I just became the GM of a guild on Ginleas. The name is Carpe Noctum. two days after I officially took the helm, we merged with a guild that was about 70% of our size. The goal of the guild is to be a raiding guild, but not a hard core one. We have 2 10-man Ulduar teams that are 5 bosses in (started that last week) so that we can learn the fights for 25 man. Goal is to begin 25 man on the 15th and move forward.

Any tips from previous GM's for succeeding with this? The first 10 days has been a bit stressful with the merger, but I think its all working out. We run a council loot system with attendance and loot tracking to help guide it. Any advice would be appreciated.

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I've been part of a guild merger. 10-man runs were still divided along old allegiance lines more than a year later, to the extent that people will not invite guildies and invite friends instead, or alts of friends. My advice is to be organized with 10-man runs or people will feel left out. Try to mix up the makeup as best you can. With WOTLK 10-mans are more important than before, because you can get experience with the encounters in a much easier setting.

You can treat 10-mans as either completely casual or a step towards 25-man raiding. Both will have unhappy people, but one will benefit the guild and one will not. Pick your poison. If people don't want to take one for the team and 10-man raid with other guildies instead of their friends, tell them they should not have merged.

If you're not organized, here's what will happen:

1) People will bring friends. No benefit to guild. Guildie who needs gear and experience, dies a lot to the red goo on the floor, will continue to need gear and continue to die to red goo because they can't practice.
2) No tanks needed, so warrior_friend_01 will go as dps and gear up a spec they will seldomly raid with. No benefit to guild. Guildie who is main specced to tank gets no gear or experience.

Have a no alt policy for 10-mans is my last suggestion. Don't let the rogue bring his shitty tank when a main spec raider is sitting on his ass.

Ease up when you're in 25-mans consistently. But while you're in "hurry up and get ready" mode, you should do some of the things I've outlined.

Great point about the merger! I forgot to mention a couple things.

We ran as an alliance between the two guilds (community channel for people forming groups 10 man voa's/os and naxx) so the integration of members has been the most solid part of the merger. We have some officer issues, but I think they will work out in the next week.

As far as the Alt policy. We have pushed the idea of class balance so hard that (right now) people are only bringing their main... but it is early yet. So I will keep that in my notes .

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Don't allow bickering. Kick people for drama. Offer loot in exchange for web cam strip teases.

Change the name.

Don't pitch the bitch.

Wake the Sleeper so your rival guild can't get primals as easy. Then fail on Tunare and have said rival come in to res and show you the door.

Give up.

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This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

Implement some sort of non loot council system. Even if you just random roll shit. Loot council is a great idea in theory, but in practice always ends up driving the people running it crazy.(either that or the rest of the guild, because they ignore all the people bitching at them when they give shit to their friends. heh) When you get into 25 mans, you'll have happier raiders if they feel they have some control over their looting future.

(I personally prefer DKP, since I like to plan my progression, but that's a headache for the person keeping track of it too. Pros and cons to everything.)

Considering progression is irrelevant to WoW, it's not as terrible a solution as it was in EQ for sure. Still fucking retarded unless done very very well.

I still don't understand how DKP can legitimately work in WoW due to badge loot. Does it end up being everyone saving their points for Weapons and Trinkets?

You only get 3 or 4 items from badges, and they are far from the best.

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This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

Well, I'm not sure about other classes but like maybe the belt is an upgrade, but it's not best in slot. I'm saving my badges for the tier set, though I wouldn't pass up a tier piece just because I can get it from badges, unless I was like 10ish badges away from it.

We use EPGP which is another form of DKP basically. After working out some kinks and me essentially becoming the loot officer things have smoothed out. If I see people saving DKP I tell them they need to start sending tells for loot or they don't get shit when they do want something.

It's rarely been a problem, most people in my guild will take upgrades. I only recently had to a tell a warlock in heroic gear to start taking stuff and he was barred from any weapon or tier drops until he did.

We also do officer decision for ilvl 232+ gear. The person still gets charged points, but the loot gets distributed more evenly to players who deserve it.

Loot has not been an issue for us so far. Thick skins for whiners is key, but in WoW, loot council seems to work for this group.

The main issue we are working through is inclusion and identifying a single 10 man "A" team. Right now we are mitigating it by having two teams race. This is breeding some interesting competitions within the guild, also some hurt feelings when people aren't measuring up. The balance is in being a less than hard core guild while still progressing through content.

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I really liked EPGP, except for the fact that there didn't appear to be a way to manually update it, say if someone didn't get credit for sitting out, and there was no web-based component.

You can export egpp to text or html.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

er...epgp.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

That would involve work.

It involves work to import the eqdkp mod into the website too, you can just upload the html to your website and that takes less time. =P

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

DKP and Loot Council both work fine depending on the guild. My current guild has been using loot council since Molten Core and we've had maybe 2 times where loot has been brought up as a complaint. If someone is having problems with loot council, it's because either A) The officers are stupid, B) People cry too much about loot, or both - in which case said stupid officers need to be replaced, crybaby guild members need replacement, or both.