When you just don't have the people...

Within my guild we have 2 groups of 10mans. This has been like that for quite a while already, in fact we still name them after the names they had when they were formed while raiding Karazhan. (though we used to have 3 groups back then).

One group raids during the week, and the other raids in the weekend (my group). Like a lot of guilds we ran into heavier weather during Cataclysm and a lot of people left. And not only due to Cataclysm, but sometimes personal situations just change. Then some of the people from my group shifted to the week group because the times fit better in their schedule, and now...yeah now my group is short people.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am NOT trying to get people to apply for my guild through here at all. We have an application process where you need a sponsor, and this sponsor needs to have known you for a while already before they can sponsor you into the guild.

This application process is there for very good reasons, and has worked quite well for a looong time already. My guild has a brilliant atmosphere, and we like to keep it that way.

This does however bring problems with it. Because when you lose people, it is hard to fill up the raid again. And my raid group is not just 1 person short...no we could easily add 3 people to our roster.

I've been breaking my head over trying to find a way to fill the gap, but in the mean time the only way to actually raid is with pugs.

Now, I am the first to admit that there is absolutely nothing wrong with recruiting some pugs for your raid. After all, I did lead a 25man pug raid on sundays for about 2 years, and quite a few people of this pug raid became guildies. But bringing pugs does bring issues.

At the least they are not in tune with the rest of the group. Everybody is new to them, and while they can be good, playing with new people is always harder.

Then there are those people who are pretty good, but halfway through your raid all of a sudden have their own guild calling for them. The raid gets disrupted, at best you can find someone to replace this person fairly quickly, at worst you can call the raid and continue some other time.

And then of course there is the possibility of getting an absolute newb for a player. People who have all the best intentions, and maybe they even have the potential to be good, but they just haven't got a clue what they're doing. Every single detail has to be explained to them, while everybody is sighing in guild chat.

But worst is when you get the 'aso pug'. The pug who thinks that they are better than your group and they are a godsend and by their holy presence allow the world to keep turning. Quite often when you review logs these are the people who feel that they 'deserve' to stand in shit while the healers just have to 'pick up the slack'.

In the end none of it is ideal, but not wanting to recruit bodies, just for the bodies, I don't see other solutions on the short term.

Luckily we might have some sort of solution coming up, but until then I guess I'll just be sighing quietly every time I get up at 5 am to try and find pugs to fill up the raid.