How do you handle 'early leavers'?

[Confucius]

My mates and I are dealing with this shit in our current guild and are THIS CLOSE to leaving it because of it. In addition to a lot of farting about there is always one guy who bails after an hour each night... funnily enough, always right after the farm is over.

This guy should have been told to get his shit together or be benched a long time ago, but he's in tight with the GM and others so he does as he pleases. Getting super frustrated.

leave like right now

[Dawnrage]

Your guild needs to put it's foot down. Sounds like they are doing it because they know they can get away with it or because there is nothing stopping them from doing it. You might lose people over this but really, what are you getting done right now when this happens and you have to halt progression anyway? If it's happening frequently enough on progression and impeding it, the GM/officers need to get their act together or deal with the fact that the actual players who are committed might quit over it and go somewhere that more fits them.

[Mykk]

What strategies does your guild use to deal with raiders who decide to leave the raid early or leave in between raids? We are nowhere near the best guild in the world, but as of late there have been early leavers and it is becoming very disruptive to our progression. We do have set raiding schedule, but it is hard to have a full proper night of raiding with people constantly popping in and out.

These are some of the wide range of areas that we have encountered recently (legitimate and illegitimate):

1. Feeling sick
2. Need to pick up X person
3. Very long toilet breaks (20+ minutes)
4. No explanation - just disappearing
5. No reason - "going now thanks for raid"
6. Blackouts
7. It's getting late
8. Very early leavers - people not turning up at all

This on top of late arrivers is becoming very disruptive. How would you handle these situations and leavers/no-shows in general?

Couple of tips

-Don't recruit players who cannot be in raids (understandable its a just game things happen so once in while its not problem if someone has to miss raid)
-Require high attendance % from raiders to get loot
-Replace players who are slacking off

For me raiding is like hobby that i've commited certain hours per week. And as person who loves hobbies im always there :P

I don't know how many hours / days in week you guys raid, but personaly i would just replace them with new recruits. Let them stay in guild till new recruit was found then demoted them to socials and told them to fuck off

[Deleted]

I don't raid anymore but it's obvious such behavior cant be tolerated.
Gkick on the spot, if not your guild leader is a pussy and should not be in charge of anything.
Of course things come up sometimes and they might have to leave but when it happens every time then just replace them, no matter what reason they might have.

[Puri]

Well, it just depends on the goals of your raid or guild.

When this is wide spread problem in your raid, it's quite obvious the members are fine with it. When it hinders you or a minority of the raid, perhaps it is time to look for a more progress oriented raid that fits your needs.

If it's in fact just a minority that is hindering the raid (in my experience it always boils down to a handful): Just tell them you don't invite them anymore to the raids of they cannot stay full time. And if they drop the raid early, simply do it and look for replacements. If they complain about it, maybe give them another chance but when they fall back to old behaviour just drop them again. In my experience 50% of those people simply will stop raiding, and the other half will drop the guild and look for one that rather fits their needs.

[Rotted]

Best way is to keep a bench of 2-3 people. So you can rotate them in if needed but for each individual case.

1. Does the person get sick often/miss a lot/ or has bailed on raid early if answers are no give them a pass.
2. does it happen often? this is why you have a bench. I can't leave my 85 yr old grandma stuck somewhere for 3hrs.
3. Replace. They're probably browsing on their phone or have a medical issue that will interfere w/ raiding
4. Replace
5. Replace
6. Are they frequent black outs? if yes Replace. If black outs seem weird. replace
7. Replace raiding is committing to a schedule.
8. Replace.

I agree with your points, except for number three,

As someone who suffers with Crohn's disease, some times bathroom breaks can't be helped. Amd it's completely inappropriate to bench or remove someone for a personal issue. We already have irl issues with things because of it and can make people feel shitty (no pun intended) having to come home and be punished for it in a guild of supposed friends would result in a quick departure.

That being said, I don't go out of my way to eat shit that will set me off. I organise myself as best as I can prior to raid start, light, easy to cope snack, pre bathroom break etc. I also let the raid officers, RL amd GM know of my condition amd each time I need to go, I wisp one of them, usually it's a quick two mins, but if it's longer than that they remove me from the raid, have an attempt, I come back, get re invited everyone happy. Mind you I can accept some people don't want to be as honest as me

Anyways, yes we're having issues with people ATM. I'll just list a few

People sign up minutes before raid start
People log in and buy their raid stuff at 20:29 - raid invites go out at 20:15 to start at 20:30
People never, ever go to the entrance on time. Always say in dalaran waiting for a summon
People tend to say during raid start oh btw I can only be here a hour tonight

Other issues we encounter are lack of flasks, potions and buff food. Now no one is expected to bring that for up to the first 5 hc and normal, but fuck me people aren't bringing it for our progress on xav hc. It's even worse when the guild has mats for everything and a strictly, "tell us if you need mats to make stuff it's free of charge" hell even if you don't have professions we have dedicated crafters there for that reason. Even pre potting I've invested my own gold, bought hundreds of wod (2500 stat ones) to use as a proof to save people money. No one has touched the fuckers in two weeks, yet no one is potting at all bar the tanks and officers (and me course )

We might be casual and we might be laxed, but some times it's a piss take with sign ups and attendance. The problem I believe, is we use rcloot council. Personally I prefer epgp or dkp, not for the actual way the system reward loot, but for the fact you can do negative marking for no shower, late turn ups or leavers. It's a really good incentive to make people stay the three hours

[Deleted]

Thats why a good guild will take attendance and people who have a non-full attendance on all bosses they were supposed to be on that fight will get lower attendance.

If they have lower than 70-80% they should then get replaced by eager players waiting to take the role others could not, or simply a loot-ban until better attendance. People need to have some healthy fear over losing their raid spot if they cant even do something as basic as stay for the bosses they were assigned to.

[Deleted]

We may be casuals (1/7MM, trying to get people to understand that no they should not drop their shit there on elerethe), but even we don't put up with this kind of shit. My advice to you would be :
First, talk to them. See if it's a legitimate reason, see if it happens often, see if they can tell you so you can plan ahead (not while you're grouping like it happens too often).
Then, depending of your progression objectives, and on wether or not you're willing to deal with particular situations (gotta afk to put the kids to bed at 10, gotta take breaks for medical reasons, works late and thus will arrive late),either deal with it or bench them, gkick / social them.
It's not a bad thing in a raiding environment to put the needs of 19 people before the desire of that one guy to raid only 9-11 when you invite for 9-12. If he gives you shit about the decision to kick him / bench him, well he can go fuck himself, and should stop considering that his time is more precious than that of the 19 other people he plays with.

[mahesvara]

I agree with your points, except for number three

It's not inappropriate to sit someone for medical issues that consistently interfere with raid hours. If someone has to consistently take bathroom breaks during raid that last 5+ minutes they're getting sat. Besides raiding is 90% finding a guild that works for you. So find a guild that is willing to work with your medical problem.

[Cwimge]

Make a rule that Raid times are set and if they can't make the full schedule to not come along.

People are adults, sometimes things come up mid raid that requires more attention. Sometimes people just leave because they are frustrated. Many different variables.

I sometimes will just drop a raid if we are failing on the same boss over and over due to people being useless or fucking easy mechanics. I sometimes don't want to spend 3 hrs dealing with retard DPS that can't switch targets or get out of the middle of a raid with a Bomb.

That is understandable, but who wants to see mythic progression gutted because you chose to throw a tantrum? It's less of an issue in normal/heroic but even then if you're a tank/healer it's an absolute dick move to pull, and always under the aegis of being harder to replace.

sometimes raid nights are going to be 3 hours of beating your head against a wall and failing to stupid shit. It happens, suck it up or find something better

[D3athsting]

a guildie fell asleep during thrash 3 weeks ago in mythic, no replaces, GM swore on ts and give raid off, then he did it again 2 weeks ago, raid off again and he got gkicked this time

[Deleted]

If they leave too often, you have to replace them as they are not filling their end of the deal

[Sencha]

Just kick them.

[Rotted]

It's not inappropriate to sit someone for medical issues that consistently interfere with raid hours. If someone has to consistently take bathroom breaks during raid that last 5+ minutes they're getting sat. Besides raiding is 90% finding a guild that works for you. So find a guild that is willing to work with your medical problem.

Give and take I should of added,

No if its constantly happening and for longer durations then yes something may need to be done,

On the lighter end of the spectrum, take me for example, my only problem is a weaker bladder atm, generally Im fine, on my best nights, I pop three times or so for a quick pee. My worst night I think I went about 10-15 times, but even then I managed that to trash clearing, I don't think thats bench worthy. The guild works around it fine and I pull some of the top numbers