World of Warcraft needs some way to address the fundamentally selfish attitude of most raiders. We are playing a “team sport” where the general manager and coach have almost no tools to properly incentivize their players to stay with the team. My solution: implement restricted free agency. Yes, it’s a complicated and potentially radically solution, but read on.
The Problem
Let’s see if this situation sounds familiar to you. Your raid group has been making steady progress throughout the current content. Lately, you’ve hit a bit of a snag and haven’t downed a new progression boss in a few weeks. Either you’ve found a boss that is just really challenging for your skill level or composition, or maybe the attendance bug has hit a few key raiders. As a guild leader, you’re feeling the pressure to do whatever it takes to get that boss down. Unfortunately, after a week of frustrating wipes, you get the news. You log on to the forums to see a “So Long Guys” post from one of your best raiders, who is heading off to greener, more progressed, pastures.
Depending on the size of your raid team and the importance of this player, that one decision to leave the team can have drastic consequences. If a 10 player raid loses a main tank or amazing healer, it can often be hard to simply plug in a replacement. While every good raid leader strives to have a talented rotation of backup and bench players, in reality, it’s often hard to do. Worse still, that one player leaving can start a chain reaction, as his closest friends decide to jump ship as well, or other talented raiders start to sense that things might be going downhill and scramble to find another place to raid.
All of this because your group was having trouble with a progression boss (which is kind of the point of progression raiding). The problem here, and it’s solution, is setting proper incentives.
The Current Incentives
Right now, the only thing keeping your raiders from server transferring is the $25 realm transfer fee and any sense of loyalty they have to your existing guild. Everyone is a free agent all the time. For most working adults, the $25 is not going to prevent them from transferring pretty freely. We play this game to have fun, and if we’re not having fun in our current raid, well then we’ll just leave and find out if the grass is greener elsewhere.
Loyalty, in my experience, is nearly non-existent unless you are part of a group of people that has been playing together for many years or has substantial connections outside of the game. Even then, it’s not unusual to see people leaving to join a more progressed group. More often, you have a group of raiders that is constantly changing, with only a few core members who stick around from content patch to content patch, much less expansion to expansion. Everyone seems to be engaged in a search to find “the perfect guild.” Loyalty is amazing when you can find it, but as a raid leader, you just can’t count on it to keep your team together.
I’ve fallen victim to this myself. I’ve left a guild because I knew I was talented enough to see more progression content. I’ve left a guild because some of the people and leaders were tools that I didn’t like spending time with. Unless you have found that perfect guild home that matches up to your skill, desire for progression, social standards, and play times, there is always some appeal in the idea of transferring to another group. No matter how well your current raid leader runs his group, there will ALWAYS be someone in your raid team who is unsatisfied on one of these accounts. If you don’t believe me, you’ve probably never run a raid.
The Solution: Restricted Free Agency
Sports teams don’t often have this problem. Imagine if, halfway through the football season, all the good players from the 2-6 teams decided to jump ship and join the 6-2 teams. Or at the all-star break, all of the best baseball players migrated to the top teams in each division so that they’d have a better chance of making the playoffs. Essentially, that is what the current unrestricted market for raiders has created. And yes, I’m sorry for making a sports analogy to WoW players, many of whom are not that into sports. But what progression raiding resembles most is a competitive team sport, so we shouldn’t be surprised to find similarities with more traditional sports.
We have a completely free market for labor in WoW, which more or less mimics the “at will” situation of most employers and employees in the real world. If you don’t like your job, you can (usually) just quit today and stop going. Your employer can do likewise and tell you to hit the road. The relationship lasts only as long as it is mutually beneficial. And in 99% of the jobs out there, this is the right way to do things, because it allows people to freely and easily change jobs and run companies efficiently.
In sports, there are difference incentives. Sports teams are organized around a common goal of winning a championship. The season lasts a defined length of time and requires full commitment from all members (and if you want to get technical, there are all kinds of strange incentives created by the essential monopoly that a sports league enjoys). Accordingly, players are signed to binding contracts. The length of these contracts can vary. However, in most sports and for most competent players, the minimum length of the contract is at least one full season. The reason is pretty obvious: as a manager, you don’t want your best players jumping ship halfway through the season.
If a player wants to stop playing in the middle of the season, he can do so, because as a society we don’t generally enforce contracts requiring people to work (too close to slavery for our tastes). But, and this is the key point: he cannot simply go play for another team until his contract expires or is voided by his current team. Instead, he has to wait until his contract expires and he becomes a free agent. Then, he is free to transfer to any team that is willing to pay what he thinks he is worth.
Applying Restricted Free Agency to WoW
How would this system work in WoW? In my vision, at the beginning of each content cycle, guild leaders and officers would have the option of offering a raid contract. The contract, if the player chooses to accept, would restrict that character from entering a raid in the current content tier that is not run by his guild. The contract would be in effect until the next major content patch, unless cancelled by the guild leadership. If the player wishes to raid on that character during the current content, he has to do so with his guild, or negotiate to be released.
The guild can decide whether contracts are required from progression raiders. Maybe it will only require them from officers, or from tanks, or maybe everyone on the roster has to sign up. The choice would be up to each team individually. The leaders can let people out of contracts for extenuating circumstances. Or they can charge people gold to get out of their contracts. Or they can say, screw you, you said you’d raid with us so you’re not taking this character to another raid until the next content patch. Leaders would finally have some leverage, and players would have an incentive to stick around and be a part of the team.
Note that this does not force a player to raid, or even to stick with his current guild. No one is stopping him from taking a break from raiding. He can pug older content with whoever he likes. Or, he can abandon his main and start raiding elsewhere on an alt. What it does, do, however, is provide guild leadership with some incentives that can help keep talented raiders on the team. At the end of the content patch (so in our current case, when 4.2 hits), all existing contracts are void, and there would be a period of free agency where raiders can freely transfer guilds and/or realms.
Like other aspects of WoW, this system puts control directly in the hands of the players, rather than Blizzard controlling things from above. Guild leaders would have the option to implement raider contracts. For many casual raiders, the idea would be somewhat ridiculous. In that case, the option can simply be ignored. However, in more serious guilds, there is often an implied commitment to the team. The raid leader assumes people are going to stick it out for a reasonable length of time. If he wants to ask his raiders to put their money where their mouth is, he can offer raiding contracts. If people can’t commit to raiding with a guild on their main character for at least one content cycle, then the raid leader has a good sense of how interested they are in the team aspect of raiding.
Conclusion
I suspect that many people will find this idea somewhat ridiculous. We live in a culture where absolute individual freedom has become almost a religion. We expect to be able to leave our current obligations in the endless quest for happiness. What most people don’t consider are the aspects of happiness and satisfaction that can only come from long-term commitments to other people. Instead of constantly worrying about whether your fellow raiders are going to bail on you, you can focus on making things better.
By applying a system of restricted free agency, Blizzard would be able to give raid leaders the option of offering raiders a more committed experience. Raid morale would improve, and players would feel much more a part of their raid teams. Since the system would be completely voluntary on the part of both leaders and raiders, I don’t think we have much to lose by giving it a shot. Choosing to sign up for a longer term commitment doesn’t remove any of your freedom. Instead, it gives you some assurance that your fellow team members are actually interested in accomplishing shared goals with you, and thereby frees you up to focus on achieving them.
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Interesting concept, but let me ask you–what is it that I, as a raider, would get in return for my signing up for a season of play?
- Would I be guaranteed loot/gold?
- Would I be guaranteed a certain type of raiding environment?
- Would I be guaranteed a bonus if I did exceptionally well?
- Would I be guaranteed a certain level of progression?
- Would I have access to certain perks associated with the club?
- Would all these things be paid even if the guild collapses?
Ultimately, I don’t think it falls on Blizzard to build in loyalty rewards into game. They can encourage it through guild perks and guild reputation, but I think their resources are better spent creating a structure in which I can enjoy myself, instead of locking me out of a tier of content because my raid leader morphed into an arsehole or went on a power trip.
In the end, I fall back on the idea that loyalty isn’t something you can demand or gain through fear of reprisal. True loyalty is something you have to inspire, and earn. (And even then, it has its limits).
The main benefit would be that you are signing up with an entire raid group who has shown a commitment to progression through that tier together. If you are in a stable guild, this will not seem like much of a benefit to you. If you’ve seen several guilds fall apart, it might be a more exciting proposition.
I don’t think a guild leader needs to guarantee much more than that, and it’s more than they can guarantee right now. I don’t think the agreement would require additional compensation for raiders in the form of gold/perks/loot, etc., but a free system would arise and if that become the going rate, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
I don’t think this demands loyalty. If people don’t want to sign up for it, they won’t. But it gives raid leaders an option to require more commitment. I do think it’s interesting to consider the raid leader going crazy and locking people out of raiding. However, right now you can have the opposite problem where 1-2 people bail on a team and effectively lock 8 more out of progression unless they can recruit quickly.
Good post. I think you’re right in identifying this as a problem, and ultimately if it gets so hard and unrewarding to run raids and guilds then people will burn out and stop doing it.
But this won’t stop people from simply stopping playing on one character and getting an alt into another raid instead if they’re really keen. And my experience is that anyone that hardcore will have geared alts.
It sounds good in theory, and addresses a very real problem… but on the other hand, if someone didn’t want to raid with my group, I wouldn’t want them there. Depending on how vocal the person is, it could affect morale (and may lead to a situation of someone purposefully being a PitA to get released).
Without contracts being hardwired in the game, it would never work. The perks of anonymity are just too great: they could name change, or server change anyways.
I do like the concept, but I fear it wouldn’t work. In your example, ALL of the power is with the guildleaders. NONE of the raiders has any say. What about being removed from the roster because a different spec is Fotm? What happens if the RL changes strats, or times they raid, or any of the other changes that makes people unable to raid through no fault of their own?
Where are the incentives to sign up for this? If you say “ability to raid” I already have that without a contract. This is basically a workplace problem, in that the owners are at the mercy of their employees, and you’re positing a solution to give the owners some more power, however you can already do that.
You think Paragon is at the mercy of it’s raiders? I don’t. Why is that? because they’re “the best,” is my hyperbole. But they continually offer raiders what they want, and while I believe they have turnover like anyone else, they’re able to pick from a great pool of people.
You have to be able to offer what raiders want, and sometimes it’s not just raiding. One of the only 25 man guilds on my server offers their guild a vial of the sands mount as an enticement for recruitment. Even though they’re more progressed than my curret guild, I get to raid just enough to be happy, and I have strong ties to my guild. Call me social if you must, but if I had to pick a guild to progress with, it wouldn’t be the one with a contract, it’d be the one with a system in place to reward loyalty.
Just want to thank everyone for thoughtful comments so far. I don’t think this is a perfect solution, but I do hope it gets a conversation started a bit on the challenges that guild leaders face in trying to herd raiders into a successful team.
I do think it would have to be “hardwired” into the game, as you you suggest Holyground. A raid leader doesn’t have any way to enforce the contract otherwise.
A lot of the feedback I’m getting centers on the idea that raiders don’t have any reason to sign up for something like this. In my mind, that works itself out in the free market. Raider leaders are not required to offer contracts, and raiders are not required to sign up. If the two sides don’t agree, people just won’t use them, or they will negotiate other benefits as an incentive to sign, as Vixsin suggests.
The other problem people are noticing is that this gives guild leadership some power. I agree, and you’d have to trust your leaders to run things fairly before you’d sign up with them for a longer term commitment. If I was able to use this system, I would personally let people out of their contracts if I wasn’t taking them to raids for performance or roster reasons. I don’t want someone unhappy and sticking around. I would probably even let them out if they were going to a more casual guild. What I wouldn’t do is let someone out of their contract to join a 9/13 guild when we were at 5/13 and just needed to buckle down and work through the content.
As far as offering raiders what they want in order to keep them around, I can’t help but approach this from the perspective of a burnt out GM. Paragon raiders have a clear focus: they want to be world #1. Other casual guilds have a clear focus: have fun with their friends. However, many guilds are trying to balance the line between hardcore and casual.
As a leader of this kind of guild, you are constantly battling different forces. Some people want to be less hardcore and focused during the raid, some people want to buckle down and progress more. Some people want to extend the lockout, some just want to clear some content. Some will min/max everything and perform well while kind of being a jerk, others will be the nicest people you ever met but only give average performance. Simply trying to “offer what raiders want,” in my brief experience, is an extremely difficult task, because everyone wants something different.
Just to take your example, I know that maybe half my guild and/or potential recruits would be excited about getting a Vial of the Sands mount. The other half could give a crap less unless we get to 7/13.
Also, I just wanted to note that a similar mechanic functions on a MUCH smaller scale when you run a 5 man random heroic. If one of your randomly chosen companions decides to leave the group early, they get locked out of joining another group for 30 minutes. Presumably, this is designed by Blizzard to incentivize sticking with your current group, unless it is absolutely horrible, so that everyone else can finish the task you’ve signed up for.
While the penalty for leaving a 5 man is minor, the principle is the same as restricting the free agency rights of raiders for a limited period of time. Maybe you think the time should be shorter (2 week “raid lock” to a guild with your main character? 2 months?), in principle, this is an idea most of us accept every time we run a random heroic, and in that case, we have no input into the people we are grouped with, unlike in a guild of our choosing.
Although this is thought provoking, I would have liked to see more discussion of how the other “half” of the contract is going to be held up. Being in a guild, even one with the INTENTION to provide all the perks that a raider may be seeking (time, place, gear, etc.) does not guarantee this needs will be met. What I’d be more interested in pursuing is how/when contract breaches can actually result in expulsion/ability to leave the guild.
Obviously, the benefits to the guild structure are clearly outlined, but I fail to see the advantages to unguilded raiders looking for a new home. I’d like to have a 2-week to 30-day “recruit” period where either party could dispense of the contract without repercussion. Once that period was over, having a 3-month to 6-month “lockdown” would be fine by me as long as certain requirements were met by both sides (attendance by raid member, 9+ guild raid runs on scheduled raid days, etc.) While it wouldn’t prevent those of us who like branching out to new characters, for those committed to their main above all, I think it would help stabilize the raiding/guild experience for a lot of players, and is an interesting idea.
What about hardwiring raiding into guild advancement incentives…For example, you aren’t able to draw or benefit from a guild cauldron until you are revered/exalted with that guild…This could be done for many raid specific incentives, gold to repair, mass rez, mass summons, etc. Not a huge incentive, but maybe enough to keep people around.
I do not think this is a ridiculous idea. I do think it may be misdirected energy, as many people have said, something this couldn’t hold ground unless it had reinforcement from within the game itself. Blizzard would never do something like that. I do like how you tied in this analogy to the 5-man LFG tool, though. A very comparable analogy, likewise highlighting how virtually impossible it would be to implement such a system at a guild/raid level.
What this article does for me is get me thinking about how to promote engagement with my guild members when they are tempted to leave. Sometimes if someone would have just hung in there for a few more weeks, things might have turned out much better. You say, with resounding truth and great wisdom, “What most people don’t consider are the aspects of happiness and satisfaction that can only come from long-term commitments to other people.” Without tools like ‘contracts’, we are left with the question of how to install that value in people. While not everyone will be on board with such a value, we can at least get them thinking about it, which may be all that’s needed. In effect, this is engagement. The real world business place terms this as “employee engagement”. The WoW/MMO world would term it as “guildie engagement”. Without binding contracts and tools that restrict, we are forced to consider people’s happiness and ensure that we get them engaged so that they stick around when things get a little tough or other pastures look greener.
BTW, did you know that too green of pastures (referring literally to green grass) causes a protein imbalance in livestock, causing problems ranging from the mild case of diarrhea to severe hoof and bone splitting? In this sense, green pastures can literally kill.
I think all the low-level guilds that have only 1 or 2 bosses down would try to scoop up people as they ding 85, and lock them into contracts to inflate their numbers. If someone does have a falling out with their guild, they’d get gkicked (or harrassed into gquitting), then be locked out of raiding, which I think is a really unreasonable degree of punishment in an already-bad situation. Most guilds would require them from anyone wanting to raid with them, so there wouldn’t be a choice of signing or not, it’s “if you want to come with us, have to sign first.” Personally, I like trying to PUG after we’re done for the week, or if something comes up and I can’t make it for our usual raid time. In the last month, I’ve downed 9/12 and got all 3 end bosses into phase 2 this way, mostly pugged into another guild’s raid when someone couldn’t make it that time. I like being a bit of a social butterfly – monogamy is for a romantic relationship, not WoW.
Great discussion and good to have you back Wugan!
I like the analogy but here’s the problem – when a sports player signs a contract like that they get a payment arrangement to go with their exclusivity agreement.
Playing wow /= payment
Playing in a raid, like playing a sport is the action both parties want to happen, its not a payment of any sort. For this system to work there would need to be some form of compensation to the player who signs the contract – and just as importantly, penalty towards that compensation should the contract be broken.
This compensation does not have to be in gold, it could be done in any number of ways, but unless there is compensation for signing said contract the existing “free agents” will not want to opt into this because it lacks benefit to them above how things are done now, and thus it falls apart.
well I dont really get why raiders might be upset about this feature. You just are not supposed to sign everything, as in real life.
if you’re not sure that you’re going to stick to those people, don’t sign.
if the raid leader demands you to sign before a trial, do you really think he’s all that grown-up and lets you go if something not your fault happened.. i don’t..
so well, just don’t sign if you’re not sure youre going to be in the guild for the duration of the lockout, and be sure your raid/guildleader is no jerk… no problem..
this probably the worst idea I’ve ever seen. the opposite problem is that there are too many guilds that think they can raid when they dont have enough raiders to support it. The solution is to allow guild mergers without loss of Guild rep.The two “weak” guilds could merge to combine enough players to field a viable raid team. Restricting free agents gives too much power to already control freak GM’s and would just cause more players to leave wow.
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