In the post on guild mergers, I talked a little about what to do when you’re trying to expand from a 10 person to 25 person guild. Today, I’d like to expand on that a bit outside of the context of mergers or alliances (the latter of which will be covered in a future post). Hopefully this one won’t turn into an opus (I honestly didn’t expect the last few to run so long, that was just how they looked when I finished writing).
So, you’ve got a 10 person guild. Perhaps you started it with a few friends, perhaps it was a group of former guild members who left your old guild at the same time, or perhaps you just stuck it out in the trade channel until you had enough people to run a regular 10 person raid. You may be happy with the situation, but a few of your guild members are making noise about the better loot that they want out of the 25 person raids. You’re not certain, but you suspect that the sentiment is a common one – people want to run what they perceive to be the “best” content, and for many people that means 25 man raids.
Some practical ideas on how to proceed then:
Is This a Good Idea?
First, make sure the sentiment is commonly held. It may just be one person rabble-rousing, and you may be better encouraging them to seek a guild that is running 25 person content rather than try to push the guild into what can be a tumultuous period in its life.
There are two points to remember here: Blizzard has decided, at least in WotLK, that 25 person content gives one tier better loot than 10 person content. They have not, however committed to continuing to do so in Cataclysm. Remember than the 10/25 versions of every raid were a bit of an experiment for Blizzard. I think everyone will agree that the experiment has been been successful on the whole, but the item level spread could do with some improvement. We might see changes to the way the 10/25 split is handled in Cataclysm.
The second point is to remind people that a boss with more HP and damage numbers doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a harder encounter. Does it feel more epic? Sure. But in terms of raw difficulty, many 10 person encounters are harder. You can’t recover from the loss of a healer (especially if you’re only using two). You may not have the full complement of buffs and debuffs to boost your DPS. For a good while after WotLK released, Sartharion-3D was considered to be significantly harder on 10 than on 25. I know a former guildie who is more proud of his “of the Nightfall” title than “Twilight Vanquisher”.
What’s driving your members to raid? Are they in it for the loot, or for the challenge of the fights and the feeling that comes from defeating an encounter after several weeks of refining strategy and execution? I am more proud of what my guild accomplished in Blackwing Lair (Razorgore to Nefarian in six weeks) back in patch 1.9 than I am of my experience clearing WotLK Naxxramas in three weeks. The raid size isn’t the point here – it was learning to master things like taunt rotations on the drakes, healing teams on Chromaggus and the periodic loss of a role on Nefarian. These were new concepts to people used to steamrolling through Molten Core, and to get together with a group of people and overcome them was very rewarding.
I haven’t really felt that same level of accomplishment since (though I am proud of what my guilds have done in WotLK). Then again, I’ve never been in a guild that pushed hard mode content.
You may find that what people are really craving is that feeling of accomplishment rather than the high item level loot. When I inspect someone and see item level 239 items (which can only be found in Ulduar-25 hard mode), I’m impressed moreso than people wearing item level 245 (easily obtained from Trial of the Crusader on normal). If so, perhaps now is the time to revisit the hard modes you didn’t complete. The extreme hard modes from older content tiers are still something to be proud of beating (though obviously less so the further you get into ICC).
