We’re in the lucky position that we get at least 80% raid attendance from our core raiders. We raid 5 nights a week, and anyone who consistently misses more than 1 night will be asked why. What this means is that we have a core team of about 30 raiders: a full 25-man raid and some extras to allow for balancing heals/dps/tanks for different fights.

If you’re a core raider (it’s a separate guild rank), you expect to be in raid. You’ll sit some fights out, but you’ll do it outside the instance in group 6. Everyone WILL see some boss fights every night, unless we’re busy wiping on progression content (Twins at the moment): then we only take our absolute best team.

So there’s a kind of two-way expectation, and I guess this exists in every raiding guild to some extent. The guild expects players to be available, and players expect the guild to let them raid.

If we don’t want someone to be in the raid, subbing in or out depending on raid balance, then we demote them. There’s a reserve raider rank, for people who want a shot at raiding sometimes but aren’t worried even if they go a week or two without spots. They almost never work on progression content, but there are usually a few nights a week with room for a few reserves. Particularly on farm content, we try to sub some of these guys in and give some of the core raiders some “time off”.

Below reserve raider we still have social ranks, and plenty of people in them. Seeing as we’re raiding Sunwell, and MH and BT are on one-night farm, anything below that happens for fun, and socials will often jump into SSC or TK runs on off-nights with a few of the raiders and the occasional pug.

I suppose, because of our core raider/reserve/social structure, we won’t really question socials who pug into raids. We generally wouldn’t invite a social along on a raid anyway, so we don’t mind if they get saved to another run.

On the feedback issue, again, our ranks kinda solve it for us. If we don’t want someone raiding, we basically have to demote them. That’s feedback in itself, but we generally wouldn’t demote someone without some discussion with the person in general.

Oh, I suppose there’s one other type of raider we have: a try-out. They sit at the “reserve” rank, but are taken in as if they were a core raider. Someone generally won’t spend more than a week or so at this rank: either we want them in the raid all the time, or we tell them that they can stay on, but only as a reserve or social.

I do remember one or two “can’t play”-style gkicks, and they usually ended up with the player in question /gquitting rather than being kicked, because they were told about the problems, didn’t respond appropriately, and were demoted.

Just another perspective anyway, hope it’s useful.

/endrant

In regards to your current dilemma, I still think communication is the way to go. I’d have probably dropped the raid leader a friendly note saying that I was helping a friend out so that no underlying misgivings would result.

And on the whole communication meme, the fact that you got zero feedback on your performance is awful. While feedback in general is usually welcome, if your performance cost you a raid slot you should have been told what you needed to improve, pointed to resources that could help you improve, and then hands could have been washed of blame. They could have helped your further by saying you’d get opportunity in the future to try out again for your slot, but while that’s what I may have done they’ve completed their social obligations by telling you what you needed to know.

Because otherwise you end up with people sitting in limbo and unable to raid but not knowing what to do — who eventually jump ship.

If a player who raided with us and stopped was online and raiding with another guild while one of our raids are going on, I guarantee you it would piss off a whole lot of people. People are going to start having resentment towards you. For example: We are looking for a 25th member for our raid. A mage who raided all the time is on her shaman alt (who she wants to make her main). She continues on as leveling while we are struggling to get the raid off the ground. People are going to think wtf. When it comes time to invites for instances, do you think people are going to want to help her when she wouldnt help when she was needed? Probably not.

Not so say what you did was wrong, but from a raiding guild perspective, people could see it as disrespectful. You appear to have frustrations with previously not being invited. Should you be ready to raid again in the future, the may not want to invite you again.

This post isnt to slam you or anything. It is just the perspective of someone who raids.