Kyrilean over at Casualhardcore posted how the officer's of the guild will guide the guild in making the switch from a casual raiding guild to a more serious one. There was a same post in Tobold's blog where his guild was going in the same direction. You can even see my comment where I was asking why I was labeled as a hearthless raider or something to that effect.
Basically they want CHANGE! A good core of their guild want to go serious or dare I say go hardcore and leave casual raiding behind. I also believe they are not the only guild making this change.
I don't know everything about raiding but I have been around the Raiding scene since Molten core so I have seen a good amount of guilds formed/broken up. I missed most of BC and wasn't until recently I got back to a serious raiding guild.
So here's an attempt to oversimply(or overcomplicate) things for you.
In some cases(or most) I believe it starts out as casual raiding guild truly in the beginning with no intent of raiding hardcore
The Transformation
Phase 1
Guild recruits advertising that they are a casual raiding guild or theyre schedule is flexible. Players get in
Phase 2
Guild down Boss X! Wooo! Next thing we know this guild is clearing up content X. Moar epix for everyone!
NOTE:
You will always have players who go above and beyond like bring consumables, read up on fights, spec right etc. We will refer to them as players x.
In this phase it doesn't bother them that other players didn't even took the time to read up about the fights, or didn't bring any food buffs, pots, wrong gems, sucky enchants or pvp specced they just want the bosses down.
Phase 3
Players X taste the sweet victory of beating a content and get used to it ... could be a good thing or a bad thing. They now know the rush or good feeling of beating a boss/content. Now these guys wanna see more content.
Now players WANT MORE ... more to satisfy their carebear needs. Rawr! Not a bad thing =P
Phase 4
Guild hits a wall. Players x now demands the same effort from the other players. i.e. "Hey guys how about you get out of the fucking fire this time", "pay attention to your debuffs!", "have you dont the Gorefiend simulator", or "how about you not cratering this time on Archimonde". Most of these are not hard at all but apparently some players are challenged by this.
Some of them responded well while other simply could not due to playtime issues, rl, or they are just really really bad players.
NOTE: There will be content where a guild hits a wall but beat it anyway in 2 weeks. In this phase I'm talking about a major wall like an encounter so bad that before the pull you know you will wipe everytime.
Phase 5
Now two things will likely to happen.
Either
a.) Guild will move to a more serious raiding direction forcing new stricter rules to keep going or
b.) A good amount of players x will move on and find another guild(or not show up) and the guild will lead towards raiding as a casual raiding again.
I would rather have the former happen to be honest. This is my oversimplification please do send hate tells.
In Part II I'll share my thoughts on how do they usually go about this change if they go with A but sadly that is not always the case.
What are your thoughts concerning casual guilds going to a more serious(hardcore?) raiding route? Is it fair to the casuals? How about the players x?
4 comments:
Honestly. Im one of those player x types. Not to go over my entire raiding life but in t5 content I joined a pretty casual raiding guild. Casual in that they only raided 3 days a week and didnt have any real rules set. Real good group of people but it was constantly seeing people underperform and not come to raids ready that pushed me into a more hardcore guild.
The group was nice and they were decent people, but constantly wiping and having the raid leader excuse that to play nice and pat people on the back was not cool. I want to progress, and if it takes me being sit when Im doing terrible then thats cool.
I dont know. Some people like the socializing aspect of WoW. But to me if there was no raiding I wouldnt be playing.
I must admit that I fear the phase 4 thing.
It can very well one day turn up that I'm one of those that are really bad at playing. It hasn't happened yet, but it may come. I deeply want to do right, I prepare in every possible aspect, I'm dead serious and focused whenever raiding, but my skill/reactiontime may turn out unsufficient. It will definitly cross my heart if I hit that wall and there's no serious alternative for me, that I'll be doomed to raid with people who don't care about preparations, who raid in a very casual way.
It sucks to be a sucker. Really.
But as Brandon says - if I can't raid (because I hit my own wall of talent/capacity, which is a different thing to his reason), I won't play. Then the game will loose its luster.
@brandon
And that is where sometimes people move on. It's just the way you play the game has changed
@larisa
In my experience hitting your personal wall only takes a few wipes(or nights) to fix it. I've done it. It took 3 kills in Heingan @ old naxx till I got the whole dancing around the room perfect. I died almost everytime =x.
Now gear wise ... that's a different story. I can't really will my way into tanking Brutallus wearing T5s...
Nice post. Hadn't thought about why we changed, but I think you hit the nail on the head.
I was the one that pushed for "casual", but to me "casual" doesn't mean slacking. You come prepared with all your buffs and bring your A-game. Unfortunately, not everyone feels the same.
Our carebear attitude towards it finally hit a wall when we could no longer carry those that underperformed. And in order to progress we need the serious guys who are willing to do what it takes to learn and adapt.
@larisa - just based on your comment, I doubt you'll hit a wall and stay there. Recognizing you hit a wall is really the way to overcome it. Most walls aren't hard, just take time.
We've got a couple of new people that we took to ZA and a lock in full epics couldn't do over 400 dps the entire time and when the raid wanted to give up he thought we just needed to substitute people. He has no idea that he's a bad player and likes to brag how good he is.
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