I was almost like a "head hunter" in wow at finding good fits for the guilds I was in back in the day. The key to recruiting is knowing what YOU want out of a member. What the "Guild" wants is way more important than the person. I think it would be a good idea for the leadership write/hash out what the goals and exceptions are going forward. (Examples: 2 - 20 man groups, that means a 50+person raiding roster. Attendance expectations?)
Although in most situations I would advise against picking up "groups of people" it ultimately leads to people being unhappy, but if the future is 40-man raids I think its a perfectly okay thing to do. Under most circumstances, I normally shy away from it, just because the people you're absorbing like to play with their friends, and sometimes that can't happen. And you like playing with your friends and sometimes that can't happen. With the situation being that you might need to recruit 30 people, I don't see this being an issue.
In the new future though, before we're close to making two 20 person raids and one 40 person raid, I would recommend having some requirements outside of just "have a desire to raid and show up." Here is a situation that could very easily happen :
We pick up 6 people next week, making it so we now have 20 people every raid no problem! Good for us! However, some of these people can only make 1 of our 2 standard right nights. Now that sucks, because its not cool to put someone on deck when they don't get a lot of chances to raid. You want to be able to tell them that "if you show up we can get you in," but you can't expect everyone to be happy with that situation, or even most people. And ultimately, is it fair or right to sit someone who has a proven track record of attendance and ability? I understand not everyone has issues with sitting out from time to time. And if its for the betterment of the raid I think people have less of an issue. I also understand some people care less about boss fights if they no longer need loot from that boss. But with that being said what merits do you use for invites? Do your raid invites change based upon encounter ? (Farm vs Progression) Transparency is very important, and even more so to new people who may not know your/our ways. This by no means is a push to make the guild/raids more "hardcore" (I really hate that term, but I'll explain it better in a second.) Ultimately it is push for getting heads together and hashing out expectations before we make things complicated with a bunch of recruiting.
-----
Different rant.
-----
I hate the terms casual and hardcore. I think they're terrible, open ended and not descriptive at all. Both words also carry a pretty negative cogitation. I will tell you that casual does not mean bad and hardcore does not mean "no life." Casual does not mean unable to progress and hardcore does not mean asshole. I have notoriously been called a "hardcore" player in every game I've ever played, but to be an open book here is way:
I value my time.
Think about from just a time aspect. We raid two nights a week, for 4 hours a day - a total of 8 hours a week. We have twenty people in a raid(plus what ever OD), thats 160 hours of time be devoted to playing and raiding together. This does not count the time outside of the game we spend looking up boss fights, watching videos, reading stuff etc. This does not count the time in game we spend getting ready, gemming, respecing, farming for mats and food. There is a lot of time being spent in order to make raid happens. I value that time. I expect other people to value time too, maybe not as much theirs as others. I have a busy life and I want to raid, therefore I have to MAKE time to raid. Its something I want to do, so I make sure I have free time Tuesday and Thursday to make it happen. I spend maybe 12 hours or so in the game. Am I "Hardcore?" I don't consider that hardcore. I was in a guild in BC that raided 25+hours a week. The atmosphere was very laid back and tons of jokes. Everyone expected a lot of each other and we got it - but we didn't have an enforceable raid requirement because our raid times were so varied sometimes. But, everyone was on the same page so it worked. We had a very high skill level in the group and did merit-only based invites. We had a rogue that was an ER Surgeon. He was always on-call, had to leave mid raid a couple times, could not raid every third week and was probably one of the best PvE Rogues in the US during BC. (tons of WOWLogs damage meter records, never died or missed kicks.) If he could raid, he was in the raid. We had no attendance policy but everyone was on the same page and it worked great - was that hardcore?
Regardless of what words you like to use to describe your out look on the game, just remember everyone values their time. Even if your goal is to be more "Casual" when it comes to your exceptions of people, remember that there are others in the raids your in that are depending on you to value their time as much as you value theirs.
-TL;DR
With us needing to recruit more to make sure to fill 20-person raids, we need to have some transparency when it comes to attendance, expectations and our plans moving forward. What we want out of people going forward is going to be the most important part of our recruitment policy.
(I'm not proof reading this crap and I had to stop like 40 times to fucking help people.)
