Guild Mum

Ok, so I’m about to dump my thoughts. I was going to post on my guild forum, but I don’t want to start too much there and I want to empty my brain somewhere.

My guild is a strict 10 man raiding guild, as defined by GuildOx. Have a read about it, but here’s the essence of their defnitions…

What are the 10-man ’strict’ guild rankings?

The 10-man strict rankings show the achievements of pure 10-man raiding guilds. A ‘pure’ 10-man raiding guild is one that does not participate in 25m progression content. We recognize that 25-man guilds or guilds that regularly participate in 25m pug runs often have a distinct advantage since they can gear up at accelerated rates and move faster through 10-man content. Consequently, our 10-man strict rankings exclude guilds which access any 25-man content that offers higher ilvl gear than what the current 10-man normal content provides. If you are a 10m guild that has members which want to run 25 man pugs then the ’strict’ classification is not for you.

First introduced by GuildOx in early 2009 - we became the innovator of 10m strict guild rankings.

We have always been a strict 10 man raiding guild (since we formed in July last year), not doing any 25 man recent content and we are now top of the realm. This sounds wonderful, until you counter it with the fact that there are no other strict 10 man raiding guilds left on our server. Now it’s starting to cause problems. Raid sign ups have dropped off lately and we’ve had to cancel some raids. Some of the more active raiders are keen to PUG ICC25 on their nights off for something to do and are hassling for us to forget our strictness. I am curious about motives and the effect it will have on our guild.

Motives - well, as far as I can see the biggest motivator to pugging ICC25 must be loot. Not many of my guild are achievement chasers, so I doubt it’s for that. Most of the folk in the guild have other characters they could play on on off nights.

I have almost the best gear I can get on Seph from normal 10 man ICC and am looking forward to downing LK and moving on to Heroic - we’re at 10/12 at the moment. We achieve things without the gear that 25 man raid guilds have. We have to kill stuff the way it was intended and not be “boosted” by having better gear. I can see that to some this might cause problems, but I LIKE thinking that we did it the proper way. (Interesting side not - wouldn’t it be fun if Blizz made it so that gear automatically downgraded if you did 10 man raids in 25 man gear :P)

What effect will it have on the guild and raiding? Will people decide that they would prefer loot over guild achievement and not sign for our raids if they can PUG ICC25 and get loot instead of wiping for 2 hours for an evening trying to kill a new boss?

It’s a tough one, but from my perspective, I like being strict 10 man. I like raiding with 9 close friends and having a laugh. Doing 25 man raids is too much for me now. They feel crowded and you don’t have to be as on top of your game. The challenge of 10 man for me is higher. Nobody can slack. You all have to be completely focussed.

For me it’s easy - I don’t want to pug for better loot and I can see no other benefit in doing ICC25. The fights are the same, the bosses are the same. There’s more to the game than loot and gear score and e-peen. I’m sticking with my strict 10 man. I just hope the rest of the guild will stick with me and sign for raids and carry on through to kill the Lich King. I’m sure we can do it and we don’t need 25 man gear to do it.

*wall of text crits you for 100000 - so sorry for the lack of pictures*

Ok - I’m not sure this has come out right, but it’s a start and I need to go play with my kids, but this has been welling up inside me for a week and I had to let it out somewhere.