How to Build a 20-man Raiding Team

Every Warcraft expansion we see the same complaints on the forums.

BLIZZARD Make Mythic Flex or 10-man again!

I think you really have different kinds of players. Type A and B.

1. Type A (Tortoise) Mostly play WoW and rarely unsub and guilds active and going doing various activities. May play side games but don't leave. Tortoise.
2. Type B (Hare) Episodic and get bored quickly/easily and come and go based on the latest new game release. Hare.

The problem guilds face is a social contract conflict between Type A and Type B players.

The Type A player wants to believe that guild or group is always there and they are a part of something.

The Type B player sees it more like a pick-up basketball game with strangers.  You play a bit and then you are gone and you may or may not see them again.

Guilds will have a mix of both A and B players.

Guild Leaders can also be of type A or type B.

Type A led guilds keep on trucking.  They may have some type B players in their guilds, but the type A's keep the lights on, create a foundation, make a home.

Type B led Guilds come alive with the expansion. A few of their Type A friends might flock to them to join in the pick-up game.   But, each expansion, less and less Type A's will be fooled by the allure of the fleeting team.

Type B Guilds will most likely struggle each expansion.   They have significant amount of flucuation of players.   They start raiding as soon as they reach the quorum minimum 10-man mark.  And even if they have a strong core and complete the heroic raids quickly, they only have their wow-progress numbers to convince others to make the move.   Many will hit a wall to reach mythic raiding.

Type A Guild never left.  When the Type B guilds hares are flitting away to Dark Soul 35 or Skyrim 13, those that remain in the Type B guild see only the type A guilds still standing.  Time to move to a stable home even if it's not as fast, light, brash and powerful.

I think, unless you are a VERY WELL led Type B guild, these guilds will compete with other Type B guilds. They consume each other as transient players "guild upgrade" based on the wow-progress until they can't any more. The lower type B guilds collapse.

Players that tire of the expand / collapse cycle either quit guild raiding or hope to find a guild that's more stable (Type A).

Some of the Type A Guild players might guild upgrade if their more tortoise-like players aren't as fast as the Type B counter parts, but many, having seen the expand/collapse before know better.

Legion Player Collapse Incoming

Now is that time in the expansion about two months in where all the race-to-raid guilds start to implode.

It isn't terribly difficult to toss together a really strong 10-15 man heroic raiding team that blasts through the content.

However, when you start to hit the Mythic level you need more than 20... you need 25-30.   Raid nights become frustrating because you are at 16 or 18 or 19 players and not enough.   They recruit like crazy but can't find the numbers.

So, better players start shopping up.  Weaker players get left behind and either quit or drop down the ranks to lower guilds.

Guilds go poof.

I've seen this so many times now.

Random Loot Frustration and Social Play Revival in WoW

The biggest complaints I have seen on the forums focus around two core areas with Legion:  

Randomness (RNG) and Prerequisite busy-work.

For RNG, everything in this expansion is random, everything.  Loot drops randomly upgrade. World Quests are randomly selected.   Legendaries are a random chance.   Itemization is so important and so hard to get.

From a frustration point, player have little to no way to focus for success because there is no consolation prize system that players can control.  Even crafting and rep grinding is behind RNG (random world quests and random stats).

For Prerequisite busy-work, it all seems to focus around the game requiring people to do something they don’t want to do (or no longer want to do) in order to get or do something they do want/want to do.

Busy work goes against a Blizzard-enabled play style.  Since mid-Wrath through Warlords, Blizzard created Alt-Play and Solo-Play through Dungeon Finders, Heirloom Gear and eventually with Raid Finder during Cataclysm.   More and more players have migrated away from organized social play into solo activities of the game such as Finders, Pets and leveling more alternative Characters as “content” for them.

The entire fabric of the player base began to wither into solo players.

Legion has pulled an about face here.  Rolling back the clock all the way to BC and Early Wrath (pre-finder).

By requiring AP gathering and ancient mana gathering and rep gathering, Blizzard is bringing back the “main game” instead of the, these-are-my-12-mains game.

There is a group of players that are happy to no longer be so bored that they are playing alts to stay entertained.  But there is another group that is so unhappy they can’t play 12 mains.

There is a group of players that are happy that guildies are grouping together instead of using the finders.  But there is another group that is so unhappy they have to actually “put themselves out there” which can be uncomfortable when a "finder" did it for you.   They have to try to get into manually created groups or join guilds.

Blizzard has done a pretty good job of giving neither positions a “win”.

Guild Cohesion

Unless your guild is excessively massive, it is impossible to really operate numerous raid teams.  

I would speculate that for each raid team you add to a guild you multiply the complexity of difficulties and coordination exponentially.    My guild runs two raids as many guilds do.  We have a primary team and a casual / alts weekend raid.

I had a long-standing player in the guild wanting to create another leader-team because the leader-team is full and he failed to sign-up and the causal team wasn't advanced enough for his wants.

While, in practice, this sounds like a quite reasonable request.   Here are the problems another leading team can cause, if you cannot coordinate properly.

1. If the teams are on different schedules, you have doubled the competition within the guild for people wanting the schedule that is more to their liking.
2. If the teams are on the same schedules, you have decide how important it is to the guild that both teams advance equally.  If it's important you'll have to balance participants and people want to raid with friends.   It can't be about just numbers.
3. You have the potential that teams can compete for the "better players".

I'm not saying it can't be done.   I know there are more hard-core guilds that make this happen.  

I'm just saying that it has drawbacks, issues and more "work" to make it happen.

If your guild does this... what approach do you use?

The Push to Premade Finder

As Legion is about to be released, there is a change afoot and Blizzard isn't flat-out saying it.  That is, the push toward the manual finder tool over the automated finders.

I think this is a great balance that will have a lot of automated-finder players extremely upset because they continue to feel like ALL content in the game should be accessible without ever trying to be connected to players in the game.

However, I think, this is the primary push back from what started the slide in WoW in the first place.  That is, when the automated finders came into creation there were many pros but they came with many cons.

The Pros of course, include no more screaming in trade.  No more hours and hours of waiting to form a group.

The Cons of course, no more group commitment, loss of community, loss of group accomplishment.

I think this new system of Mythics being outside the automated queue system is the perfect compromise and it fits the model they've used with LFR to Normal+ raiding.

Yea, players are going to complain.   But, it brings back some of the old WoW without eliminating the new.

The Silence Penalty

Blizzard recently announced a "new" system called the Silence Penalty.

The forums seem to be up-in-arms about it, but what is entertaining to me is that nothing has changed.

The "violations" as players are the same.

The reporting system is the same.

The only thing that is changing is the type of penalty.  Instead of a verbal and then ban, players will be unable to talk in public channels or through other interfaces that might communicate to strangers.

I know the vloggers and bloggers love to hate on Blizzard, but this really is not a big deal.

No more reports are going out than before, unless more people report.

No more punishments are going out than before, unless more people report.

Blizzard's system has always been a reactive one.  If players don't report, nothing happens.

What do you think?

Cross Realm Zones, Realm Hopping and Server Populations

If you aren't familiar with Cross Realm Zones and Realm Hopping, they probably use the same back-bone of technology which is the ability to make players move / appear / interact on different server  from their "home" server.   All of this added in the midst of server population problems and the established playerbase lacking new blood.

TLDR: Solution thoughts provided at the bottom.

History

Server Population

As the player population ebbs and flows it is mostly in the negative direction.  Servers have less players.  Less players mean less viable guilds.   Less viable guilds means more player migration and more subscription losses.  This is all simple stuff that Blizzard has to understand.

Their "psuedo-mergers" (a different topic) were great to help a little but it's a temporary fix and Blizzard knows this.

Without these cross-realm tools, many players wouldn't even be able to do much of the content which would result in more losses.   Yes, it encourages some to pay the fees and move characters, but I fathom a larger number just choose to quit all together.   Speculation, of course.

Blizzard has a set of tools they created so they wouldn't have to really solve the server population problem completely.

Cross-Realm Battle-Tag Grouping

Blizzard created the ability for players to group with players from other realms and play with their friends from other servers.   It required knowing their real-id to bring them in.    The technology would pull the lower level characters to the server of the high level players.

Pros: Friends could play together even if they are on different servers.  Allows players to participate in content that wouldn't be possible on lower population realms.

Cons: Players cannot trade items or gold.  Cannot join the same guilds.  Cannot participate in most current raid content (this slowly relaxed until it only excludes mythic raiding and only until it's mostly been completed).

Cross-Realm Zones

Using the Cross-Realm technologies, Blizzard decided that playing in the lower level zones of World of Warcraft was less fun because most players, after playing for any amount of time, all end up at the end zones or latest expansion.   That is 99% (made-up) are at max level expansion and 1% all played alone and might get bored and who knows, perhaps quit because there was no MM in the MMO (Massively Multi-player).

To try and improve that experience, they created Cross-realm Zones.  Any Zone below the current expansion, will coalesce players into sets of players trying to bolster the number of characters in those zones.

From a players perspective, there is no telling how many players are in that zone and what server that are from.

Pros: The zone feels alive.  The content is being used as it was designed to be used with a quantity of players.

Cons: You cannot join guilds or trade with players from off realms.  While the content is now being competed at the designed level, many players don't want competition for game rare creatures.

Pre-made Finder (Realm Hopping)

In Mists of Pandaria, the infamous TinySmasher (a player) created a game add-on called oQueue.  This add-on was highly debated, loved, reviled, and contested.  It used the battle-tag / real-id system to piggy-bag communication between realms in a mesh network of inter-server communication.  The purpose he initially created it for was for a community of PvPers to "cheese" random battleground by taking the "random" out of one of the competing sides.  That is, if you could bring 20 friends into your RBG, all on voice against just a bunch of random people, you'd win.   Well, they did.. they'd stomp them.  They did.

The add-on also allowed for people to create cross-realm raiding activities using Cross-Realm Battle-Tag groups of people on various servers all wanting to do the same content.

Essentially it was the predecessor of "Pre-made Finder", but it had no "auto-invite".

Today, we have pre-made finder, largely, I think, because of oQueue.  But the auto-invite feature allows players to quickly join pre-made groups, for whatever purpose and use them to pull their character to different servers.

Players do this for the sole purpose of hunting rare creatures that have long spawn timers, increasing their odds of finding these creatures significantly.

Pros:  Increases odds of finding these creatures significantly.  Players feel justified for doing this because Cross-Realm Zones decreased their odds.

Cons:  Can be disruptive to groups that have people join/leave without having any real intent to participate in the purpose of the group.   Defeats the purpose of Cross-Realm Zones.   Creates a whole new purpose for pre-made finder for which it was never designed.

Where from here

Much debate and argument could go here about Server Population, Pre-made finder Realm Hopping is fine or why Cross-Realm Zones is bad and I probably could agree with many of their points while at the same time disagree with others.

But, what I think, however, is that the whole system is broken because the original intents are not being accomplished and the features are being used for purposes other than intended.

All these partial solution are leading in one direction that Blizzard just doesn't appear to want to go.

Sure, I will use these systems to do similar things while they exist, but that doesn't mean I think it is the right technological answer.

Blizzard wants:

• Competition for resources - Hopping for rares breaks this.
• Pre-mades for playing with people - Hopping for rares breaks this.
• Preserve the concept of realms.

Players want:

• People they can play with.  
• Ability to play with friends
• Servers that are viable

Their solutions aren't working.

• Servers are still getting lower populations and becoming non-viable as more players quit or migrate.
• Cross-Realm zones is a partial implementation to ameliorate low population server problems. 
• Pre-made finder is a partial implementation because it doesn't support ALL content.
• Players can't really play / share / join the same guilds, it's just a band-aid.

Solution

Blizzard needs to fix their broke.  They are creating band-aids that just create more problems.

It is time to free players from their servers.   I have my own ideas on how it could be implemented but this is really something only Blizzard could design.

My basic concept is as thus:

• Realm is just text appended to your toon name.   But servers are only an internal Blizzard thing.
• As players you can join any guild.
• Guilds are listed on a larger web site accessible in game or out.  This system would allow for a large set of search criterion that's not only complex but detailed.
• Players appear on the same server as their guild (irregardless of their "realm" text).
• Guilds are grouped to balance player population by a balancing system.

There are still servers, but they mean much less to the players.  What matters is what guild you join.

Pre-made Groups still can exist.  But they need to have their purpose enforced.  If you are not near the realm leader, you are not on his instanced server.   This stops hopping pre-made groups.

Cross-Realm Zones needs to exclude rares.  Then you no longer need to hop for rares anyhow. 

We could debate this and maybe my solution is the right one.  But the way we are headed isn't better as long as low population servers continue to die the game will suffer.  

Max Zoom Removal

I tend to lean in favor of Blizzard's decisions on many things.  What can I say.... I love the game.

On this particular change, however, I am a tad flustered.  Not because I don't think the change is needed.  The frustration is over being lied too.   I hate being lied to.   If Blizzard really has a reason for the change, they need to be honest and explain why.  Even if the details are left out, they could still be indirectly honest about it.

For example, "Max Zoom is being removed and we hate it because of technical difficulties with the new visibility distance" (made up reason).   I could buy that.

What frustrates me is the disingenuous explanation for the change. I'm sorry, but I don't believe the "fairness" candy coating.

Blizzard says... the UI is so complex they can't show us our full stats.
Blizzard says... you can get an add-on to see your full stats.
Blizzard says... max zoom is an unfair advantage, we are removing max zoom.

Is having an add-on to see your full stats an UNFAIR ADVANTAGE?

• If not, then why is max zoom?
• If so, then why allow add-on for full stats... why even recommend this?

It does not compute.

Blizzard, give us the real reason for the change... or you just plain look like liars.

Guild Features Need Love

As a guild leader, it should not be a surprise that I think guilds are the heart of World of Warcraft.   That's not to say that solo-play doesn't work in WoW, and fun can't be had, but I wouldn't be here if it was a solo game.

Blizzard has definitely dropped the ball on giving some needed guild improvements.   Players should not be required to get add-ons to compensate for some of these core capabilities.

While they tried in Cataclysm with the guild experience and the guild recruitment tool, those were focusing more attention on the wrong areas, in my opinion.

Today, players walk up to any billboard in WoW and the game suggests a litany of solo-play activities.  But, for guilds, all they get is the guild recruitment tool that doesn't really work.

Guild Recruitment Overhaul:

1. Ability to invite people that are offline or alts of your own.
2. Automatically update the guild list to indicate how active a guild is... what activities they have done recently as a guild and allow queries on this information.  How many players that have logged in the last 3 weeks.
3. How many players are in the guild (not characters).
4. Have guilds that are inactive - no guild activities (no one logging into them) are grayed out as inactive.  They have a guild activity tracker system, let the players know when guilds are dead or at least how active they will be before you join.
5. Ability to search on exact raid times, bt times, etc.  Find one that matches your schedule.
6. Give players the ability to filter, search and set criterion to help them find the perfect guild.  
7. Why do players have to know about wowprogress.com or guildox to be able to assess a guilds progress?
8. Have a big block for guild leaders to fully write up on their guild and what it is like.

Handling Players and their Characters

1. Guilds should allow up to 999 account instead of 999 characters.  The number of characters should not impact the number of players that can join a guild.   The more and more character slots Blizzard gives us the more characters players want to bring to their guilds but this limits the number of people a guild can have.   Please fix this!
2. Build into the system to manage players (and their alternative characters) as a unit (by account) instead of having to manage them independently and try to figure out who is who.  Yes, I know this means that players give up some ability to have 2 toons in a guild and be anonymous on one or the other in the same guild, sorry, but I track alts already and have never had anyone have issue.

Guild Permissions:

1. Allow us to have permission sets independent of the ranks.  Ranks usually imply what activities players do or how long they've been with the guild.  But, this doesn't mean they also need privileges.  They might, but they might not.   With permission sets, I could apply different "jobs" to different players regardless of their ranks.     Example:
1. Member:  PvPs set, Raider set.  Bank Manager set.
2. Member:  Raider set.
3. Officer:  Guild Chat set.  Bank Manager set.  Raider Set.
2. (7/6/16) Guild Note Permissions.  Add the permission that a player can only edit their own guild note.

Ranks:

1. I'd like about 5 more ranks.  I probably don't need that many, but it's nice to have ranks to indicate length of service in the guild.   I can do this, but without permission sets, I need different ranks for different bank permissions.   Example:
1. New 
2. Member (> month)
3. Tenured (> 6 month)
4. Senior (> 12 months)
2. Allow ranks to have a sub-titles that guildies can see on name plate.  Today you get "recruit" in your guild tag, but the guild could see guild labels instead.  The guild reputation no longer means anything:
1. New -    Joeman
2. Raider -  Joeman  
3. Officer - Joeman

Guild Calendar:

1. Ability to indicate when players are away and when they will return.  Sort of like a "leave calendar"
2. With #1.  If someone is scheduled on leave, automatically decline for new events on their scheduled away times and link to the "away" notice.
3. Ability to chat/set away notices from the phone app.
4. Ability to give notes when you accept an event like "I will be 5 mins late", "can't make it, cat's on fire"
5. Make calendar notices more "in your face" than just the blinking ?. Like when they log in.   Here are new activities on the calendar.  
6. Allow creating repeating events so I don't have to copy paste week to week for regular raids. Perhaps just a month at a time if they are afraid of forever events.
7. Allow for color coding activities on the calendar.

Guild Bank:

1. Give us the ability to set types of items on a tab and when people donate the items to the bank it automatically attempts to place it on the correct tab.
2. Make the guild bank auto sort.
3. Have the ability to exclude certain items from being added to the bank.  If people submit junk and it's rejected and returned to the submitted ("your item type is not currently requested by the guild").
4. Better API for monitoring suspicious guild bank activity.  People regularly withdrawing gold, regularly withdrawing items, etc.

Voice System:

1. Provide an API for external voice providers to hook in for quicker voice joins.  Yes, I know WoW will have a new voice system soon, but unless it can compete... folks will still prefer Discord, Teamspeak, Ventrilo.   Don't close the voice economy down.    Then, if voice services choose to allow it, they can auto join voice servers in a single click.

Guild Notes:

1. Give US a LOT more space for guild notes.  
1. 1024 characters for the player (per account).  The play can tell a little about themselves, offer up contact information if they are willing, etc.
2. 1024 characters for officers.  A small space to track notes about the players play schedule, teams the participate on, what kind of activities they like.
3. 1024 character for the guild manager.  A small space to track issues or conversations with the player in case of dispute.

Guild Planner:

1. Give guild planners the ability to plan activities.  Quick and easy way to add raids to the calendar.
2. Suggest ideas for guild activities:  Raids, 5-mans, challenge modes, rated battlegrounds, pet battle tournaments, races.   Have a suggestion of the month that pops up.  Keep the players engaged.  Help guild leaders improve their guilds.

Just think of how much better organized a guild would be if we had the tools to make a guild sing.

Guilds didn't need guild perks, guild leveling.   They are nice, but they need tools.

What about your guild?  What would you add?

Leader Moment: Don't be a douche

My guild may just not be your style.  I get it!   But my guild is over 250 people from all walks of life and a multitude of age ranges.   I have learned that each generation has it's own social tolerances of what is acceptable.   Usually the younger the generation the edgier.

I feel I am pretty progressive for a 50 year old southern boy living in the bible belt that I can take a lot of what I would call "aggressive banter".   Perhaps playing WoW has added "salt" to my diet.

Anyhow, last night, I was recruiting and I give my usual spiel about the guild and the the only really simple behavior rule I have.   Essentially it is just a simple "don't be a douche".

1. Don't bring up topics you know are going to get people all hot and bothered because if it gets you hot an bothered it will definitely do the same for others.
1. Politics
2. Gender, Gender inequalities
3. Sexual Orientation
4. Race, race relations
2. Swearing is allowed, but don't be lewd.   And, as a southern boy, this means using any term that's derogatory against women.   You JUST DON'T DO THAT!
3. Don't troll the trade channel.   Everyone that sees that will immediately think... their guild leader is also a douche because they allow this.

I personally don't think that's really asking too much.  I mean you have a full spectrum of topics to talk about and let's be realistic, 90% of what people talk about is the game anyhow.

And, I always tell folks that in smaller audiences... say like on voice chat, once you get to know the person you are talking to, the barriers will slack a little.

Now, why would have such a restrictive rule.   It is VERY SIMPLE.

Because:

• I don't want to deal with whispers of the offended.
• I don't want to deal with the overly emotional.  
• I don't want to clean up a mess that you could of avoided.

Hey, disagreements happen.  But most people here are here to play WoW.

Play nice!

Check out my write up with dealing with the "offensive".  I guess I need my write up on dealing with the "offended" as well.

Guilding up for Legion

With the way people play World of Warcraft today, Guilds have sort of become marginalized and this makes me a little sad.

You can essentially boost a character to end-game and gear up quickly with catch-up mechanisms and essentially complete all the content without ever really engaging with the other people that play.

I get it.  I understand that not everyone has the scheduled play time.  Not everyone can commit to a group of people all over the country and try to organize something larger than the temporary affiliations that the premade finder or raid finder can provide.  And, of course, not everyone has the social temperament to play with others.

But, I seriously feel as if I could never really enjoy this game that way.  Part of what makes me stick to this game as long as I have is not the game play at all, but all the people I have met and get to play it with.   If not for the people, I'd have left long ago.

If you are new to WoW, or if you haven't been guilded for a while, perhaps it's time to give a go.

If you have and had a bad experience, do your homework and try again.  Don't just accept the first guild that you see advertising but ask other members in that guild what it's like first.   Talk to the recruiter and find out what it takes to get involved and what the guidelines will be required.

You may find that guild just for you.  You may not.   But you'll be missing something if you don't try.

Leader Moment: Present Leader

So many things about guild leadership can be delegated if you can find people that are equally dedicated to making a guild functional except for one thing.

Being present.

I believe that it's a responsibility of being the guild leader to be the "glue" or the "anchor" of the guild.  If you aren't present then the anchor is gone.

It isn't difficult to maintain a presence even if you aren't online all the time.

Ways to be omnipresent.

• Give the guild ways to contact you off-line - I give my personal phone number, e-mail, and they can use DiscordApp.com to contact me.   For the most part, even with my 250 person guild, people don't use it.   Just like you, they like to maintain some distance as well and will respect it.
• Participate in a little of everything - I like to be involved a little in everything so I understand the dynamics of the issues involved in those things.   Even if I don't raid with all the raid teams every time, occasionally making appearance is a great way to let the guild know you are hands-on!

Don't give your guild members a moment to wonder... where is everyone and is it time to start looking again.

Managing the Guild Roster

As your guild starts to get larger you might begin to get overwhelmed by the number of players in the guild and perhaps their alternative characters depending on if you allow them in the guild.

I recommend starting early and figuring out how you will manage the roster before it gets too big.

How many Alts is enough?

How many alternative characters can a player have?   I have found that the majority of players will have 1 character.  Then, after that, about a 1/3 of the players will have from 2-3 and the remaining 1/3 of players will have from 5+ characters.

Since we are currently limited to 1,000 characters (not accounts) in a guild, it is important to decide in advance if you want 1/3 of your players taking up the lion share of your guild.

I understand you want all their toons in the guild so they feel welcome and can talk to their friends, but at some point it limits the number of players your guild can host.

For me, I have set the max at 5 and I will trim that back as the guild grows.

Here is what I do to keep track.

First, I run the add-on called ALTS.  The biggest plus to this add-on is that it allows me to export my entire roster to a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file that I can import into Google Sheets.   It takes a little effort, but from there I can do all sorts of filters and manipulations to get a better look at what I have in terms of guild size, levels, ranks, etc.

Primarily what it does for me is:

1. Let's me set a note tag indicating the players main.
2. Let's me export to Google Sheets
3. Let's me see if I have typo's in mains/alts.
4. Announces the player's main name when they talk in chat so I don't lose who they are.

This add-on supports several formats of placing the information in either the officer or guild notes.   I chose guild note because everyone can see it and use the same add-on to help themselves track people.  Or, if they don't have the add-on, they can just look at the note and see who someone is.

Here is how I set the notes:

Toon1: 05/06/16
Toon2: ALT: Toon1

In my notes this tells me that Toon1 is a main and it joined the guild on 5/6/16.  Toon2 is an alt of Toon1.

There is a newer add-on that does something similar, but I am pretty well established with this one and this system works pretty good, but it's not perfect.  You have to stay on top of it because Toon1 might leave the guild and Toon2 is orphaned.  Players won't warn you.   This is why I always ping a toon on wowprogress.com.   It can help you track down those pesky alts and see what they are about and who they were.

Next, I run an add-on called Guild Tracker.  It tells me all the changes to the guild since I last logged in.   This is great because then I know that Toon1 left the guild.  I think it even tells me their note when they leave so I can see the "05/06/16" and quickly repair the associations.   Just be sure to turn off achievement tracking and level ups.  I mostly use it for join/leaves.   It's nice to know without going to look what has changed.

Finally, I use Guild Search, also created by the person that wrote ALTS.  This lets me find players quickly with a GUI instead of command line using only ALTS.   /gsearch Toon1, finds all their toons.

Huge Guild?

If your just that great of a guild that everyone wants to join.  Then, I recommend setting up a second guild using the GreenWall add-on.   Make all the "extra" alts go there.

The big plus for GreenWall is that users don't have to configure it.  Only Guild Leaders.

The big drawback for GreenWall is, that only those players that have it, see the conversations.

Leader Moment: Just Chime Up Already

You may find you have a guild member that just never says what they want out loud.   They might mention it at first when they join the guild, but after that, they expect a personal invitation to everything or they feel snubbed.

There is nothing you can do to placate them.

My response is, don't accept that criticism.  Just respond quickly that it is not how you operate your guild.   If they want something, they must tell you and your job then, is to help them toward that goal.

They may not have what it takes to be the greatest Mythic raider or even a Rated-BG star, but that doesn't mean you cannot help them toward that goal.

But, I believe, it isn't the leads job to pull them off the sidelines if they aren't willing to meet you half way.

Keeping Raid Attendance

Keep Raiding Attendance Helps Lead

Any guild trying to build a raid team, I think, should try and keep an attendance record.  Mine looks like the screen clip here.

For my guild, I try to track the following kinds of information:

• Did they stay the whole raid period (leave early, join late)?
• Did they tell me they wouldn't make it or just not show up?
• Did they post it as away vacation?

This information can help you in many ways. 

• Recruiting - If I know what my attendance looks like, I can do a good job of knowing how many people I need and how hard I should be recruiting.   You should never stop recruiting, but I am talking about how much effort you expend as a result of where you are and your guild's need.
• Learning Player Dedication - With a good statistic you can start to know what the probability a certain player will attend (whether they tell you or not).   You can use this to decide if they are a good candidate for your Progression Mythic team or should stay more as a backup.   You start to see signs and patterns in behavior.  These are the kinds of things that people won't tell you. This information doesn't have to be used to judge players, but it does help you plan and planning will ensure the show goes on.
  
  Here are some samples of what I mean:
• Joe - Never signs up for raid, but has excellent attendance and if he's going to be away lets you know.
• Mary - Always signs up.  Always shows up.
• Fred - Will tell you he'll make it and won't.
• John - Only shows up on farm nights.  Claims excuses for other nights.
• Dealing with issues - Occasionally, an issue comes up where someone that has lackluster raid attendance argues that they deserve some thing (raid slot for certain boss, item that drops, etc.) based on being a consistent raider.   You can just point and say," really?"

Side Story: I like to jokingly compare this to my desk office at work.  I sit right across the hall from the men's bathroom.  No matter how hard I try not to pay attention, indirectly, you learn the bathroom habits of all the people that use it: who doesn't wash, who won't go in if someone else has a stall, who wants a particular stall, etc.   It isn't something I want to know, but I just can't help it.   Watching your attendance is the same kind of thing.  You will start to see patterns.

My Attendance Sheets

The system I use has evolved over time because if some aspect of it isn't working or if I am not using information in the way I originally intended, then it's time to redefine it make the information useful.

First, I created a Google Sheets on the web.  It works great because I can publish it as a fixed web page that the guild can see as well as a motivator and it just updates automatically.   Google also offers an only publish when you want option as well so you can work and then publish.   But, I prefer to just keep it out there.   People won't be staring at it as much as you will.

Down, I have names and across the dates.  In the cells, I put:

• 1 = Full attendance.
• fraction = partial attendance, present about 1/2 the raid, they get 0.5, etc.
• purple fill = they told me they'd be missing.
• orange fill = they told me they are away on vacation.
• N = they just joined the team and these previous dates were before their joining so don't use it to assess them.

With a little bit of Spreadsheet magic, I can tell you that of my 29 raiders, I have 10 that attend 85-90% of the time and I have 5 that are about 70% of the time and another 10 that are 50% of the time, etc.   I can predict the odds that I'll be short raiders.

The crudest check for odds of attendance is just sum the % attendance on people.  If they add up to a full team, you have good odds.  I have thought about creating a more definitive equation for determining odds of being short, but this has done well enough for me without getting to complex.

If you have a cool way of keeping attendance and how you use it, let me know!

How to handle the "offensive" person

Occasionally I get a player that's a little "edgy" or "salty" as the current slang term is currently.  These are the kinds of players that go for the shock factor as "their thing".

You might also get a player that comes from a background where talking like a rapper is just how everyone does.

How do you deal with these kind of differences if it's a problem for you?

The first thing I do is try to understand why they are "showing out", as we say in the south.   I ask them if they feel like it's appropriate to talk/type that way and who they think might be offended by it and why?

If they have the mental capacity to understand that someone could and why they might be offended, that's negotiating grounds to bring them in line slowly.

The next thing is to explain to them that "Open Channels" such as "Trade Chat" or even "Guild Chat" are not necessarily the best places to talk about your privates or what favorite "positions" you like and why.   These type of conversations are really limited to close friends and its better to work toward being close friends and keep the touchier topics for a much much smaller audience ... say less than 5 people.

If you can't seem to get through to them.  You might have to give them options.  Options including submit, desist, or perhaps find another guild that is more like-minded.  Never cave, or you'll lose ground.

Guild Write-up / Policies / Rules

It's that time again, just before a new expansion, when guild leaders should be reviewing their guild policies for what worked, what they mentally adjusted during the expansion but didn't document, and get it all down in words.

I highly recommend all guilds have a basic document that does the following:

• Explain what the primary guild goal is.  This goal should be as specific as you can make it.  Your goal here is to delineate your guild from every other guild.  Ways to be different include:
• When you play - Pick a time frame.   Unless you are huge you can't be a raiding guild that raids in the morning, afternoon, night and late night.
• When your primary activity is scheduled.
• What content - Pick what activity will be your primary focus.  It is hard to be strong at Rated Battle Grounds and Raiding and Challenge Modes, etc.
• What Type of Player - Pick if you are seeking hard-core raiders, casual raiders, ranked PvP, etc.
• What age of Player - This might or might not be important to you.  I know it can cause debates, but people in different phases of their life have different priorities and these can impact guild activities.
• Explain guild rules
• How players should act and how infractions are handled.
• How your guild activities operate, who to contact, etc.
• What is required to join an activity, i.e. try out or logs, or just gear checks.
• Their access to the guild bank and how it's handled and what the bank is used to hold.
• Explain guild ranks.  What do your guild ranks mean and how do players get them.  For you, they may only mean access to the bank, but the members they are a prestige as well.  You can use them to signify what activity someone participates in, how much help they provide the guild or even how long someone has been with you.   Some guilds even give them cute names, but just having them is a plus.
• Explain Guild Behavior.   In my guild, I want guild members that are cooperative.  It's very hard to Shepard cooperation but it makes a guild a family instead of just a group of people all competing for the same gold ring.

Doing these things will help slow down membership churn because as you advertise, you know exactly what to say to explain to them what your guild is about.  If they know, they are more likely to jump in knowing exactly what to expect.  Yes, people change and their lives change as well.  But, isn't it better adding members that fit you rather than you trying to fit them.

What kinds of things would you put in YOUR guild policy?

Here is ours.

Guild Recruitment

I haven't been posting much lately.  My game activities have gone from being lackluster to insane with Warlords of Draenor.

I have grown the guild from about 20 players to over 340, with 240 active and about 50 raiders.

I won't claim to be an expert by any means, but over the 2 years of this expansion I did my best to try and define what the guild was about and make sure anyone that joins the guild know in advance what we are so they know coming in what to expect.

Here are the things I tell them right up front before I send ye-ole invite.

1. How many people are in the guild.  Some people like large and some like small.   And when I mean people I mean people not characters.    /ginfo will tell you accounts which is close enough.    But, it doesn't filter those that are absent.   So, I make sure to export my roster using ALTS add-on and filter it with Google Sheets.
2. When they can expect player to be online.   This is important if they want to play from 8AM to noon and you guys all come on from 5PM to 10PM.   
3. About how many they can expect to be online.   That is, I may have 250 players, but usually 10-30 are online in the evenings unless we have a big activity.
4. What kinds of things the guild does.   Whether you PvP or Raid, when, what's required to join.   
5. Ask them what they hope from the guild.   I always want to be sure they aren't looking for the 13/13 Mythic raid team when we are the 13/13 Heroic guild with a few toss in mythics.   The goal is to reduce the probability they will leave because you aren't their style of guild.
6. Tell them Guild Policies up front... the big ones.   Can they curse?  Can they troll trade channel?  Can they use offensive toon names?  How long absent before they are removed, etc.

I also do my homework and look for bad signs.

1. They claim to be something they are not.   That is, they claim to be a mythic raider but their char sheet says otherwise.   I am not looking for their skills, I am looking for their honesty.
2. They change guilds frequently.   This is an indicator you might have a problem player.   And, then you can softly nudge them away with phrases like, "I'm not sure we have the kind of guild you want".
3. They rail on their current guild.  If they are bad-talking their guild, guild leader, raid leader.  This is a sign that they will do the same about you when they leave.

Neutral Signs:

1. The guild just kind of left me.  This happens a lot right now in WoW.  I am very sympathetic to this kind of player.   They aren't willing to follow the guild in race / server transfers.   Or their friends all went to play Overwatch and they still want WoW.
2. I pug raid a lot because I don't have a good schedule.   Unless you force players to raid with you, it's great having a few that may or may not be available to fill in and pug raiders still seems to get gear now-a-day.

And after you feel confident they might fit your requirements and they are still interested.  You should let them know, you will be giving them a link to your guild guidelines.  That is, let them know you have rules and how the guild works.   If they are fine, invite away.

There is no promise they will stay, but you should feel more confident that they will be the kind of guildie you can keep long term.

Calling out mistakes

When raiding, mistakes happen.   You'll find that the basic sequence is:

1. Here is the strategy - and perhaps your task assignment.
2. Pull
3. Mistakes happen
4. Most learn from their mistakes
5. Go to Step 1

However, occasionally, someone is truly struggling with a mechanic and you are faced with how to handle this.

We are a friendly group.   We strive to not call out specific players unless they are among a list of players struggling.   That is "John, Joe, Mary, watch out for fire".   But never, "John you were in fire". 

Most likely, instead, you hear, "Several people were in fire, here is how to handle that mechanic, please try to do better".

The key here is that some people are overly sensitive to hear their name called out.   And even especially sensitive when they are called out more than once.

Unfortunately, the more times the same mistakes happen, eventually something needs to be privately handled on the issue or someone else, in the group's frustration will cause them to handle it for you and not necessarily the way you'd prefer.   Drama will ensue.

It happened to us this week in raid.  Someone made the same mistake several times.  After having their name in the list 3 times, they quit the raid and quit the guild and insisted we were being disrespectful to (a) his age (b) his limitations as a player.

The problem is, this player never spoke up.  They never said, I can't do this.  They never said what other things can I try since I struggle with this mechanic.   Instead, they waited until they were past their limit and then up and quit.

If this happens to you, here is how I handled it.

I let them know, the mistake was not ours.  The rudeness was not ours.   All the mistakes  were on them.  Here was their failure.

1. They failed mechanic - not the biggest problem.
2. They failed to speak up on their difficulty with the mechanic. - BIG PROBLEM
3. They quit instead of speaking up - THEIR PROBLEM.

Raiding is a team sport and team players have to participate more than just causing fails over and over.

If they speak up, and have difficulty, you then have options.   You can work around the issue if you know.   But if you work-around the issue without knowing, then it looks equally insensitive.   Don't let your raiders get away with being shy.

All-in-all, I'm saying.  Don't accept a criticism from someone when you know you are making all reasonable accommodations given a known circumstance.

Yes, eventually, it may come to sitting them out for a fight they can't do.  That doesn't mean they can't come back for later content.  Or eventually figure a new strategy.