Hey everyone, I’m still in Seattle for the Labor Day long weekend. Needed to unplug and try to decompress myself for a bit. Got a great question in the email today.
What advice would you give a GM and their leaders who wants to make the jump from 10 man raiding to 25 man raiding?
I’ll add my thoughts to this in a later post. I’ve personally never had to engineer that type of jump before since I have mostly been in a 25 man raiding environment.
If you want to make a transition from 10 to 25 just do it.
Take randoms if you have to, if people leave in that hard time, be happy you got rid of them early.
First, you need to expect way more turnover than you had in 10-man. Don’t try to do two 10-mans on your way to 25-man, either. Aim right for your goal. If you try to do two 10-mans, you’ll need to recruit twice as many tanks as you’ll need for 25-man.
With the increased turnover, keep an *up-to-date* roster at all times, with everyone’s role and class included.
Don’t think you can grab 30 people and that will be enough. Anything less than 40 means you’re gonna have progression nights where only 20 show up. It sucks, but that’s 25-man.
First, get 25 cats and take them to a park, then set them loose. If you can successfully herd them and keep them under control, you are ready to lead 25-mans! haha 🙂
In 25-mans, it’s pretty rare to have the same level of skill, focus and commitment from 25 people, that you have in a group of only 10 people. The reality is that many guilds running 25’s have maybe 15 people, give or take, who are on the same page, and you’re constantly running after the elusive other 10 or so. Recruitment is constant, like revolving door constant. It can be frustrating, exhausting and suck your will to live. But, it can be interesting and challenging as well. It’s definitely not boring, lol.
Trying to keep more than 25 people happy, including yourselves (meaning GM and leaders), can be draining on both your enjoyment of the game and your time. Just don’t lose yourselves in the balance, don’t forget that you’re more than just the leaders, you’re players too and you deserve enjoyment out of the game!!
Be united and be decisive as a leadership team, and communicate your values, goals and expectations clearly to your members.
I have always admired those that can do it successfully, it is definitely a skill over and above the game-skill. Good luck and happy raiding!! 🙂
Simple: either don’t it or just do it. If you decide to do it, make sure that the people making the foundation of it are on board with you for however long it may take. If going from 10m to 25m from a single 10m team, it can take a while to get up to 25m numbers. Merging with another 10m guild at the same progression level may be easiest in terms of getting the numbers needed–just bear in mind that leadership issues can arise (lay down all the rules and how things will be beforehand–think of it as literally signing a guild charter that lays out /everything/).
Well, one of our raid leaders thought this would be a blast since we had so many people whining that they never got to raid. We threw up a 25 man on the calendar the two 10 mans skipped BWD and we gave it a try. The man LITERALLY broke his mic and probably got three tumors in his lungs from chain smoking. We spent forever trying to PuG the last few spots to even start. We downed two bosses but he swore 25 mans off (literally) for good.
It made me sad since I liked 25 but what I would suggest is promoting a recruiting officer just so they can feed the turnover of quitters and institute a on-call requirement for 25 man recruits. GM/raid leader is hard enough, recruiting can add just more hassle while trying to do a huge transition to 25. The other suggestion is don’t wait till you have a full 25. People just get frustrated when there is no raiding going on and it wears on them to “wait” for recruiting. PuG it, even if they are bad, have one person(maybe your recruiting officer) stay in city to replace the dropouts and the baddies.
“Don’t try to do two 10-mans on your way to 25-man, either.”
Wholeheartedly disagree with this. When we were recruiting at the beginning of TBC, we ended up running two Karazhans when our roster had built up to a size that allowed it. We did so by using an off-spec tank. Or, more specifically, by using a feral to off-tank for one of the groups. This player was expected to play that role (and happily).
The problem with running only one 10-man before you’re ready to switch to 25’s is that you’ll have nearly half a roster bored out of their mind as they sit waiting for spots to open in the raid. Even if it means doing normal modes for some bosses because one or both of the raids are a tad watered down, that’s better than half of them doing nothing at all. And if you really want to get some heroics down, you need to compromise.
Then, once your roster is healthy enough for 25-mans, you can switch over.
Doing 2 10s on the way to 25s is a slippery slope. Avoid at all costs stacking one raid group with your best players, this will only serve to alienate your other group and leave them behind in learning fights.
Back when I used to run a raiding guild in WotLK we did a lot of PuGing in the beginning. We ended up with many new recruits out of it. Not that they were all the amazing players we were hoping for, but they enjoyed our raids and decided to join – sometimes even bringing friends along.
Recruit recruit recruit. Take stock of each one individually after 2 weeks and assess if they should get the boot or if they’re worth the time to work with. Your officer selection will help this process immensely, as well as other raid members with better output giving tips.
Using the official forums as a recruitment tool is probably the most effective, however the recruitment forums move quickly and your thread will get knocked off page one rather fast. If you or another guild member is home during the day or is lucky enough to be able to post from work, bump that thread often.
In short, it’s a very tough job. Transitioning to 25s will show you, without fail, how well you’ve selected your officers. Be sure to delegate some of the tasks as you will burn out quickly trying to handle all of it yourself.