State of some guilds ... warning!! its long :)

Up until 2003 I was in a bleeding edge hard core ( 6-7 days per week) raid guild. Burned out, took some time away from game, came back joined a family style guild that raided. Was there for 10 yrs and for almost that entire time guild was either one expansion behind in content, or struggling to get through the most current expansion of content. More often than not we wouldn't beat last expansion until receiving power up from new expansion levels, AA, spells etc.
For the most part majority of the members of the guild were content with being about an expansion behind. Massive inflation in stats on gear however changed all that. Why bother to show up for raids or even put in an decent effort when you are using group gear/spells that is better than what drops in the raid chest? Leadership is left with no option but to try to beat the most current expansion content. Immediate crisis ....
Officers know they have a core of about 50% of their raid force that are 100% attendees, play their characters either really well or in some cases exceptionally well. 25% that are fairly high attendance and play fairly to exceptionally well, last 25% is all over the map with attendance and skill. You got tanks that can't hold aggro or don't seem to know how to help themselves and are totally dependent on healers. Healers that only cast when player hps are already below 50% or lower. DPS players that on their best night only do 50% of the dps of the best you got in that class. ADPS that look at you and go HUH?!?! when you call for them to click their adps. Some people that seem to fail every e mote or fail to follow instructions more often than not. For years you know these issues (and others) exist but you worked around them or just plain overpowered older content.
You are doing your best to keep everyone happy. You try to be inclusive and allow everyone a spot on your raid force. You try to beat current content events. Otherwise attendance falls off drastically, and you desperately need those numbers to fill raids to have any hope at all of getting a win. Reality check ... under such conditions you are in for a world of pain trying to get through current content. You are trapped in a catch 22 situation ... damned if you do ... damned if you don't.
For years you have sweated, explained until you are blue in the face, put in hours and hours of time and effort to address these issues ... trying every way you can to make the guild better and the players play better .... all for naught. Yet you still keep trying ... hoping beyond hope that miracles happen.
You have a lot invested in the guild. Developed friendships, loyalty, sometimes even cyber and real world families. You have tried everything alliances, guild mergers, staged several "comebacks", watched as others just gave up the good fight and ceased to exist as a guild or in some individual cases just quit playing the game. I feel your pain.

EoK has 3 events that in the past we called guild killers ... Queen, Vault, Kar Zok. Those of you that are struggling on Queen will have an even more difficult time on Vault. Kar Zok without blockers ( have to win to get) will be damn near impossible. That is a FACT. No changing it.
There has been a lot of posts and threads where people go running the the developers crying "it is too hard!! I can't do it" Make it easier or make me so powerful that it becomes trivial for me to do. New expansion may do that it may not.
Good lord grow up!! Accept your limitations. Aspire and work hard to get better. Help others to do the same.
Simple fact of life ... no matter how much we wish we could be the best of the best it takes skill, talent, luck, and a lot of hard work to be so. For most of us all we can manage is average at best. Sometimes that is good enough, sometimes it isn't.
For guilds that are struggling I say to you .. assess, adapt, and work your off to overcome. Don't go running to mommy and daddy (developers) to make it possible for you to get what you want. Or just accept your limitations, be happy with what you can do, and enjoy the game. Find like minded people and build on that.

That wasn't long...

Trying to make everyone happy, as stated there, is the main problem these guilds have. Win events and everyone will be happy. Stop the hand holding, the aww shucks its ok we ll get it next time mentality. Hold the people who constantly screw the pooch in raids ACCOUNTABLE, bench em sit em call em out whatever. That person or persons , just wasted the time of 53 others in raid, are those others who are working hard and doing their job not just as important?

Hold people to a higher standard, expect more where nothing else will do, expect people to do their jobs and over come and NOT say oh its ok do better next time. THATS the guild killer right there.....The raiders who ARE doing their job and want to succeed, as opposed to the constant dim bulbs who are wasting people's times, get frustrated, get sick of leadership NOT doing their job and pressing people to get it right, then seek play time elsewhere.

When the leadership of said guilds stop wanting to sing kumbayah, hold hands and roast marshmallows, and decide that the people who DO want to succeed are just as important if not more so then the slacks, and weed out the slacks and hold their hands to the fire, you may just stop seeing the death of or struggles of guilds such as those in question.
just my 2cp.

Seems as if the same players that don't play anywhere near their potential are also unable to look past one stat on some gear to see the overall picture of all the values on the gear. TBM raid gear is still superior to EoK t2 group gear. It's just if you get fixated on one stat that is sometimes better on some slots for some classes that you start having issues. People were doing the same thing wtih TBM group gear vs. TDS raid gear by taking an extreme build drastically overemphasizing one stat.

It does not help raiding guilds be competitive when the same few guilds get the strats handed to them in beta and then keep them a close held secret. I don't think Devs even realize people leave the game over this. Some directly, but most indirectly. They destroy competitive raiding before it even starts.

idk what universe we are speaking about, strats are not handed out. If you are a guild that tests a raid and maybe sees a raid before others, it is what it is but that does not a strat make. There is still a HUGE learning curve when the events go live. If your theory Straps was correct, EVERY SINGLE beta testing guild would have the raids down on the first day they go live. Just saying.

The base premise here that you have to choose between a bleeding edge raiding guild or a family guild are false.

My guild opted for an all of the above approach. We have a reasonable endgame raiding team and a casual "beer-and-pretzels", bring-your-alt-if-you-want-to raid team. On other nights people are doing hunter achievements, helping each other tradeskill, all of the above. Playing the entire game, instead of a niche.

Each guild has management that runs their guild as they choose to and adopts a style they want is all this is. If you haven't found a guild to your liking then keep shopping.

Too short, didn't read.

Kar Zok just plain sucks. I despise it.

BTW what "blockers" for Kar Zok?

Your ability to crit heal and Crit damage are suppressed so you need to acquire blockers. So 1 group per week gets un gimped.

This!

The issue that gets many of these guilds is not running to mommy and demanding content be made easier. It is more like their players who perceive themselves worthy of something better (minus the effort put forth to achieve that something better) running to guilds that have already bested that content and thus can reap all those rewards blind of whatever effort went into getting to that point.

Most of these smaller guilds that struggle do indeed put forth an effort and believe in wanting to win. Its not like they all just set out to fail. Even the Cleveland Browns want to win but they know they are not New England. You don't see them trying to change the rules of the game in spite of that.

And that is why those are the some of the worst mechanics introduced to the raid game ever. They're just unfun to play against. I prefer team work mechanics. Reminds me of Aprosis versus rest of Suckteris. Aprosis was the worst designed raids I've played against in any game because it was so dependent on range and even when you did beat it you had to spend an entire night playing Russian Roulette.

There's a lot of really well designed raid content out there over the years, but the curse and power ups thing has been a little wonky.

The OP has mentioned a lot of things in the first post which are accurate. But there are a few other points which come into play that he failed to mention.

First, on sitting or dropping poorly played/performing characters; trust me, every raid leader / officer who has raiders who are poor would jump with joy if they could sit/ban poor characters until they improve and not see a diminished raid. However, that broad category of 'poor character' brings to many caveats. Among those caveats are changes in real life (job, family, health); questions like... if you sit 'bad raider #1, do they leave the guild/raid and their friend 'good raider #4' goes with them; and the other big one... well bad raider #2 does provide (heals/songs/buffs) that can not be replaced easily. For the OP... tell me how I can motivate someone to spend an extra 10 hours a week in game to fill in their AAs & achievements when they have a sick family member, a newborn child, or a new job which requires them to make a cross country move and work weekends? I guess, as a raid leader, I should just tell them to sit out of raids until they can put in the extra time.

Another big problem facing non-elite guilds occurs when elite guilds drop in attendance and start picking off classes by directly recruiting their high desired classes. This has happened countless times over the past 5 years in our raids. Low / mid tier guilds now commonly face this problem from all servers with the ease in character transfers and diminished player base. There are some guilds which fill their ranks by the normal up-ward movement of players, but other guilds make promises of loot/dkp which can not be matched by low/mid tier guilds. This is essentially a talent drain. When either of these things occur, it occurs to the best players in the low/mid tier guilds. If it happens to often in certain classes, the losing guilds end up with a lack of knowledge / talent to help teach & improve recruits. And if you want to know which classes are most at risk of a talent drain in lower guilds... just visit the recruiting section of the top guilds. For years; until EoK alliance spells; the recruiting desires have generally been the same across all servers. (why recruit a 3rd mag when you can recruit a 4th zerk or wiz)

The last issue I will talk about is the lack of availability of key ADPS classes. How many times have the Queen Vault, & KarZok raids been beaten with 1 box sham, 1 box bard, and 1-2 main enc? This type of attendance by the key ADPS classes occurs frequently in low/mid tier guilds. In the last 6 years, I can't remember a single raid when we had 3 mains in each of the sham, brd, & enc classes on the same raid. There has only been a small handful of raids during the past 6 years when we have had 2 mains in each of those 3 classes. When our raids pick up just 1 main in any of those 3 classes, it's like a godsend to our DPS. It's unfortunate, but people just do not play those classes enough to fill the needs/desires of every raiding guild. For the OP, next time you do Queen / Vault / Kar Zok... take away 40% of your raid dps and see if the event becomes harder. Now imagine how difficult it would be to do those events for the first time.

Sooo... in closing for the OP, when you see posts about the difficulty of raid events, resolving the issues facing low & mid tier guilds goes much deeper then "assess, adapt, and work your ***** off to overcome".

Cliffs please, a lot of us don't have time to read essay style posts explaining why people cannot be held accountable for poor play, not caring, and not learning.

He was speaking of the immunization.
Possibly calling it "blockers" because well.. it "blocks" the zone-debuff lol.

Really...
People who want to comment on "lower guild's state" should have been at one point in their place at least.
And remember how they "overcame" that situation.

Read Nightops' post thoroughly...
He's nicely summarizing what i've been saying elsewhere:
There are constraints a RL of a "lower" guild or alliance has to work within that the "top guilds" do not have.
And "top guilds" are only top guilds because they can "prey" on the so-called "lower guilds".
That "recruitment chain" naturally ends somewhere, and the closer you get to the end,
the less does "advice" like "adapt and work harder" work or even do any good.

For anyone that is in a low/mid tier guild that is struggling/floundering I empathize 100%. Been there done that got the t - shirt. Even though I am now in what is considered a "top tier" guild ... don't kid yourselves we face many of the same issues "lower tier" guilds do.
-Blaming others for your problems is counter productive. As is expecting others to solve your problems for you.
-The definition of insanity is doing things the same old way and expecting a different result.
-Failing to act on advice given for any reason is not the fault of the advisor.
-It is trite but true ... you can't soar with eagles when your flopping around with turkeys.
-In the end it all comes down to are willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve your goals. Having done all that are you willing to accept that maybe those goals are not within reach .... yet.

All those problems which you listed can't be much disputed.
Any guild faces them, to some extent - some more, some less.
What differs are the alternatives available to deal with them.

The lower guild you are, the less options you really have to "discipline" your members.
Where a top guild can bench someone, or fail his trial or even kick him
a "lower tier guild" needs to think twice before doing either.
This is because where the "top guilds" can replace drop-outs rather quickly, the "lower" your guild is, the longer you need to look for recruits.

What i can NOT accept, especially when we're speaking about EoK, is this though:

I am not asking for freebies or anything.
I like a "challenge" much like anyone else.

But i ALSO think that events should be designed in a more... "openended" way.
Allowing for different approaches as opposed to basically FORCE a guild into having a certain roster.

Compare EoK to TBM and i hope you can see why i am arguing the way i am:
Around this time last year (almost but not quite a year ago) EoK was released.
At that time, we had 50 (that's FIFTY!!!) percent more guilds that had beaten the expansion or were in CoSul with at least HBB beaten.

I don't think all those guilds have become incompetent or had to fold in the last year.
I know that this isn't the case for any guild listed on MY server at least - for other servers i can only guess.

Yet, a significant number of guilds is still stuck in EoK T2, a year after the expansion's release.
Not incompetent upstarts, but established guilds with leadership that at least DID once know what they were doing.
They might have been slower than us, but they got there - "in time" before the next expansion.
This year, they didn't.

What we seem to differ in is:
You seem to think that distance is fine and entirely the guild's fault.
I think it's NOT good for ANY of us (us, who beat the expansion included in the long run!) NOR can it be those guild's "fault" really.
I rather think that the Dev's overdid it with their use of -blocking mechanics.
And they compounded the issue with their itemization decisions too.
(don't know about your server, but on mine, we did not even have a single open raid as we normally do - there was just not enough interest in that "still superior gear" as some claim TBM raid gear is).

AND i think that this is a development that needs to be stopped before we're loosing people again from frustration over banging their head at artificially erected walls

We're talking a GAME here, not rocket science.
Yes some effort has to be put in - certainly more than in the average Nintendo game.
And the learning curve can be (too) steep for some.
Some people race lockout timers, some don't - and so we get mostly the order that we have.
That's fine.
Personally, i do not need to be "the first" - i know my worth even without a "title".
But there is a difference between "not being the first" or "having lost the race" and "being hindered to advance".

As much as some people like to deny it, the latter IS the case in EoK - and for too many guilds to boot.