Would you leave a guild if...

[Ectothrix]

It would be silly to leave.

[Nobleshield]

Thanks for the replies, they pretty much echo how I would feel. This all happened several months ago; I was curious as to how others would react just in case it rears its ugly head again in 5.4 (and I would be one of the ones arguing against bothering with ToT since you can get equivalent gear from LFR and Flex).

[pld]

It depends on a lot of different factors:

1. What's the goal of the guild? If it's a progression-focused guild, it could be justified seeing how it goes against what people signed up for.

2. What's the situation surrounding this decision? Were new recruits/alts brought in to help solidify the raid composition? Is it just a case of trying to brute force the boss via gear because people are failing to mechanics?

3. Why is older gear needed? Similar to point two, is it because someone brought an alt to help fill in for a role (tank, heals, dps) and has blues that can be replaced? Was that person given noticed about this change? If so, were they proactive about being prepared before the raid? (ex. running LFR, pugs, etc.)

[Inthislzon]

Question to see what others think about this semi-hypothetical scenario. I say semi because this happened a few months ago, a little after ToT was released. At the time, the guild was struggling on Horridon (I had just come back and was leveling an alt, not planning on actually raiding fulltime anymore). A few people in the guild wanted to put some time in running T14 raids to help gear people up, while a few others wanted to focus solely on T15 and Horridon progress. It got to the point where a few core raiders left the guild because on what would have been T15 raid nights, it was decided to raid T14 instead and help gear some lesser-geared members up.

My question is: Do you think that's a good or bad thing to do? If you were in a raid team struggling on an early normal boss (and if that concept is totally foreign to you, imagine a friend who just isn't as good as you are) and a week or two you were told that instead of putting in more attempts on the boss giving you trouble the group was going to raid the previous (and now nerfed) tier instead for more gear/helping to gear people up, would it be a reason for leaving the guild? This came up because personally I'd rather devote time to progression than to go and clear what amounts to outdated content on the off chance someone might get an upgrade; with the gearing options in 5.4 going back to ToT is even less of a valid idea since you can get equivalent gear from Siege LFR and even better gear from Siege Flex, so it seems like the argument of "gearing people up" is a moot point, and I'm not sure how I would approach that suggestion if it were to ever crop up again.

On any progression-oriented guild ignoring the guildmaster (or whoever dictates the raid) to do something else earns you a gkick on the spot. Similarly, should the GM be the one doing that i'd gquit that very same second, again talking about progression-oriented guilds.

[Bigbazz]

I'd go for progression, if you want to run older raids then do it on non raiding nights, seperate to the orgranised progression raids. When you're putting in your time and effort to do something (TOT progress) then the suggestion that you go back to do something you're burned out of, that you really have no desire to do and something that makes you feel like you're being used isn't exactly attractive.

I get it though, in some cases you could benefit from gearing up new players to help with the progress. But look at it from the point of view of someone who has already been through all that shit, someone who is probably already feeling fairly burned out from the game and it's possible that the TOT progression is the only thing keeping them playing.

I remember when we were progressing Black Temple in TBC, and due to missing 1-2 players and having to bring undergeared guys meant the raid leader decided we would do SSC/TK, and the whole raid was just so demoralised by the idea of having to go back there, they would rather not play WoW and do something else, the reason they logged on was to do Black Temple, it was something that gave us the drive and motivation to play, and not going there was enough to kill it. Same thing in WOTLK, on our 25man ICC night we lacked numbers and decided that rather than doing it normal mode we would wait until the next raid and instead do Ulduar that night. Even though we loved Ulduar we we're sick of it, our minds were focussed on progression in iCC, we didn't care that most of us didn't have the 25man achievement mount, or that it would be easy to achieve. The fact was that the motivation to do it was long gone when we wanted to focus on ICC.


Would I quit the guild over it? Clearly not, as I've been in the same guild since the start of WOTLK. A casual semi-hardcore progress guild that were not willing to raid late to push progression and that would always put real life ahead of ingame, that also often struggled on numbers and that while they always killed the content on HC mode while it was relevant, often had situations of "going back to do old content" when current content was perhaps less possible that night.

It really depends on the individual situation though, how strong is the guild and the leadership? That is the most important factor. I stay in my guild because I have friends here, I trust in the people there and their abilities, it is a long standing (from Vanilla launch) guild that has survived through every expansion pack. In a guild with less foundations, without friends and without attatchments or belief in the people I play with, I'd probably be thinking of moving elsewhere if I didn't see much reason to stick around.

[Lumineus]

Why would you do old content normals when you can do LFR and get better gear???

Because an upgrade is an upgrade? Say you have a 489 or even a 483 mainhand because Elegon is a bitch and, like most guilds who got stuck on Horridon, you didn't farm ToES nearly long enough. Would you rather just have a small chance at a 502 from LFR and an infinitesimally small chance at a shared 522 off N Jin'rokh, or those chances plus a decent chance at a 496 from Terrace?

[Nobleshield]

In a guild with less foundations, without friends and without attatchments or belief in the people I play with, I'd probably be thinking of moving elsewhere if I didn't see much reason to stick around.

And therein lies the rub, because sometimes you can have friends but not have confidence in the group as a whole to be at the level you want to be at, and then deciding becomes a much harder choice.

[Weightlifter]

Our raid leader wanted to use our last week of T15 to do Glory of the Thundering Raider instead of trying to progress before the big nerfs hit. The reason was that he bought a 13/13HC boost run and had some of those achievements missing from his meta. As soon he got his Achi and title he stopped caring about progressing.

[clevin]

Not enough information. If this was very early in ToT's release and we really were undergeared (some folks at 485-495) I'd be OK doing 1-2 weeks of stuff in late T14 (HOF and ToeS) assuming that the undergeared people were ALSO running TOT LFR to get gear there and capping VP to get the easy SPA gear.. Investing a couple of weeks like that simply isn't much of a sacrifice and it can pay off in the long term. Keep in mind that a ToeS run is, what, maybe an hour for a decent group? It seems petty to begrudge people an hour and gquit on that basis.

HOWEVER... I'd not go back to MSV since if 489 gear is an upgrade for people they've been lazy in gearing AND the undergeared people need to be putting forth effort to improve their gear outside of the raid nights too (getting the easy VP gear, etc). Bottom line - I'm perfectly willing to help the team members - that's part of BEING a team - but they also need to help themselves.

Finally... all of that assumes that some people were really undergeared and that gear was an issue on Horridon. If everyone was 500+ then going to T14 wouldn't help and would be a waste of time. At that point I'd push to see what was really causing the wipes on Horridon.

[Inthislzon]

And therein lies the rub, because sometimes you can have friends but not have confidence in the group as a whole to be at the level you want to be at, and then deciding becomes a much harder choice.

With flex not sharing lockout with normals, heroic scenarios and whatnot i feel there is enough content to play with your friends even if they happen to raid on some other time frame, or with some other guild.

I know it's not a "now" issue, but that's what i'd do "now"

[Shiira]

Our raid leader wanted to use our last week of T15 to do Glory of the Thundering Raider instead of trying to progress before the big nerfs hit. The reason was that he bought a 13/13HC boost run and had some of those achievements missing from his meta. As soon he got his Achi and title he stopped caring about progressing.

That's terrible.

If your raid leader raids for personal achievements instead of progress for the guild you need a new raid leader.

[Annarion]

I think it's mostly a question of expectations vs. reality. If your guild was legitimately pulling off the mechanics but just not quite cutting it, and no progress was being made, I'd absolutely blow through some farm content on a progression night to bring up the bottom performers. If it's just people shitting the bed and not a question of gear, undergeared raiders can sort that out on their own time while studying how to actually do the fight.

Obviously in this case Horridon is a little of both, but I wouldn't quit a guild if it took a week off to gear people, I just wouldn't bother logging on those nights. (Unless that was the only way to make it work.) Guilds are a lot about teamwork, what you put into it, and what you get out of it. If what you're getting out isn't worth what you're putting in, consider a change of scene.

Back in the day we had a somewhat similar situation with Sunwell, we were happily progressing on Felmyst when both tanks changed servers unexpectedly. We lost a few other core players at the same time due to them all being friends. So even though we wanted to work on Felmyst, recruitment only existed from raiders who were either working on T6 (hardly any), raiders stuck on t5 (still not very many), and raiders that had Kara on farm and their guild was at 3/4 timed ZA (99% of recruits). So we had to go back and farm Hyjal, which everyone fucking hated at that point, and wipe on Illidan because people are stupid. A lot of the core stopped logging on Tuesdays, because we knew we were in t6 those nights. We mostly handled it by gearing alts and not getting super serious about it, and it was a good way to filter recruits if they couldn't hack it in farm content.

[unholyness]

Question to see what others think about this semi-hypothetical scenario. I say semi because this happened a few months ago, a little after ToT was released. At the time, the guild was struggling on Horridon (I had just come back and was leveling an alt, not planning on actually raiding fulltime anymore). A few people in the guild wanted to put some time in running T14 raids to help gear people up, while a few others wanted to focus solely on T15 and Horridon progress. It got to the point where a few core raiders left the guild because on what would have been T15 raid nights, it was decided to raid T14 instead and help gear some lesser-geared members up.

My question is: Do you think that's a good or bad thing to do? If you were in a raid team struggling on an early normal boss (and if that concept is totally foreign to you, imagine a friend who just isn't as good as you are) and a week or two you were told that instead of putting in more attempts on the boss giving you trouble the group was going to raid the previous (and now nerfed) tier instead for more gear/helping to gear people up, would it be a reason for leaving the guild? This came up because personally I'd rather devote time to progression than to go and clear what amounts to outdated content on the off chance someone might get an upgrade; with the gearing options in 5.4 going back to ToT is even less of a valid idea since you can get equivalent gear from Siege LFR and even better gear from Siege Flex, so it seems like the argument of "gearing people up" is a moot point, and I'm not sure how I would approach that suggestion if it were to ever crop up again.

If you are a good player, then yes I would leave and I did leave a friend's guild for a progression guild as I match much better with raider's. You can run LFR,crafted,rep gear and so on without touching old tier so idk why people would go back beside player's play level being low. If you want to raid progression then you should be in a progression guild, if you are a good player than you know by looking at o ther peoples numbers that it isnt going to work out. I stayed for one tier during DS and in that time realized that without huge changes this guild would never push content.

[clevin]

Thanks for the replies, they pretty much echo how I would feel. This all happened several months ago; I was curious as to how others would react just in case it rears its ugly head again in 5.4 (and I would be one of the ones arguing against bothering with ToT since you can get equivalent gear from LFR and Flex).

T14 was different though. You could run ToeS in 45 mins or so and for some people a few of those items would still be upgrades. ToT isn't like that at all.

The bottom line items here are 1) is gear really the issue, 2) whats the quickest way to gear up people who are undergeared, (for SoO) why are they undergeared when ToT (and ToT LFR and VP gear) has been available for six months?

Both of these are key - if tactics are the cause of wipes then a minor upgrade in the raid's gearing will not solve that but if gearing is an issue (several new raiders who didn't raid much in ToT, people being asked to take on new roles) then taking a little time to gear those new people up helps the raid and the raid should be willing to look at doing it.

At heart, this is about several things:

* How team oriented the raid is,

* how individuals help themselves,

* immediate gratification vs longer term success,

* each player not being intensely selfish and thinking "Screw that, I don't care if X needs gear because we asked them to change roles, I'm not helping."

[Weightlifter]

That's terrible.

If your raid leader raids for personal achievements instead of progress for the guild you need a new raid leader.

I am already considering gquitting because of so many other issues we have. Our RL's huge ego and douchebaggery is one of them, but not the main reason.

[Bad Ashe]

thats why i guild with friends above raiders.

[Drummerboy]

I would leave. Gear is not a reason to go backwards in tiers when LFR is capable of bringing people current. If a person doesn't want to gear via LFR they will never put in the effort required to be a regular raider. There are lots of raid guilds with lots of raid teams that can fit my desired play.

Don't fall in love with your guild.

[Deleted]

It's so sad how guilds have become so sturdy... In vanilla and tbc, at last on my servers, it was absolutely normal to farm gear in prior tier-raids. We even had a special raidday just to farm old content to gear people up. And I don't even comprehend how horridon progression stalled for weeks cannot bring the people to the conclusion that they need to change something. I mean - they SHOULD struggle even on some t14 bosses if they have so much problems. I know many people who actually hate the whole progression phase and just want to optimize gear / their own characters control while having a chilled raid. They love to "farm" content. If you only beat one boss and wipe on the next for months without ever having a good "fulfilling" victory time in that raid how can you even make people stay?

[Veilsyde]

My old guild almost went this road. The problem I had with it was that the lesser geared people never put effort in to even try and gear themselves for tier 15. If you're not self-motivated to get the best gear you can on your own and just want carried through content then your raid team isn't for me.

I agree 100% with this my old guild did this a few times but it was only 1 day that we did and we brought alts and gave higher gear priority to the new guys

[nightfalls]

I am already considering gquitting because of so many other issues we have. Our RL's huge ego and douchebaggery is one of them, but not the main reason.

Just do it.