Welcome to the third episode of my Raid-Management Guide. This time, I’ll explain why some sort of leadership and management is needed.

The last two parts were about a general overview. In these two parts, I highlighted already some indications why a leader might be appropriate in such an environment: The need of coordination and the need of management. This part will take a closer look at these two needs.

Coordination: In a raid environment, nobody is playing alone. To be successful, there is always a need for some other people, who are online the same time, who are pulling together and who are making a commitment to the same general rules.
To achieve such coordination, there’s a need of a person in charge. A leader, who can set up a raid schedule, writes out some rules and gives everyone the same goal.

It would be very difficult to create a raid without a raid schedule. If there is only one member missing, you’re probably not able to raid. Without such a schedule, nobody knows when a raid starts and ends and it wouldn’t be possible to have everybody online at the same time. A raid schedule is a great tool to get all the members in line and get them online at the exact same time. Such a schedule works a little bit like a rule or a guideline. But this rule needs to be written out by somebody.
The raid schedule is a great tool for the raid preparation as well. Most of the raids have more member than they actually need because often somebody has some more important duties to do and won’t be able to participate in a certain raid. In this case some kind of rotation is needed, so that every member in the raid gets the same amount of raiding time and the other members are able to raid even if someone is missing. To get a rotation working, there’s a need of decision making who will be benched and who will participate in the raid.
-> need of decision making and need of rules

After setting up a schedule, the next thing that is probably needed are some general rules. Without rules, everything would end in chaos. Rules are more guidelines for the members to know, what is expected from them and what they can expect from the raid. Rules can make clear how important it is to show up at raid time. They solve loot distribution issues by giving a standardised way how the loot will be distributed.
The rules should be appropriate for the desired raid environment. A „fun“ raid might have some general rules to get rid of the most common issues like the loot distribution, whereas a „hardcore“ raid might have strict rules, which are declaring what everybody has to do and how to perform.
-> need of rules

The last important thing about coordination is getting the raid to pull together. Everybody needs to know the exact strategy the group is using to kill a certain boss. At least somebody needs to decide which strategy might be appropriate and makes sure, everybody in the raid is up to it.
-> need of decision making and need of instructing

Management: As mentioned before, a raid without member won’t work. This leads to the need of some sort of human resource management. If there is a lack of a certain position (e.g. tank), than some recruitement is needed. If people don’t show up to raids, somebody is needed to get this issue „fixed“.
Generally speaking there’s a need of a person in charge who takes care of every member in the raid, keeps everybody up to the recent tactics and makes sure everybody are following the rules.
-> need of management and need of human resource management

The need of a leader – Roundup

A raid has the need of coordination and management. The coordination part can be seperated into: the need of a raid schedule, the need of rules, the need of instructing and the need of decision making. The management part is about making sure everything runs smoothly. Management includes a huge part of human resource management as well.
These two needs lead to only one thing: there’s a need of a person in charge, who does all these things. Without having one dedicated leader, it would be very difficult to keep a raid working, because the list of the needs demands a person who is in charge: a leader.

In general, I also like to answer user – in this case your (!) – questions. So, if you’ve a question about the whole topic of raid-management, just write me an e-mail (questions[at]learning-by-gaming.net) and I’ll do my very best to answer them.