We are less than 2 weeks away from starting our grinds to level 60. On that journey, I wanted to structure some ideas I have for mitigating attrition and getting us into our first Molten Core raid as soon as possible.
Attrition & Benches
There is quite a bit of misdirected focus on the (lack of) boss difficulties when it comes to Vanilla. The challenge rarely was in the content, but forming a group capable of reliably showing up to put the required amount of hours into the raids to push forward.
Running a 40 man raiding guild is a different beast.
The biggest fight in Vanilla is not Kel’Thuzad or C’Thun. It is being able to effectively run the same 40 players with a healthy bench – night after night. Being benched is not fun, but it is an absolute requirement in Vanilla. When running such a large group, operating on a thin raider pool is unsustainable. Traditionally in Vanilla it was common to have 50-55 players online on Tuesday, and 42-45 on during progression. That 2-5 player margin would consistently get guilds into trouble. We were no exception.
In Classic, we will be recruiting at a surplus and working towards creating a community that is understanding of the stringent requirement to maintain a healthy roster that extends into the bench. Since Classic is releasing in a rather unique way where everyone is leveling in parallel, it opens up a major recruiting tactic that worked exceptionally for us in Wildstar.
Thanks, Wildstar
In Wildstar there was an absolutely ridiculous attunement chain that required every would-be raider to complete every Dungeon with a “Silver Medal”, or under 30 minutes. This ended up requiring the guild to consistently run all eight 5-man dungeons long after they were even relevant for us.
For those who are not aware, due to the above Wildstar was bleeding players the moment the population hit level cap. The 30-minute requirement to do dungeons was hardly a test of merit, but mostly will. Folks without a guild to support them struggled to meet the requirements for the attunement because it required 4 other players who knew all the gimmicks to complete it in a reasonable fashion.
Realizing that we were going to be running these dungeons for new recruits rather regularly, I pushed for those in the key runs to try their best to pull in a random PUG to fill in the 5th slot. There was an unending amount of players screaming in General for help with their raiding homework, and it was a perfect pool to dip into for recruitment. Combined with the rather flashy website at the time, we were able to pull in a few players a week through the attunement chain by just asking them to check out our site after they were done carried. I believe the same methods can be applied in Classic.
4+1 Dungeons
As we start hitting level cap and beyond, starting the farm for BiS gear I want to really push the idea of 4+1 Groups.
4 Members, 1 PUG
By recruiting at the top of the leveling deck instead of the entry like is happening currently, we are rolling better odds to be raid ready sooner. We’re looking at roughly 50 applications since we opened our doors to the public on Monday night. It’s a great showingt, but ultimately a crapshoot when it comes to how the players are going to end up when it’s raid time.
By pulling in outside players to our BiS runs, it drives Cue the Credits straight into the server community. Allowing us to hook our claws into potential talent. While running with 5 CtC members is likely going to be easier, adding a few minutes to a run to potentially net a great recruit is worth it. Especially when most of the guild is still leveling. If we can get 30 players to 60 rather quickly, and recruit the last 8-10 to shove push us into MC then that is all the better.
I think we will find there are going to be a lot of players leveling alone, waiting for to see which guild is most aggressively positioned to enter Molten Core the most prepared. That can easily be us.
Recruitment Stress
I hope you’re starting to see a reoccurring theme here.
Recruitment, recruitment, recruitment.
The Vanilla mantra. Combined with the threat of retail patches and other game releases, Classic is going to endure some major hiccups throughout it’s content releases. Every member needs to have this in the back of their heads as we move forward. It’s my job as the GM to make sure we are setup for the smoothest path to reach our goals. But that is built on a never ending pull on the servers playerbase.
We endured Wildstar and were top on the server, this will be a breeze.
Cue the Credits has been able to hold together for so long due to how cohesive the personalities are to our raiding style. Almost 15 years later and I was able to almost immediately pull in over half the required players to raid in Vanilla from our Veterans alone. But even as much as we all get along and love WoW, doing Molten Core for the 15th time while wait for BWL is going to wear on some.
We need to be prepared for that.
And we will be.