Officers' Quarters: It's IC in Northrend

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes

Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

It seems like quite a few players are in a hurry these days. They're in a hurry to be the first of their class or race to hit 80, or in a hurry to be the first on their server to clear a raid. They use the most effective method of gaining experience over time, ignoring all other options until they achieve their goal. In this environment, the role-players are definitely a breath of fresh air. This week's e-mail comes from a reader who wants to know whether "IC raiding" -- or raiding in character -- will be possible in this expansion.

Hello, Scott. I'm a long-time reader, long-time guild leader, first-time send-question-in . . .er.

Anyway! I run a . . . not sure what you'd consider 'small,' so let's say small (around 30 people) RP guild on Moon Guard. How feasible would it be for small, semi-unscheduled, IC raids (Naxx10 and other 10-mans) in Wrath?I know it'd be hard to do in fights, but do you think a small(ish) roleplay guild could pull it off?

Thanks much!

--Maciah Banes

I will say up front, Maciah, that unless Blizzard decides to buff some of the early raids, you will have a much easier time succeeding with this type of raiding in Wrath than you did in early TBC. By all accounts (which are admittedly few at this point), Naxxramas, the Obsidian Sanctum, and the Eye of Eternity are far easier than Karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and Magtheridon.

Some people aren't happy about that, but I think it's a great thing. Five-player dungeons have always been trivially easy, and even in Heroic mode they never presented a terribly difficult challenge -- why should the first raids of an expansion suddenly take months of effort to clear? Why not increase the difficulty over a curve instead of over a cliff? There are, after all, plenty of achievements to earn if you want to make the existing raids harder for yourself.

Even so, to clear the raids in WotLK, you can't waltz in expecting free epics. Before you clear these raids and have them on farm, you need to encourage your role-players to treat the run as a life-or-death situation. Use whatever lore you need to accomplish this -- but make sure the result is that they focus on the job at hand rather than any character-specific conflicts between raid members. Also make sure the direness of the situation encourages them to come prepared with all the proper consumables, reagents, etc.

As a raid leader, you have two options. You can go into the raid blind, knowing very little of the dangers and challenges that you'll face. This is probably more realistic from an RP perspective, and it certainly makes things exciting. However, it could also be a bit frustrating if the raid is wiping frequently. So you could also come up with a plausible reason for your raid leader to know something about the bosses ahead of time. I don't know the lore enough to even attempt at coming up with such a reason, so I'll leave that to the experts.

Do role-players ever use add-ons? It's easier to raid without add-ons than it used to be, but they can still help a great deal. That's another situation to consider.

I'm a little wary of your plan to run these raids "semi-unscheduled." It really depends on how active those 30 members are. If you can consistently field 10 balanced classes (who aren't abstaining for RP reasons), then you can probably get away without an official schedule. But even then, it can be frustrating for members who really want to see these raids. They might feel like they have to be online every single night in case a raid occurs, and that's not really a healthy situation. Even a vague statement like "we'll only raid on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday nights" can help people to plan out their week.

I'd love to hear from some other role-players out there. Were you able to make this type of raiding work in TBC? What is your plan for Wrath?

/salute

Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas, and suggestions at scott.andrews@weblogsinc.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters! For more WoW Insider gameplay columns, click here.