Starting a Raiding Guild

Well that isn’t exactly the case. I’m not starting a raiding guild. I’m overseeing the transition of a casual guild into a casual raiding guild. When I started, I didn’t quite know what I was in for but I thought it would be fun. Having been a raid leader in previous guilds, I thought that actually organising the new structure of the guild would be easy as pie. I was wrong.

There were steps to be taken before I could start implementing any raiding plans and questions to be asked. What are our aims? Where do we start? When do we start? Who leads the raids? I answered those questions fairly quickly. Our aims are to clear as much end game content as possible before Wrath of the Lich King. We start in Kara and move on to ZA when it is released. We start after the 2.2 patch and I lead the raids until other experienced members join up. Ok. Simple enough. Now to start reshaping the guild.

The first thing I did was to redo the ranking system of my guild. Previously, we had a ranking system based upon the level of the player but this wouldn’t do for a casual raiding guild so we replaced it with a simple system, which looks like the following:

Trial Member
Member
Elite
Class Champion (1 per class)
Raid Leader (Me)
Deputy GM (2)
Guild Master (1)

The next thing I did was to slightly change our recruitment policy. We want to come across as a casual raiding guild that not only supports end game content but also supports medium level content. So I decided to raise the level cap on recruitment to level 40. High enough but not too low. I also decided to give those players who wanted to raid a format to follow when they apply. That would allow me to see what they can do when directed to follow instructions as this is a key element of a raider.

So we have the ranks and the requirements. Now onto the juicy stuff – DKP. I decided up a zero-sum DKP system. For those of you unfamiliar with zero-sum DKP, it basically works by applying a value to items that drop. This value is then deducted from the player who wins the item. The value is then divided amongst the total number of raiders. For example:

Item value = 50 DKP
Players = 10
50/10 = 5
5 DKP is awarded to all members of the raid.

Seems like a fair enough system. I’ll be using WebDKP to admin it and as I am leading the raids, I shall be the only one really touching it.

Until we start raiding, that is as far as I can go. We have the members, the system and the leaders. All we need now is VoIP and that comes with patch 2.2.

I’ll keep a blog of my guilds raiding efforts here on The Daily Quest.

You can view my guild via this link.