Selling/giving epics, roleplay and endgame

Recently, I finally got a chance to catch up on WoW Radio's Farm Status show. One of the topics discussed was endgame guilds inviting people to instances and selling them epics.

On my server (EU Defias Brotherhood, RP/PvP), there's plenty of players who have no access to Molten Core. Not because they don't know how to play, but mainly because they don't apply to endgame guilds at all. Why? Roleplaying. Many guilds on our server were founded for that. For example, a tauren-only guild would lack the numbers, attendance, interest and the classes required to do endgame. However, there are always some players that like their RP guild atmosphere and their events, but would like to see endgame.

I was one of them. I started in a troll-only guild Second Gurubashi Empire at day 1 when the server went online. Because the guild had been planned for a while, it was one of the largest for quite some time. Because trolls have access to most classes (except druids and warlocks), we were planning to do at least Zul'Gurub on our own. However, problems started arising when the first people dinged 60. While they were happy doing other instances for a while, they eventually got the gear. Endgame was the only way to go to progress in PvE. Because not all of us were level 60, doing endgame in-guild was not an option. Eventually, they got frustrated waiting for the rest of us and joined endgame guilds, one by one. When a few more people dinged 60, some other 60ies left. We were almost able to do Zul'Gurub for several months.

The inability of the guild doing even the planned endgame (Zul'Gurub) was creating a lot of guild drama, causing tempers to flare. In-character grievances got mixed up with out-of-character grievances. Nasty stuff. Eventually, a solution was worked out. Raiding alliances. Find a few other large roleplaying guilds and do endgame with them. Raiding alliances have their own problems, so I'm not going to discuss them at length. Raiding alliances are not an option to everyone. Very small guilds would get rejected from raiding alliances, and managing a big alliance is hard due to incompatible egos and guild dynamics (how much weight should a small guild's voice have?).

At the same time, some endgame guilds on the server were getting bored doing Molten Core. Some people still needed one or two pieces of gear from there, but doing a full clear felt pointless for just a few items and a bunch of Nexus Crystals. Attendance suffered.

So there were plenty of good players interested in endgame scattered around the realm, but would not want to leave their current guilds due to various reasons. At the same time, there were endgame guilds with a temporary shortage of players.

Some time ago, one of the major endgame guilds (Last Stand) on our server started inviting people with them to Molten Core. Write a good application, and you can join them and pick up any epics they don't need. The guild gets a little temporary help and still gets plenty of core leather, fiery and lava cores, the loot they still need and other stuff. The lucky applicants get gear they couldn't even dream of, and valuable experience. They also get to stay in their own guilds and not "compromise" their characters' personality by giving up IC principles. Win-win.