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Officers' Quarters: When to give up
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook. Guilds are like a living body. A little blood loss now and then is alright, as long as you can replace it. But if you bleed members for too long, the wounds don't heal, the bleeding never stops, and eventually the body goes on life support. So it is with the unfortunate guild in this week's email: Hi Scott Firstly I'd like to thank you for your advise in Officers Quarters and your book. The Guild Leaders Handbook was invaluable when I was made GM. A bit of background of me and our guild. I joined this guild a few years ago as it suited my play style. We were only Raiding once or twice a week and getting through content nicely for a guild who's aim was just to see content. Over the years I made friendships with people in the guild and it's a great atmosphere to be in. I was made an officer and at this stage we had just enough active members to do 10mans once or twice a week. Some weeks we would have to pug 1 or 2 people. This is when we started to lose people. With a guild that has been around for 5 years this month is was to be expected that people would leave the game for various reasons. So I recruited more members to fill the gaps and a few more left the game. At this stage raids again were pug'd to fill the gaps. Newer members were leaving to other guild's due to not having a full raid team every week and more long term members left the game including the guild leader who passed the leadership to me.
How many wipes does it take to end a raid?
This is probably a good question to revisit since we're heading into a patch where lots and lots of us will be running pickup raids and groups. Souldreamer on WoW Ladies LJ asks: "just when do you give up on a raid?" It's a good question, and unfortunately, the answer probably depends on the raid itself. If, going in, you're not sure just how much DPS the raid can do, and your healer says he's actually specced prot, and you were planning on going to bed anyway, one wipe is probably enough to call it. On the other hand, if you've dropped a few bosses and have an issue with the tank losing aggro for a second on a boss, you'll probably go back for another few wipes just to see. Do any of you have an actual policy? I tend to not get involved in PuGs at all if I think there's a chance they won't make it -- there are too many fish in the sea, and too many other things for me to work on rather than beating my head up against a boss. But maybe it would be good to set up a rule that most of us can agree on, something like, "three wipes and you're out." That might save a lot of time and frustration in the new Dungeon system.
Breakfast Topic: When to call it
You've been through this. We all have. Last night, we failed to finish Kel'thuzad. It was the first time we had to call the raid before clearing Naxxramas since we'd put it on farm status. A lot of it had to do with the absence of veteran raiders, substituted by some new guys who weren't quite on top of their game. But at a time when a lot of our veterans were bored with the content, we needed some warm bodies. Anyway, my point is, we called it after wiping at Kel'thuzad a few times and players were tired and wanted to go to bed.Many times during our time playing this game, we've decided to call it. Usually in an instance, maybe a boss that's too hard to handle for our group at the time. In Battlegrounds, the equivalent would AFKing at some point where you know the game just isn't going anywhere (Warsong Gulch would be the likely culprit in those cases). I guess my question is when do you know when to stop? I've had experiences where 5-mans would have changes in their line-up just trying to down one boss -- when a player leaves in frustration, the others go to the public channels announcing "LF1M, last boss Heroic <insert dungeon here>".But we have to stop sometime. When do you when that sometime is? After one wipe? Certainly not. Two? Three? I know we've wiped innumerable times on some progression bosses, only to end up calling it in order to continue another day. What is the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back?
