The summer slump has officially hit. If you’re in any kind of raiding guild out there, you’ve probably noticed it as well. Signups start slacking, people sign on less and less, recruitment slows to a crawl, and it’s just generally harder to get anything done. I think I started REALLY feeling it over Memorial Day weekend, last week. We barely had enough people to make our 10-man raid, and this week it looks like we won’t be able to pull it off at all without dipping into alts or something horrifying like that. The problem there? We were looking at poking a hardmode (Halfus), and DEFINITELY planning on putting time in Nefarian as well.

 
My guild only raids 2 days a week, and in spite of that, as well as a VERY late start to the raiding game (the last week of January was our first week of raiding) we have managed to go 11/12 in normal modes. This week, the plan was to poke at Heroic Halfus on wednesday, and then start chipping away at Nef on thursday, but as it stands right now, one of our healers is going to be an alt, and we’re switching out one dps over another between days. Chances are, heroic halfus isn’t going to happen this week. As far as Nef goes… well.. we’ll just have to see from there.

 
Anyway, i’m not writing this week to just gripe about my raid leading woes. I’m actually curious how a lot of people deal with this. I understand that real life ALWAYS should come first, but how do guilds who aren’t at the top of the heap, progression-wise keep afloat amidst all the summer activities? Do 25 man groups drop to 10s? Do you simply overrecruit in the spring in hopes of retaining enough to keep things going? Especially with the Firelands looming on the horizon, I am desperately trying to keep from putting a temporary freeze on raids until then. I would love nothing more than to be able to have all the normal mode content clear before 4.2 comes out. It would be a big personal success for me, as a raid leader, but it would also be a huge success for the guild as a whole. Anyway, I would love to hear how you deal with summer retention in the comments. Have a great week everyone.