One of the earliest posts I wrote for this blog was Casual Raiding. At the time, my guild (Bandits Reborn) was attempting to do some 25-man content in house. We did have some success, and to this day occasionally try to run a 25-man in house. But honestly, it never really was in the cards.
The bandits have been around for over 7 years, having originated in Asheron’s Call. It’s one of those guilds where there is a core group of members that stick together through different games and incarnations. We have had a presence in Anarchy Online, AC2, Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons and others. We joined the World of Warcraft bandwagon on day 1, and haven’t looked back.
The point is that we have a solid core membership. From the very beginning, we were a casual guild. We have a lively website with much-used forums, a fairly strict recruitment policy, and a dedicated membership. One thing we have never had and I imagine we never will have is any kind of attendance or gameplay requirements. Sure, you have to follow certain steps to join the guild in the first place, but once you’re in, you’re in for life. Most of our members are mature, family-focused people who just like to play together.
Because of that, we are not built for in-house 25-man raiding. We just aren’t. You need time commitments and guarantees that our membership cannot provide. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the way things are. We can occasionally get 25 people together for Gruul’s or, more recently, Mount Hyjal, but it’s not all that often.
Maybe you have a guild like I do. A guild that doesn’t require anything of you, but just a guild that is there for you to have people to play and chat with, and have a good time. Like my guild, you probably have a handful or more of people who really really want to take a serious crack at 25-man content. Maybe you have 6, maybe you have 10, maybe you even have 20. The point is, you don’t have the 30 or more people you would really need to do it on your own.
So what can you do? PUG it? Get all your guildies together, then fill from the LFG channel?
Doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it?
Well, I have good news for you. There is another, better option. It’s an option that has worked wonderfully, though not always perfectly, for myself and my guild.
Form an alliance. There are casual guilds like yours everywhere, all you have to do is find one or two that you can work with, and work together. Every casual guild has more progression-minded folks who want to see SSC and BT without sacrificing the benefits of a casual guild. Put your 10 progression focused individuals with 10 from one guild and 10 from another, and boom! You’re raiding!
Now, it’s not a piece of cake. It takes some work. You’ll have to figure out a way for your guilds to work together, but it’s not impossible. I believe there are three things that make our alliance run successfully.
- Every guild in the alliance (right now there are six) has representation. One rep from each guild has a say in any alliance decisions. They also control who can and cannot raid from within their guild. If you want to raid with us, you need approval from your guild rep.
- We have three main raiding days, and some of those days have MULTIPLE raids at different times to choose from. This is important when dealing with casual players, as they often have very different play schedules. This works great for me, as there is a raid that starts at 8 PM server time on Saturday nights. I make nearly every one.
- We have a shared website with forums and phpRaid to handle signups. When you have as many guilds working together as we do, you need a handy way to handle signups and a place to "meet" and discuss things.
And you know what? it works. I can’t think of another way a guy like me could raid, and do it successfully. I can really only raid one night a week, so I wouldn’t even fit in most "casual" raiding guilds. (In my experience they want at least 2 nights a week.) I’ve personally seen 5 of 6 bosses in SSC go down, and now have seen Supremus go down. It also just so happens that the Saturday night I usually attend is a sort of "progression" night. So I was there for the first kill of Morogrim, Fathom Lord Karathress, Leotheras the Blind, and Supremus. It’s a great feeling.
Anyhow, I hope my success can help some of you out there if you are struggling getting things off the ground. An alliance CAN be successful with a solid plan and strong leadership. Sure, we won’t ever be bleeding edge, but I don’t care. I’m just happy to be seeing things I thought I’d never see.
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brilliant
Is there some kind of website where guilds can find each other to form these kind of alliances? Sounds like one of the most difficult things would be finding guilds to ally with.
Great stuff regardless
@Zupa–
Not that I know of, but you could try to use your realm forums on the official site. Honestly, I don’t even know how ours started in the first place. I think we may have used the forums.
Also, take note of good players that you group up with from other guilds, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.
Ok, a littel history. The alliance that PTD is talking about is affectionally called the SLACK alliance. It originates back to the days prior to BC when raiding was a 40 man activity. In those days it was primarily a 4 guild alliance to pursue content that we could not setup and do inhouse. most of those guilds were capable of fielding a 20 man with planning but never could float 40 even if they had the sheer numbers. During those times we ventured into and cleared MC, Killed the first boss in BWL and saw some of AQ40 (though never dropepd a boss). We were a bit behind the curve in getting into 40 man content but we got there and had a good old time. those raids were often like mobile block parties as we cut up in teamspeak a bit while we moved through the instance.
SLACK effectively quieted down in the months leading up to BC’s release and then stayed pretyt dormant for probavbly the first year after. Once the member guilds achieed a level and gearing that was heading them into Kara the alliance started to percolate again. While we never really had alot of Kara raids, we did have some that were slotted into some odd timeslots liek midnight Friday and Sat or early saturday mornings. The focus of the alliance was shifting to the 25 mans and setting up new leaders and rules as some of the original leaders have moved on or no longer willing to lead. the early 25 mans were a struggle to field, but we scraped folks together and fielded our first Gruul run and promptly wiped all over that initial pull of HKM (I hate that warlock) While the three largest guilds all have numbers to be able to field a 25 man successfully, we all never seem to be able to pull it off the same way we didn’t have issues with 20 mans.. Seems strange but that’s the way its gone.
Anyway, to the question of forming or adding guilds, we recently just added two into SLACK. The leadership looked at the forum boards but the best resource actualyl turned out to be hanging arround at the summoning stone and looking for who is trying to get into pickups and talknig to folks there to get a sense who is at taht stage ready to make the leap to 25 mans. We then have chats withguild leaders while looking at profiles of their members and their slot on wowjutsu and finally make a decision if we want to approach them about membership. It seems like a bit of work and it is, but the key here is getting guilds together that share ideals for raiding. If you add someone who doesn’t then the alliance will suffer.