Spooncraft

In today’s Captain’s Lounge we’re going to get a little in depth with the idea of guild alliances.Basically, a guild alliance is when two guilds that are medium to small in size, band together to form one raid group in order to meet the requirements needed to enter an instance. Two small guilds that have karazahn on farm status for quite some time but individually cannot seem to recruit enough players to make an honest attempt at 25 man content can band together and form an alliance so they can actually take on the higher level encounters.

There are a lot of different things to consider before making a deal with another guild involving raiding and mutual assistance. There’s a lot of drama and headache that can stem from a bad run this late in the game, reputation does make a very big difference in future recruitment.

First and foremost the guild leaders have to not hate each other. There doesn’t even have to be some deep seeded love and friendship between the two leaders but a sense of mutual respect and understanding that this venture is so that both guilds can progress while they work on their own recruitment. Sometimes guild alliances start and never end as both guilds maintain their individualism and yet always raid together.

There’s also the more jagged topic of guild mergers that can sometimes be a really negative subject rather than a progressive one. There isn’t much that can be said about merges, the key factor has to be how close both guilds are. If enough time has passed where both guilds spend so much time together in different raids and such that any separation is ambiguous then a merger won’t necessarily be seen as a hostile takeover.

Secondly there’s the issue of looting rights. When there’s two guilds involved one may use DKP the other council, or some other method of dishing out loot. This has to be decided right away with the understanding that this alliance is something that both groups want to keep going for a while. It should not be a fly by night or “just one time” kind of thing as it’s not so much an alliance at that point rather charity for the guild with more people.

Finally you want to make sure that when first starting out raiding you don’t have your special members given the ability to speak. Every guild has at least one. That special person that doesn’t seem to open his or her mouth without either pissing somebody off or making a complete ass of themselves; but they are amazing players (or just filling a niche you’ve yet to recruit more of). When you’re first trying to solidify the alliance you want to bring your A team. Make sure that everybody is focussed on the objective and that they came prepared for the encounter. It leaves much to be desired when by the end of the 13th wipe, one guild feels like they pretty much carried the other.