. If you really want to push progression more then recruiting to replace these people has to happen. Will the 2 or 3 bad/no show raiders cause the good ones of this same clique to gquit, etc? Possibly. It could turn out to be that these players have a higher priority to do this "progression" content with the guild and won't be phased if you have to recruit to replace some of their clique that isn't showing up.

[Esch]

My group's officers shifted ToC to first thing every night, doing one boss per night, followed both other stuff. As we raid four nights a week, there is a double ToC boss evening as well, and VoA/Onyxia are set on other nights. Usually the mix-ups are Beasts/VoA, then Jaxx/FC, followed by Valkyir/Onyxia, then Anub. The rest of the time is filled with Ulduar clearing from hardmodes, achievements, Sarth 3D and Malygos, in about that order. (Sarth is mostly for mount, trivialized by our gear while Maylgos is just a badge pinata.)

While someone can guesstimate which ToC bosses will be when, this did reduce the lack of nonToC signups. After all, if you roster for a raid, you're expected all raid, and dropping after ToC would certainly be noted by the officers. Also, some folks just can't make X night, but they're not shut out of collecting some emblems & possibly a trophy on the remain nights.

The problem with a set schedule is folks do try to plan to be present for a particular boss, to get a specific drop or two. If you have a consistent pattern, then folks have an idea when they want to be present, yet you can say 'Okay, Beasts dead - head to Sarth' or 'Nice on Jaxx. Zone out and we're doing ToGC Beasts'. Members need to be flexible as well, not just raid schedules. Getting folks used to adjusting is hard, but gets easier once they understand that is how raids are run.

RE Recruitment - I expect you're going to need to recruit, as some folks will blow off raids if they're not getting what they want. Replacing them is unavoidable and ultimately for the best, as it allows you to bring someone new into the group and say what the rules are, rather than trying to have an older member adapt.

[shez]

We started to have attendance issue for both normal and heroics and we've been doing what bishoptwo said for a long time, like not telling people what raid we're doing, do heroic whenever we have the right group, put toc25 normal mode on a low attendance night, giving more dkp on progression nights.

Recruit and replace is the key solution to this, however, recruitment has been very very hard lately. We haven't had a single app for weeks, we've been spamming trade, posting on realm forums. And we also don't.

We are not top progression but top 10 (including both factions), only thing we have not killed is anub heroic 25 man. Every guild on my server is recruiting, and there's not many people looking for guild and my server is a high population server.

People don't need guild anymore since every raid in game is puggable.

[Xianth]

When I used to run a 25 man guild in TBC I would just set certain evenings to be "raid days" and then I would decide about 30 mins before. This way, people would turn up regardless if they were available - not everyone is just there for loot but it made sure the full complement of players who were available were about. Obviously, you'd eventually get into a comfortable pattern (say MH on weds and BT on sunday) but the threat was always there that the day could change and sometimes it did. Most people arn't serious offenders but if they know it's a wipe night and some excuse pops up to avoid they raid they will go with the excuse and it only takes 3-4 people like that to spoil the party. Having experienced using both methods I would definately say it is much better for the good of succesful raiding that a) people don't know to far in advance which raid you're going to and b) they don't know until invites whether they will get to go. I dunno, perhaps it worked with my people because they were well drilled, but I can't see anyway to best manage that sort of behaviour otherwise and it certainly won't help your guild if you have ambitions of good progress.

Raiding is a two way thing, your people need to support the wipe nights (through clever tactics or otherwise ) and gear up on the farm nights.

[Fastous]

Not sure if this was covered in the list of solutions, but this is what my previous guild did to solve your issue of "Loot Tuesdays"

Invite everyone for ToC 25 on Tuesdays. Go to ICC and start summons. Everyone is online and ready to raid on Tuesday and had stopped showing up past wednesday, and eventually, past tuesday, so we just started hitting the progression first and saving the easy or old stuff for the end of the week.

[Fledern]

This sounds very familiar.

We're also a casual guild, meaning we raid regularly but we dont kick members for low attendance/crappy performance, we just move them to casual list. We had a kickass team that pushed into 3/5 ToGC25 but quite a few got bored and moved on to other games/new girlfriends, etc. Now we're lacking people.

The things we've found:

1) Keeping what raid you're going to ends up alienating more & more people. Changing days constantly does that too. So we ended up fixing our 25man days. It also lets you know which people dont want to raid.
2) Raid current content. ICC first 4 bosses are being pugged regularly on my server. So is ToC, even ToGC10. In such an atmosphere, if you continue raiding ToC in any format, you become a "regular" pug. Move to ICC and push really hard for plaguewings.
3) Recruit heavily. Recruitment on our server is pretty tough too. It seems there's a new 25man guild being setup everyday, the trade channel is spammed with guild recruitment messages and nobody gets their 25man running. Still we get regular new applicants. Some of our new applicants i guess of being alts. Some are just plain crap or annoying. But we still got enough jewels that it's worth continuing.
4) Dont mind the people grumping about the new people. We're having that too. But once the shakedown begins and the more decent ones start becoming proper raiders, people get used to them.
5) Keep trying. One thing i'm still not sure if we're doing right is, if we cant get a 25man going, we switch to a 10man. People who reserved that night for gameplay at least get to go somewhere. It also helps people to show up, since they know they'll be going somewhere, sometimes even hoping it turns into a 10man run. But still keep trying for 25mans and make sure everybody knows you're busting your ass for that.
6) Ninja players. Ok evil idea but not so much without merit. With so many guilds out there trying to go and not succeeding, it also makes for a fairly high number of disgruntled players. Use pug raids (another reason why you should be running icc as guild, so you can pug toc) to get to know the better ones, chat to find out about their progress, note which guilds have decent players but no progress and start asking around.

[Njordus]

OP: It seems you have the wrong types of people in your guild. If you want to have people show up for your progression, you need to have people that would rather do that than farm easy modes.

Bottom Line: Set a guild raiding goal, and recruit people that want to achieve it. Dismiss the rest.