Naxxramas

[MongoJerry]

How big is The Core? If your raid draws from a stable pool of around 60 people, then you can finish old content before burnout occurs.  Casual-friendly raid guilds require more people to fill raids. This stretches the time to finish MC, creates burnout in the early 'hardcore' raiders, and results in turnover for the guild.  If this process loops back fast enough, you get endless MC.

That's why the goal from the guild's birth from the ashes of The Offenders was to keep the guild large enough to raid but always no bigger than that. In practical terms, I'd say we have about 60 very active players, another 20 semi-active players, and maybe another 20 who are there for more social reasons and don't tend to go on major raids.

If a guild is too large and has a lot of turnover, there are some things you can do. First of all, you can throw out the chaff and stop recruiting people you don't need. But if that's not possible (say, you're in an inclusive guild like The Basin), you can also create sub-classes of raiders within the guild. For a while, The Core assigned people to the "A-team," "B-team," and "C-teams." Basically, the A-team was the front raiders who consistently showed up and were willing to take the repair costs of learning new bosses, and were therefore guaranteed a spot in the "A-list" raids like BWL if they showed up on time. The B-teamers could take up spots if for whatever reason some A-list people didn't show up and if the raid needed that particular class. C-teamers rarely got to go on the A-list raids and were there mostly to socialize, PvP, and maybe go on some of the smaller raids. On the other hand, when MC came up, B-teamers and C-teamers got first priority, which sometimes made the runs slow and painful, but at least they got the chance to raid and get some epic gear for themselves. As A-teamers left the game or guild, people could get promoted based on their attendance and willingness to donate needed materials to the guild. We had this system going for about six months but decided to abandon it when we realized we weren't quite big enough to need as formal of a system as that.

So, if you set up something like this for your own guild, you could have your A-team have the same type of attendance requirement that I first mentioned in my post above. That is, they could be required to show up only for BWL and AQ40, and in return for this requirement, they get first priority on these raids. Then, MC and AQ20 and ZG runs can be scheduled, but these would be considered "optional" raids for A-teamers so that those who want to have some time off can do so and not get raid burnout. Non-A-teamers could then go on these MC and 20-man raids and get loot they need. Of course, any dkp system you have in place would need to keep track of dkp earned in BWL and AQ40 seperate from any earned in MC. (We award loot in 20-man raids with simple need-before-greed /rand 100 rolls). Non-A-teamers would again know they have the potential to be promoted to A-team status based on their guild participation.