Forming a raiding guild, Need advice

[Nobleshield]

One bit of advice I'm going to pass along is to make sure you have backups available; for a 10M nothing sucks more than having one person not be able to make it and have to hit Trade looking for a pug; it hurts morale and almost always unless you're on a really good server means any progression is being halted that night.

Also, don't let friendship come in the way of success. That sounds harsh but one of the things I've consistently seen in guilds is that progression gets held back because nobody wants to tell that one guy everyone likes that he's doing poorly and has to shape up or ship out, so you deal with it and end up just another scrub guild that has barely any kills, which in turn hurts your recruitment because higher-progressed players want higher-progressed guilds (and hell most people looking for guilds usually want something a few bosses above their current progression level), and lower progressed players are often (but not always) not as skilled. It's very easy to get into a downward spiral of having low progression and then never being able to recruit good enough raiders to get past that hurdle, so you constantly have low progression and low-skill raiders.

[Nayelie]

Please excuse any auto-corrects my phone might make...

Anyways. First off, are you both guild master and raid leader? If not, find a raid leader than has the same goals in raiding as you. Make sure that all of your raiders have the same goals as you. Do not recruit casuals for your progression team, or don't recruit progression raiders for your casual team.

Make sure your guild gets to level 25 ASAP if it isn't already. The easiest way to level is having low level guildies that are questing, or arenas.

Make sure to have a vent/mumble/whatever set up and accessible. Also, write down your guild and raiding rules, and post them on your website. If you don't have a website, at least post your rules in a Google document or anywhere that you can point to and share with your team and guild.

Recruit from pugs. If they like your style, they are very easy to recruit. I've gotten awesome recruits from pugs, even when my team has failed to down a boss. They liked our attitude and our style.

Know that you can't please everyone. You just can't. Always take feedback, but know it's Okay to say No. Sometimes, you'll have to kick people once in a while. Do not tolerate drama.

Also, don't give up. Building a raid team from scratch is usually a long, difficult process. I started in March, and I didn't have my first successful raid team until late July.

Good luck to you!

[Deleted]

Yeah, don't.

[Celista]

Advice here is good. The guild bank is not your personal piggy bank. Don't give yourself the best loot first just because you're GM. Don't auto-loot rare mounts and bis trinkets. Don't tolerate drama, and don't cause any yourself.

DO delegate. DO be the best player to your ability and set an example for the rest of the guild. DO take the time/effort, especially if raid leading, to learn the basics of each class and what they bring to the raid. DO use logs, and DO take the time to review them along with player performance in relationship to gear and other variables before finger pointing blame when things go wrong in a raid.

Know when a player is dragging you down, if that player needs to be replaced then tell them what they need to improve upon. New raiding guilds rarely have a full roster of quality players that are on time ready to raid each week. This means that you will have to coach them through UI optimization, and possible rotation/awareness/gearing issues if you want to raid. Decide for yourself if you are willing to devote the time to do this.

Best piece of advice I can give as a raid lead: praise publicly, correct privately--you'll need to find a middle ground between being too much of a softie, which can interfere with progression if you hesitate to correct people and adjust for mistakes, and being too much of a dick/hardass, which can be horrible for morale.

Now is a good time to start a raiding guild and have a core team set up in time for the next expansion. GMing a guild is massively time consuming, as is being a raid lead, officer, or having any other core role in a guild. Don't get discouraged if it's slow going in the beginning, for most guilds recruitment is a never ending process. Again, remember to delegate tasks to other members whenever you can.

Good luck.

[Lefeng]

I forgot to mention something earlier that no one since has touched on. Have reasonable and attainable goals. Don't tell your raiders that you expect to clear SoO every week right from the start, even on flex. Take things only as fast as your team can comfortably handle them. Having said that, you might find that your team is resilient and capable of being pushed to their limits with out ill effects.

[Deleted]

The best piece of advice I can give you: don't give up no matter how bad roster problems you may face.

[Vaelorian]

The best piece of advice I can give you: don't give up no matter how bad roster problems you may face.

Dunno about you but I have been GM for 7 years of a relative "hardcore" guild with a core group of players. Ultimately I stepped down in Cata due to real life and thus the decline started happening in my guild. (others weren't in a position to put in the time that I did)

But before that happened I could see that we would have serious issues. Now we had issues about the roster every year at one point or another. And I just pulled some people out of my magic hat by spending a week or so on recruitment (took holidays etc). This would fix things...

I tell you know that when I quit, I knew that we would have trouble soon and I would not be able to fix the roster. I had spend huge amounts of time already without result even tho we were server first 25 man. It did not matter. The only solution would have been to transfer servers (again). And I am very much unsure that would have been succesful as most of my raidteam were hooked on the current server.

Anyway, it is time to give up when it is time to give up. When there is no way out basically. Maybe you meant this anyway.

I think that people shouldn't just quit over a few drama cases/roster issues/progress issues. Things usually will be worse before they get better. So yeah stick with your plan as long as people are there to give you the chance to fix it.

Another tip:
Do not think it all lands on YOUR shoulders. Include your fellow members in the recruitmentdepartment. Make sure that when you want a few applicants and you want them from a PUG (5 man?) you take a few guildies with you. The pugger will know what kind of quality and atmosphere you have.

Also ask/demand your guildies to ask people in their 5 man (if the class/skill/attitude match) to tell those players to look up your website and apply.