Hints & Tips For Creating A Successful Raiding Guild

The following section touches on a number of guild areas that may or may notapply to the style of guild you are setting up. These are drawn on past experiencesrunning The Syndicate, which has been around, and one of the lead gaming guildssince 1996. They are also drawn from lessons learned watching thousands of otherguilds rise, and fall, during our lifetime. Some of these points are definitelydebatable and you might be better served using them as lessons learned or startingpoints to think about how you wish to run your guild. There are some right andwrong answers for running a guild but there is also a large grey area that isinfluenced by you personally, as guildmaster and the goals you wish the guildto achieve and the types of people you recruit.

1. Setting Up A Raiding Guild

In World of Warcraft, a —raid” is a collection of up to 8 groups of5 members per group (i.e. 40 people max). Some raid targets require less. Someraid targets will be unwinnable even wit h 40 people until you lea rn t he tacticsor get the ne cessary type of gear or both.

A raiding guild for WoW is not quite the same as it was in Everquest, where theconcept of raiding was born. The Everquest designers designed encounters, upthrough the Planes of Power expansion, which required increasingly large numbersof players to win them. Post Planes of Power they began to scale back and limitencounters to a much more sane number of players. World of Warcraft was in itsdesign and coding phases during the height of the “massive’ raid size pushin Everquest. It was going into beta right as there was a massive backlash againstEQ by the players and the Blizzard team clearly saw that occur and took thatinto account when designing their raid content. They took the approach of limitingthe number of people to a reasonable size and they chose 40. They, in turn, balancedall encounters (assuming you know the tactic to defeat the monster and have thenecessary basic gear for that fight) for 35 people. And once you have the tacticsdown and pretty good gear, 30 people or less should be possible.

Recruiting Members for a Raiding Guild

So the first aspect of a raiding guild is having the people to raid. A typicalrule of thumb is that at peak time, you will have 50% (or less) of your coreraiders available to you unless you mandate that they be online. So if you need40 people to raid, you will either need to preschedule your raids so people knowto be online or you will need to recruit 80 to 100 raid capable members. There are several schools of thought in that arena. Thefirst is that you are better served having 40 or 50 raid people both to limitthe number of members who get left out and to ensure that each one knows theirrole and perform it well. The price for this route is possibly not having enoughpeople to raid and each person is more important so if your key tank or healerscan’t make a raid, you could have 35+ other people waiting around doing nothing.The second is that in order to ensure you do have enough people to raid you reallyneed the higher numbers of members understanding that you may sacrifice somequality to get size. You certainly don’t have to sacrifice quality for size butin order to avoid the quality sacrifice you have to invest time to find the rightpeople. So there is a price to pay whichever route you chose and you simply needto pick the one with the price you are willing to pay.

Raiding Guild Structure

The first rule of thumb when picking a structure for your guild is picking onethat works for you and your members. But a structure, of some sort, is necessary.Showing up with 40 people to raid with no plan and no clear person in chargeis a recipe for disaster. In addition, having too many chiefs trying to leadthe group can also cause issues.

Since ra id size is limited to 40 peop le, anywhere from 1 to 3 people is probablya good number of leaders to have for a given raid. You don’t need 5 or 10 peopleto coordinate the activities of 40 or less raiders. If you do then your raidersare not paying enough attention and don’t know the basics of raiding to beginwith.

A suggested structure would be to have a group of Raid Commanders within yourguild. Those people are familiar with the tactics of the different raids andare capable of organising 40 people into a cohesive raiding force. Those peopleneed to have patience, since mistakes will happen. They need to be able to clearlycommunicate and not just assume everyone knows the tactics or goals. And theyneed to understand all of the classes on the raid and how to deploy them forthe best chance of success.

In addition to the raid leaders themselves, there are some other raid roles youmay wish in your guild. While these are not necessarily “lead’ roles theycan add value to have them in your structure.

Main Tank: The main tank is the person in charge of getting aggro on the moband holding it. Everyone keys off them and assists them for their target. Assigningoff tanks/crowd control tanks to handle any adds is a good idea as well. Yourmain tank is likely to be a defensive specialized warrior with as high of AC,HP and resists as they can get. The more they have then the easier time keepingthem alive you will have.

Main Assist: The main assist is the person your members must all assist to gettheir target. This person is often not the same as the main tank since the tanksmay need to change targets, midfight, to save the healers. A hunter can do apretty good job in this role as they can also mark the target. If a hunter isnot your main tank you may wish to assign a hunter to mark the target once theyassist the MA. Its hard to miss a giant blinking red arrow. The MA is importantsince attacking a Crowd Controlled (CC) mob will result in breaking the CC (sheepform… banished etc..)

Main Looter: You definitely need to have a loot policy of some sort in your guild.WoW is setup with a random rolling method of loot. One typical way to handleraid loot is to use the Main Looter strategy. The raid sets one person to bethe main looter. That person is the only one that the game allows to loot allcorpses. They loot the misc. items and hold anything that is not —bindon equip”. Those items get rolled on by your members using whatever rulesyou setup. At the end of the raid, the main looter calls out all items they areholding and everyone present rolls on them. This allows you to move faster andnot stop every minute to roll on loot. It also lets people see the sum totalof items you collect before they decide to roll on items so that they don’t takea lesser upgrade if a better one is available later on.

Healer Lead: Having a lead healer can be an asset. There are encounters whereyou will want to do more than just spam heals at the main tank. You may wishto have a healing rotation of healers firing one after the other to chain heal.You may wish to have waves of healers that move in and out as mana allows. Whateverthe strategy you use, having a healer lead at the raid, to coordinate the correcthealing, will relieve the raid lead of that responsibility.

Pull Team: Good pulling can make or break a raid. Pullers whobring too many mobs can kill a raid. Pullers who pull to slow can kill a raidor drag it onfar longer than it should go. Chose your pullers with care and you may wish tohave a semi-permanent pull team that learns the dungeons… learns how to work with the different Main Tanks… learnsthe speed their raid can handle incoming mobs… learns to communicate with theOff Tanks to handle adds… and that can ensure they don’t kill your raid repeatedlywith bad pulls. Practice does make perfect when it comes to pulling so don’tjust send anyone out to pull.

Raid Tactics

Blizzard has repeatedly said that he secret to winning WoW raids is in the tactics.You cannot “zerg” them by throwing warm bodies at a target until itis dead. Not all encounters are straightforward ones where the main tank gainsaggro and the healers heal them and everyone else wails on the monster whileit stands there blindly hitting the main tank. The encounters are varied andsome are complex. So raid tactics are key.

Blizzard has also said it is likely you will die your first time or first severaltimes until you learn the tricks of the encounter and master the tactics. Onceyou know the tactics they have also said that you should be able to win the fightwith less than the max of 40 people that you can bring.

So raiding is all about the tactics. Pay attention. When do the adds spawn? Doesthe mob do different things at different health percentages? Are certain resistancesneeded? Where should you position your tank? Where do you position the raid?Even if you lose the fight, if you learn something then its not a waste of aneffort. If you repeatedly rush in and die and learn nothing, then don’t evenbother raiding. Learn, especially from your defeats and refine your tactics asyou go. Tactics are the key.

Communications
Communications for a raiding guild are critical. This is a natural extensionof tactics being the key to success since if your guild doesn’t know the tactics,it isn’t relevant if the raid leader is an expert in them. You need to pick raidleaders who can clearly communicate. You shouldn’t expect your members to magicallyknow their role in a raid tactic until you have told them or shown them. Therecan sometimes be a fair amount of elitism among the top end raiders where theyassume that since they know something, everyone else must know it else they arestupid n00bs who can’t raid. In reality, you will have a lot of very skilledpeople in your guild that haven’t yet learned or fought an encounter. They willknow how to play their classes well and how to work within a raid well, but don’tyet know their classes specific role for the new raid you are about to embark upon. Communicateclearly and effectively to them and you will save yourself many headaches.

You should probably setup a guild posting forum on the web somewhere. Use thatto communicate raid dates/times as well as raid tactics. Use that for peopleto ask questions about their role and encourage open discussion. Discourage peoplebelittling members for asking questions and foster an atmosphere where peoplelike to ask questions and learn. It’s far better for them to learn a tactic onyour posting forum before the raid than during the raid when they can screw itup and end up killing everyone.

Ensure, during your raids, that your raid leaders are clearly communicating whatis going on. Sometimes your leaders may get discussing something in officer chator in tells and forget there are 35+ other people standing around not hearinganything and wondering what is going on. You need to keep them informed not onlyso they can be successful at the raid but also so they aren’t bored. If yourraids are boring engagements where most members stand around in silence for 90%of the time punctuated by short intense battles, you will soon fine people goingto other guilds where the overall raid experience is more entertaining.

Do Other Guilds Matter To You?

No, they should not matter. WoW is an MMORPG but the high end content is almostall instanced. That means you exist basically within your own world playing yourown high end game and what other guilds do has no bearing on you and your guildunless you let it. You shouldn’t feel like you have to —keep up” withother guilds. Progress at your own pace. Kill the mobs you wish to kill. Learnthe encounters and have fun doing it. A good amount of the fun of gaming is learninghow to overcome the puzzles and challenges. If you feel like it is a footracebetween you and other guilds then you will lose site of the —fun” aspectand the game will become all about getting to see certain pixels before someoneelse. Remember this is gaming and it is completely irrelevant how much or howlittle another guild achieves. They cannot take your kills. They cannot preventyou from killing something. They cannot slow your progress. They cannot trainyou. They cannot block your progress by hogging a key spawn. It is a game ofinstanced high end content. Find the pace that suits your guild’s style and don’twaste any time or energy worrying about other guilds.

2. Fun Guild Events

For some guilds, MMORPGs are all about Raiding. However, there are other thingsyou can do with your gaming experience (both in game and out of game) to keepthings fresh and fun. In The Syndicate, one of the chief comments I hear frompeople joining our guild is that their old guild was boring. It never did anything.Or it only raided. So if your guild isn’t simply a —raid raid raid!!” typeguild then you may find some of these events to your liking:

Guild Dinners: Few things bind a guild together like a real life encounter. Ifyou have members that live locally near you, setup some guild dinners and gettogether. Have dinner, drink a beer and talk about the game and the guild. Ultimatelyyour guild will be stronger for it. Certainly this isn’t possible for every guildto do but it is very effective. The Syndicate, for example, as a 15 to 25 personguild dinner in Northern Virginia every month and a 100-200 person real lifeconference every year somewhere in the US. If your guild has the resources todo those things, they are powerful tools to bind you together as a stronger,longer lasting team. Remember that no matter how motivated you are today, 99.999%of the guilds that form today will not be around in a year or two. Most willbe gone within 3 months. As such, anything you can do to swing the odds morein your favor is value added.

Craftsman Day: Long ago, in Ultima Online, The Syndicate started a traditioncalled Craftsman Day. The event was so popular that it spread to most UO serversand eventually spread to other games. Today it exists in the WoW world and itis a great event for your guild. First of all, it’s free to host. All you needis your time. Second, it is of great value to anyone in the gaming communitythat doesn’t have a craftsman. Third, it’s a great way to meet people and otherguilds. The event is very simple: Gather your craftsman together in a centralspot (like Orgimaar bank for the Horde or the Stormwind bank for the alliance)and offer your services, for free, to anyone who wants them. Offer to createany item for them that they wish, if they supply the ingredients for it. Sinceyou cannot “fail’ in the creation of an item in WoW, the person risks nothingunless you steal their resources. That can only happen about one time beforeword spreads and your reputation is tarnished so only pick members you trustto represent your guild at those events. Craftsman Day lets people who couldnot normally make an item and don’t wish to pay the huge auction house prices,get items created for the cost of the raw materials. If you make it a regular even t, they can save up mate rials and plan to attend a fu ture one to getyour help.

Scavenger Hunt: The Scavenger Hunt is a great event for both the general publicas well as for your guild to help keep members happy and give them somethingcreative to do. There are a lot of interesting items in WoW whether its parrotdroppings or troll sweat or wines that you can only buy in a specific location.With a little creativity you can easily come up with a list of 20 or 30 items.Pick a time and have your members online. Read off the list in guildsay and thefirst person or team of people to get back to you with all items (or the personor team with the most items when time expires) will win.

Fight Night: Fight Night and variations on it have become very popular eventsacross online gaming. They can be private for your members only or they can bepublic contests. They can have persistent ladders that carry rankings from weekto week or be fresh events every time. They can be solo or group events. Thegeneral premise remains the same: It is an organised pvp event where individualsor teams duel to determine a winner. From a guild standpoint they offer a changeof pace and a good chance to practice pvp tactics and develop new ones with friends.