Conquest’s 25 man raid team made some major strides today on Cho’gall. Back to back wipes at 4% and 5%. We spent a good 90 minutes after the raid just really analyzing all the little things that we were doing right and doing wrong. I’m extremely confident that we’ll get him down on Monday. That being said though, the recruiting doors are being opened for competitive, progression minded players.
Except it seems we’ve entered a bit of a recession in terms of players. With the increasing number of people situating themselves in 10 man guilds, the 25 man guilds are working extra hard trying to find players that still have the desire to do 25s. Already, I’ve witnessed a few larger guilds on my server breaking up or completely splintering off.
Not exactly the route I had in mind when I said I wanted to progress up the server rankings.
The usual recruiting methods just weren’t working fast enough. We had to really get creative and think of other ways to try to pickup players. Our initial goal was to raise awareness of our guild and to try to find the players that would both fit in and share a similar work ethic that the rest of us had to raiding. I’ve completely abolished the recruiting officer position from my guild. I think recruiting is something that every player in the guild should try to do. Different people have different talents and as a GM, I have to encourage them to play to those strengths.
Other than relying on trade chat or the recruiting forums, we’ve started trying out different strategies for recruiting. We don’t know if it’s going to work, but right now its innovate or die.
Recruiting from the other side
X, one of my players, prefers the front line approach. He’ll actively pursue and chat players up who aren’t affiliated with any guilds. His efforts have generated results as one of the players he picked up is one of our current main tanks.
But you know what’s even crazier?
He created a character on the Horde side and started advertising in their trade chat. Ever since players could have both Horde and Alliance players on the same server, it never dawned on me to try recruiting players on the other side. So if you’re stuck on your side of the server and there doesn’t seem to be any fish biting, try the other side and see what they’re like. I know I’ve received a few messages from players who were interested in switching over to Alliance for a change of pace.
Livestreaming raids
On our progression nights, I’ve started live streaming raids for players. These are generally for people who have interest in joining and raiding but are unsure of what the guild raiding atmosphere is like. So what I’ll do is activate my microphone and stream what’s on my screen as I’m playing (and they’ll hear the occasional Matti-rage).
- I don’t want players to join the guild only to discover this isn’t what they’re looking for.
- I don’t want to waste their time or my time.
- I don’t want to invest gear into players only to realize that this isn’t for them.
By streaming raids, especially during progression, they’ll get an accurate idea of what really goes on in the heat of the moment and they can see this guild at its best (or its worst depending on what we’re working on).
Macroing in the LFD
I haven’t started doing this yet because I keep forgetting. But after I finish every run, I’m going to try to drop a friendly macro listing what our guild is about, where we’re at, and the fact that we’re recruiting. While granted most players are already in guilds, I wouldn’t be surprised if t here were a number of them who were unhappy or who want more from their experience
We’re still raiding right now so we’re not in any serious jeopardy. But I wouldn’t be doing my job as a GM if I wasn’t exploring additional options. I made a mistake in the last expansion. I settled for the players I had. Unfortunately, settling didn’t get me a heroic Halion kill, a heroic Lich King kill, a heroic Anub’arak kill or a 25 man Algalon kill. I’ve learned from that and the crew here have realized that the foot isn’t coming off the accelerator.
That being said, if you’re looking for a stable guild for raiding, check us out.
Classes I’m looking for especially:
- Elemental Shaman
- Rogue
Even if you don’t fit that, I encourage you to apply anyway. I don’t guarantee raid spots. Our philosophy has changed to take the best possible players we have available and our loot system reflects that. If you want to know more, feel free to get in touch with me via email or Twitter or in game. Either myself or one of our raid leaders can assist in answering your questions.
Feel free to toss in an application otherwise.
Hope to hear from you soon!
I was curious about Live streaming raids, as it was recently discussed by my officers to start doing this, for potential recruits as well as those who have to sit, so they can still see whats going on.
How do you go about live streaming your raid, what do you use (application, service, etc)?
Ceraphus, it isn’t the most optimal setup. First you need a program that functions as a webcam, then you need a webservice that can turn that webcam and stream it.
The one I found that’s free is a program called Manycam (Manycam.com I believe). Once you finish installing it, you’ll want to hit sources -> Desktop and press the Custom desktop option and resize the grey box that shows up. That is the size of the area that you’ll be transmitting.
After that, I used UStream as a way to stream out. There’s multiple services that can do this. Xfire has another great option as well although I ran into some problems with it myself, but I’m going to try it out again later.
Let me know if you run into any problems!
Thank you for sharing about live streaming raids. Could you please share some results from such action? What kind of responses have you gotten from it? Both good and bad. You note it is not optimal and so presumably time consuming or perhaps a ‘chore’ to do. Has it actually paid off for you as a recruiting mechanism?
A good idea on recruiting Matt. I’m really glad that I don’t have to worry about that any more.
I think LiveStreaming raids is a great idea… something I never considered in the past. As a 25m progression guild in the recruiting market, you’re already pinned against the wall a little bit because there are far more people that aren’t suited to be in your raids than those who are. Specific tactics with regard to application questions (which you do already) and ways of player screening (via vent interview or whatever) go a long way in cutting down on time wasted both in and out of raids to acquire the right player and personality for the guild.
My personal favorite for recruitment isn’t listed here. I prefer to use my alt(s) to recruit. Rather than raiding with all guildies on my alts, for the past couple years I get myself into PUGs, and I /combatlog (and post to WoL) so I can browse it later. Sometimes I’ll have a guildie or two come along as well… just to ensure the guild has a good showing. But for the most part myself and my guild stays quiet when we PUG into something, rather than attempting to lead it or adjust people’s strategies (unless something is blisteringly wrong). There’s simply no better way to size up would-be raiders than to see them raiding… and holding a “try-out” of sorts.. without them knowing it’s a try-out. If someone catches my eye, I strike up a conversation in tells with them mid-raid and find out what their potential raid situation/availability is – then post-raid you can direct them to forums/application while browsing the log from the raid.
Very sneaky Weezi.
I approve!