Well it’s finally here. To the joy of many players, Blizzard announced the release date for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria. The release date being only two months away is a surprise to most players who thought they would be waiting much longer. As an officer in my guild, I have already noticed how this information has changed the mindset of the raid team. Many of the raiders are already burnt out on Dragon Soul, and now that there is only two months till the next expansion, many do not see the point in continue raiding. This got me thinking about how guild leaders can keep their guild active, without upsetting those players who do not feel like going into Dragon Soul, or doing whatever else the guild does regularly.
The first thing to keep in mind is you do not want to scold players who do not show up for raid night. Even if you are a very serious raiding guild, many players are sick of Dragon Soul and would rather do other things with their time. If players are ridiculed for missing raids, they will most likely just stop playing with the guild. On the other hand, allowing players to miss raids will allow them to get in a good mindset and be ready to get back into serious raiding during Mists of Pandaria.
The second thing goes hand in hand with the previous. Recruit. Yes it is true that a lot of players are sick of the current raiding content, yet there are some players who have barely been able to step foot into Dragon Soul for whatever reason. Recruiting these players into the guild will help bolster your ranks as well as fill any spots of raiders who did not show up. This is also great because it gives new players a chance to be carried through a raid and allows them to get a feeling for raiding. After raiding a few months at the end of the expansion, they may be ready to join a serious raid team during Mists of Pandaria.
The last and most important thing to remember during these slow months is to stay active. This may seem contradicting to the first statement but it is not. Being active simply means that there is something going on in the guild, be it the normal raiding schedule, running old raids, leveling characters together, or messing around in battlegrounds. As long as the guild is doing something then it has a much better chance of staying together during these last months of Cataclysm.
This is the strangest time of any MMO, when players still have content to run yet they can see the upcoming expansion on the horizon. It is important for guild leaders on this time to remember that there are both players who are sick of the current content, and those who are still interested in it. It is a difficult task to try to balance between these and keep everyone happy, but doing so will keep the guilds morale high and allow the guild to flourish in the upcoming expansion.
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