Lack of Interest / Attendance

Hi All,

Our 25 man raids have been suffering significantly lately. I'd like to hear what everyone thinks about this issue and what we can do to remedy it. A few thoughts that have been considered:

1. Use in-game Calendar and require signup / cancel raid if not more than 20 sign up (and show)
-the issue with the in-game calendar is that events have a maximum of 100 participants. So if you mass invite the guild level 80's, we have more than 100. So then you have to go back in and selectively prune to get it down to under 100.
2. Use an addon such as Guild Event Manager, which we used pre-WoTLK.
-the issue is that many people don't want to download and use a 3rd party addon for raid scheduling. If we were to do such a thing, we'd need to be clear that those who sign up get priority over those that do not regardless of ones past history.
3. This should be done regardless if we continue 25-man raids: RECRUIT!
4. Focus more on our 10-man groups. Possibly leave 1 night still open for 25-man raids. This would also give those that can only make it fri/sat a chance to get with a 10-man on those nights rather than not raiding at all.

As always, your thought would be appreciated.

-Boman

Well it is as some have said, the “summer curse” that affects servers all over WoW. Many guilds take a break from raiding or scale way back in the summers due to lack of attendance. People are traveling, they’re outside more, having cook outs, working on tans, etc. The good news is that it’s almost over. My kids go back to school in a week and a half! (modified school calendar) I’m sure many are lamenting that summer is half over already! So the “remove curse” spell is almost cast.

As far as a calendar goes, use whatever will be easiest for you Bo. Because I’m sorry to say, you won’t be able to please everyone. If it makes you feel better, take a poll, use the outcome to make your determination and rest easy. We’ll still love you regardless.

One remedy may be to change the 25 man raid night to a night when both 10 man groups are running. I mean, I know there a few nights when both teams are running so that’s 4/5 of the 25 man raid right there. Now granted if it’s on a weeknight the time may be gimped and we can’t go for as long, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to have the first section of Ulduar on “farm”. Besides, badges of Conquest are yummy!

Recruiting…hmmmm, I don’t believe I have the invite privilege so maybe the Officers can spam the trade channel and perk up interest?

Those are my thoughts, now if you’ll excuse me, I have some dailies to attend to.

As Bellona said, it's the summer. Things will pick up once school starts again.

Couple of other "Daargo's take on things:"

Uldar is harder than Naxx and "some people" don't have the patience/persistance to learn and master new content. These are the same individuals who rarely come prepared and have to be reminded to flask/eat/buff etc. They want to be carried like they were in Naxx. IMO.

GEM. Just say no. People who want to raid will find out when they are and be there.

Posting on the guild website here you are NOT addressing the target audience I would imagine. Those of us who come here are the ones sitting in their chair of late on Friday night thinking "Guess I won't have to record Eureka to watch later now." Well, maybe that's just me.

Recruiting new members always makes me cringe. Just never ever EVER invite Gama, again. Of course, on the positive side, we did invite Bellona. So many nuggets, so few gems.

10 Mans on Friday/Saturday nights. Hmmm, I might like that.

Again, that's just MY take on things.

I think Daargo is right with the difficulty thing, people get frustrated that we aren't tearing through this like we do in Naxx 25.

I wouldn't mind seeing us progress more through 10 mans, an extra day would be awesome but the problem with that is, its only getting 20 people geared, 5 people are getting left behind for when we actually do 25 man ULD.

The problem with random recruiting is how do we know we're gonna get people who can do what we need. I've seen plenty of people who claim to pull 4k DPS and most of the time they're under 3.

I think Oz said it best the other day in guild, lets bring people who can admit they're bad but willing to learn.

Maybe we should hold tryouts in naxx 25 or something, find some people who are interested, lol

I honestly feel we need to find another guild to merge with. Since Mirtas and Co. left we have never had an on time start as we are holding to add pugs. It wasn't too bad at start needing 5 people on average. But every week we needed more and more till we are finally in our present dilemma.

And come September... just who is it that's coming back????

Another factor.... patch is suppose to add new instances...5, 10 and 25 if the rumors are correct. How are we going to do Uldar with everyone wanting to be elsewhere.

Briteleaf

I have a little input...ignore it if I'm off base but let me suggest something:

I don't really care for merges, however I know they happen all the time. Problem is you have a set rank for individuals and leaders who are well known in their own guilds. When you merge, no matter what people say at the beginning there is still animosity just below the surface (in nearly all cases I've seen or been part of). Officers of both guilds expect to be officers in the "new improved guild" and then you end up with too many chiefs and not enough Indians. If you happen to find a guild that is falling apart anyway, the individuals left, who want a new leader, are probably are not as far along as we are. Thus, we move into training mode. Which I don't mind in the least, but hopefully it’s not training Naxx.

The suggestion I would propose is not a merge but a “joint raiding guild” that way we retain our own identity. At least for a trial period of a couple weeks to see how it works out. If it seems like a good match and the GM and officers are in sync, then maybe a merger is the best move. I’ve been in a guild who had a “sister” guild and we had our own 10 man teams and we went to 25 mans with the sister guild. Now there was a sign up because if the other guild has more than 12-15 willing to show up, you run into not enough spots (something that sounds great but in reality isn’t).

Another suggestion is that we recruit heavily for the next month and a half while 25 mans are suspended. I mean, we have a recruitment officer correct? Deputize a couple of people and see if they can help spark interest. Plenty of people pug and find people looking for guilds to join but don’t go to the recruitment forums. Plus once you have been in a pug with someone you can get a good idea of what kind of raider they are. Did they ninja, get impatient or act like a jerk? You know not to mention we’re looking for members then.

These are just my thoughts and ramblings. I like DO and couldn’t imagine a better GM than Bo. (not sucking up really…last guild I was in had a GM that yelled at us all the time and I swear he’s probably had a heart attack by now!) I’m down for whatever though, I’m the epitome of “team player”!

Bells

I wanna second the 'merger' down-looking, my old server and guild separated because of chat rules! it's not fun seeing exactly what Bellona stated about officers wanting to be officers in the 'new-improved' guild.

A sister guild?? As some may have noticed, i made a guild myself, and i have no idea if you want to run with this guild, because my comfortable raiding times are not DO's comfortable raiding times, but im more than willing to share resources with DO, as Law is still part of DO. And although i must say i will eventually move my rading block to be with this new guild when i have the people for it, im still running with group 4 until that time. March or Die is subliminally affiliated with DO already =). But hey, separate raids, separate people, unique identities....i only pull alts from this guild if theyre interested in my raid time, midnight server-3A.

A lack of people definitely hurts us, but we've pugged how many people in the last few weeks? surely we can convince some of them to go regularly. Shaah is an example of this type of person, pugged once and nagged me every week to do a raid lol. has alts in other guilds, we have connections everywhere we just need to get these alts in other guilds to spread the word for us to their own guild if they have people that cant make their own guld runs because of RL issues, etc. but it requires our members to not be lazy and actually help out with the success of this guild, we can't rely on our guild master to run EVERYTHING for us along with our officers...and have everything HANDED to us, it's YOU, the members of DO, who make us successful.

time to get down and dirty...