Saturday, March 03, 2012

Are 10-man Guilds Too Small?

I've been in semi-large guilds for almost all of my MMO tenure. One of the advantages of large guilds is that whenever you log on, there's usually a critical mass of people online. Oh, not enough to raid, but usually enough so that you can start a 5-man, or there's some chat going on, etc.

Is this the case in 10-man guilds?  Or do 10-man guilds normally have 5 or fewer people online at non-raid times?  Or do 10-mans work best as small teams inside larger guilds?

It seems to me that this is one downside of the push towards smaller raid sizes. Larger raid sizes required larger guilds, making it more likely that one would log into a bustling community at any given time.

12 comments:

  1. What if the server itself was a bustling community, ready to form groups and chat?

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  2. I never considered it that way, but it seems right. Nevertheless, nowadays we just hop on the LFG and get things done. 5-man content is available solo. There is no need for the guild past raid-time, so its dimensions are not a concern.

    Which is disheartening. I would think that reducing the size of a guild would create a tighter community, but it is not the case, as this community isn't required anywhere else in the game. Call me a retrograde, but I liked whispering half the guild to get an instance running.

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  3. In my experience it depended more on what role you were playing when you asked if people wanted to group up for 5 man content.

    Generally a tank would be able to get a full group rather easily just so we could skip the que times as dps. However it was much more common as dps to only be able to find 1-2 people to group with instead of a full group.

    Though my results may be skewed as I was one of my guild's best dps in both movement, utility and overall dps. Some of our average members might of had a harder time. I remember hearing from out GM frequently that people were looking for help gearing up but rarely saw those people and I would have been more then willing to carry them if the need be.

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  4. I am in a 10 man raid guild and I find that during the big events like new patches and expansions, there are plenty of people on for my "prime time" gaming sessions but that may be because my guilds core raiders share the same roughly the same schedule.

    Logging in at odd times and being the only one on in the guild isn't unsually, but at the same time logging in at all during that odd of a time is.

    We have a REALLY strong core of people on for probably 4 to 6 hours a day during said events, but now after having cata out for so long we probably limp along with only a lot of people on during raid nights or other planned occasions.

    I would say that a 10 man guild that probably runs a little large feels very social group oriented rather then the huge mob of a 25 man guild simple because you depend on those other 9ish people for more.

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  5. This argument was true before patch 3.3 where you had to trade PuG 5mans, and probably before that in TBC where 25m raiding was dominant.

    A 10m guild probably has alts, standby, and also socials. For a 5man you can also PuG (if you got 3 or more its a "guild run"), if you got a tank or healer you got a quicker queue (for LFR you'd prefer a healer). All that does not much matter much though.

    What mattered, matters, and will matter is the (quality) peers you know, and the peers of your peers. Those can be now cross platform (RealID), and soon you don't even know their real name (BattleTag).

    If you run an alt run you rather take a social or the friend of a player who vouches for him than a random from /trade who has achi. Reason is that the social/friend is a peer who may come back, who accepts the atmosphere, and they are skilled enough to pick up the fight (the social pressure of the peer who knew the fellow would otherwise make them look bad).

    If you know the right people on my realm you can easily get into HC progress in PuG alt run. You need to be skilled though. We also have a lot of PuGs on our realm, and they've been able to clear 8/8 since first weeks.

    The advantage of a 10m raiding guild is that everyone knows everyone, and everyone gets along. Conflicts are easily solved because of this. In a 25m there is more group forming. I also find the 25m chat in /ra and /g quite hectic. On the other hand I can imagine the competition in 25m is more fierce because of people having same class/role/spec combo.

    But your argument that there are more people available, I don't think it is relevant anymore in patch 4.3.3. Plus soon with BattleTags even less because that'd make the realm you play on even less relevant.

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  6. @Kleps, a server just isn't the same to me. For one, it's too big, there are too many people. Ideally, you have a guild, you open up the guild listing and you recognize all the names.

    Second, a guild is a bit like a private club. It's not only defined by the people who are in the guild, but also the people who are not in the guild. You can kick out the trolls and spammers and misbehaving people.

    @Milady, it's not necessarily a "need" for the guild. I think it's unreasonably to expect a majority of people in the guild to be online at random times when there is no scheduled guild activity. But the larger the guild, the more *likely* it is that there will be a significant mass of people at any given time.

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  7. It's no longer possible to subscribe to comments by email since the design of the comment window changed. Could you check that please? Thanks!

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  8. Depends on the kind of 10 man guild? My 10-man-only guild runs 4 10 man teams, so that's 50 people plus the social members.

    I came to this guild from another guild that ran 5 10 man teams in WOTLK, so we are not so few and far between :)

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  9. @ Rohan your example is recognizing the name in guild. As a player in a 10m semi hardcore raiding guild I find that quite shallow. I know every player in my guild. I know how their voice sounds, I know their personality, I know most of their alt names, and I know almost all the socials as well. I even get along with every person (tho some require a user manual), and I'd play with every single one of them. Good luck with that in a 25m raiding guild.

    A realm, depending on size, is like a huge guild. In a big guild you don't decide who is in and who is out either (same with realm, unless you are officer), and the bigger the guild the more people you don't know and potentially people you don't like. If I read trade chat on my realm there are many names I recognize. There are many people I played with before, and there are also a few people I would not want to play with again. I am sure there trolls and spammers but I use add-ons and /ignore to filter out the gold/anal/legendary spam.

    I'd say we're more discussing realm culture now, but it matters in this context. Many people on my realm came from a realm transfer from a different realm where they all started to play in Classic and TBC. So people know each other, even though they are now in different guilds (some even realm transferred and keep in touch via RealID). It is not uncommon for a new social to join guild or vchat who was a former player somewhere between 2005 and 2012.

    So all in all, the realm you play on, your guild, your friend all together are your peers.

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  10. @Kring, it looks like Blogger recently changed their comment layout and that option disappeared. There's a number of complaints on the forums already, so it'll probably get fixed sooner or later.

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  11. I'm GM of a small raiding guild, 15-20 active accounts, and we solve this issue by posting more stuff on the calendar. Achi runs, pvp, w/e people want to group for. If people know what's going on and when we don't have any issues with getting the bodies we need. We also PUG for anything, right up to raids. My friends list is full of people who like doing stuff with us ('cause we're cool as hell (; ) so if we're short a slot or two we have a meta group to dip into.

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  12. My guild is on a low pop realm and is "strictly" social. We have a core group of raiders, about 7 or 8 people, that show up each week prepared to raid. We also post our raid schedule 2 weeks ahead of time, though its always the same each week. Because of this we always have at least 11 people signed up and a few more tentative. We have no problem filling our last 2 or 3 slots from either in the guild or from friends who used to be members.

    The trouble with our social guild is that many of our members are either couples or married adults with kids. This is true with our core raiders as well. When we lose one of the members we lose both which usually means we have to pull from our friends or RealID lists and do older content.

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