The Attendance Boss

The Attendance Boss.

Oh how I hate thee. Of all the bosses I’ve fought in WoW this seems to be the one that never gets nerfed and seems to scale with gear. In my current guild this seems to be the major issue preventing us from being a top 10 guild on our server.

When we first began raiding in Firelands on Mug’Thol, we had some recruiting to do, that was something we knew ahead of time and had been trying out best to do so. We weren’t real picky, it was a new patch so no knowledge of the fight was expected, and valor gear and tier 11 was so easy to come by that we really didn’t have concerns about gear level. Our first raid we downed three bosses with less than 25 people because we just could not fill the spots. It got better the following week, we filled, if just barely, and the following week we were up to around 30 people. Finally we could start to select based on performance, and we did. We of course had people quit over the fact that they were replaced do to poor performance, but we had a pretty good first month overall.

Then it happened. There was a sharp and sudden drop off in attendance. First we noticed it on Thursdays, we were having trouble filling raid. And suddenly it was every week. Normally we are able to fill our raid, although we have 24 manned a few bosses and done a few Baradin Holds with substantially less than that, however it’s WHEN we fill it that is the issue. Our designated raiding times are 830-12 Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; this is something that is clear to everyone that apps and so everyone in the guild should be aware of this. Does life sometimes get in the way and it is not possible to show up for every single raid on time? Absolutely. Working late, family gatherings, bad traffic, whatever the reason, there are always good excuses. However when we are consistently having issues making that first boss pull before 930, an entire hour after we are supposed to be buffing and pulling trash, that’s an issue.

I have found this week especially hard to put up. There’s a huge nerf to Heroic modes in Firelands that has taken place; 15% reductions of damage and health right across the board. This is the week that we should be able to really push past some bosses, using this nerf to give us a bit of room to make some mistakes, and yet this week seems to have presented our worst attendance so far. It’s Thursday today, last night we raided and again didn’t pull until 930. Around 850 in my frustration I said in guild chat something to the effect of “Is everyone that showed up late aware that we raid at 830?” The response I received from one person was “It’s just a game,” and from another “there’s no point getting mad about it, that doesn’t solve anything”. I hate both of those responses. I get that it’s just a game, but if you had plans with a friend to meet them for drinks, and you showed up 30mins-1hour late, how happy would your friend be? Sitting there waiting, and waiting, and waiting until finally you show up, no apology, and just sit down. That’s exactly what making the rest of your guild wait is like. How do we fix an attendance issue? Recruit. We recruit and start to sit people who don’t show up. Will we maybe not progress as quickly by not running our top players because they don’t show up? Probably. But it’s not as though they can really go anywhere else. Most guilds that are substantially into heroics require something in the area of 90% attendance from raiders, it’s something they can afford to say because they have a lot of applicants when they’re sitting at 6/7, us not so much, but considering we don’t progress very quickly by wasting half our week waiting around, I think I would rather raid with people that want to be there, and try hard (even if they aren’t the best) then people that show up whenever they feel like it, without the regard for others to be on time, or let us know that they will be late.

Any other suggestions?