Guildleader Chores - Helping out and Helping yourself

I do not claim to run a perfect guild, nor do I claim to run the best guild. I only know that I do what I can to run a guild with a pleasant environment, and that there is a lot of work that goes running a casual social part and the casual heroic part.

In a guild like Frostwolves it can be difficult for heroic raiders to help the casual raid on the weekend without getting some kind of reward out of it. I have lectured the officers often enough saying that if you want to be an officer, then you should be attending. Distributing loot however, can be difficult because how do you make it fair for everyone yet also some reward for the heroic raiders?

This was always a difficult thing with Xyn, because he didn't like how I looted mains > alts and then allowed all mains to roll. He got so grumpy with me once, that he told me he would stop coming to Sunday raids. And that was fine. But it gave me something to think about, and how I could make it a little more fair and rewarding for time being given by heroic raiders.

So, I said that with high ilvl stuff (titanforged) and highly sought after things (like trinkets) priority would be given to heroic raiders if they didn't already have it, otherwise mains > alts.

So far, that has seemed to go down well. Soon people were bringing alts to Sundays and then the alts would roll on stuff that mains didn't need.

I mentioned in a previous post about doing heroic carries for the casual normal raiders to get their AotC. Because we had been struggling with doing Gul'dan with our normal heroic group, throwing one casual into the mix might make it so much harder that everyone would be cranky.

Someone proposed an alternate solution. How about we take a smaller group to do Gul'dan of people who were happy to help guildies out as being excellent at raid mechanics and good internet connections?

Man, I could see lots of problems with that.

Whom do I choose? And those who were left out, were they going to be upset? Would there be ranting because someone got to use an extra roll on Gul'dan? And those who did come, they had to be patient and not yell at the person being carried because that was why we were doing the run in the first place.

Some choices were easy. They put their hand up to help the guild and were always super helpful. They were loyal to the guild and the ideals and supportive in many ways. They also had to stay till the carry was done. Officers were also included. I had 11 people and I thought ok I will run with that.

We did our first carry run on Monday and it wasn't easy, but we did it. Boss health was much less which was good, and our first "carry" guinea pig was Furyfire. He did well and though he didn't outdps the tanks he managed to stay alive the whole fight. I was impressed. He also lived through heroic Elisande!

I realised that there was another way to make the choice for who helps on Gul'dan. And that was if they didn't kick up a fuss if I had to sit them out. Because, I realised, that would separate out the ones who wanted to help from those who were there for themselves.

There are some things I can enforce. Heroic raiders needing certain addons, contributing one flask for the guild cauldron, handing over herbs for your AotC carry. But, there are some things you cannot force and one of them is guild spirit.

I was really proud and pleased with my guildies who came to help for the Gul'dan carry, knowing that we would be doing this for a few more weeks to make sure we could help as many as we could get their achievement. I was all warm and fuzzy inside when people were apologising to Fury for how long it took, but was just as pleased when he was so grateful for getting the carry and all the effort we put in.

Perhaps I should retract my first statement. I said I do not claim to run the best guild, but really, I think I do. I love my guild :) and I am proud to be a part of it.

Tacky, Faith, Emmu, Duck, Blood, Magato - your turns are coming up soon!