Second raid team

[Roderigo]

I thought I would post my story here to see if anyone has any advice for me. Let me give a little background about my guild.

We're a 10 man guild only. We tried 25 mans in BC when it was required for progression and it broke up the guild, so we reformed and decided to stick to 10 mans only. It's worked well for us, we have progressed through wrath content at a good pace, currently working on ToGC10 faction champions.

About 4 months ago we decided to try and add a second raid team so we would have more folks in the raid for off nights, and to allow alts from either team to fill in for absences to ensure a steady raid schedule. We've recruited alot of folks, most of them from other servers, to fill this other raid which we were planning to run friday/saturday nights.

We got enough to start raiding, stealing some alts from our first raid group. I was main tank for both runs. We started in ulduar and after recruiting about 8 people, were able to move to ToC10. I shifted MT duties to the other tank, since I was planning to phase myself out of the second run, and we promoted one of the people from the new group to officer/raid leader.

Overall, the runs aren't bad. There are some issues with synergy that new groups experience, but that will work itself out once they have a solid set of raiders, since we're filling in 2-4 spots on a weekly basis with alts from the first raid group.

This is where the problems are starting. It's not a guarantee that we're going to get enough alts around during those times to fill in absences, and there are considerable absences with the new group. It's very unstable, people's attendance. And most of the problem, i think, is that it's a friday/saturday raid. Unfortunately, the weekend is the only time half the raid can commit to at all.

And we've hit a wall on recruitment. Because most of the guild is married couples and adults, we are pretty selective on who can join, so the recruitment process has had to give a little just to get as far as we've gotten. I'm unwilling to give any more leeway.

We're at the point we can only get 1 night of raiding with the weekend crew. This is barely enough to keep people's interest, and I'm afraid we're going to start losing the good people we worked so hard to recruit. But I am worried we won't be able to fill the holes because it's hard to find quality players who will fit in with our guild to raid on the weekend.

So what do you guys think?

[Penlowe]

Part of this is just the time of year. From Halloween through New Years, most raids, whether 10 or 25, easy going or hardcore, have more and more absences, RL pwns WoW.

That said, sometimes a preemptive "hey we know at least 4 people have company Christmas parties this weekend, no raid, see you on the 12th" on the guild forum or or GMOTD makes for a much less stressful non-raid than trying and stressing over people not being there/ trying to fill slots.

Second, the next patch with new content is close, you guys will have stuff to do. You can't fret too much over players lost, often when people don't fit well and stay in a guild it causes far more drama than if they had left at the point they decided it wasn't for them. Ever work hard to get a date with someone and then that hard won dates was just... okay? Not bad, but not great and certainly no sparks flew? Raiders who join you for a while and move on are going through the same thing, accept it and keep looking forward.

[Pattyfathead]

Well Penlowe pretty much said it all.

One thing to add though is, for any raid group you need a few standbys. You say your recruitment has hit a wall? That will make it tough. I find for any raid group I need to have atleast three extra people that have the possibility to show up.

We run two 25 mans. And we have to recruit past the point of 50 people to maintain that, up to the point of having atleast 60.

Some nights you will have 53 people show up and a few people will be miffed they didn't get a run. But i find that is usually much better than the nights when only 47 people show up, and 22 people are miffed their run didn't go.

So I will say, if you want that second run to succeed, you have to get around that recruitment barrier and get atleast one or two players that can run when others don't show up.