How do you manage your bench?

As you might have heard, we've been recruiting.  (No, this isn't another shameless plug!  Unless you happen to be a critchicken, we're done for now.)

My goal this time around wasn't to recruit to fill raids; it was to recruit to fill raids and maintain a small bench. 

This is a completely new model for us.  In the past, we've run with a "core raid" of anywhere from 18 to 20 players, supported by a much larger pool of casuals.  It wasn't unusual for our roster to change from night to night — and sometimes even from hour to hour — depending upon who of our many casual raiders was available. 

This approach saw us through substantially all of The Burning Crusade.  We were solidly middle-of-the-road when it came to progression (our reliance upon our casual raiders meant that we farmed content for much longer than was ideal), but at the height of the casual/hardcore feud, we managed to fold both approaches to raiding into one uniquely successful guild.  Our core raiders enjoyed guaranteed raid spots and the knowledge that they could take the occasional night off without thwarting progression, and our casual raiders had the opportunity to experience T6 content at a time that most truly casual players were relegated to farming Karazhan and PuGing Gruul's Lair.  It was a win-win situation.

Needless to say, the Wrath of the Lich King rendered our entire model obsolete.  Our casual players — who I had always considered a part of our extended family — no longer needed us to see content, and over time those who didn't step up to core eventually left the guild to play with real life friends and family. 

I was reflecting on this the other night when something occured to me that could almost be called an epiphany:

In order to be successful in the new end-game, we have to change the way we manage our bench.

In TBC, if we wait-listed a player, it was most likely a casual raider who understood that second priority on invites was the price she paid for the flexibility to raid sans attendance requirements.  

In WotLK, with the non-heroic versions of even the highest-end raid content easily PuGable, there is no incentive for a player like this to remain in a guild like Surreality (other than the strength of our community, of course, which I still maintain is what has kept us together at a time that many raiding guilds are falling apart). 

The simple fact is that we can no longer rely on an extended roster of casual raiders who are content to fill in on an as-needed, as-available basis.  By and large, these players no longer exist.  In the current end-game, everyone who is capable, committed and consistently available needs to have the same opportunity to raid.  This means setting up some kind of rotation rather than continuing to operate on a strict priority system that is no longer relevant.

The question now is, how do we do it?

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.

Riding the Bench

I’ve read quite a few blogs, forum posts and tweets recently from raiders lamenting their semi-permanent “bench” status.  In some cases, I sympathize.  But most of the time, I want to smack the author upside the head with a 10-pound catfish and ask “What in the name of all that's dark and soulless did you expect?!" 

(Sorry.  Once a warlock, always a warlock.  >.>)

I don't want to call anyone out, so I'm not going to name names.  Instead, I'll talk about a few case studies — some from my experience as a guild leader, and others from elsewhere in the nether.

Case Study #1: The Casual Raider in the Not So Casual Guild

The situation: 

You are an excellent paladin.  Or hunter.  Or death knight.  You are active in your class community.  You dabble in theorycraft, frequent the Elitist Jerks forums and maintain a well-respected WoW blog. 

Unfortunately, for whatever reason — conflicting timezones, odd hours at work or the ubiquitous "wife aggro" — your playtime is limited, sporadic, or simply on opposite hours from the rest of your guild.  You don't consider yourself a casual player; on the contrary, you invest more time, effort and resources in researching your class, perfecting your performance and min/maxing for success than most of your guildmates.  However, because you aren't able to attend all or even a majority of your guild's raids, you are still perceived as "casual" and often the first person dropped from the roster when a raid is over-signed.

Your perspective: 

This is, in your opinion, entirely unfair. 

You are every bit as good as the guild's other raiders — and, indeed, better than most.  Because you can't attend raids predictably, you have made a point of improving your gear outside of them.  You have never missed a heroic daily; you often PuG 10-mans for emblems and that odd piece of loot; and you have invested thousands of gold over the course of the expansion on orbs and BoE epics.

Such initiative should be rewarded.

Besides, it isn't your fault that your schedule is incompatible with your guild's.  It really wouldn't hurt the guys with 100% attendance to step out once and a while, either.  After all, they're disenchanting gear that you could actually use!  Personally, you don't understand why your guild leader hasn't set up some kind of rotation to ensure that you see some raid time, too. 

Fair's fair.

The guild's perspective:

The guild actually agrees with you: it isn't your fault that you can't attend a majority raids, and Real Life™ should always take precedence over a game. 

However, it isn't the guild's fault either.  Nor is it the fault of the 10 or 25 other raiders who can commit to a set schedule.  Who among them would you like to sit out — at your convenience — so you can experience the occasional raid? 

No one begrudges you your time away from the guild, but no one feels particularly obligated to step out for you either.  If you were able to commit to raids, then you would have a guaranteed raid spot; because you aren't, the guild has either recruited a core raider to replace you or enlisted several similarly casual players in the hopes that at least one of you will be available on any given raid night. 

Either way, someone has to sit out — and it doesn't seem fair to ask the player who attends every raid to ride the bench so someone who shows up only once and a while can take her place.

Possible compromise:

The guild can attempt to set up a rotation.  For example, Surreality offers full standby EP to wait-listed raiders, which encourages those players who don't need gear from a particular boss to volunteer to step out for those who do.  As long as there's a warlock in the raid, substitutions are relatively simple and can be accomplished during the inevitable downtime between encouters — especially if leadership is on top of the rotation and has standby raiders queued for upcoming bosses.

If the guild is unwilling to comprise:

If compromise isn't possible (or enough to satisfy your needs as a raider), then you can look for guild with a schedule that is more compatible with yours, or one with a more casual-friendly attendance policy. 

Your playstyle may not be casual, but your playtime is; plan your search accordingly.

On the outside, looking in.

Annah and I decided to sit out this week's Ulduar 10.  I put the raid together, as usual — if I don't, no one does — but in light of all the recent (and not so recent) drama surrounding 10's, we thought it best to step aside and let some new players rotate in. 

The group is doing really well: they've done all of the Keepers on hardmode — and that's with fully half the group seeing the fights for the first time.  I'm happy for them, and satisfied with the decision to sit out.  It will be good for guild morale.

... and yet, when you play the game to play with friends, it does sting a little to be the odd one out.