Guild Politics

[Brolan]

I left WoW shortly before Burning Crusade was released.  The reason I left were the guild politics in regard to raiding Molten Core.

I left the guild I was in and then realized I couldn't advance my character any further without a large raiding guild.  I had no stomach for more guild politics so I ended up quitting the game.

Now I have a bunch of questions for you all.   Is there any reason to go back to Molten Core and work on your armor?   Do you need to be in a big raiding guild any more to advance your character?   What are the new smaller raids like?  Are they custom instances like those in EQ1 LDoN?

[Selby]

Is there any reason to go back to Molten Core and work on your armor?   Do you need to be in a big raiding guild any more to advance your character?   What are the new smaller raids like?  Are they custom instances like those in EQ1 LDoN?

Molten Core is done just for shits and giggles or nostalgia these days.  The massive 40 man raids are no more (they exist, but no one does them).  The gear you get there just flat out isn't worth it.

Define "advance" your character...  If you want to see all of the l33t-tastic end game raids, having 20 people you can rely on to get the instances done is a requirement.  You don't have to switch immediately to raiding once you hit 70 anymore, just go PvP in the battlegrounds\arenas, finish up other quests, or roll another character.

The smaller instances\raids are just like MC and whatnot, but just with less people (and if you ever did Strat or Scholo, it is similar but with more people).  Some battles are matters of hitting the buttons in JUST the right order at the right times to win, others are less stringent.

There are heroic versions of normal BC instances, which people used to grind faction and occupy their time.

If you are asking if guild politics and requirements have changed since TBC, in a way they have but mostly they haven't.  People can still be douchebags.

[Fabricated]

Well, the new-new expansion is coming which will completely invalidate the raid content in Burning Crusade.

No, there is no reason to even think about Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, AQ40, AQ20, ZG, or 40-man Naxx.

Short version:

-There are a LOT more 5-man instances in Burning Crusade for max level players, and the items they drop are actually really good. Also there's a bunch of new item mechanics (haste, sockets, etc)

-When you get honored with the faction associated with an instance you can choose to run the instance on "heroic", which amps the difficulty up to basically what amounts to a 5-man raid instance (mobs hit a lot harder, get new abilities, bosses get new tricks). Any Burning Crusade instance that isn't max level (i.e. 60-67ish) get completely new drop tables with level 70 rares, and on ALL heroics the final boss drops epic items that are a tad below the epics you get from the first real raid instance. Also, all bosses in heroic instances drop 1 "badge" for each player, which you can turn in for epics of various quality (there's badge epics that're equivalent to nearly the highest tier of raiding epics).

-Also, each faction has a pretty good stable of rare/epic items and profession plans you can get, and overall faction grinding is way way easier (not anywhere near as awful as Thorium Brotherhood/Argent Dawn)

-These are the current raids in progression order:

Karazhan (10-man, several bosses. Yes, just 10 people.) (Tier 4 level drops)
Gruul's Lair (25-man, 2 bosses, small amount of trash) (Tier 4 level drops)
Magtheridon's Lair (25-man, 1 boss, small amount of trash) (Tier 4 level drops)

Zul'Aman (10-man, 6 bosses) (Tier 5 level drops)
Serpentshrine Cavern (25-man, 6 bosses) (Tier 5 level drops)
The Eye (25-man, 4 bosses) (Tier 5 level drops)

The Battle of Mount Hyjal (25-man, 5 bosses) (Tier 6 level drops)
The Black Temple (25-man, 9 bosses) (Tier 6 level drops)

The Sunwell (25-man, 6 bosses) (No new tier of gear, but basically a tier above in item level)

-The entry level raid, Karazhan is a 10 man and is really, really big. It's a goddamn huge zone. A whole raid walking into the place in blues and the odd rep/crafted epic will find it challenging but not mindblowingly hard. Zul'Aman is made for people in full Karazhan gear and is a fair amount more difficult but a much shorter raid, with a timed skill event where you get more loot for killing the bosses before timers run out.

-You can pug the Tier 4 content successfully depending on the server, and real casual guilds can do some raiding with Karazhan, but you'll need some decent players to do Zul'Aman. You'll need to be in a raid alliance or a raid guild to do anything past that. I think there's a lot less drama anymore but I imagine some other people disagree heartily.

There's a lot more for non-raiders to do in BC and there's even more coming in WotLK.

[Merusk]

Additionally the LK expansion is adding a new level to raiding.  If you like seeing new bosses, and burning through new content with close friends, but don't care so much about the loot there will be 10-man versions of all the 25-man LK raids.  The caveat is that the 10-mans will drop a full tier lower than the 25-man version.  (i.e. If the 25 drops T7 level loot, the 10 man would drop T6.)   

Frankly, I don't see a downside.  If you've run 25 mans (and 40 mans) as a regular raider, you've seen how loot-whorish people get, and realized just how big your guild had to be to field that number of people on a regular basis.  The 10-man raids let you keep it much smaller and close-knit, something a lot of people were wanting after finding their guild was able to run Kara, but had to grow to do the next level of stuff in BC.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, you can safely abandon all of the pre-expansion raid areas now.  Just ditch 'em.  Get to 70 and go on some ten-man raids in Kara for more fun and to get nicely-geared in time for the next expansion.  Once the expansion is out, you can tell 25-man raids to kiss your ass and never put up with them again.

[Fordel]

I eagerly await the new 10 man raid zones and sets, if only so I don't look like a total clown in my Badge gear 

[cevik]

Finding 10 decent people who are willing to regularly run through stuff and not be giant loot whores/annoying whiny bitches is much easier than finding 25.  We have a good regular group for Kara and ZA that I run with, mostly either friends from real life or people that our group has known in various mmogs for years and years, makes for fun times. :)

Even if you decide not to go that route, you can 5 man heroic versions of the instances and get good quality blues and a few purples as well as badges that are essentially Blizzard's answer to DKP that you can turn in at special vendors for great gear.

[Arrrgh]

I left WoW shortly before Burning Crusade was released.  The reason I left were the guild politics in regard to raiding Molten Core.

I left the guild I was in and then realized I couldn't advance my character any further without a large raiding guild.  I had no stomach for more guild politics so I ended up quitting the game.

Now I have a bunch of questions for you all.   Is there any reason to go back to Molten Core and work on your armor?   Do you need to be in a big raiding guild any more to advance your character?   What are the new smaller raids like?  Are they custom instances like those in EQ1 LDoN?

You can also get fully epiced out via PvP now. If you can't bear grouping at all you can solo the BGs to epicness, but it will take a while. Find one other person you can put up with and you can do some arena matches to speed up the process.

The smaller raids require 10 people. 10 people gets you politics.  You also get churn since the bigger better toys are in the 25 person raids.

[cevik]

You can also get fully epiced out via PvP now.

This now really depends on why you are getting epic'd out so to speak.

If you are getting epics to PvE then PvP gear is mostly worthless, you'd be better doing 5 mans for blues and reputation epics and heroics for badge epics.

If you are getting epics to PvP then PvP gear is your best bet, just PvP for the gear.

If you are getting epics because you like having a tab full of purple items you can do a combo of the above and not worry about the stats.

[ajax34i]

I haven't played since January, but, yeah, you can get to 70 and see most of Outlands solo; plenty of quests, plenty of loot.  Instances with blue drops are peppered through the levels 61-70, most people on my server hit 70 and did them in Heroic mode, so I couldn't really find pick-up groups for them.

At 70, it was easy enough to find a Karazhan guild and get purpled up.  Don't know about now, but I think Karazhan-level gear will probably be sufficient to get you started levelling up in the first zone of the next expansion, which I hear will be released relatively soon.

Once you hit 80, though, it'll probably mean having to raid with some guild.  It's a cycle:  level up, raid, level up, raid.  Most guilds want to progress, so they won't stop at 10 mans.

Major drama with this past expansion (Burning Crusade / Outlands) happened because Blizzard designed progression so that a guild started by doing 10-man raids, and then had to graduate to 25-man raids.  All the pre-expansion 40-man guilds broke down trying to re-fit to 10-man, then had to recruit to reach 25-man size.  Was a mess.

They've improved the loot system so that everything drops tokens (in addition to the randomized class-specific armor/weapons) so that if you don't win a drop piece, you can go buy an equivalent from a vendor (with the token).

[Sjofn]

I eagerly await the new 10 man raid zones and sets, if only so I don't look like a total clown in my Badge gear 

I am going to link this to you every time you start to whine that you don't waaaaaanna tank for Naxx waaaaaaah.

[Brolan]

Thanks for all the great info.  I'm going to reactivate my account at the end of the summer.

[Drugstore Space Cowboy]

Thanks for all the great info.  I'm going to reactivate my account at the end of the summer.

Another one bites the dust.

[Fordel]

I eagerly await the new 10 man raid zones and sets, if only so I don't look like a total clown in my Badge gear 

I am going to link this to you every time you start to whine that you don't waaaaaanna tank for Naxx waaaaaaah.

Talk about stones and glass houses Miss "why isn't WoTLK out yet waaaaah" 

[Sjofn]

I eagerly await the new 10 man raid zones and sets, if only so I don't look like a total clown in my Badge gear 

I am going to link this to you every time you start to whine that you don't waaaaaanna tank for Naxx waaaaaaah.

Talk about stones and glass houses Miss "why isn't WoTLK out yet waaaaah" 

I'm not wanting it to come out so I can play my paladin though! Nyah!

[kildorn]

Man what? Fordel's whining that he WANTS 10 man raid content? The man you have to bribe with bacon to even get to show up?

[Rasix]

Get a room.

[Fordel]

I'm not wanting it to come out so I can play my paladin though! Nyah!

Why must you turn this forum into a house of lies!



Kild: I'm sorry, when was the last time you even logged in 

[cevik]

So, to answer the original question, apparently yes, guild politics do still happen.

In fact they appear to be happening in this thread right before our very eyes!

[Rasix]

Guild drama is awesome.  Just got done with another guild split/dissolution, and I actually got to listen to the /o chat for this one.  Thank god for slutty officers and barely literate raid leaders.

Think I'll give my current guild until sometime after WOLK to get their shit together, but this stuff just put me into pre-WOLK mode and has pretty much shut down my desire to raid (not that we can anymore) or even group.  Then I get to go on the impossible search for a guild that does 10 man raiding but doesn't aspire to anything more and doesn't care that I don't raid often.  And isn't full of teenaged retards (hardest requirement).  And on one of the worst servers in WoW.

Ugg, I had it good for a while.  As good as can be expected.  Guild drama is at every level and for every aspiration. No way to avoid unless you have no aspirations.  Then you're golden.. and LFG.

[Merusk]

 I missed out on some awesome drama myself recently.  The guild I quit before rerolling horde just broke up, with the GL x-fering servers with 2 of the officers and taking the guild bank with him.   I happen to know he x-fered because his reputation and that of one of the officers was such absolute shit on Alleria that there was no way he'd have gotten another guild running to do the top-end stuff like he wanted.   Ahh, sweet sweet drama.

[Ingmar]

Guild drama is awesome.  Just got done with another guild split/dissolution, and I actually got to listen to the /o chat for this one.  Thank god for slutty officers and barely literate raid leaders.

Think I'll give my current guild until sometime after WOLK to get their shit together, but this stuff just put me into pre-WOLK mode and has pretty much shut down my desire to raid (not that we can anymore) or even group.  Then I get to go on the impossible search for a guild that does 10 man raiding but doesn't aspire to anything more and doesn't care that I don't raid often.  And isn't full of teenaged retards (hardest requirement).  And on one of the worst servers in WoW.

Ugg, I had it good for a while.  As good as can be expected.  Guild drama is at every level and for every aspiration. No way to avoid unless you have no aspirations.  Then you're golden.. and LFG.

Horde/Windrunner? 

I would expect to see a significant rise in the kind of guild you're looking for after WotLK releases and we have a full 10 person raid progression, instead of Kara plus a too-wide jump in difficulty to ZA.

[Rasix]

Horde/Shu'halo.  Although I think we were a Windrunner transfer server at some point. We were like 4th worst on Sunwell Isle daily progression.  No guilds clearing Sunwell and I think 1 horde/1 alliance have even cleared BT.  Terrible podunk server and no one on the board forums can stop whining about it.  I think it's nice most of the time, except when you're looking for a compatible guild or even a group.

For some additional drama humor; it was fun to make a mental list of "Guys that want to fuck the slutty officer" and then watch every single one of them leave within the week.  Some were even classy enough to bolt after winning some raid loot.    The vent chat in Kara raids she ran sounded like some sort of G4 version of the Bachelorette.

[Fordel]

Why do other guilds get hot drama? All we ever get are bitter old men saying totally inappropriate things 

[Paelos]

So people actually banged the slutty officer?

Our slutty ppl are all talk.

[Ingmar]

Why do other guilds get hot drama? All we ever get are bitter old men saying totally inappropriate things 

That's because most of the people in your guild are over 30 and married.

[Rasix]

So people actually banged the slutty officer?

Our slutty ppl are all talk.

At least one that I know of.      It gave a lot of losers in the guild hope.  She's no prize. Again.. 

What I would give to be in a guild where a majority of the people work salaried jobs and can recognize some of the pop culture references I make in guild chat. Only a few have children and you can only tell that because you randomly hear screaming in the background.

[Paelos]

That makes sense. I've seen pictures of the ones who talked too much in chat. We nicknamed one chick, "The Manatee" 

[lamaros]

At least one that I know of.      It gave a lot of losers in the guild hope.  She's no prize. Again.. 

What I would give to be in a guild where a majority of the people work salaried jobs and can recognize some of the pop culture references I make in guild chat. Only a few have children and you can only tell that because you randomly hear screaming in the background.

Server transfers are your friend. If you really want to find a guild like that your best chance is comming up with WotLK, so hop to it! I have to do the same myself. I'm hoping the people I used to play with remember me fondly and I can find myself in a decent guild because of it.

[Dren]

Well, it has been a few months since I've offered my guild up again, so here it is.  Whisperwind Alliance.  It is everything being talked about here.  Minimal guild drama, older (most with kids,) smallish (do regular runs in Kara, but find it hard to get 10 a lot of times.)  We do 25 man content but only with an alliance to a few other bigger guilds.  PM me if you want to give it a shot.  I'm not in game this week due to business trip/training, but I'm still wired.

[Merusk]

If you're serious about wanting to find a guild and are willing to transfer, my horde guild on Zul'Jin (pvE they're carebears about leveling but a few, like me, run BGs/ Arena) is a group of people I've known since EQ days.  They're all stable and have kids/ jobs and most are my age if not a little older (34).  They're not hardcore or even medium-core, really.  They're only just starting to run Kara but that's because until I, my wife and a few others started showing up regularly they didn't have 10 people to run it.  No pressure to play, ever, just curiosity as to where the hell you've been. 

The guild's name is Plague Riders.  Make an alt and check it out if you're interested.  Seeing how they work while leveling up before x-fering is always best. My name there (until my cable shuts off) is Narcella and my wife's is Narcelia.  Just say you're a friend of Ayarae and they'll invite you.

[Musashi]

So people actually banged the slutty officer?

Our slutty ppl are all talk.

At least one that I know of.      It gave a lot of losers in the guild hope.  She's no prize. Again.. 

What I would give to be in a guild where a majority of the people work salaried jobs and can recognize some of the pop culture references I make in guild chat. Only a few have children and you can only tell that because you randomly hear screaming in the background.

Your best bet is a high pop server.  Better one that's heavily favored to your faction of choice.  For Horde, I suggest Mal'Ganis.  That way, even if you don't find exactly what you're looking for, it's easy to get a group/pug/whatever.  The economy is insane, as in you can find what you're looking for pretty much whenever, and the sheer volume of competition ensures a reasonable price.  There are LOTS of pug raids up to even the highest content.  YMMV.  And if someone ganks you, just say where they are in general and there will be dudes raining down on them like angry bees - no matter where you are in the world.  

But on the downside, there's sometimes a queue.  The bg queue is reasonable but not what I'd call fast - 5 minutes average.  There's sometimes a lot of spawn competition.  And if you want world pvp, good luck, because the Alliance is beaten into submission and never ventures out.

My friends and I have played on many different servers, and we feel BY FAR this is the way to go.  Easily worth the money to transfer.

On topic.  Guild politics.  Don't even phase me anymore.  Pretty much seen it all.

[Rasix]

Unfortunately a server transfer is out of the picture unless the two RL friends I'm playing with decide they're done again and never coming back.  They both did server transfers (multiple characters) so we could play together come WotLK.  In restrospect I should have gone back to Shadowsong.  I'm not sure they'd both agree to transfer again since both are significantly tighter financial situations.  When/if they decide they're done again I'd be transferring to a higher pop Horde PVE server.  I'm too time constrained to deal with being on a pvp server, and I'd pop a blood vessel in my brain if someone ganked me while I'm fishing.

And man, the guild drama today got priceless.  A merger between my guild and the guild that split off from us was proposed and sounded like a pretty fair compromise.  I'm pretty sure we were only going to get a few token officers and one assistant GM.  I've been logging on only to do my fishing daily, but my guild has pretty much been going nowhere since the split.  Two of our assistant GMs, the main raid leader, and a fair bit of the officer core has been distracted with real life or just hiding since all of this went down.  The new guild pretty much gutted the entire raiding leadership when they left.  All that's left is a bunch of class leads that don't want to be more than that and pvp oriented officers with no real interest in raiding.   The other guild, to their credit, realized this and have basically told my guild to fuck off after less than a day of deliberation.

We have thrown out the olive branch and given them the invitation to join us in the new world we have created. I still feel that more of our friends will join us in time… and even if they don’t… nothing changes the friendship I feel towards them and that I will still assist them running stuff and still shoot the shit to them. In fact, if they think I might have some words of wisdom to assist them if they decide to try and rebuild Hellbent, I will assist them... Unfortunately, I think they need to make thier own decisions and either sink or swim or take grab onto the olive branch that we threw out there - I do not think that we should risk tearing ourselves apart (effectively sinking our own ship) to be their rescue boat. "

WoW is serious business.

[Paelos]

My guild alliance is going through some hoo-hah about re-evaluating the council we elected. I'm the main raid leader in the alliance and said up front when I was asked that I wanted no part of gaming politics. They respected that and left me alone to run raids, and I left them alone to do recruitment and whatever else. Then, people started to bitch that we had closed recruitment and that raids were suffering and yadda yadda.

The "Update the Council" thread was getting entirely too serious, and it was frankly ticking me off that we actually had a council at all in a loose raiding alliance. This post was actually posted as a suggestion:

How about we reorganize things into "Governing Council" "Discipline Council" and "Cabinet"?


The Governing Council will consist of a small number of highly motivated and highly interested people who will decide policy and keep things running smoothly. Back in the Day we had a group of three who kept things running, and for the most part the three of us kept each other in check. Since the circumstances which allowed Cogline, Arlanthe and I to succeed as well as we did in that position aren't likely to be repeated, I suggest a Governing Council of five or seven. This is a small enough number that each member will still be keenly motivated to hold that spot, but not so small that one or two people being AFK for a few days or a week will cause the whole thing to crumble. It should also be an odd number, so that there will never be a deadlocked tie.

Day to day minutiae will be handled by the Governing Council autonomously. If something large comes up, the Governing Council will discuss amongst themselves and hammer out a resolution which will be suitable for either "Up or Down" or "Does the PMA like A, B or C better"? type votes. The entire PMA will be polled with these resolutions, with the poll lasting a reasonable period of time. This will allow a check and balance, because the Governing Council will be empowered to do minor things like cleaning up policy papertrails on its own, but will need the blessing of the PMA at large for major decisions such as opening or closing recruitment, or Some Other Stuff I Haven't Thought Of Yet.

The Governing Council will be composed purely of volunteers. Since the Council is answerable to the entire PMA, it will be guild agnostic.

The Cabinet will consist of other people who are interested in PMA Government. Cabinet members will take the place of the current "Officer" rank and permissions status. Cabinet members will be free to speak in the Governing Council, but will be considered advisors only.

The Governing Council and the Cabinet will have full "Read" access to the Council Chamber, however the Cabinet will only have "Write" privileges to the Council Floor. Governing Council will have moderation privileges currently accorded to the "Council" permissions group, and Cabinet will have the privileges currently held by the "Officer" permission group.

At this point, I realized that people in gaming worlds are completely insane. This much beauracracy isn't required to run a city, let alone a guild. So, I just said they can have fun playing student government, but I officially stopped paying attention to it anymore.

[Merusk]

Guild councils never work.  Successful guilds are either groups of friends, strict autocracies or had a very small (3-5 people) totalitarian system. I've never seen any other method work for longer than a year or so and even the last one has its problems, with all the sycophants out there.