What I tend to find in most casual guilds is the lack of use of private forums for them to have somewhat intelligent discussions on.

I believe that a post about the direction of the guild and the expectations of raid members. Everyone needs to read it and sign it so no confusion later on can be used as an excuse.

After that the hard part begins

You have to change the way raids are run

The idea is too complete each boss as fast and eficient as possible. No downtime is important.

Its amazing how much people screw around between trash and the boss. I know with several “new” guilds that were running SSC the downtime between every trash pull was enormous simply because people took their time rezzing,eating,drinking or just lollygagging around.

You have to change peoples mindset and that is hard to do.

Thats the first part I think. Weed out people that dont rez, constantly ask for buffs for trash, pull aggro, go afk, talk constantly in vent, ask the same questions over and over,cry about repair costs,dont bring reagents,pots,flasks etc…

Once you get rid of people that are simply not cut out for raiding you can then work to improve the raid’s output each and every night and once your their you got yourself a raiding guild.

After that its just a matter of learning encounter and getting better at the class and spec you are playing

25 man raiding in SSC/TK is a major shift for casual guilds that have a friendly environment. The reason is the level of difficulty the bosses in these instances have. I know most people read that Luker/Void reaver are LOL JOKES but the true answer is they are VERY hard for people that do not or have not ever done this content.

As a guild leader if you are willing to disrupt the nice little thing you got going in your guild because you and others like you really want the challenge of 25 man raid content then you must take the following into consideration

1. People are bad
2. People are Lazy
3. People are greedy

Every casual guild has alot of these kinds of players in them with some combination of the above. They may have been in the guild for years and they may be your friends but I can tell you you will not be able to 25 man raid with them unless they change and almost 95 percent of them will not change.

SO just a warning to those looking to change their guilds from casual fun guilds to a full 25 man raiding guild

I have been known to have certain veins pop out in my forehead when someone who signed up for the raid ahead of time tells me they didn’t do any strat checks (no guide, no video, no podcast). I have even gotten to the point of making people /roll to do strat over Vent to find out who knows their stuff and who doesn’t. Do you have any ideas for how to change that mindset Matt?

I’d love to be able to tell the people who say stuff like that that they aren’t welcome in the raid until they are ready for it but we have so few people that we are already borrowing friends from another guild to fill in on the 25s. I know selective recruitment would help to some extent with this but our policy has always been friendly community before guild invites so we only invite about 4 people a year.

Thanks, Ard

My reasoning is this. I belive people should concentrate on one task and one task only to be effective. Having a tank switch to DPS or a healer switch to a tank is detrimental than anything. If people get a taste of something and decide to make the switch for good it would suck to have to gear up another prot pally or healer

Also it would allow raiders to simply get better at what they are doing. If your a DPS warrior thats all you would need to think about and get better at.

Just my 2 cents