Rethinking the raid guild

[Brista]

Some of the posters here are clearly guilded with well-motivated and even-tempered people that make most guild runs very smooth

I've never had any luck in finding such a guild. I find that most raid guilds I've tried have had a substantial minority of lazy quarrelsome and/or greedy people that drag the others down to their level. Priests that don't buff in the hope that some other priest will buff their group for them. Shamans that usually afk and make a coffee after a wipe. Warriors and Rogues that guildquit if they don't win that special weapon then beg to be allowed back in the next day.

Guilds have a tradition of being communities, bunches of people trying to build friendships. The expectation is that guild leaders should show sensitivity and understanding to the various foibles and human failings of the members

OK so here's my point: why not construct a guild first and foremost as a team (like a soccer team) rather than as a community?

So my basic plan is to have a number of spots available and pick the best people to fil them. Based on performance

Suppose we want 6 tanks for a 40 man raid. The guild would have a figure of 9 tanks as the ideal roster, that allows us to field 6 tanks when some are offline. But at the beginning of each month we accept all tank applicants and spend the month weeding them out based on how well they do. At the end of the month we're down to the 9. Any tanks who didn't make the cut are not eligible to apply again for a month

Each month we start with 9 tanks and recruit every tank who applies who has a chance of making the level required (eg no green-geared tanks if we're in Naxx). We then spend the month paring down the numbers until we're back down to 9 at the end of the month

One important idea is to be very forgiving about people we reject. People's feelings get hurt if they're gkicked for not being good enough, we shouldn't worry what they say on the forums after

"Performance" is a broad term and for me covers a lot of factors. It's essentially about improving the raid because of your presence. Someone who plays really well and tops the dps meters but drags us into a half hour argument about loot is performing poorly because we would have got more done had they not been there

How performance is measured is something that would be a work in progress undertaken by the members of that raid role, with some supervision from the top.

Note too that I say "tanks" not "warriors", "raid role" not "class". Doing it this way offers great scope for hybrids and off-specs. Got an epic Voidwalker and want a tank spot as a Warlock? Fine, come on in, but prove it works better than our 10th best Warrior/Feral Druid

DKP is an issue. We don't want someone coming in, being crap all the time, and walking out with 10 epics after their first month. I would like to use DKP as a valve to control recruitment applications. Basically if we're successful and everyone wants to join us then no DKP for your first month (in other words you have to make the cut at least once to get any loot whatsoever). While building up we'll probably set it to no DKP earned for your first week

Raid spots and loot priorities are determined by pecking order so far this month. If you're our top healer you get first dibs on what you need to keep you top

I think it could work out to be a very exciting and engaging process. It's bound to create some whining but then if negativity in the raid is a factor in rating people's performance I think that would dampen people's inclination to be disruptive

I'm thinking of rolling a new character on a fresh realm in BC and trying it out. What I need from this board now is people's opinions on whether you would consider joining such a guild or better still advice from anyone who has tried this out. If everyone who posts here thinks no one in their right mind would join such a guild I'll cancel the idea. But in the aftermath of yet another raid where the same 3 people out of 10 ressers do all the ressing, the same old people are outraged by the way we hand out loot as they are every time, the usual suspects are afk without saying anything I feel for the sake of those who come with potions and whipperroots, who pay attention and who read up on bosses in advance it would be fabulous to do something for the guys who cause you to succeed

[Monkey]

An interesting (and certainly bluntly honest) approach. Have you considered using ranks to graduate your system? So you might have:

Rank 1: People in Charge
Rank 2: Guaranteed Raiders (The "Starters")
Rank 3: Raid-qualified (The "Bench")
Rank 4: Probation (The "Rookies")

New applicants go into Rank 4 and can earn their way up, if they stay in rank 4 too long, they're removed from the guild. Likewise, if someone in rank 2 gets lazy, they get moved to the bench. Lazy on the bench, moved to rank 4. Too long in rank 4, buh-bye. It's not very community oriented, but I think you could build a successful guild with it.

[oldmandennis]

I really don't think this has a snowballs chance of working.

You really would have to be at the top of progression for your server to attract the stream of quality applicants you want. Since you show no loyality to your members, they will show no loyality to you. 2-3 bad weeks of progress will probably gut you. And giving a warlock a chance to prove that his voidwalker can tank will hurt that progress.

I'd be suprised if you get many recruits if you offer no DKP for a month.

Also, trying to make a strict ordering of the skill of your members will gut your group with drama. Especially if that ordering effects loot.

Why don't you reroll or transfer to someplace you know there are good guilds?

[Professor Frink]

Short answer: Yes, I would be interested, assuming my interest in wow in general survives the expansion coming out (I'd say ~40% chance). I've seen a few guilds that I or RL friends of mine have been in who have tried things along the lines of what I think you want, but usually in a timid or too-little-too-late fashion. It's very leader-dependent, you need someone willing to make the time commitment and with the emotional stamina to ignore the BS and those who produce it, who is also competent at the actual mechanics of playing the game. I'll assume for the sake of argument that you're willing and able:)

There's two big decisions to be made; who you take to your runs, and how you split up loot. These are, imho, entirely seperate concerns. Things like whining about loot or being overly "greedy" are solved with a well-thought-out loot scheme; this is essentially a solved problem. Problems like taking ill-timed afk breaks, learn2play issues, general negativity and not valuing other people's time are not likely to be solved by messing with the loot, but I think your plans to keep that sort of thing in line by making you less likely to be invited back has a lot of potential.

Traditionally, this is done by the useful poeple in the guild identifying each other and leaving, but this is really inefficent and I agree with you that it'd be better to go from the beginning with the idea that the good people can stay and the bad ones can go instead.

And now, a little negitivity of my own where I point out things i've spectacularly not work before:

How performance is measured is something that would be a work in progress undertaken by the members of that raid role, with some supervision from the top.

This won't work. You're not going to be able to offload responsibility for judging people to the people being judged. It would probably be sufficent to hand-pick a couple of people and assign them roles to fill and a number of slots to do it in, from a list of people deemd "good enough to take" (possibly but not necessarily the entire guild). In other words, the class-leader system that generally works just fine given good enough class leaders, though there's nothing sacred about haveing an exactly 1:1 class:leader ratio.

If you want the system to be somewhat more transparent I could see telling your class leaders to use some sort of carrot/stick point system and a general policy of taking the person with the better rating.

DKP is an issue. We don't want someone coming in, being crap all the time, and walking out with 10 epics after their first month. I would like to use DKP as a valve to control recruitment applications. Basically if we're successful and everyone wants to join us then no DKP for your first month (in other words you have to make the cut at least once to get any loot whatsoever). While building up we'll probably set it to no DKP earned for your first week

This part in particular looks like a solution in search of a problem. Your loot distribution system should not be so broken that people who just started raiding with you are getting gear that other people want. Just use one of the dozens of loot systems that don't suck. People should be permitted to accrue credit from day one; it encourages performance much more effetively than vague threats of being kicked from a guild that you just joined.

-- frink

[Brista]

I really don't think this has a snowballs chance of working.

You really would have to be at the top of progression for your server to attract the stream of quality applicants you want. Since you show no loyality to your members, they will show no loyality to you. 2-3 bad weeks of progress will probably gut you. And giving a warlock a chance to prove that his voidwalker can tank will hurt that progress.

I'd be suprised if you get many recruits if you offer no DKP for a month.

Also, trying to make a strict ordering of the skill of your members will gut your group with drama. Especially if that ordering effects loot.

Why don't you reroll or transfer to someplace you know there are good guilds?

You could be right, Dennis, but if this was a weirdo variant character spec instead of a weirdo variant guild system I'm sure you wouldn't be saying Forget It

It's worth trying simply because it will be interesting to see what happens, regardless of whether it works or not.

Another thought has occurred to me

In an archetypal 1950s Communist economy the workers at the grim dirty canteen with the awful food got paid the same by the state as the workers at the bright clean canteen where the food was always hot and fresh. It was perceived as fair and socially just that people who work all day got the same reward

Nowadays, having witnessed the collapse of those systems in Europe and the loosening of economic restrictions on workers in China such economic systems are laughable. How could anyone possibly expect a productive economy to result from a system that doesn't reward productivity

So then why do raid guilds use such a Communist system in WoW? People who take part and are crap get the same rewards as people who are good

[Brista]

Short answer: Yes, I would be interested, assuming my interest in wow in general survives the expansion coming out (I'd say ~40% chance). I've seen a few guilds that I or RL friends of mine have been in who have tried things along the lines of what I think you want, but usually in a timid or too-little-too-late fashion. It's very leader-dependent, you need someone willing to make the time commitment and with the emotional stamina to ignore the BS and those who produce it, who is also competent at the actual mechanics of playing the game. I'll assume for the sake of argument that you're willing and able:)

Thanks that's very encouraging

There's two big decisions to be made; who you take to your runs, and how you split up loot.

For the first few runs of the month we want to get everyone to two raids each so priority is for people who haven't raided yet

After that, priority is by ranking within a raid role. So if we have 16 dps slots we will start inviting based on performance for the month so far. The raid leader can override this if he wants a particular class. If the raid leader wants 2 warlocks because of the nature of the encounter he can invite the top two locks even if they're 17th and 18th best rated dps available. It's all about optimising our chance to be successful on this night's raid

How we split up loot will be by buying them with points. Say a weapon costs 10 points. Someone who has raided twice so far this month and has scored 5/10 and 6/10 has 11 points and would get the item ahead of someone who has raided once and scored 8/10 (and would then have 1 point left in his bank)

This is not zero sum and is inflationary. However at the end of each month all players balances are zeroed. So there's very little motive to hoarde dkp and new players alway have a sporting chance to get something unless they're really awful

These are, imho, entirely seperate concerns. Things like whining about loot or being overly "greedy" are solved with a well-thought-out loot scheme; this is essentially a solved problem. Problems like taking ill-timed afk breaks, learn2play issues, general negativity and not valuing other people's time are not likely to be solved by messing with the loot, but I think your plans to keep that sort of thing in line by making you less likely to be invited back has a lot of potential.

Well I'm trying to tie poor performance in to 4 main reward areas: loot distribution, guild security, raid spots and e-peen. Most raiders are very egotistical, if a raider keeps getting 5/10 because he performs really well but constantly tells the raid leader how to do every encounter "better" enough for the raid leader to penalise him his vanity is likely to stop him from continuing to get these bad scores (or gquit in disgust and tell everyone I'm a noob, which is fine. I think frequent server forum flame wars will be good publicity for us and will help get us recruits)

And now, a little negitivity of my own where I point out things i've spectacularly not work before:
This won't work. You're not going to be able to offload responsibility for judging people to the people being judged.

OK I can see that. As I see it measuring performance is about 3 things: collecting data, analyzing data and assigning a value system

Let's use the Mages role in the Major Domo fight as an example. For anyone who hasn't played this fight there is a main boss and 8 adds, you can sheep 4 of the adds. To complicate matters the adds get a magic reflection buff at periodic intervals during the fight so if you let sheep break and they have the 10 seconds buff up you either have to wait the 10 seconds while your target rampages through the healers or if you're really stupid you cast sheep and sheep yourself

Now suppose mage #1 keeps his mob sheeped, refreshing sheep well before it wears off and still manages to dps
Mage #2 keeps his mob sheeps
Mage#3 does lots of dps but his mob breaks sheep a few times and about 5 people over the course of the fight
Mage#4 sheeps himself. Twice

As raid leader/guild leader I wouldn't want to collect this data. It's too laborious to keep track of every player in this way. So I want the mage leader to collect it and then perform a preliminary analysis by posting on our boards the scores for each mage and why they scored those marks. I then have a chance to glance over his post and see if I'm happy with it. If Mage#4 always screwed up and I was really cross with him I might downgrade his mark for instance, because I'm seeing it from a raid perspective. He wiped us twice and we had to call it a night. He doesn't even deserve 3/10

But also and just as importantly the Mage players can make their case. If Mage #3 wants to argue that his damage was crucial to the fight and a big part of why we won he has his soapbox and the debate can range back and forward.

Mage#4 might claim resists and lag, while it doesn't effect his mark since marks are tied to good results not good intentions it allows him to mitigate an embarassingly bad night

If dps leader is awarding himself high marks unfairly (eg a rogue who did much more damage than the mages because he didn't have to sheep and is basing scores off the damage meter) then the forums will explode in flame wars and the guild leader can step in. That's fine, I'm happy for things to work that way. It's a lot of delegation but with intense scrutiny of the marking by those concerned

I also suspect that if they're fighting each other they'll fight me less. My headteacher mother once explained to me why she liked school uniform. Teenage girls want to push the limits. With uniform they rebel by wearing jewelry and culottes. Without uniform it's boys and drugs

The dps leader steps down at the end of the month and whoever is top rated dps aside from him is offered into the job. Leaders earn +1 mark per raid and can't be kicked for performance (although they could be kicked the month after because they're no longer leader if they keep performing badly)

Now it's possible for a role leader to always mark himself up. There is the option for the guild leader to intervene. If every time a role leader publishes his analysis there are howls of protest he's jeopardising his position. Even if I don't sack him during the month does he really want to risk next month's leader hating him?

So I think it's possible to let role leaders decide their own marks. As so much of this, it depends a very great deal on the people. In my experience most really good players are very clear-sighted about the game, it's the people who aren't very good who have delusions

If you want the system to be somewhat more transparent I could see telling your class leaders to use some sort of carrot/stick point system and a general policy of taking the person with the better rating.

Yeah exactly. As I described above it may even be the most transparent system ever - people can work out exactly what they should be doing to score points

People should be permitted to accrue credit from day one; it encourages performance much more effetively than vague threats of being kicked from a guild that you just joined.

Both here and on the WoW EU boards where I also posted this idea players have felt very strongly that people should be permitted to accrue credit from day one.

I think I'll U-turn on my original idea of not paying dkp for the first week-month. There's enough incentive in the system to play well and with experienced raiders telling me people want to get paid from day one I can accept the point. There aren't many people who would work their first month of a new job free unless truly desperate

I think the key thing is that we offer a chance to practically every one. I don't care if people are furious with us and flame us, they're still welcome back a month later when they've calmed down and can't get a guild elsewhere. There are always going to be surplus warriors and dps, I'm sure we will have plenty of recruits there. I am a bit worried about healers but I think we'll have to suck it and see. I certainly think the guild leader should be a healer so that's at least one we'll have. What is nice for healers though is a bid on anything spec for anything policy. Want to stay feral and just heal in raids? Fine as long as you can make the cut. Want to go Resto and heal raids while collecting face melter gear? Fine. I don't want it to be a "omg, you don't need that!" atmosphere. This mainly hurts Rogues, Mages/Locks and people who want 2-handed weapons which are the most available classes of raiders. So the guild is more viable because we can attract the healers who want tank/rogue/mage loot and specs. Not ideal, but I hate the traditional wow attitude of "stfu and heal, you rolled healer so heal"

What I'm hoping is that we'll develop an elite of superb Rogues and Mages who take pride in being far above the Retrinoobs and KittyKats, while also having an enthusiastic bunch of healers who heal us because they know that if they get bored (which they won't) we'll support them in gearing up a different spec

Well I certainly think it's interesting enough to try it out, responses from the WoW EU boards were generally supportive too

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?t...=70177024&sid=1

[Skandranon]

I have to agree with oldmandennis on just about everything. You're trying to build a team, which is all well and good, but you seem to hold that in diametric opposition to being a community. The most successful raid guilds are teams *and* communities, not either/or. For that matter, you've got what seems to me to be a very skewed vision of community: you're listing all the bad points and none of the good points. The fact is, success in end-game is based on skill, yes, but if your people don't like each other and don't have team spirit, the first hard encounter will shatter your guild like glass.

I can't think of a more confrontational way to build a guild, frankly. Within each class, you've given vague ideas of how ranking should be accomplished and then, essentially, told them to "have at it". You even concede that you expect fighting between the members of your guild, and believe me, there will be fighting. People will rank their friends higher and their enemies lower, they'll blow little incidents out of proportion (because whether you intend it or not, people will trend toward making others look worse to make themselves look better). Class leaders are going to be awash in accusations of corruption (and some of them will probably be guilty). Rankings lead to loot, after all, which only increases the already sky-high potential for drama. Think clearly about this: you're building a guild on the basis of subjective marking and long debates - every raid. Does that sound like a pleasant place to play?

Finally, there are a few things which I think haven't been properly thought through. No offense, but your loot system is silly. Not only is there the arguing factor I listed above, but the supply of points fluctuates radically and incentivizes strange behaviours. Consider: a caster cloth +damage piece that mages and warlocks can use drops. The Lock class leader is a reasonable guy and ranks his locks 8, 7, 7, 6 on average during a raid, because they do okay, but not great. The mage class leader is a congenial guy and awards his mages 10, 10, 9, 9. A few raids into the month, the mages have an insurmountable point lead, and easily buy the cloth piece.

Now the warlocks start debating mage ratings. The mages argue warlock ratings. The priests and druids start to yell at each other. You say you don't want to keep track of every little thing, but that's precisely what you'll have to do because without fail, any assessment is going to get someone unhappy and calling the guild leader on it.

Zeroing points at the end of the month is a similarly silly idea. Consider: you run, say, Blackwing Lair. During the entire run, no Wrath drops. Warriors shrug, figuring they'll get it next week. And the next week none drops. And the next. And the next. At the end of the month, warriors, having purchased nothing, get their points reduced to zero. Every other class, which has been looting stuff, also gets their points set to zero. Is this fair?

Your system has incentivized the opposite of hoarding - buying the first equippable item you see - which results in a uselessly scattershot loot distribution. If nothing drops, everyone gets points purged for nothing: if too much drops in the wrong order, your best tanks wind up with gloves and belts and your weaker players wind up with bracers and breastplates.

In summary, I think you're vastly underestimating the impact of drama. In my time on Stormrage, I've seen guilds come and go, and the thing that breaks end-game guilds is almost always drama, not lack of skill. Skill is important, and it should factor into recruitment, but any guild leader who doesn't try to foster a sense of community and friendship is not building for the long term.

[oldmandennis]

Ehh one more time because AQ40 is late getting started.

In an archetypal 1950s Communist economy the workers at the grim dirty canteen with the awful food got paid the same by the state as the workers at the bright clean canteen where the food was always hot and fresh. It was perceived as fair and socially just that people who work all day got the same reward

In American football, everybody from the team owner, to the star, to the backup, to the athletic trainer get the same ring when you win. Lately, most of the winning teams have been very "working man" type teams, with a relativly small spread between the stars and the scrubs. And the NFL in general is fairly socialist, splitting the monumental TV revenue evenly between small market Green Bay and large market NY Giants. Salary caps prevent runaway bidding for players. The NFL is, by most important measures, easily the most popular sport in America.

For the first few runs of the month we want to get everyone to two raids each so priority is for people who haven't raided yet

This will hurt your progression. Progression would be the key to making this work at all - you have to be so bad ass that the recruits keep flowing in despite the people you kick for (subjectively) underperforming bad mouthing you all over the place. And it will hurt some peoples DKP. Which may make them wonder why they are in this guild in the first place.

What I'm hoping is that we'll develop an elite of superb Rogues and Mages who take pride in being far above the Retrinoobs and KittyKats, while also having an enthusiastic bunch of healers who heal us because they know that if they get bored (which they won't) we'll support them in gearing up a different spec

How will your healers be less bored then healers in general? And if they gear up a bit for damage, woln't they fall behind the other healers, and be at risk of a /gkick?

[MongoJerry]

It basically comes down to: Why would someone trust you to judge their performance fairly and objectively? I don't see that happening in a brand new guild with recruits taken from the general population.

Now, in The Core, which can fairly be said to be the most progressed and successful Horde guild on Tichondrius, we use a loot council system, which basically takes much of what you want -- rewarding people who perform and contribute to the guild as a whole the most -- without all of the awkward ranking system that you're describing. Over a year ago, our guild, then called The Offenders, used a modified DKP system that caused all kinds of strife and ill feelings. When TO broke up and the core members of the guild formed The Core, we switched to using a loot council with all guild officers and class leaders voting to decide who gets what items. It succeeds where the DKP systems fail, because first and foremost, the guild members trust our guild leaders to make what are in the end subjective decisions. The loot council takes into account attendance, contributions, and past loot obtained, like a DKP system would, but having a council allows the council members to alter their loot decisions based on subjective reasons. A guild member can improve his or her ability to obtain items by improving his or her raid attendance (btw, one gets raid attendance credit even if you're outside picking herbs -- just as long as you're online and ready to sub in if needed), but while the loot council tries to distribute items fairly, it's pretty obvious that the best performers do tend to get the first pick of the hottest loot. It's a subjective decision-making process, but it works because the guild members trust the guild leaders to do the right thing.

[NuurAbSaal]

Hi

Not to further rain on your parade, but do you have the slightest idea what an epic timesink you create with a syszem as complex as yours? Writing up the rules so everybody understands them alone will take hours, and all drama aside, simply reviewing the data the classleaderts provide you with will keep you at your computer longer than raiding. You also should be very well informed on all encounters (well, this usually applies to any decent guildleader) and on top of other classes skills, abilities and special roles in raiding.

I lead a fairly small guild on Twilight's Hammer (for almost a year now), about 20-25 active level 60s, we raid together with another guild. I grossly underestimated the time I need to do keep everything working somewhat smoothly, it doesn't help that I am also responsible for the forum, warrior class leader and the link to our partner guild.

I have actually cried out of frustration on two occasions and I don't consider myself overly "emo". If you never did guildleading before, you will be totally overwhelmed with work AND drama, trust me on that.

Well, to shorten this a bit: In my opinion, you won't get past the first raid, if that.:(

Which is a shame, since I can sympathize a LOT with the problems you describe in your first post. It is so unbelievably frustrating how some people will, pardon my Klatchian, #$%& you over simply because they do not care enough or can't be assed to look at something else than personal (and virtual!:o) gain. Oh how I would like to smack them! All those people never bothering to read the rules or tactics, never comeing prepared, always whineing ->ARGH

It would be great to get a raidgroup where EVERYBODY would play like the hardcore (and I don't mean that in a time-spent-online way) veterans, to the best of his or her abilities and always for the greater good of the whole guild. Sadly, I don't think your approach has any chance of getting there, but kudos for trying to find a way. /salute

Feel free to disagree of course.

take care
Nuurabsaal

[oldmandennis]

Now there is a middle ground. You can start a more conventional guild, and then slowly ratchet up the pressure to play better as you get into more challenging content.

After the first week on Geddon or Vael, deduct DKP for people who blow up the group. Mock people who get caught by dark glare on C'thun. And once you are getting more then 40 people at your raids, have people who aren't prepared with the proper consumables put on the alt list with no compensation. Make it clear that people who are showing up prepared for progression nights will get priority on getting into the farm nights.

You don't explicitly threaten to /gkick people who really underperform, you just give them fewer and fewer oppertunities to go to attractive raids. If they are happy to fill out numbers in MC or ZG, that still helps your guild.

[Brista]

Now there is a middle ground. You can start a more conventional guild, and then slowly ratchet up the pressure to play better as you get into more challenging content.

Yeah I suspect middle ground is the way to go. While some people have felt "interesting idea" a lot of people are appalled by the idea and no one has strongly come out with "that's exactly what I've been waiting for"

OK so let's see what to salvage from the idea

I like the idea of class/raid role leaders writing up reports. Even without scores I think people will be much more focussed if their contribution is discussed. And a lot of the people who don't try are pretty blatant/stupid about it. Eg He's not that great, he only beat me cos he uses potions

I do think that we can get away with awarding the Player of the Month within each class/raid role an item. It's the stick that concerns people, not the carrot. Even if they don't like it at least it's only once per month not daily

How about the idea of raid roles rather than classes? It was frustrating as a Feral Druid to be strongly encouraged to make way for dps warriors in crap greens. I'd rather have signed up as a tank, be prioritised for tank loot but not healer loot, than have signed up as a Druid and been prioritised for healer loot I didn't want. Maybe a hierarchy where a Tank Leader is in charge but we also have class leaders

[Monkey]

How about the idea of raid roles rather than classes? It was frustrating as a Feral Druid to be strongly encouraged to make way for dps warriors in crap greens. I'd rather have signed up as a tank, be prioritised for tank loot but not healer loot, than have signed up as a Druid and been prioritised for healer loot I didn't want. Maybe a hierarchy where a Tank Leader is in charge but we also have class leaders

Role Officers make far more sense than class officers, and not just because you want classes to have more opportunity. The endgame in TBC may turn out to be radically different than the raid-or-die model that ran for so long in WoW. Right now, the premier instance we're hearing about is a 10-man instance and not even a full 25-man. There will certainly be full 25-man raids eventually, but I think you'll see continuing 5/10 man content being released at the same time as new raids.

In the meantime, unless you force yourself to think about those potentially serious changes, it's can be easy to fall back on the current endgame. In a raid guild discussion on another board, one person proposed a TBC leadership outline with 23 officer positions. But the funny part was all the people defending him!

[oldmandennis]

I like the idea of class/raid role leaders writing up reports. Even without scores I think people will be much more focussed if their contribution is discussed. And a lot of the people who don't try are pretty blatant/stupid about it. Eg He's not that great, he only beat me cos he uses potions

In our guild, this works a lot better when you have a class hiarchy. We even have seperate voice chat channels for the different classes. To the maximum extent possible, general complaints and concerns are discussed amongst the class, and if something needs to be said the leader says it to the other class leader. For example, we usually assign shamans to mages during AOE. It's much better for the shaman leader to say "OldMan, your mage went down. Keep those heals hotter", then it is for the mages to start going "Shaman suck" - "Well if we had AI we could keep you up" - "We didn't have time to do it, the noob hunters pulled too soon"... blah blah blah. It stops medium sized things from becoming bigger, while still reinforcing better play.

I do think that we can get away with awarding the Player of the Month within each class/raid role an item.

Not a bad idea.

How about the idea of raid roles rather than classes? It was frustrating as a Feral Druid to be strongly encouraged to make way for dps warriors in crap greens. I'd rather have signed up as a tank, be prioritised for tank loot but not healer loot, than have signed up as a Druid and been prioritised for healer loot I didn't want.

I'm not sure what the problem is as far as loot goes. There aren't a whole lot of items which would be conflicted between druids and warriors. All the armor is out, weapons are out, rings you should go for ones with armor that are usually not wanted by warriors... neck back and trinkets are worth making a fuss over?