How is Your Guild Handling the Holidays?

2009 has almost come to an end.

I’ve observed that a number of guilds have entered a brief hibernation mode and ours is no different. We’ve had to shuffle our roster and raid days around so that they wouldn’t coincide on Christmas Eve or New Years Eve either. High attendance days are usually reserved for progression content on the 25s and farm raids have been suspended until after New Year.

In the past, the guilds I’ve been in handled their winter breaks differently:

  • Completely call off raiding for two weeks
  • Disband (due to abandonment)
  • Combine with other guilds and organize pickup raids
  • Achievement running

My guild recently picked up a hunter.

What’s so special about this hunter that deserves a minor mention?

She has more achievement points than I do.

Time to fix that.

In any case, guilds aren’t the only ones taking a break. A number of bloggers are taking a much needed break over the holidays. I’ve taken a few days rest but I still have a number of posts to complete.

What is your guild doing over the winter break?

9 thoughts on “How is Your Guild Handling the Holidays?”

  1. Since we clear ICC10/25 in 1 night – we cleared it all on Tuesday before XMas, and are taking the week off until the 3rd- clearing ICCs then doing TOGC on Monday, and then to the new Wing in ICC on the 5th. As much as I really really REALLY hate gated progression, the timing (THIS TIME) wasn’t too bad.

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  2. My guild raided last Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday — clearing all of ICC and regular 25m ToC. Unfortunately with the holidays, we had a hard time getting the right mix for ToGC, so it looks like we’re saving that for Monday. We typically clear that in a night, so it’s really not that bad. I’m really looking forward to the next phase of ICC, and taking another step away from the loot grab of ToC.
    .-= Morynne´s last blog ..In-Depth: Hunter Tier 10 =-.

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  3. While I normally hate gated encounter releases, I’m pretty happy that Blizz decided to hold off on the next phase til after the holidays. We cleared ICC in a day on both 10 and 25s, and had another run with alts and mains that missed the first run as they celebrated the holidays with their families. As new content is released and people get back to a normal schedule we’ll be well-rested and ready to tackle whatever Blizz throws at us!

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  4. We’ve set our progression raid instances to puggable status so those who wants can go out and have some fun and meet new people. For a few of us it’s a good time to do the veil achievements or just loiter in Dalaran. We need the rest to gather our strenght it seems there is a Lich King comming who needs a good wopping next year.
    .-= Uskan´s last blog ..Bah Humbug =-.

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  5. 1 night full clear of 25 ICC with achievement on Saurfang…

    Without most of our top DPS. I got to loldot the adds as offspec Shadow.

    Good thing my Holy Set happens to include several pieces that fit well in a Shadow set.

    Normal TOC 25 we’re running with alts or no DKP mains (this week) since we got a little fouled up. A bunch of the guild ran the TOC 25 with no real heads up on Wed (alt run night, but it happens to be BEFORE raid nights, we’re primarily a weekend guild) so that could have caused some drama. Tomorrow’s our last raid night so hopefully we’ll run it again and it will be by /roll. We’ll see if we can prevent DKP drama (You got that for free, I paid massive DKP for that two weeks ago, etc, etc)

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  6. Our guild cancelled all farm raids that we still use DKP for and allowed them to be pugged for this week only. Kept ICC as a guild run and made sure we didn’t do it on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve. Things have been going super smooth with no hiccups so far. We went into the holidays knowing things getting off the ground would be iffy as most of our players are family oriented and some notified us previously they would be out of town; gladly everyone was ok with that and I think the short break from our regular raid schedule was welcomed.

    Here’s to hoping 2010 will bring much gusto back into raiding!
    .-= Napps´s last blog ..List of abilities to add to Grid for ICC encounters =-.

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  7. We are continuing with our regular schedule, with the knowledge that the Thursday night slots will probably be odd. We have put up a “catch-bucket” invite so at least the people who are going to be online know who else is around.

    We found that even for the holidays, there is usually interest in doing something, even if we have cleared progression content earlier. Better to keep the pattern going than lose momentum.

    Same holds true for our 10-man runs.

    And if we don’t get enough for a full in-guild run, at least the people who are interested can opt to pug in some form or another.

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