High end raiders will reach a point where they can’t seem to make any further progress in the week. Maybe their raiding week ended early and there’s a day or two left over with a few bosses remaining. In some cases you might encounter a situation where a more progressed Guild comes up to you and requests to take your instance.
Why would a Guild do that?
Both parties could benefit out of a mutual arrangement. Here’s a few reasons:
The Asking Guild
- No time needed to clear through trash
- Specific bosses available
The Receiving Guild
- Some form of compensation for their instance being taken
- Experience gain for a few members if an agreement is reached where they can raid with the Asking Guild
Things to consider
There are a few ethical obligations to keep in mind. Usually an asking Guild will go to the guild leader and ask them for permission and try to reach a deal. If they’re not able to, they might turn to other members in the Guild in order to hijack their instance.
Pros
- I O U: Good and honorable Guilds will never forget favors and I try to build as much good will as I can. Networking is an important skill to have.
- Chance at free loot: Who wouldn’t want a free shot at gear without having to spend copious amounts of DKP?
- Experience gain: You’re able to learn from other experienced players around you in regards to little tricks that can be done to make the encounter go by smoother.
Cons
- Wasted Effort: Don’t like the idea of clearing all the way to the end boss for another Guild to swoop in and take the kill.
- Contaminates the Economy: If an item drops and a member from the receiving Guild gets it, it could cause some animosity amongst players in the Guild because they didn’t have to spend DKP for it.
- Costly: If the instance is given without a GM’s consent, the consequences could be very high leading to a GKick.
As a personal belief, if an opportunity arose where another Guild wanted to take our instance and kill Kael in Tempest Keep and we would no longer be raiding the rest of the week, I would have no qualms at all with giving them our instance. Coming from an Asian family, it’s been instilled that wasting anything is wrong whether it’s money, food, or Archimonde.
So what’s the going rate on Archimonde right now? Would your GM be willing to pay to take another Guild’s Archie kill? If you’re on the receiving end, what would your price or terms be in negotiating with another progressed Guild?
TRI did this with another raid on our server that we (as a raid) are friends with – some of their alts actually raid with us.
This was back before you could run straight for Vashj, and we were 4 or 5/6 at the time. The deal we worked out was we got the nether vortexes and some of the marks of illidari that dropped, and some of our raiders got to go and see how the Vashj fight worked. In return, they got a trash-free, boss-free instance and could kill Vashj without having to kill things that they had no need of loot from anymore.
All told, it worked out great, and we got access to some crafting patterns that we hadn’t had drop yet (since their raid crafters were very generous and made stuff for us if we brought them mats). It was a good system!
Annas last blog post..TNB meets BBB
We paid 10K for Illidan for a few weeks. We got some decent loot out of it. But our guild bank is now down to only about 45K. We’ve been running BT on off-nights, however, for free.
Lumes last blog post..M’uru Is Dead; Hello, Kil’Jaeden
Our guild does this every week with Hyjal. We clear 4/5, then they take our ID (and GM) and go kill Archimonde. In exchange we get about 15-20 Hearts of Darkness. Not a bad trade if you ask me.
I’m hoping to be allowed to go on one of these runs and see the guy die–and kill twenty-four other people in the process. 😛
I was soo going to post on this subject but you beat me to it.
As you can see from my last blog entry, we were given a nearly completed BT instance with only the Illidari Council and Illidan left. Things are handled properly between guilds, and we only do this Monday night before all instances are reset.
What the other guild gets? There is always some form of compensation. Gold, Hearts, sometimes they don’t for anything in return. We bring 5-10 of their players (they pick who they want to come), and loot rules are that everything is reserved except Tier loot, which they have no problems with. Also we give their main tank first dibs on any Tier loot for him.
What the other guild gets from this is not only a chance at some free loot, but most importantly is experience. Their main tank coming to see how Illidan is positioned and all that tanking goodness, will help them be able to get Illidan down themselves one day.
Tunas last blog post..Week 6/10 – Recap
Joint raiding can be fun, too, for people who want a break. I know we often did SSC/TK runs with a nother top guild on the server for the phatz on our alts (or mains who were still after certain items from Vashj).
But yeah, a lot of deals can be made. We took a subpar guild who was stuck on Bloodboil to Illidan. We took five of their members (they did it by a lottery). The lock even got Skull of Guldan since we were giving it away to Resto dr00ds and Holy Priests.
Moniques last blog post..Confessions From a Former Hardcore Raider
We sold Illidan & council for a couple of weeks and then Illidan only for a week or two. We did help a guild kill Kazrogal but they backed out giving us Archi, at the last moment because they might want to go back for a try. In the end they went to SSC and we finished off the last hour of raid time with Gruul+mags for alts.
My guild does this occasionally. Very recently, we asked another guild, at the end of their raid week, if we could have Archimonde (the current boss they are working on.) We took him at 11pm on their last night, which is only an hour before they are scheduled to stop raiding. They had attempts on him all week and, since they couldn’t down him, we paid to be able to let him “not go to waste” if you will.
Back pre-patch, we would do this with guilds stuck on Vashj/Kael, or shortly before those bosses, to get recruits keyed. We don’t really take any of the other guild’s members with us. We just work it out with the GM, pay, and wait until the end of the other guild’s raid week. No hard feelings.