Brainstorming.

One of my officers thinks we can motivate raiders to show up by forcing them to compete for their raid spots.  I think he's on to something.  If we're so desperate for warm bodies that we will literally invite anyone who logs on at raid time, then there really is no incentive for individual raiders to maintain core attendance.  (...Other than the fact that we offer free gems and enchanting mats to our core, of course.  >.>)

So, now that I've vented Emo Elle into an imbued vial and dropped her deep into the Underbelly (to be fished up again at some point, I'm sure!), how can I go about attracting the "right" kind of player for our guild?

• Continue to market Surreality on altadin.com.  Of course, the problem with this is that I use the blog to vent all of my frustrations ... and after watching me wax emo day in and day out, I don't know who in their right mind would want to join.  (No offense, Forrest. <3)
• Pursue leads on the Horde recruitment forum.  I spent a bit of time browsing the recruitment forums last night, and it seems there are several groups of friends looking to raid together and willing to transfer to do so.  We've been leery of package deals in the past, but recruiting a group of friends could be an efficient way to fill the holes in our raiding roster.  Some of these groups are decently progressed (on par or even slightly ahead of us).  I imagine that most well-established guilds would have a hard time accommodating them, whereas those reroll and start-up guilds that could would be less attractive on account of their "unproven" status.  With two years under our belt and entrenched membership, we have a lot to offer — and could certainly use an influx of DPS (although not so much tanks and healers).
• Host a weekly server PuG.  Once upon a time, we PuG'd from /trade to fill our weekly Gruul's Lair raids and actually picked up some quality people this way, including a few who are still with us.  I'm a horrible raid leader, but maybe one of the guys — Keaton? Ouchies? — could be persuaded to get involved.  We have enough geared alts in the guild to fill at least half of a Saturday afternoon PuG with our own people, which would let us control (or at least strongly influence) the experience.
• Absorb (or potentially just ally?) with a 10-man guild.  I'm sure there are some 10-man guilds out there with members who would like the opportunity to experience 25-man content without abandoning their 10-man teams.  To players like this, we could offer the best of both worlds: 10-man autonomy and the ability to raid 25-man content as part of a larger group.
• Merge with another 25-man guild in a similar situation.  Most of the guilds on Black Dragonflight are struggling to fill raids.  We could attempt to merge with (or, preferably, acquire) the core of another guild.  I'm not crazy about this idea, to be honest: I don't want to raid badly enough to gamble with our identity and reputation to do so.  /frown
• Capitalize on upcoming opportunities.  Rumor has it that a major Horde-side guild or three is on the verge of implosion.  That will leave a number of potential raiders in LFG...
• Network more! I'm antisocial by nature (I play WoW, okay?), but I read blogs every day from raiders who are disillusioned with their current situations.  I don't want to "poach" — but I could start reaching out to people instead of secretly hoping that they will come to me.  (If you're wondering if I'm thinking about you with this one, then I probably am!)

Do you have any creative recruiting ideas?  I'd love to hear them!

As an added bonus (and to make up for the wall of text I posted earlier this afternoon), here's a totally random picture from my Sedona vacation:

I also have one of Keaton teaching a statue of a bear to tank, but I don't think he'd appreciate me sharing it.  (I'll just have to text it to Elam so he can do the honors!)

Two roads diverge.

I'm undergoing a slight crisis of faith.

... No, not that kind of faith!  I'm still a devout atheist (if that isn't a complete contradiction in terms).  No, this faith pertains specifically to my long-held conviction that when it comes to raid progression, it isn't the pace that matters: it's the people.

Surreality, then.

When I created Surreality, our tag-line was "fun and friendship first; progression second" — and we truly meant it.  We scheduled raids around our members' availability, and since we quite literally had players in every hemisphere of the globe (and in such far-flung places as Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, England and Italy), we compromised liberally on days and times.  An odd kind of Tuesday-Saturday-Sunday schedule emerged, along with the highly fluid, merry-go-round raid roster you would expect of a small, social guild that was determined to include as many of its members as possible in the fun, and largely without regards to skill or gear.  (We were just starting out, after all.  Most of us had never raided before, so the assumption was that skill and gear would come with time ... which they did.)

As unlikely as it sounds with this kind of foundation, we were successful.  Progression was slow but steady, and while we were "months behind" — due in part to our late start, and in part to our determination to "leave no raider behind" (which often led us to farm content for longer than was strictly necessary) — we were having fun.

Everytime we entered a new raid, it felt epic.  The first time we zoned into Mount Hyjal, a palpable awe settled over the raid and more than one player whispered me joyfully to profess "I never thought I would see this!"  (Or, in the case of a certain warrior-turned-rogue of my acquaintance, "OMG LOREGASM.")

It was an amazing experience — and the fact that it was shared forged bonds that I would never imagined possible between strangers in a video game.

Unfortunately, the game has changed since then, and so has Surreality. 

Please understand: the occasional rant notwithstanding, my sense of self-worth is in no way tied to the ilevel of my purple pixels.  I understand and even support Blizzard's decision to make the end-game more accessible to the majority of the player base.  For most people — including, I imagine, many of my friends and readers — it was a good decision. 

But for us?  ... Not so much.

You see, it just so happened that at the same time that the game as a whole was becoming easier, Surreality's raiders were becoming better. 

With time, determination, and patient support from the guild, even those players we initially feared were "hopeless" were coming into their own.  By the time we started Mount Hyjal, the hunter who couldn't have laid a trap to save his life in Heroic Sethekk Halls was kiting Scourge through the Alliance camp to engage Jaina's forces.  At the same time, a mage who had once trailed tanks on the damage meters found herself flirting with the threat cap, and even the resto shaman whose action bars consisted of nothing but Chain Heal (Rank 5) was starting to develop an efficient healing rotation.

As a guild, we cleared Black Temple through the Illidari Council two weeks before the 3.0 release.  Illidan himself was on the verge of defeat — and actually fell the night after the patch in a thoroughly anticlimactic battle that left us painfully aware of how close we had come to "winning the game" (and all the more determined to take Northrend by storm).

Surreality, now.

Suddenly, with the gear reset that was Wrath of the Lich King, we were no longer "months behind."  We were an established guild with a proven formula and accomplished core, supported by a large pool of casuals we had always made a point of rotating into our raids on an as-needed, as-available basis. 

Like so many other guilds in our position, we hit the ground running, cleared Naxxramas in a few short weeks ... and ran out of stuff to do.

Literally overnight, the entire game had become more casual than we were!  There was no internal paradigm shift; we never decided to "stop" being casual raiders and become hardcore instead.  The spectrum simply shifted beneath us, and we were forced to adapt.

Because we are explorers at heart — players who are enthralled by new challenges and new experiences rather than simply new loot — we decided to focus our attention on hard-modes and achievements.  It wasn't about "e-peen," nor was it about competing with the truly hardcore guilds on the realm progression thread.  It was a decision born out of desperation, because there was nothing else to do.

It wasn't long before we realized that hard-modes are, well, hard.  And, understandably, not everyone is motivated to wipe for hours at a time on "progression" when it looks and feels exactly like farm content. 

We started to bleed members — not to more progressed guilds, because progression as we knew it no longer existed, but to other games and even Real Life™ as more and more our members realized that the game they were paying for wasn't the game they wanted to play.

For me, personally, raiding has always been about the people ... and enough of my people were willing to ride it out that I decided to rebuild rather than simply disband. 

As a guild, we discussed our options and made a deliberate decision to "serious up" for Ulduar.  Most of our truly casual players had either left the game or moved on to 10-man guilds to play with real life friends, so we set our collective sights on 25-man hard-modes and opened recruitment to similarly motivated players.  Over time, we raised our attendance requirements, shifted our raid times to encompass peak hours and became increasingly particular about gear, talent choices and raid performance when evaluating potential recruits. 

The Guild Leader's Dilemma

As deeply and personally invested in the guild as I am, the one thing I have been unwilling to do in the name of progression is compromise on the character and quality of our members.  Our code of conduct — which has been codified from almost the moment of our inception — encourages mature, honorable behavior.  It also affirms our commitment to prioritize people above progression and real life above WoW.

There have been many times that I have turned applicants away because, as impressive as their raid performance was, they just weren't a good fit for the guild.  These include the obvious rejects — the trade channel trolls, drama queens and known ninjas — as well as those who struck me as immature, arrogant, inarticulate or simply unkind.

My standards have always been high when it comes to character, and low when it comes to gear and prior raid experience. 

Because of this, our guild culture has remained remarkably consistent over the last two years.  Like any family, we have our spats — rivalries emerge; cliques form and break apart; members lose their patience and, occasionally, their tempers over misunderstandings and perceived slights — but, on the whole, we have stayed true to our vision of "fun and friendship first," and even maintained a flavor of our old determination to "leave no raider behind."

This has been a source of pride for me, as well as a source of frustration. 

In the past, I have refused to bench underperforming raiders, either because I believed they were capable of improvement or thought they had more to offer the guild than subpar DPS.  ("The old Surreality would have worked with them," is something I tell myself often.)  I have also declined applicants who in all likelihood could have made material contributions to progression, because I didn't think they understood, appreciated or were ultimately on board the guild's overarching vision.

I have always told myself that the occasional (and temporary!) setbacks in progression that result are a small price to pay for the integrity and long-term health of the guild.

And yet ...

And yet last night, one of my raiders approached me in Dalaran in the aftermath of our thwarted raid.  (After completing no less than three new hard-modes last week, attendance dropped again and we were forced to call the 25-man raid after Sarth 3D — we're farming drakes — and run two 10-man ToC's rather than resume attempts on Heroic Jaraxxus.)  He is seriously considering leaving for a newly reformed guild that is apparently the amalgam of the best members of several progressed guilds that are currently stagnating as we are. 

This isn't a new member.  This is a veteran of Mount Hyjal, who has friends in the guild and has been sincerely invested in our success.  From time to time he has even taken advantage of our (perhaps overly?) accommodating natures, /afking for significant lengths of time during raids and occasionally stepping down to a casual raider rank to focus on things other than the game. 

These are things that many raiding guilds wouldn't tolerate, let alone encourage, and yet — in keeping with our RL > * philosophy — we do.

He wasn't the last person I would expected to leave for the promise of a more progressed guild ... but if I had been keeping a list, he would definitely be closer to the bottom than the top, and so his announcement (as infailingly polite as it was) (he is, after all, Canadian) has me more than a little shaken.

Has my unwillingness to compromise protected my guild and helped us to retain that which makes us good and unique: our character?  Or has it thwarted raid progression and contributed to our decline, if only by allowing us to stagnant during these long lulls when less discriminating guilds are clearing content?

I honestly thought that my guildmembers supported me.  Attrition has always been low, with members leaving for other games or Real Life™ but very seldom to other guilds.  Until now, I have taken that as a sign that I was doing something right.

Now, I'm forced to wonder.

“They’re just pixels.”

My guild's other main tank — the warrior, not the druid — called me while I was driving to work on Friday morning. 

"Ouchies was hacked," he announced.  "The guild bank has been completely emptied."  Pause.  "Except for the glyphs.  They didn't take the god damn glyphs."

I couldn't help it; I laughed.   

"The enchanting mats, the BoE's, the gems ... all gone," Coffer continued, sounding bleak.  (I know Amber trademarked 'Cranky Tank,' and I won't infringe.  But every guild has one, and Coffer is ours.)

... Did I mention it's a gorgeous autumn in Arizona?  It was a cool 80-something degrees and I was cruising up the 101 North with my convertible top down and the Goo Goo Dolls on the radio.  (If you see a girl in a red Mustang with LOLRET plates, Pix, /wave!)

"Don't worry about it," I told him, enjoying the drive too much to fret myself.  "They're just pixels."

Besides, I'm sure a GM will restore whatever was taken.  It's Ouchies I feel sorry for, since he's going to have to sort through two guild banks' worth of mail in about two weeks. 

Hopefully, whoever took temporary control of his account left him some gear to do it in.  Undead female orcs are not particularly attractive naked.