Alan was writing me about an interesting subject, the tension that sometimes arises between the general good of a guild, and the wishes of the individual guild member. That happens most often when raiding, when it turns out that the perfect raid group and the reality of people actually showing up are two very different things.
The perfect raid guild has exactly 40 members, with a perfect mix of classes, and all of these members turn up punctually for every raid and never have to leave early. Hands up who knows such a guild. Nobody? Thought so!
The first problem for a raid is getting 40 people together at all. Now if your guild only has 40 members, you can be sure that less than 40 will turn up. Not everybody can raid every night. So what most guilds do is having more guild members eligible for raiding than raiding slots, in the hope that 40 of them will turn up for the raid. If just 38 or so turn up, that is still okay, but if you fall below 30 you might have problems with encounters that would be easy for 40. The problem starts when more than 40 people turn up for the raid, because then somebody has to decide who goes and who can't go.
Most guilds have some sort of sign-up system, either on their website, or using addons like the Guild Event Manager GEM. So if in doubt, the first 40 people to sign up get a spot in the raid. Unfortunately that isn't ideal either. Why should somebody who just happened to be around when the raid entry was put on the calendar have priority over somebody who happened to not log on that day? Besides sign-up systems lead to perverse incentives, people signing up "just in case", and then not showing up for the raid, while somebody who would have had time didn't sign up, because the raid was shown as full. The next problem is what to do if among the first 40 people that signed up there are 10 hunters and not a single priest. If more than 40 people show up on time for the raid, it might be better for the guild as a whole to take some priest from the waiting list in preference over some hunter who signed up early.
Probably a better system is a blind sign-up system, where nobody gets a guaranteed spot. When the raid begins, the raid leader has to make some tough choices based on optimum class mix, competence of the players, who signed up when, and who didn't get a spot in the last raid. Very difficult to handle, but unless somebody comes up with a brilliant raid-spot-distribution point system, there is no easy way. Actually I find raid-slot distribution more difficult than loot distribution.
A related problem pits the player's right to play what he wants against the guild's need of certain classes. I have both a level 60 warrior and a level 60 priest, but as the guild usually has a lot more warriors than priests in any raid, it would create some tension if I would chose to bring my warrior. And imagine if a guild's main tank declares that now that he is full epic, he doesn't have any interest in coming to raids with his warrior any more, but wants to come with his rogue alt.
World of Warcraft raiding guilds are often more a confederation by necessity, than a band of brothers. Churn rates are high, and few people are willing to put their individual goals behind the greater good of the guild. That is only logical if they don't know if they will be with the same guild in half a year. On the one side a guild needs to be fair to everybody, because otherwise people simply leave. On the other side a raid leader needs to be able to take decisions like who to invite with a view to maximizing the raid's chance of success, and not only on perceived "fairness". The more people learn to trust each other, and to look out for the good of the guild, the easier it becomes. A guild full of egoists is bound for failure.
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