Legion: Worst expac for recruiting?

[Sigxy]

I kiiinda face the same issue but, not in regards for Raids or any kind of PvE/PvP. I've been running a RP guild since TBC and I've run it for over 9 years now. It wasn't the biggest, but that's pretty much how we preferred it. Sadly, Legion seem to have bored people out of the game and it's darn hard to find decent RPers over at my realm (or any at all) - and whenever we usually celebrate Anniversaries we're around a bit under a dozen people for them. This last one: 3. And now it's pretty much just me and one person around. x_x

[Cheze]

I really wonder what kind of jobs people are applying for that a guild application (basically just a forum post and/or quick voicechat) feels like that application process

anyway, recruiting has always been a struggle. It takes work to find people who're a good fit for your culture/schedule/etc and filter out the assholes and so on. It's not any more difficult now than it ever was.

One thing that is really nice about recruiting for mythic raiding in legion is that it's relatively easy for people to 'keep up' without being in a guild; previously an applicant (or alt) who wasn't already a contemporary raider was someone the raid had to devote time to gearing up. These days players can maintain relatively current gear and demonstrate ability by doing m+. A player might not have much of a history of raid accomplishments but if they have a good wowprog m+ score we know they can at least breath through their nose and swallow their own spit.

[Trapped]

theres no point in being in a guild or bothering to find a good one when I can pug all of heroic which is enough for me each week. I could care less about 10 more ilvl in mythic and bashing my head against a wall for 50+ wipes on a boss just to feel some sense of achievement in life. I did that back in BC and WOTLK i dont want to do it now. A lot of guilds on my server are either more elitist than I sound... or they are just straight plebs.

I agree with you, but that's the issue. Guilds keep getting "nerfed" while Blizzard keeps shoving these anti-social features at us to make gameplay easier and more convenient. We're sacrificing possible real friendships for the convenience of "getting shit done whenever the fuck I feel like it".

This. It also proves to me something I always suspected: lots of people were only in guilds because they felt they had to be. Now they don't have to anymore outside of Mythic.

I know I'm not. I will never conform to someone else's schedule ever again.

Yes, there were many people that only did organized guild raiding because you had to if you wanted to see the content. Sure, there were some trade chat pugs on Fri/Sat night, but outside of that, 90% of raiding was done in a guild. Now, if you don't care about Mythic, you don't need a guild. Quite a shame.

[Deleted]

Log on prepared for raid 2-4 times a week and keep their weapons up to date sure is hard.

But a lot of people was drived away from raiding in early Legion. One of the reason that literally killed a lot of small guild and discouraged a lot of "casual" raiders were the ASTRONOMICAL costs of raid consumables. Let's be honest, in a lot of server 1 flask cuold go up to 3k gold. This was INSANE. And specially for casual or smaller guild, where you don't always have a proper organization or a well manteined Guild Bank.

And while in early Legion was not mandatory for a Hc guild to have all weapon maxed out, it was kinda necessary to have a raid full flasked and with food.

[Deleted]

Well, not trying to derail this thread, but main culprit is actually the WF/TF crap. I've seen people with 1/10 mythic NH that have higher ilvl gear than me (9/10 mythic guild). That sure puts a damper on the feeling of achievement of clearing mythic bosses.

I still don't want the 10/25 model back and definitely don't want cross-realm current mythic raids. It's OK for heroic, but mythic raiding also kind of lives off the internal competition. Being realm position 1 means something more than being world rank 1,000.

The recruitment has never been easy and probably never will. However, over time, raids will consolidate. The "new content re-subbers" are just normal fluctuation and any guild that wants to have somewhat decent progress won't recruit those anyway, knowing that they will be gone again once content is clear. So: The more guilds collapse, the bigger the pool of dedicated mythic raiders available will be.

Market forces do work

[Arainie]

I really wonder what kind of jobs people are applying for that a guild application (basically just a forum post and/or quick voicechat) feels like that application process

This. Writing a few paragraphs about yourself is not a job application, it's a 15 min effort in return for a potential home in WoW. A lot of people spend years in the same guild!

One thing that is really nice about recruiting for mythic raiding in legion is that it's relatively easy for people to 'keep up' without being in a guild; previously an applicant (or alt) who wasn't already a contemporary raider was someone the raid had to devote time to gearing up. These days players can maintain relatively current gear and demonstrate ability by doing m+. A player might not have much of a history of raid accomplishments but if they have a good wowprog m+ score we know they can at least breath through their nose and swallow their own spit.

Also this. If you've been running M+ and the occasional HC raid you're most likely 905+ and in no way too far behind to join a Mythic guild. Doesn't take anything away from the fact that I think you should spend those 15 minutes on an application though, especially if you don't have any Mythic experience.

You also forget all the really bad guilds that ask for extreme stats. Hence why they recruit for so long, because they filter out so many people instead of helping integrate and build them.

I've never really seen this being the case. By all means the best way to get in to a guild is to provide logs proving that you can carry your own weight, but if you don't have the gear or recent raiding experience it's usually not that hard to get in to a guild on old merits or simply a good application. However, if you've got no experience, no gear and can't be arsed even trying to promote yourself, why should anyone take a chance on you?

[Rotted]

I've got a few social characters hanging around some raiding guilds, I see them bitching recruitment is low and do they not want to raid one night or do they pug 3 dps etc.

However, I'd also checked out their websites, and they all have the same descriptions "we are 3 or 5 mythic, we expect you to be". Back when I was a heroic raider in Wrath, I was also our recruitment officer. I handled every application, and thoroughly checked them over. If they were a Warlock or DK I'd check their amoury over, anything else I got hold of the right class leader.

I'd go check out their applications to other sites if possible, contact a few people from their previous guilds if possible, and I'd actually include in my choices their achievement points, my logic is if you have someone with 12k achi point in wrath, they put a lot of hours and work into that character.

I'd quite often take people who knew what they were doing, but hadn't raided. Even progression in ICC heroic, we took people, we ran normal, we ran ToC, we ran Uld. We ran the ICC dungeons with them, and one of us would go into tank spec and spam heroics to get them badges. We'd get them to our level within a week or two, or atleast a level they could compete at. Hell, we even had members pass up on loot items they'd been waiting for to help out some people (voluntary, not asked or ordered)

I used to take great pride when I was on recruitment, these days all you lot seem to do is bash someone that's heroic geared applying for a guild on mythic, regardless you haven't got the players. There's no constructive feedback given - like our class leader used to make a full list of what they were missing etc. It's just a flat out no and more often than not some abuse or mockery.

We're 8/10M almost 9/10 with 6 hours raiding a week and we basically get one application per week, most of them garbage tier with no mythic experience. Our guild has been around on Ravencrest EU since WotLK so we're not exactly newcomers, and while we've never had roster issues and very few people quiting during this expansion the number of applications has never been this low.

Prime example here granted your a little higher than what I've mentioned but... right off the bat insulting their gear they've probably put in a fair few hours to get, and second no experience so your default not interested. I'm not saying your intentionally being malicious, but that sends up a big red warning flag for me. And honestly the reply I'm expecting here is "Why should we boost them"

- - - Updated - - -

I've never really seen this being the case. By all means the best way to get in to a guild is to provide logs proving that you can carry your own weight, but if you don't have the gear or recent raiding experience it's usually not that hard to get in to a guild on old merits or simply a good application. However, if you've got no experience, no gear and can't be arsed even trying to promote yourself, why should anyone take a chance on you?

This is a fair point, and it's why I like application (Used to check an entire character over not just their raid exp). If you've come back to the game after a few years break, your applying as a fresh or even leveling 110, but you take the time to make a really detailed application, good spelling, grammar, highlighting previous expansion raids, providing someone who can vouch for you and the likes, that goes a long way in my books. But if you just apply and fill in yes / no / yes / no / NA odds are you aren't someone you want around your guild.

[Arainie]

Prime example here granted your a little higher than what I've mentioned but... right off the bat insulting their gear they've probably put in a fair few hours to get, and second no experience so your default not interested. I'm not saying your intentionally being malicious, but that sends up a big red warning flag for me. And honestly the reply I'm expecting here is "Why should we boost them"

It's like this entire forum is either black or white with nothing in between. Why should we as a guild take a chance on someone who doesn't seem to bring anything to the table, especially when we're not desperate and never risk calling a raid due to lack of members? We would never insult an applicant as a reply to their application, but I don't personally find it engaging to give constructive feedback when a lot of applications look like this:
Yes, I have obviously removed personal details about applicants including charname and warcraftlogs links.


For reference, here's an application that's above average in terms of current experience and gear:


However, do you actually think that's a decent application?
When I wrote my own application to this very guild in early Cataclysm I spent a couple of hours on it and while I don't expect people to write an essay you can at least try.

Would my point have been more obvious if I wrote "Most of them garbage applications, mostly without any mythic experience" to emphasize that I'm not talking about garbage mythic tier experience?

EDIT: Reduced image size.

[Rotted]

It's like this entire forum is either black or white with nothing in between. Why should we as a guild take a chance on someone who doesn't seem to bring anything to the table, especially when we're not desperate and never risk calling a raid due to lack of members? We would never insult an applicant as a reply to their application, but I don't personally find it engaging to give constructive feedback when a lot of applications look like this:
Yes, I have obviously removed personal details about applicants including charname and warcraftlogs links.


For reference, here's an application that's above average in terms of current experience and gear:


However, do you actually think that's a decent application?
When I wrote my own application to this very guild in early Cataclysm I spent a couple of hours on it and while I don't expect people to write an essay you can at least try.

Would my point have been more obvious if I wrote "Most of them garbage applications, mostly without any mythic experience" to emphasize that I'm not talking about garbage mythic tier experience?

EDIT: Reduced image size.

No, this is what I'd call a poor application, with no previous raid experience, raid boosting as current and a poorly written application I would decline. This is a perfect example of what I said about people not being up to date / no raid experience and a application.

[Romobama]

Do you ever ask anyone why people are leaving? You need to capitalise on finding out why, to see for any trends to understand how to better your guild going forward.

Do you ever actively recruit? Or do you wait for people to come along from a trade chat macro or forum post?

Are your guild goals very clear and are they communicated so people are all on the same page?

Sounds like optimising guild management could resolve your concerns/issues, potentially.

1. Do I ever get a chance too? I would love too, but either they leave without a word (change servers and the like), or they've just quit the game. I'm not one to make people do what they don't want to do (like anyone could stop someone from quitting). This is a game, Real life comes first, I understand... but a bigger pool to draw recruits from, would infinitely help my guild (and I would think most guilds)

2. Yes, as I stated, '...haven't seen a new recruit stay...'I pop a macro in trade when I'm on, and if I can catch someone asking in trade I'll invite... but most just disappear, see #1.

3. Yes, stated to member when invited, posted in the guild info, worked on the spreadsheet to get availability times for everyone who joins and wishes to raid. But, you know, see #1

I've optimized as far as I can with my limited resources ingame. /shrug

[Celestraza]

So, to all the guild leaders and/or officers out there, how are you doing in the recruitment department? Are you seeing a constant stream of new recruits, or are you able to keep most of your core raiders together?

Pretty bad.
The game has emphasized so many features that made the game and community increasingly anti-social and egocentric.

We had a core of older raiders dating from Vanilla/BC. I would describe these raiders as loyal, skill before gear, team/guild players, respectable and social. But ever since MoP this kind of raider is dieing out. Older raiders are quitting and the newer raiders just aren't cut out to make a stable and dependable core.

New players we have gotten so far:
- Disloyal (just use guilds as a stepping stone for ilvl increase and move up the ranks)
- Get poached (there is a huge amount of poaching by higher ranked guilds, we even had top guilds steal people for their legendaries...)
- Egocentric (obsessed with rankings on logs rather than killing bosses)
- Lootwhores (the whole ilvl emphasis has increased bitching and moaning about loot distribution)
- Rude / Disrespectfull

In the end we merged with a guild that has the same issue. But you can't stop the flow of losing loyal core members, the older core always lets us know what is going on. It always is real life for these core. People get married/kids, get jobs or get tired of WoW (AP grind killed a lot of veterans).

[Gasparde]

Applications are outdated, you'll get nothing out of an app that you couldn't otherwise get out of a ts/discord/whatever talk. Yet a lot of people just can't be bothered to write applications for a game (including actually good players). You're basically saying 'I don't want to raid with this player because he didn't bother to fill out a form'. What do you expect to get out of an app? Run the player through wowtrack, warcraftlogs and check his armory, done. If players want to bullshit you, they'll bullshit you in their apps as well ( I sold my Scarab Lord account back in TBC, you know the drill). And since you trial them anyways (I've seen guilds trialing people for 3 months, like, wtf do you expect to see?!)... why fucking bother about apps?


Stop trying to pick up only the gems, if you're not a world ~100 guild that's not gonna work. Get as many people as you can, give the newest of the newcomers a chance and go for quantity instead of quality when acquiring new members. You'll quickly see if someones good or not, no need for a 4 weeks trial phase for that.
I've been recruiting for my guild since early EN. Back in HFC we were world#200, with EN we ended up world#600 because we had 10 people suddenly burning out (who coulda guessed that Legion's gonna be more than logging on for raids?!) and a lot of people just becoming lazy and inconsistent - we had to replace a lot going forward. Early on we tried the approach of only going for promising players, only giving the finest applicants a shot and the second someone sneezed in their trial phase they were kicked (not really, but you get the point) - we were acting like a guild we no longer were. This fucked us over well into ToV and early NH. With that attitude we got like 5 trials, from all of EN to 3/10m NH. We had to crawl to 4-5-6-7/10 with the lazy and bad players we had left over without any new trials, because we, as a random world#500 guild, didn't offer anything worth a character transfer. It was at this point when I actively began to recruit people heavily behind us in progress. And yes, we went through a ton of awful people - but so what, we had like 2 bad trials per week on farm bosses, costing us 1 or 2 extra wipes, happens. In that period I managed to constantly get like 5+ trials per month. Again, most of these people were shit, but since we got rid of them after like 1 or 2 weeks, no big deal. Yet, some of our currently best players are players we invited without an application, who were 3/10 when we were 8/10 and are now loyal as fuck because we gave them a chance and they could prove their worth to us.

We're back to ~world#300 now, looking forward to getting ~200 with Tomb again. My biggest advice for other guilds in similar situations: Take everything you can get instead of trying to cherry pick only the best of the best. Give everyone a chance - it doesn't take 10 years of hardcore raiding experience to to well in WoW, the game isn't that complex anymore.

Also, never stop recruiting. The time of people people loyally playing for 10 years without breaks is over. People come and go, that's sadly what it is today. One day you'll be best buds with someone on voice, and a week later you'll suddenly read his 'I gotta take a break'-post on discord. Happens, keep recruiting, keep trialing people.

[Deleted]

Issue is not core game play that is required in order to participate in the mythic raiding.

Of course guild masters want nice people in their team, I totally understand that. I used have GM status myself and I know what does it take to group up members for mythic raiding.

I really have no idea what you are talking about.
I am the GM of a 2 day a week Mythic raiding guild that is on 8/10 at the moment.
We have 26 raiders in our roster and no requirements are set due tot he fact that all these people play the game and by playing the game you get your weapon up your legendaries & all the other stuff.
The guild provides flasks/food & respec books so the only thing they need to bring is gold for repairs & the 6 hours a week we raid (2x3hours).

We use angry assignments and everything is writen up by my self & the other raid leader.
Tactics are available on our discord before raid but we go trough them before we pull the boss.

Its EXTREMLY easy to be in a mythic guild as a raider and it takes NOTHING from you except that 6 hours a raiding a week.

Stop making up shit.

Back to the topic.
Its been extremely difficult to recruit people so far, we've had weeks we had to go back and farm heroic due to low numbers and we have weeks we lost 3 people and no time to replace due to work commitments etc.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Depends on the factors, overall recruiting has become more and more difficult over the years with no end in sight frankly. So it being worst in legion is just par for the course, because in 8.x it will be even worse. That being said there are obviously other factors that play into this, if you are on a high population server, one of the major ones every one migrates to, or you are the last active raiding guild on your realm (or at least the best one) then recruitment, as far as raw applicant numbers go, will be easier. You will, because of that probably also get more good applicants, by the grace of the sheer numbers. If that is not the case though, then good luck, you will always keep strugling.. I know my guild leader is actively considering swallowing some smaler guilds with capable people all the times, just to get some good players for mythic raids.

[Kakera]

It's because the game is dead and most of the good players that actually understand how MMOs and RPGs in general work have either gone to new MMOs or quit gaming altogether to live their lives. You have this new generation that doesn't understand shit about shit expect numbers.

[Deleted]

I doubt many will agree reading this thread but I dont see any real differeces with the last few expacs. Finding players that are devoted, fit your scedule and the group are always hard to find.

You always get some apps from people that are only interested in quick progression or gear. They are almost always a waste of time and effort. If a player fits with the team is most of the time not about raid experience or gear, but about how well they fit in the group you have and whether or not they want to work to achieve the level needed. AP and Mythic+ are grossly overstated. Having to play the game outside of raids should not be too much to ask.

Only with big influxes of players (like exp launch) is recruiting easy. Outside of that finding the right players is tough and will always be like that regardless of what blizzard does to the game.

[Deleted]

Applications are outdated, you'll get nothing out of an app that you couldn't otherwise get out of a ts/discord/whatever talk. Yet a lot of people just can't be bothered to write applications for a game (including actually good players). You're basically saying 'I don't want to raid with this player because he didn't bother to fill out a form'. What do you expect to get out of an app? Run the player through wowtrack, warcraftlogs and check his armory, done. If players want to bullshit you, they'll bullshit you in their apps as well ( I sold my Scarab Lord account back in TBC, you know the drill). And since you trial them anyways (I've seen guilds trialing people for 3 months, like, wtf do you expect to see?!)... why fucking bother about apps?


Stop trying to pick up only the gems, if you're not a world ~100 guild that's not gonna work. Get as many people as you can, give the newest of the newcomers a chance and go for quantity instead of quality when acquiring new members. You'll quickly see if someones good or not, no need for a 4 weeks trial phase for that.
I've been recruiting for my guild since early EN. Back in HFC we were world#200, with EN we ended up world#600 because we had 10 people suddenly burning out (who coulda guessed that Legion's gonna be more than logging on for raids?!) and a lot of people just becoming lazy and inconsistent - we had to replace a lot going forward. Early on we tried the approach of only going for promising players, only giving the finest applicants a shot and the second someone sneezed in their trial phase they were kicked (not really, but you get the point) - we were acting like a guild we no longer were. This fucked us over well into ToV and early NH. With that attitude we got like 5 trials, from all of EN to 3/10m NH. We had to crawl to 4-5-6-7/10 with the lazy and bad players we had left over without any new trials, because we, as a random world#500 guild, didn't offer anything worth a character transfer. It was at this point when I actively began to recruit people heavily behind us in progress. And yes, we went through a ton of awful people - but so what, we had like 2 bad trials per week on farm bosses, costing us 1 or 2 extra wipes, happens. In that period I managed to constantly get like 5+ trials per month. Again, most of these people were shit, but since we got rid of them after like 1 or 2 weeks, no big deal. Yet, some of our currently best players are players we invited without an application, who were 3/10 when we were 8/10 and are now loyal as fuck because we gave them a chance and they could prove their worth to us.

We're back to ~world#300 now, looking forward to getting ~200 with Tomb again. My biggest advice for other guilds in similar situations: Take everything you can get instead of trying to cherry pick only the best of the best. Give everyone a chance - it doesn't take 10 years of hardcore raiding experience to to well in WoW, the game isn't that complex anymore.

Also, never stop recruiting. The time of people people loyally playing for 10 years without breaks is over. People come and go, that's sadly what it is today. One day you'll be best buds with someone on voice, and a week later you'll suddenly read his 'I gotta take a break'-post on discord. Happens, keep recruiting, keep trialing people.

I logged in just to say thanks for such a positive post. It describes at best what exactly is happening on the raiding scene for a long time now. The whole "application process" makes it feel like a job, in a gaming community ffs, when it does not have to be a world first race for the guild and it is actually for survival purposes. Or simply put have fun...

I understand that some people believe they need to filter "bad" players, but they have to sit down and think what they would do if they were without a guild that just disbanded (and you were loyal for long time maybe), or they have left the game for RL reasons after been burned out in hardcore raiding (maybe with a good back story too). It is so tough sometimes when you just trying to start over again, when you had to provide logs, achievements when they were current, references from previous guild master and raid leaders even for crying out loud... It is really not a very pleasant experience for anyone.

What we did back in start of WotLK, was to take people to Occulus HC (yes you heard me right, that was the trial dungeon). Because people hated it and did not even know what to do, we were testing their reflexes their reactions on "accidental" wipes and their ability to adapt, listen and focus. I have a lot of friends still remembering the "horror" of that trial and laugh about it.

I wish the game went back to its community-based roots. Back then, when we did not have enough people to raid, we were asking friendly guilds to borrow some of their alts and help us on progress kills, allowing them a chance on the loot for their alts. There was a very strong sense of community, almost everyone knew each other on the server and you needed friends to accomplish anything simply because there was no LFD/LFR tool available. This feeling of belonging, is something that has been systemically exterminated in-game. I have seen so many players without guild, than ever before in WoW Legion. I really can relate to them and I understand them.

I do not know what the right answer is anymore, things have changed, I am 42, with a wife and kids, so what do I know? :/ I do miss my friends in wow, both for good and the bad moments. Well mostly for the good ones, but the bad felt funny even back then... The friendships I built back then still hold today after 10 years and I keep finding myself talking to those guys, always saying, wish we had the time and play the game again.

[Hotsforyou]

I am literally accepting anyone for my Guild. We raid late night PST times and i am struggling to get hardly anyone. It sucks.

[Osmeric]

I could easily find job in NASA as main engineer with requirements that mythic guilds are asking from players these days.

NASA? SpaceX is where it's at these days.

[Frolk]

But a lot of people was drived away from raiding in early Legion. One of the reason that literally killed a lot of small guild and discouraged a lot of "casual" raiders were the ASTRONOMICAL costs of raid consumables. Let's be honest, in a lot of server 1 flask cuold go up to 3k gold. This was INSANE. And specially for casual or smaller guild, where you don't always have a proper organization or a well manteined Guild Bank.

And while in early Legion was not mandatory for a Hc guild to have all weapon maxed out, it was kinda necessary to have a raid full flasked and with food.

wanna know how i dealt with high flask/pot prices?
I farmed my own herbs and with all gear we had when EN opened, u didt NEED to 2x pot etc on norm/hc EN bosses.