Short, discussionary post for today. You are the GM of a 25 man raiding guild. A player comes to you and wants to form their own 10 man raiding team outside of the hours that your 25 man team raids at. Let’s say that player is unable to match the times that the 25 man team normally plays at but has expressed desire to stay under one banner.
That’s two separate rosters of different raid teams with similar, progression minded goals.
Would this be appealing to you? Why or why not? What type of benefits or drawbacks could there be?
And the big question: What social issues might arise? Can you imagine the logistical nightmares?
What an interesting impact guild reputation has made this expansion. Lodur’s previous post about the subject continues to hold.
I’m a firm believer that 10s and 25s can coexist, and two 10 man teams or two 25 man teams for that matter. It works fine for my guild (http://healbot.net/?p=1064 10 vs 25 debate resurrection), we chose in wrath to run multiple 10 man teams and have had zero issues with progression differences then, and now.
If everyone is like-minded why wouldn’t it work? Why not just support 2 teams who raid on different days? that works for us as well, our 2 teams run on different sets of raid days.
Especially now that 25s and 10s are only a matter of preference and effectively no different, some 10s are even harder 😉
If the 10 man raid wasn’t interfering with the 25 man raid, I don’t see what the issue is. I think it just has to be stated that the main objective of the guild is 25 man progression, having a 10 man raid going as well shouldn’t hurt anything, right?
(Note: I’ve hardly played this expansion, so maybe something that I don’t know about has changed that might make it a problem.)
A big issue I forsee is the use of guild common materials for raiding: glyphs/gems/flasks/enchants or even new recruiting. Well which raid does this guy belong too? Stick him in the ten man! Wait no, 10 man is too challenging, we need perfection. Stick him in 25. Heck NO! He will steal all our leet gear, etc etc. Or even the reverse of this.
I’m in a situation like this now – I run a 10 man team and some folks on it want to do some raiding on a 25 man team during our off nights. We’re focusing on BWD, and the 25 man team will be in BoT. So far it’s ok, but soon there will be a time when either the raid team will have to choose, or the raid leader will need to make some substitutions.
To me, this is a ticking time bomb. We’re 4/6 in BWD now, and once we get to Nef, I’d hate to have to tell the entire team “Sorry, we can’t go do a few BoT bosses for gear because 2 people have a lockout.” This won’t just be my problem, but the problem of the other RL.
When that day comes, I don’t want to have to go shopping for replacements. The only solution I can see here is for these people who want to have their cake and eat it too should play on alts (which opens up a whole other can of worms).
This situation is coming for my team — I still don’t know what I’m going to do. The folks in question have been on this 10 man team since ToC. They’ll have to figure out where their priorities lie.
Cheers,
Blooddrive
Earthen Ring
Unrelated, but what’s the particular reason for not doing the early bosses in BoT? Gear + points would certainly help you get Nef down faster.
This is exactly what I was looknig for. Thanks for writing!
It works, they just have to run separately and independently of each other like 2 full teams (irregardless of the team size). Set some rules and competent raid leaders for the 10 man though.
I think this would really depend on the guild environment. One of the ideas my 10m guild has kicked around is trying to pick up a second 10m (or more) that operates entirely on their own – just to increase the number of players we have leveling the guild. Since the perks are nice, but not AMG MUST HAVE, we haven’t really stressed this.
The only real issue that came to mind is the guild bank, and how you could get around it. While a gbank is nice, everyone in my guild has been around long enough to remember bank alts and the days when your GM or someone had a toon that held all the gbank items. Would it be slightly more inconvienient to do this? Sure. But with the gmail perk, guild pages, etc, you could get around it pretty easily.
As far as issues within the guild go, I suppose it would depend on the 10m guild and any rules set forth at the beginning. I can see our group joining a larger guild for the perks, and then most of us turning off guildchat and just speaking in our own channel. I can certainly see our ‘colorful’ banter offending folks who may be used to a more civilized environment.
My biggest concern would be the GM or someone else attempting to pull from the group for 25s because we were advancing faster (see, I’m modest too). This might cause some tension, especially if we’re seen to be operating outsided the guild rules. I suppose my only response to that would be that we’re paying our way – through the looting system that deposits money right into the gbank that we wouldn’t have access to.
It’s certainly an interesting thought, and one that I wouldn’t turn down without some thought.
Two teams can of course run together as long as there is separation between them. It makes a lot of sense to have multiple raiding teams under a single banner now (guild levelling, etc) because there is a reason to be in an established guild and the secondary teams help the primary one (free gold if nothing else).
Recruiting should of course be handled separately with knowledge that the teams are separate under one banner. Moving between teams should be similar to leaving a guild and applying to a new one so that you don’t end up with people split across saves and hard feelings.
I think you can support both. The primary sticking point tho is not treading upon the 25’s boss lockouts. If there will never be player overlap it’s easier. But if there is some, then coordination of whom is raiding in which instance then becomes a necessary weekly conversation.
I can’t believe I’ve been going for years without knwonig that.
If someone is coming to you with this proposal, they have to be prepared to do ALL of the work, and have their plans already laid out.
1.No support from the 25m raid leader or recruitment officer.
2.Prepared to supply own raid materials (I have seen a surprising number of guild raid teams on my server supply nothing mind you.)
3.Not permitted to ninja players from 25m core.
4.All players *MUST* uphold the guild values at all times.
If you are a GM who wants a 2nd raid team inside your guild, you may want to be prepared to offer the leader of the 2nd team a junior officer position, and some repair/material perks to the raiders as well.
Our guild was the highest level on our server for a while. A 10m guild who was having trouble gettin to rewards joined and has a completely different guild bank and system and it’s working out great. We sub for each other if we aren’t saved. I can see more issues with starting one among people who are already guild members, as you might have people trying to switch groups or roles or even run in both.
Logistical nightmare indeed. My guild is currently struggling with attendance issues for our 25-man raids, so you’d need a lot of raiding-minded people to do both a 10 and a 25.
Socially, envy is bound to occur if one group progresses faster than the other. The simple logistical and spacial challenges of handling 25 people puts 25-man raids at a disadvantage for progression, often leading to the 10-man group moving ahead of the 25. If you run with a group of level-headed, understanding people in both groups, you shouldn’t have many issues, but that’s a best-case scenario.
Matt – wouldn’t this be similar to Conquest having two branches of ‘raiders’ – the PvP arm and the PvE arm? I’ve looked at your guild application and if I remember correctly the groups are both Conquest, but have their own rules and such.
Yes, and no. The PvP team seeks to dominate in rated BGs and in arenas while the raiding arm focuses exclusively on end game content. Two subgroups going after end game content? I am personally fine with that myself. I know others may not be.
We have this very set up in Big Crits. It’s so successful that not only is there 2 progression raid teams – 25 man and a 10 man but we also have 3 other 10 man teams for alts and such throughout the week. Yes, you got that right, 5 raids a week. It rocks and works out really well for everyone involved.
It works “ok” for us.
The pattern was well established in that we had a bear run in tbc, that morphed into two 10 man achievement runs in wotlk( in radically different time zones) plus in the icc era we had a 10 man casual run form for those who found the heroics a bit too much.
Now we have our main 25 man raid and 3 10 mans, coexisting. Why I would say it only works ok?
2 of the 10 man raids are do not have any overlap with the main raid. They did at one point but it was allways planned to fill those slots with alts and now that has occured. But the plan was to only run 1 of bwd and bot each week and 10 man the other, eventually the main shifting too clearing both. The 3rd raid 10 main raid has 6 25 main raiders, 3 of them officers, so we continue to run 2 out 3 instances each week.
Note generally as long as your behaving and not a permanent raider for someone else you can stay in the guild as long as you want, so we have a lot of players who have raided in the past but can no longer commit to the full 25 man.
I am absolutely baffled at the number of respondents who would willingly trade on their guilds brand name & image for so little in return.
The idea of not overseeing the type and caliber of player who is representing our guild is entirely alien to me.
If you’re super casual, sure, maybe the idea of a mega-guild is viable because there’s nothing to lose, but if you’re an officer in a successful, performance-oriented raid team, why would you want someone else coming in, inviting who they wanted and not checking to make sure that every healer/dps/tank/etc in your guild is up to snuff?
Alt/Back-Up/Recruit raids, I’m on board with 150%. A second progression-oriented raid, especially one that starts as a foreign enterprise? No way. That’s not a symbiotic relationship, that’s a parasite waiting to explode.
Separate but not equal never works. I’m surprised that more of you are willing to ignore that.
10 man raids in a guild set up for 25 raiding is a can of worms. In Wrath with separate lockouts we actually had people leave the guild because they “never” got in the unofficial 10 man raids. Which wasn’t true. Alt/friends raid on a friday with some drinking games though is good fun!
I believe two raid teams can coexist in the same guild – even that it is actually better. More players in the guild means more people online during non-raid time which can only be a good thing. I hate being in an endgame guild which has 3 people on during the day and 30 on during raid time. It is great to be able to grab a guild group for daily HC, achievement farming, bgs, arena and the likes.