New rule: if you PuG TOC25, you’re cheating on the 10s ladder.
Personal soapbox time!
What are the 10-man ’strict’ rankings?
We recognize that 25-man guilds or guilds that regularly participate in 25m pug runs have a distinct advantage since they run 10-man content with higher iLevel gear. Consequently, our 10-man strict rankings aim to exclude guilds that access any 25-man content that offers higher ilvl gear than what the current 10-man normal content provides. If your guild members regularly run 25man pugs then you are not considered a 10-man strict guild.
Translation: nobody in the guild is allow to have fun on weekends and run PuGs. Y’know, like the majority of people like to do.
What is the 10-man ’strict’ criteria?
Guilds will be required to not earn any Coliseum 25 normal kills or any Ulduar 25 hard-mode kills.
Normally guilds will earn these 25m kill achievements when either 10 players complete a kill in the same raid or when 15 players complete the kill over time. We have added a special trigger for the Coliseum that will exclude a guild from strict rankings when 5 players achieve any boss kill in the same raid or a total of 10 players achieve it over time.
…
Please ensure you discourage your guild members from participating in any Coliseum 25 and Ulduar 25 hard-mode runs if you wish to remain on the strict rankings. Also be sure minimize the recruitment of players that have previously achieved these kills since they will contribute to the guild total, regardless of when they achieved it.
Last weekend, about 5 or 6 of us did a TOC PuG. We didn’t finish the instance in the end, but if we had, our realm would no longer allow us to be on the 10 man progression ladder.
- advertises and recruits as a 10 man guild;
- runs 10 man raids in sanctioned raid times;
- does NOT run 25man raids in-guild (pugs excepted).
I know, it’s pretty revolutionary – try to wrap your head around it for a few minutes. A 10 man guild is a guild that says, “We’re a 10 man raiding guild!”
How on earth can anyone think that running a PuG on a weekend and MAYBE being lucky enough to pick up a piece of loot each week (most PuGs have a one-per-run rule), that puts you A) anywhere near the 25man guilds, and B) at a distinct advantage over someone who doesn’t?
Skill, as always, trumps gear, but if anyone tells you that a 25man guild kitted out in 25man hardmode gear won’t generally have an easier time and go faster than a 10 man guild in 10man gear and a smattering of badge/PuG gear, then I want some of whatever they’re smoking.
We already have a list of 25 man guild contacts, why do we need another one with progress listed? See what I did there?
I like this one. Nobody ever thought to improve the system, so why improve it now? Of course, makes sense. Truth is, few people probably thought to speak up. A few 10 man raiders have already said that they didn’t think of it or that they had thought about it but hadn’t said anything. They aren’t vocal like me 
Plus I also think that some guilds may look at the 10 man list, see it full of about 15-20 large guilds, and think, “why bother”. Maybe if there was a “real” 10 man list, they would be more keen to have their kills listed.
If there’s not many guilds, as everyone keeps saying, then how could it be very much work? I counted about a dozen 10 man guilds at a glance that would be on the list – how much work can it be to maintain a list of 12 guilds? Plus, I offered to help out and do it myself if it was too much. That didn’t go down so well.
This is something I’ve been thinking about since back when I did my post on linear progression and people commented about 10man guilds getting screwed over. But becoming a 10 man raider did bring it back to the fore. Even so – what should it matter how long we’ve been around? We’re a 10 man guild, we’re raiding – how is it that we are less deserving to display our prograss than anyone else?
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hehe long post
couldn’t read it all but i know what you’re on about having seen a bit of the cael forum post hehe
well is quite happy for there to be a strict 10man ladder so you have our backup
its a shame theres so much opposition to a rather simple concept
good luck!
People are putting far too much weight on the terms “pure” and “strict”. Are you a 10 man guild, running 10 man raids? Then you’re on the 10 man list.
There shouldn’t be a 15 page entrance exam for what qualifies you as a 10 man guild.
And if people really ARE hung up on “strict” rules – then go use GuildOx to filter it… it’s so simple, I just don’t understand…
I see where you’re coming from and yes, I think guilds who intend to only progress in 10 mans should have their own listing but…
This pugging 25s and getting gear from 25s is a big grey area for me.
Is it to hard to define something like less than 25% of your gear between the 10 people can be of a higher item level than you could otherwise possess from 10s?
At the end of the day there are only two factors to success: gear + skill (I would include raid leading and organisation in skill).
Say another guild on the list is a 10 man raiding guild. But each week they also run 25 man ToC with another guild or two as an alliance (this is exactly what my guild’s officers do with their alts).
Would you want your progression measured against them?
Where do you draw the line?
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I think if your 10 man team is running 25mans every week in an organised fashion (say as a guild alliance), you’d be disqualified.
It is true that things start to get fuzzy here.. but is it really fair to disqualify entire guilds because people like to run pugs on weekends? The only way you can strip it back is to use sites like GuildOx – but I think they go too far.
I honestly think doing weekend/spare time pugs is the NORM, not an unusual phenomenon. There are so many 25man pugs through teh week and on weekends, and many (if not most) 10 man players jump at the chance to do something different, and yes, perhaps grab some 25man gear.
I think it’s really unfair to be incredibly strict on 10 man raiders who just want to raid and get credit like everyone else. 25man raiders don’t have these limits and provisos because they can go do any content wearing anything they like, and it’s not seen as cheating. But 10 man raiders have to prove that they’re “really” 10 man raiders before they’re allowed onto the ladder – and if they stray into 25 man raids in their spare time, they’re somehow trying to rip off the “real” 10 mans (the few of them that are out there, somewhere) who tell their members never to go to a pug, ever.
I think that’s really, really unfair. We’re 10 man guilds, we raid 10 man content. If we pick up a few items in pugs, I don’t believe that gives a massive advantage. If you’re running organised 25mans every week – that’s a bit different – but if you’re just chilling in some weekend runs, it shouldn’t take away your ability to call yourself a 10 man raiding guild.
Oh, by the way – I also added on the realm post that it would be good to bold or highlight the guilds who DO stick to the strict rules, and only use 10man gear, don’t rack up 25man achievements, etc.
Give them extra credit, by all means – but don’t shut the rest of us out because we like to do the occasional PuG.
Ok not to throw a spanner in the works… but when I said “alliance” I meant it’s not scheduled. It not on the same day or at the same time. But does it count as a PuG if you pull your raiders from the same pool each time? It’s just a really really big pool.
Anyway, I don’t think PuGging 25s should disqualify you. But I do think that guilds who actually complete the content in the intended gear deserve some recognition.
Kinda how the first Azgalon (I think) kill in 25 Ulduar gear (with 0 hard mode gear) was an achievement.
Cassandri´s last blog ..Dust-y Black Belts
I would actually really like to give recognition (above and beyond the normal amount) for those guilds who stick to GuildOx’s strict criteria. Good on them for doin’ it tough!
But as you said, I don’t think that weekend TOC pugs should exclude the rest of us from being able to claim 10 man kills.
I can’t help getting my hackles up with I see 25man raiders (not you, I’m generalising) trying to dictate rules to 10man raiders. If 10s tried to set the rules for 25s, they’d be laughed at. But (some) 25s seem to think that it’s their place to decide what 10s can and can’t do. I find it very hypocritical, and somewhat condescending.
There are offenders on both sides though – I’ve come across 10man raiders who think that if you do anything other than 10 mans, you should be lumped in together with the 25man guilds because that’s what you really are. 25man raiders posing at 10s.
So we’re stuck in the middle, in this raiding limbo-land, where we’re not a 25man guild (I don’t care what anyone says, the items you are wearing do not dictate the type of guild you are in, how ridiculous), but we’re not a 10man guild because trying to claim 10man progression with badge gear and pug items is dishonest. Why can’t it be simple, as it has always been – why can’t we just be a plain old 10 man guild?
Pugging bigger raids is something that people have always been able to do and have always done. Gruul’s Lair, Naxx, OS – and now Ulduar and TOC – it’s a common thing, and people have done it for years – yet all of a sudden people are up in arms about ilvls and achievements and criteria.
Nobody ever pulled up the Kara guilds and said – “OI – who do you think you are, going to Gruul’s Lair? Nice try, buddy!”
Granted, 10 man guilds back then were probably seen as not worth counting on any progression list – 10s are definitely becoming more accepted now.
I wish people could get over the ilvls and the achievements, and just let us be who we are and raid how we want, without the foot-thick rulebook defining our guild identity and telling us what we can and cannot claim as “progression”.
Keeva´s last blog ..New rule: if you PuG TOC25, you’re cheating on the 10s ladder.
The GuildOx rules are dictated by what they can pull from the armory and automate. They don’t have much choice there.
For your own server you won’t get around making your own rules and with the diversity of playstyles you are asking for a rather specific list. A list that also has to combine a pretty wide array of possible gear options where I keep wondering about the value of the end product; ehmn the list.
What do you want it for? To compare your guild to another 10man guild where the MT got lucky in his 25er pugs and tanks the 10er hardmodes easier (wild example)?
I guess I just don’t see the “fair” playing field within your set rules, where a ranked list would make any sense. Too many random elements.
Tried convincing the current list keeper just to add a “tmg”(ten man guild) to those guilds that ask for it?
Without any special rules attached, perhaps only highlighting that its a small guild.
Homunkuhlus
I want the 10 man guilds to be able to have a list that is just for 10 man guilds.
It’s really that simple.
What happens by some weird unspoken agreement on my server is that only guilds who raid primarily 10 man content post in the 10 man thread. Its assumed by everyone that the 25 man guilds will clear the 10 man content at some point but as their focus is 25 man stuff its not recorded on the forums. Obviously plenty of people in those 10 man guilds PuG the odd bit of 25 man content but at least the leader board for 10 mans isn’t topped by the top 25 man guilds.
It has been mildly difficult for Vortex, as we do have several raiders and casuals who like to jump into pugs. We had to weed through GuildOx’s vague restriction requirements back when the Strict rankings were first released and figure out what we could or could not do, and then discourage our members from running in U25 pugs while progressing through U10. We had to turn down some offers to fill in others’ raids, but it’s been worth it from the standpoint of pride in our accomplishments as a strict ten.
Vortex voluntarily maintains a no-25-pugs policy for ToC25 and Uld25. We have no such limitation against badge gear: if we can purchase it without running Uld/ToC25 pugs, there’s no reason not to purchase it, and even GuildOx does not penalize us for it. GuildOx is looking for guilds who don’t raid the progression 25s, not “casuals”–and it would be the casuals who have trouble saving badges for 226/232 vendor gear. It’s the people that complain about a guild’s members wearing vendor gear as being “not 10s” that really drive me up a wall >.> Idiots, they are.
I do feel sorry for the recently formed 10’s who previously raided 25s and thus are excluded from strict rankings due to 25 achievements, but given time, those achievements won’t count against them anymore because the content won’t matter as much (just as Naxx25 does not count in strict rankings at the moment).
Perhaps your server can link the GuildOx list for strict 10s rankings, and then have a list in the same post of “non-strict 10-man guilds” for those that allow progression pugging or are recently formed out of a 25-man guild?
It is all a big mess, isn’t it?
I think this sounds only fair… comparison of 10 man raiding guilds. Being in a strictly 10 man raiding guild, we started Ulduar 10 with Naxx 10 gear… and are slogging through TOC 10 with Ulduar 10 gear. Folks in our guild don’t pugs 25 mans at all.
Anyways it has always irked me that folks who talk about how 10 man stuff is so easy are often doing it within 25 man guilds with 25 man gear.
There’s my two cents.
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I’m gonna be honest here, and it’s probably going out on a limb and saying something unpopular (and maybe tangential to the original topic)…but it’s something that I’ve often commented on to friends.
I hate the world/nation ranking sites. I find them horrible. I think they cause a lot of un-needed pressure/stress on something that is is supposed to be fun.
I had a lot more “fun” with the game when I was only concerned with how we performed on our server and not a “world” rank, or having something that ranked us simply on some arbitrary progression standard.
Not to mention that the two big rankers (GuildOx and WoWProgess) use different systems in which to award points and rankings to guilds. Although I’m not a fan of either, I tend to like the way WoWProgress assigns values, based on “when” you got a kill, whereas GuildOx only values “if” you got a kill, and doesn’t take into account various levels of anything. (i.e. Different Sarth Drakes, Freya’s Guardians, Yogg’s Keepers, etc.).
This is a game. This is not a professional sport, it’s not a competition (well, at this point for some folks it is, I suppose). It is supposed to be fun. Here is my honest opinion: All these ranking sites do is cause stress, tension, and drama/disrespect for people.
If I had it my way, I’d trash them all and go back to where nobody assigned you a number telling you how good (or bad) you are and people focused more on having fun than on “being the best”.
Beruthiel´s last blog ..Setting Raid Goals Redux (working ToC into your schedule!)
Hrmm? Beru, GuildOx counts Sarth+Drakes, Freya adds, and Yogg keepers, since they are achievements… and ranks those who got it first over those who got it second and so on, even if they tie in number of achievements earned.
Some people are more competitive, even among the 10s rankings
Personally I don’t care, but the guys get pretty competitive. It only caused drama once when another guild complained about our first Yogg kill since we had a “pugger” (applicant) with us on the kill… it made me laugh that they’d be so picky about something like that. Same people complained that we were pugging Naxx25 for gear, though.
I actually rather like GuildOx as a ranking site since it gets the names of small (10-man) guilds out there, where the more progressive guild-hunters can find you through filtering by the “strict” listings. WoWProgress just ranks the 10-man-guilds with the 25s.
@Kae – GuildOx counts them in “achievement rankings” yes, but not in their “progress rankings”. Which tends to make me feel that they don’t consider them “progress”, which I think is wrong. Yogg less keepers is certainly progress.
As an example, our GuildOx score is 19, while a guild that has killed steelbreaker but not Freya with a guardian or Yogg without a keeper has a score of 20 because of their steelbreaker kill. The same guild was also awarded the same 1 point for killing Hodir, FL and XT HM almost a full two months after we did. Somehow that doesn’t seem quite fair to me.
Yet, on WoW progress we are a full 20+ points ahead of that guild because it weighs in all aspects of hard modes as well as when you killed the boss.
This gets even further complicated when there are things like bugs that are completely out of your control affecting your progress. I was not happy that we had to wait an extra day to kill Anub because the floor returned and there was nothing we could do about it. Yet we were penalized in the rankings because our kill date was later. We have seen this frequently because we don’t raid on Tuesdays, so we miss some “first kills”.
Both systems are flawed, and I dislike them both. But of the two, I think the way WoWProgess currently ranks is a fairer and more accurate reflection of a guilds progress, at least for 25 man guilds.
edit: As I think about it, I wonder if GuildOx isn’t ranking differently for the strict 10 man progress, as there is just “10 man strict” progress and not the same “achievements/progress” rankings that there are for 25 mans and 10 mans?
Beruthiel´s last blog ..Is There Too Much Focus on Progress Rankings?
Back when I led my own guild, we only focused on 10 mans but never found ourself on our servers progression list because they weighed 25-man achievements higher. This annoyed me, especially when we needed to recruit a spot or two because people wouldn’t even see our guilds name on the list – we never stepped foot in 25s but we had everything available cleared.
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I feel like a noob.
I didn’t even know there was a site that told you guild rankings.
So when you kept saying GuildOx, I kept thinking you were talking about a seasoning we have here in Canada. Hence, in my head, I was asking myself, “Why is Keeva talking about spices?”
/facepalm
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I’m sorry, I should have actually linked to the site – I forgot to.
Now I have relentless giggles.
Keeva´s last blog ..New rule: if you PuG TOC25, you’re cheating on the 10s ladder.
gotta disagree with you on this one keeva. :)I dont believe that there can be a separate 10 man progression because people can sidestep and get higher 25 man gear then go back to the 10 mans. It does not matter how you got the higher ilvl gear (pugging 25 mans, serious 25 man guild or previous guild) the point is you are coming to the 10 man with 25 man gear. If you came to the same 10 man with only previous 10 man gear that won’t make the difference as to whether you conquer the material (only your own drive can determine this) but it will make a difference in how quickly you can do hard modes, how quickly you can run through it and make acheivements. There is no level playing field…
If you do 10 mans in 25 man gear and expect “strictly 10 man status” … well doesn’t make sense.
You literately have to be a strictly 10 man guild if that is what you want credit for. That or have Bliz create 2 WOW mmo’s one for 10 man and one for 25 man. (i obviously am suggesting this tongue in check)
This point has been made many times.
It’s unfair to put ["pure" 10mans] and [10mans who pug] into the same bracket.
And yet – it’s not at all a problem to put 10mans into the same bracket with (and expect them to compete against) guilds running 25man hardmodes – this is perfectly fair?
The former is somehow a huge problem and completely unfair, but the latter can be ignored entirely?
You don’t see the inequality there?
I ended up asking for a compromise, as suggested by several people, to simply mark the 10man guilds so that you could see who the leading ones were. I really would like a separate list, but if people are so passionately against it (still don’t see the big deal), at least this way you can see at a glance who the 10mans are that you might like to join, keep an eye on, etc.
Right now there is no way to tell which guilds are 25 and 10 unless you know them well, or you look through another post to see what they list themselves as. This way, you’d be able to tell the difference right on the progression.
My boyfriend is going to hold this over me for a long time, because he was one of the people to suggest marking the 10s. But I really would have liked a ladder just for the 10mans. But there comes a point where you realise there are far more people interested in objecting than are willing to come forward in support, so I relent:
Keeva´s last blog ..New rule: if you PuG TOC25, you’re cheating on the 10s ladder.
I think it’s a great idea Keeva.
I have a mate who has a small guild and only does 10 mans with his guild and I know he finds it fustrating(maybe not the correct word) when he can only manage a rank of sub 20 because all the 25 man guilds are pushing him down. Should this 10 man only thread start it would bump him up into the top 10.
I see no reason for people to be annoyed with it, after all they will still have there 10 man kills displayed in the progression thread.
As for the gear ilvls being as reason to make a guild not eligble for 10 man only.. well thats stupid.. If 10 man only progression cannot be tracked because of the gear being given away in TOC25 then the same should happen with ulduar 25 hardmodes, shouldn’t it. Seeing as pre 3.2 no-one was running around in 245 gear.
Anyway just my 2c, probably doesnt make much sense and spelling is probably way below par. Tired as hell.
You raise a good point here, and in my mind the whole 10 man/25 man system is completely flawed. The problem is that 25 man guilds want to run 10 mans because 10 mans still give rewards that 25man guilds want. It was a little better with Naxx than it is now, we’ve kind of regressed a bit. Back with Naxx, unless you needed a specific item you didn’t run 10man (speaking from 25man perspective here) because the loot in general was inferior and the badges that dropped were lower tier.
However in Crusaders Coliseum the problem is that 10 mans are dropping the same badges, even the same amount as 25, and the heroics are dropping a lot of extra trophies. Therefore 25 man guilds can and will push for 50 try kills because it will ultimately boost raid gear and thus raid performance somewhat in the 25 man heroics. This clouds the 10 man achievements once real ‘10 man only’ guilds come along and want some recognition for their efforts.
As far as I can see the only thing blizzard could do to curb this is make the 10mans more unattractive for guilds who have access to 25mans.
Cows´s last blog ..Why is he climbing the mountain?
To me the difference between 10man and 25man is what you normally do. We have always had a few members that love to raid and will pug anything we are not raiding that week whether it be 10 or 25 and I cannot see that a couple of people having a couple of pieces of higher ilvl loot will unbalance the playing field that much.
I used to think that the original GuildOx strict 10-man rules were not strict enough, but now that they’ve changed it I think they are too strict. We would have hit the cumulative wall with our puggers even if we hadn’t done 3 ToC bosses in 25man as a guild. We had this random occurence that pretty much every single raider in the guild had signed up to the same night, so we decided to go in with everyone rather than benching some and making 2×10. Everyone knew it was just a fluke and unlikely to happen again, it was just fun to do something different. Afterwards we saw the new strict rules.
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