The announcement of Warlords of Draenor came with mixed emotions; an initial spurt of excitement that eventually lingered away to annoyance. At least for raid leaders of dedicated 10-man cores, such as myself. Blizzard announced a new raiding difficulty, mythic, that will be for dedicated 20-man raids, while heroic and regular difficulties will follow a similar setup to current flex raids. The introduction of mythic raids places both 10-man and 25-man raids in a difficult position – 25-mans will need to shave off five of their players, while 10-mans will need to recruit another ten bodies. As a raid leader, my current 10-man core is feeling the pains of the anticipated expansion. While guilds do have a good five months before the expansion goes live, Blizzard has already confirmed 6.0 will release mythic raiding for Siege of Orgrimmar, giving guilds some experience in the 20-man environment. I won’t sugar coat it – from a raid leader’s perspective, these next 4-5 months will be recruiting hell. Finding another 10-12 competent players with harmoniously mixing personalities to our current group will be steadfast and difficult. Spamming forum posts, weeding through applications, conducting interviews – it’s a grueling, tedious task that cannot be ignored, no matter how much I loathe the process.
10-man Cores Recruiting Pains
The end of an expansion and the beginning of a new one has so many implications for the dynamic of a core. Even more so with the forced evolution to 20-man cores. Dedicated 10-man cores recruiting for Warlords of Draenor will undoubtedly flood the guild recruiting forums, with the more progressed, hardcore guilds having their pick of applicants. The pool of core-less raiders will greatly diminish, as well as the inevitable swapping of players already part of a 10-man core. All raid leaders have been victim to having one of their players enticed and grabbed by another guild at some point, the resulting frustrations only seeming to fuel the despair in recruiting all the more. Core mergers may be the best option for 10-man cores recruiting at the moment, but most would vouch mergers either end in catastrophe or surprisingly successful. It’s a wager for a raid leader, and one that I anticipate many will be forced into.