I wish I couldn’t care less.
Matticus recently had a guildmember depart for a more hardcore raiding guild. By and large, he was fine with it — even supportive. He just wished the guy had talked to him before leaving rather than after, and perhaps finished the lockout period instead of bailing in the middle of it.
While I don't necessarily agree with Matt's observation that he "should have" been angry (a psychology major, I don't believe there's any such thing as "should have" when it comes to feelings; they simply are or they aren't), I am surprised by some of the comments he has received. A couple of people — including well-respected members of the community (read: not trolls!) — have told him point blank that it was his fault that the former guildie didn't approach him. Clearly, Matt should have fostered a more open, communicative environment ...
Um, excuse me for interrupting the self-righteous diatribe: but how the hell do you know what kind of guild culture Matticus and his officers have created (or failed to create)? Do you play with Conquest? Have you listened in on one of Matt's raids or polled his members for their opinions on his leadership skills (or, as you assume, lack thereof)?
Maybe you're right, and Matt is a piss-poor guild leader whose members are right to leave (in the middle of the raid week, with no advance notice or even the courtesy of a post mortem tell).
Or maybe the guy was just a dick.
* * *
Last night, I found myself in a similar situation. The guildmember who threatened to quit two and half weeks ago finally did, and although "L." isn't a dick — he's actually a pretty nice guy — he certainly exhibited some dickish behavior on his way out.
While the too easy/too hard debate rages on, only the most optimistic of gnomes seems to find the raid-game "just right." The rest of us have been struggling: either to fill raids as our members become increasingly bored with the same repetitive content, or to break into raiding in the first place when no one bothers with the entry level zones. On Black Dragonflight, several top level guilds have failed — felled not by hardmodes, but by simple ennui — as have countless start-ups.
For about a month, Surreality was failing too. We were consistently canceling two out of three weekly raids, and those members who wanted to progress through hardmode content were thwarted by those who simply didn't care.
Then, a couple of things happened.
First, I kicked recruitment into overdrive, using the official forums to lure potential raiders cross-server. (Hi Val. *wave*)
Second, two major Horde guilds failed, which led to an fortuitous (for us!) influx of new recruits — giving us not only the numbers we needed to start hardmodes in earnest, but creating competition for raid spots that many of our members had come to take for granted (and couldn't always be counted on to fill). We've seen a considerable step up in interest, attendance and performance as a result. In the space of two weeks, we went from 23-manning Trial of the Crusader once a week to making significant progress in Trial of the Grand Crusader. We even broke into the server's Top 10 for the first time in our existence.
For the last two weeks, our members have been interested, engaged and enthused. Raids are lively again, with everyone from new initiates to seasoned vets offering input and suggestions for strategy tweaks. Even our 10-mans are back in business, with a first round of Rusted Proto-Drakes hatched and many more to come. (I'm currently working on an extended Uld 10 schedule that will open up hardmodes to members who haven't had a chance to see them yet — without leaning on those who never want to see them again. It's even harder than it sounds, but I'm determined to make it work. Somehow.)
... So why now? Why wait until everything is going right to /gquit?
I knew from a previous conversation that L. had been offered a trial with a hardcore guild, recently formed from the remnants of several decently progressed — but largely stagnant — raiding guilds. "SRP" (which stands either for Smoke Ring Productions or Stupid Retarded People, depending upon who you ask) is a typical FotM guild. You know the type, I'm sure: the fourth or fifth reiteration of an old and somewhat controversial name, recreated by and for players who are united in the pursuit of purples but have no deeper or more lasting ties than that. I predict that SRP will enjoy a meteoric rise and then implode as soon as the novelty of being the talk of Trade Chat wears off and its members realize they've been guilded together before and actually hate each other.
So, no, it doesn't sound like a great offer to me — but then, I don't raid for epics or even progression. I raid to play with my friends, so I can't imagine an end-game without Surreality and her odd ensemble cast. Perhaps this is naive of me, but I truly believe that it's the strength of our community that saw us through the worst of the "summer slump" and ultimately allowed us to rebuild.
L. obviously doesn't share my opinion, and that's fine. As Matticus points out, everyone is motivated by different things, and there's nothing inherently wrong with looking for a more compatible experience. For his part, L. was certain that SRP's offer represented an opportunity: a "new adventure," as he phrased it on our message boards.
We talked long into the night the first time this came up, discussing the pro's and con's, and L. eventually decided to give Surreality a month long "trial." "You have one month to recruit more raiders," he concluded at the end of our conversation. "They'll either convince me to stay, or they'll replace me."
Not surprisingly, my officers were a little (okay, more than a little) annoyed by what they perceived as an ultimatum — especially since it came from someone we had historically found to be a little ... unreliable?
With all due respect to L., he does have an unfortunate tendency to /afk through raid content — including our entire first Archimonde kill and multiple bosses in Trial of the Crusader (although completely unattended, his pet once managed 700 DPS on its own on 10-man Jaraxxus!) — and often struggles to maintain a consistent Internet connection. This week, he missed two of our three weekly raids: one because he was late (albeit for perfectly understandable reasons), and one because he disconnected so often that he ended up costing us attempts on the heroic Twin Valks and had to be subbed out.
An unstable Internet connection and flakey attendance aren't ideal for a raider in any guild, but — true to our casual-friendly roots — they are things we're willing to work around. To a point. L.'s veteran status (and the fact that I have always believed his heart to be in the right place, even when his head isn't anywhere at all) has been his Get Out Of Jail Free card. Truth be told, I've taken a bit of flak about it from my officers. But I still view Surreality as my baby and am determined to preserve our "fun and friendship first; progression second" philosphy towards raiding, even if the gap between first and second has narrowed considerably over the years.
Ironically, the same credo that has kept L. in the guild as a core raider has become his reason for leaving. "I guess my desire for progression finally outstripped the guild's," he told Keaton last night. Oh, you mean the desire for progression that leads you to /afk randomly throughout progression raids? (Which is the main reason you're seldom our first choice for a 10-man, by the way. >.<)
I think our melee officer said it best: "Are. you. fucking. kidding. me.?"
Be more condescending. Please.
... Yes, I'm a little upset. Not because he left, per se, but because ever since he recieved the competing offer, his ego has been out of control. It became increasingly obvious after our talk that he no longer wanted to be a part of Surreality. Literally overnight, he went from being optimistic and generally constructive in raids to critical and overbearing — harping on other people's failures while largely ignoring his own. I received so many complaints that I finally resolved to ask him to leave the guild, since it was clear that he resented his choice to stay and was taking the resulting frustration out on us. I suppose I should be relieved that he spared me that particular confrontation ... but I'm mostly just annoyed.
Sometimes, I wish I had Matt's emotional distance. Matt writes that he couldn't care less; that he keeps his members at arms' length and considers no one irreplaceable. Me, I care too much. I feel personally responsible for everyone's enjoyment of the guild and game; on more than one occasion, I have made myself literally sick stressing over the raid roster or an initiate we had to turn away or a veteran who had somehow fallen behind and needed to be demoted or benched.
At the end of the day, I want everyone to love Surreality as much as I do, and am genuinely disappointed and even a little hurt when it turns out that they don't. But this? This was even worse, because — adding insult to injury — the player who left did so in search of a "hardcore" experience he certainly couldn't deliver in-house. His condescension was completely unwarranted and — in my estimation, at least — out-of-character (although no one else seems particularly surprised, so maybe that part's just me).
I wish I was a big enough person to wish him well, but I'm not.
Do you ever find yourself second-guessing your second guess?
We knew it would happen.
Summer crit our raids. Between the usual attrition to Real Life™, pre-patch ennui and widespread disinterest in the watered-down endgame, attendance tanked. Suddenly, instead of attempting the hardmodes and the meta-achievement we desperately wanted to complete before the release of the new tier, we found ourselves 22-manning Ulduar, PuGing from our Friends & Family ranks and flooding the market with BoE epics and abyss crystals.
In a last ditch effort to save the guild from stagnantion, I threw recruitment wide open. I was determined not only to replace those fairweather raiders I just couldn't count on, but also to seed a small bench to cover the inevitable weekly absences that are all part and parcel of running a Mostly Casual® guild.
Over the course of the last month, I've recruited two warlocks, three mages, a rogue, a Death Knight, a fury warrior, an arms warrior and an enhancement shaman. It sounds like a lot, but — summer attendance being what it is — it still wasn't enough to reliably fill raids. And even when we could assemble 25 raiders in one place at one time, we didn't have the cumulative DPS to tackle hard-modes because we were forced to invite undergeared players as an alternative to running two or three or ten raiders short.
... then 3.2 hit, and our long-MIA members came crawling out of the woodwork.
Last month, we had to PuG DPS — DPS! — from /trade to fill an Ulduar-25 raid.
Last night, we had 36 would-be raiders scattered throughout the Tournament grounds — including some players we hadn't seen consistently (or at all!) for weeks.
Literally overnight, raid slotting became a nightmare.
Do I invite the rogue who raided throughout The Burning Crusade and still tops the damage meters, in spite of being a full tier behind in gear ... but who disappears for months at a time with no warning at all?
Or do I invite the rogue who joined us halfway through Ulduar and suffered through the very worst of the summer slump with 100% attendance ... but who can barely eke out more DPS than our feral druid (when he's tanking)?
(For the record, I invited the consistent but subpar rogue to last night's raid — our first real foray into T9 — but will make a point of talking to him about his performance before the weekend. If he can't put out respectable numbers for his gear, then he'll need to step aside in favor of someone who can. I also had a brief chat with the flakey rogue to get a handle on his intentions. He says he wants to raid again, so I'll try to start slotting him in where I can and assess his commitment from there.)
I've been very open with my members about where we are as a guild, what my goals are for the new tier, and how I intend to prioritize raid spots (i.e., to those players who have been filling them — provided that they are also competent). Nonetheless, there was a bit of drama last night when I wait-listed one of the mages I recruited to fill summer raids in favor of a new and much better-geared recruit. In between add-on induced disconnects, I attempted to explain to the mage that his DPS was too low for Ulduar, let alone for a new tier of content. We were committed to helping him gear up in Uld so he could contribute to progression raids in the future ... but until then, he would have to sit out.
... Of course, now that I've actually done the Beasts of Northrend, I realize it's an easier and much more forgiving encounter than many of the fights in Ulduar. In hindsight, I'm sure we could have overcome the mage's subpar DPS. But I had no way of knowing that going into the Colesium for the first time, and felt it was unfair to ask the rest of the raid to carry deadweight when there were better options.
I attempted to explain all of this — but the mage essentially accused us of using him, and then casting him aside in favor of "returning friends." He /gquit before I even finished slotting the raid. (Ironically, one disconnect and a thoroughly hopeless Death Knight later, he could have subbed back in if he'd just stuck around.)
To be fair, we did "use" him: he was a warm body to fill our raids. But he was also someone we genuinely liked and were committed to helping succeed. He came to every Ulduar raid he signed up for and walked away with several pieces of T8.5. We invested in him, and had every intention of continuing to do so — just not in progression content.
And I absolutely did not cast him aside in favor of "returning friends." In fact, I wait-listed all of our "returning friends" in order to trial new Initiates. It seemed like the right thing to do, since I recruited the Initiates to raid (not to ride the bench!) and the "returning friends" were the ones who made it necessary for me to open recruitment in the first place.
The idea was to invite the better-geared Initiates, and sub them out over the course of the raid for raiders on standby (such as the mage) if it turned out that their DPS wasn't commensurate with their gear ... but, obviously, that didn't work out.
I'm sure that things will sort themselves out in the next few weeks, as we are better able to assess our new Initiates' skill and determine who to invite to the guild as a raider and who to let go. The novelty of patch 3.2 will wear off, as will the newness of the Coliseum (which I can already see myself coming to loathe — given that one thoroughly uninviting and lackluster room tied to completely nonsensical lore is the setting for no less than six new instances).
I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't have benched the mage. Maybe his loyalty throughout the summer slump should have been rewarded with an invitation to our first run at the Trial of the Crusader. But I feel we made the best choices we could in the limited amount of time we had to make them in, especially considering all of the variables we had to take into account (raid composition, prior attendance, order of sign-ups, rank, gear, skill... etc.).
I've tried very hard to create a supportive guild environment, with clear and transparent rules regarding raid invites and loot distribution. For the most part, I think I've done a good job, but situations like this lead me to start second-guessing myself.
And then I start second-guessing my second guess, and it's all downhill from there.
To raid, or not to raid …
... is not actually the question, but "to farm Heroic Naxx, or to postpone the 25-man shardfest until the weekend and invest one of our peak raid nights in Sartharion-10 3D?" just doesn't have the same ring to it. >.>
Our 10-man team spent a good eight hours wiping on Sarth 3D last week, and is so close to the kill we can taste it. (Barbecue dragon, mmmm...) But for various reasons, we won't be able to try again until Sunday — unless we postpone our Wednesday night Naxx-25 until Saturday, which will leave Wednesday free for OS10?
Naturally, being a Libra (and attempting to juggle all of the conflicting needs in the guild-at-large...), I'm torn.
Pro's
- My 10-man team will have the opportunity to get back into OS10 early enough in the reset to (1) experiment with various group comps, because fewer of our fellow guildmembers are likely to be saved to other ID's and can be rotated in (we'd really like an unholy death knight, a warlock or a critchicken for the +13% spell damage buff to our caster-heavy DPS); and (2) still have all of Sunday afternoon to fine-tune our strategy, if for some reason we aren't able to down Sartharion on Wednesday.
- Some of our more casual weekend raiders (who have gotten short shrift since we started clearing content in one and a half raid nights) will be able to raid again, something that they dearly miss — and have been remarkably patient about, all things considered. Not coincidentally, these are also the players who could most benefit the most from the gear that our weekday raid typically shards or loots to off-specs. Also, because Saturday is one of our official raid days, we'll need these weekend warriors in the best gear available to them. Come Ulduar, they will definitely be a part of the progression team, so it behooves the guild to rotate them into farm runs as much as possible.
Con's
- Because my 10-man team includes (by necessity) some of the guild's strongest players — including both guild leaders, three officers and two of our three main tanks — it is already perceived as a "clique" by a handful of members. If I start scheduling 25-man raids around a 10-man run, then drama is almost certain to ensue. We already have a contingent of players who feel that 10-mans are largely irrelvant to the guild's progression ... or at least, less important than farming Naxx-25 for their last few upgrades.
- The reason we can't raid again until Sunday is that our main tank and raid leader has weekend plans, and he isn't someone we're willing or able to replace. Since our protadin (who isn't on the 10-man team) won't be able to make Saturday, either, we'll be down two and possibly even three tanks. There are at least two alts (of players on the 10-man team) who are willing and able to tank Naxx-25, especially if it means freeing up Wednesday for OS10 progression ... but I have a feeling that relying on alts to tank a 25-man will result in a rougher run than we're accustomed to, and therefore drama (because some players still expect to be carried, and will fret that the guild's best tanks are unavailable for the 25-man run because we prioritized our 10-man earlier in the week).
Through all of this, I also question my own ability to remain unbiased, and make decisions that are in the guild's best interests. I'm on the 10-man team. I'm also the guild leader, and have a huge vested interest in seeing that little checkmark next to our name under OS10 3D on the realm's progression thread before 3.1 hits.
Whatever I decide, there will be unhappy people, missed opportunities and the opportunity for drama. I hate all three of these things! Immensely! But as Kyrilean pointed out in a post earlier today, the worst decision is often no decision at all.
It's coming. I just need a few more minutes to think about it ...
/waffle
* * *
Update: We didn't have the best turn-out tonight, so we did a quick 25-man Malygos with fill-ins from our Friends & Family rank while we waited for a few more raiders to log-on. Then it was off to Obsidian Sanctum for Sarth 3D. We were still missing some key people, so DPS was a little low; it took us a few tries, and definitely wasn't the smooth kill it's been for the last two weeks. (I spent most of the fight face-down in the dirt after clipping a void zone. After all these weeks of raiding as a shaman, I /fail hard at 'locking.)
We had an hour left on the clock but everyone was drained, so we called the raid there. It looks like we'll be doing Naxx on Saturday after all; the guild seemed receptive to it, as it would get our weekend raiders in, and the weekday core is a little burnt out now anyway.
Sometimes I overthink things. ;.;
Gonna Go When The Volcano Blows!
Remember that disaster of an "alt" OS10 run that transformed me from a mild-mannered Tauren shaman, serenely communing with the elements, into a card-carrying member of the Angry Healers Club? What I neglected to mention was that immediately after we pulled Sartharion, our sole non-alt DPS — a Death Knight who never fails to "win Recount" — committed suicide-by-lava.
I can't say that I blame him, to be honest. I was /wrists-ing at several friends in a private chat channel at the time, too.
... or, rather, I couldn't say that I blamed him ... until I realized why he did it ...
It wasn't because the tanks were inconsiderate, incompetent and, well, plural. (Why did we bring three of them, again? /boggle)
It wasn't because raid DPS was so ridiculously slow that we started asking each other if Sartharion had an enrage timer.
It wasn't even because the healers were snarling-mad (although we were).
No. He committed suicide to cheese the achievement. Apparently, the game doesn't recognize the difference between dying before you're hit by a volcano and defeating Sartharion without being hit by any volcanos at all ... provided that the other nine-tenths of the raid is able to down him, of course.
Which we did.
Eventually.
Painfully.
With much gnashing of the teeth, tearing of the hair and general QQ.
So in the end, our sole DPS main earned (/cough) his 10 achievement points, our feckless alts walked away with gear and badges, and I spent the next few days commiserating with Angry Healers everywhere. (Yay, blogfodder.)
Win-win, right?
... not if you asked the other healer in the run, the holy-turned-ret-turned-holy-again paladin who was the Light to my Lasers that night. He was absolutely furious that the Death Knight took a dive, especially since it forced the two of us work that much harder to keep the rest of the raid alive (and thus miss out on the achievement ourselves).
I understand where he was coming from, of course. I wasn't mad myself (the Death Knight announced before accepting the raid invite that he was going to die in a fire; we just kind of assumed that he was joking...) but that's probably because I was already frustrated to the verge of tears by ten other things. One more would have pushed me over the edge from angry into homicidal.
I kind of shrugged it off at the time, /pat'd the paladin on his jet-blue shoulders and wrote the entire night off as a "learning experience" (as in, I learned never to subject myself to that again!).
So why do I bring all of this up again? Am I that hard up for things to write about?
... Yes, but that's thoroughly beside the point.
You see, late, late last night — after working on Sarth 3D (Lite Edition) for an hour or so and realizing that we just didn't have the right group for it — we decided to assassinate the Twilight drakes one-by-one and then take on Sarth, which would give everyone who didn't have the achievement yet an opportunity to practice volcano-dodging in a relatively stress-free environment. (Because, believe me, a lava wall and some fire elementals are a nice walk in the Sepulcher compared to all of The Bad® that Sarth 3D has going on!)
So, no Of The Nightfall for me this week.
But no volcano-spew, either!
Without throwing myself into the jaws of the dragon — or letting any of my precious little Grid-boxlets go out! — Gonna Go When The Volcano Blows is one more Glory of the Raider achievement checked off my list.
/flex
The hands-down best part was that the Angry Paladin got it too, which inspired him to forgive the Death Knight (it's easy to forgive someone when you can feel superior to them — such as for earning an achievement legitimately that they had to exploit). I never have to listen to him cry in /officer chat about it again!
... Still, the entire incident has me thinking about Tarsus's excellent No Faith in Achievements post in a whole new light. I don't necessarily agree that achievements are pointless, although I certainly wish they were: their only real value comes from keeping my guildmembers interested in the game at a time that we're all bored out of our minds. If the raids themselves presented more of a challenge, then the gimmicky raid achievements wouldn't feel like such a necessary evil.
OMG, ninja!
Drotara of Less QQ, More PewPew posed an interesting question: When would you become a ninja?
My first impulse was to exclaim "Never!" in my best Scarlet O'Hara voice, while clutching at my heart with one hand and fluttering around wildly with the other. Then I remembered that I'm Undead, with half-rotted fingertips that are likely to fall off if I attempt that bit of girly frivoloty ... so, nevermind.
For the record, Drotara isn't asking "Why would you master loot that spirit trinket to your mage (over the PuG resto druid who could actually use it)?" or even "Is it ever appropriate to Need-and-run?" No, Drotara is more interested in the ethics of passing another player over for a piece of loot — especially if she actually won the roll — if you don't feel that she "deserves" it. Maybe she died 3% into the fight and didn't contribute at all. Maybe her performance was simply subpar. Or maybe you don't agree that she needs an item because it isn't optimal for her class or role.
What really made me stop and consider the question was a story Drotara shared about another player's mother, who participated in a Vault PuG and actually won the roll for Valorous gloves — only to watch them go to another Death Knight because the raid leader decided she "sucked."
My Mom plays a Death Knight, too. The last time I checked, she was completely decked out in spellpower plate because it looked cuter on her Blood Elf than DPS gear, and had the added benefit of "making her spells pwn more." (Really.)
If my Mom were brave enough to PuG into a Vault run — which she isn't; she's listened in on enough of my siblings' raids to be absolutely terrified of opening herself up to that kind of criticism — I suspect she'd come somewhere below the tanks and above an Affliction 'lock her Baby Blizzard Bear on DPS. She'd try her best, and possibly even drive herself to a panic attack in the process ... but the damage meters would not be kind, and I can't imagine that the typical Black Dragonflight PuG would be either. (Sometimes, I think my server prides itself on its collective cruelty.)
What if I were the raid leader? How would I handle the situation?
As a guild leader, my reputation is extremely important to me — so on the rare occasions that I organize trade channel PuG's, I am very careful to (1) make the loot rules clear before the first pull and (2) follow them to the letter. If this means rewarding the Death Knight who can't DPS her way out of a netherweave bag, so be it.
When I'm handling loot in guild runs or even partial PuG's, I do tend to be a little more subjective. In these cases, the letter of the law actually becomes secondary to its spirit.
I'm thinking specifically of an incident that occurred in a 3/4 guild, 1/4 PuG run of Serpentshrine Cavern. SSC was officially considered farm content, so we were using a simple "Need for main-spec/Greed for off-spec/Pass otherwise" rule to handle loot (with a few pre-determined exceptions, such as the Earring of Soulful Meditation and Tsunami Talisman — our primary reasons for hosting the PuG in the first place!)
We were muddling through with less than a full raid group, including a PuG tank who remains to this day the single-worst prot paladin I have ever met. "Healsforhugs" absolutely could not pick up his adds on Hydross; our feral druid ended up tanking all four, while Hugs ran around dropping Consecrates around the perimeter of the raid for ... no discernable reason.
Still, the rest of us overgeared the content, and were able to brute-strength our way through it fairly easily. Hugs picked up a couple of off-spec drops uncontested, including the warrior-tanking mace off of Lurker. (We really couldn't figure out why he wanted it, but no one else did, so ... whatever. /shrug)
We eventually made it to Leotheras, who dropped a Champion token (and some other things I can't remember, but definitely not a Tsunami Talisman). Healsforhugs asked to /roll. So did our Holy Paladin, who already had healing gloves but was looking to build a protection set in preparation for Mount Hyjal.
At that point, Hugs was in the raid simply because I didn't have the heart to kick him. His actual contribution was negligible — perhaps even negative, since he had been directly responsible for numerous trash deaths, and we had already decided to call the raid after Leo since there was no possible way he could tank Tidewalker's adds or anything in the Karathress fight.
Meanwhile, it was in the guild's best interests for the Holy Paladin to have an up-to-date prot set, since our pally tank was teaching a summer course and often missed raids, which occasionally left us without a viable tank for Hyjal trash.
I explained to Healsforhugs in whispers that even though the other paladin was healing at the moment, prot would be his main spec in guild raids so I was giving them equal priority. The /roll alone would determine the winner.
The Holy Paladin won the roll, and I looted the tier token to him.
Healsforhugs threw an absolute fit. He immediately dropped the raid, hearthed to Shattrath and started denounce us in /say us as "ninjas" and "robers" ... which, come to think of it, led to this rather comical moment:
[Healsforhugs]: Don't join Elleiras's guild! Ninjas! They just robed me!!
[Random Player #1]: You mean ... they forced you into a robe?
[Random Player #2]: OMG, I would totally join a guild for a free robe! Where do I sign up?!
... I really shouldn't make fun of poor Healsforhugs, especially since — technically — he was right. I did break my own loot rules when I accepted the Holy Paladin's off-spec roll as if it were main-spec.
Was it justified? I think so. Healsforhugs was worse than useless, had already received several items and actually lost the roll to the Holy Paladin.
Did the guild's reputation suffer as a result? Not at all. Healsforhugs made a fool of himself in Shattrath and I actually received a /w that night from the leader of a guild he had recently applied to, thanking me for exposing him as a loser and a creep ... which I didn't quite get, since the extent of my public response to his theatrics was a simple "/say You lost the roll to another paladin; I'm very sorry that upset you."
Cliques Happen
It's an inevitable fact of guild life — and, indeed, life in general. We gravitate towards those people with whom we feel the most comfortable, often because we share common interests or experiences.
An inherently social game, WoW actually encourages the formation of cliques by rewarding us for forming 5-player teams from level 12 on. As content becomes more challenging, we are increasingly motivated to group with people we know and trust; after all, Razorfen Kraul was relatively painless to PuG. Heroic Old Kingdom ... not so much.
My guild's first negative experience with cliques occurred in our early Karazhan days, when we were attempting to organize our diverse roster into two 10-man groups — a significant challenge in and of itself, given that we had members in all four hemispheres! It wasn't an issue when we were a mere leveling guild; in fact, it worked to our advantage, since there was almost always someone online to talk to or ask for help with that group quest you could almost but not quite solo. However, when we finally entered the endgame, we had to make some serious compromises to accommodate timezones that ranged from five hours behind Server Time to 13 hours ahead.
I posted a poll on the guild forum to collect information about our members' availability, input it into an Excel spreadsheet, and spent a thoroughly exhausting four hours in a Vent meeting with my co-guild leaders: planning the future of the guild, drafting loot rules and building two raid rosters that were as balanced as they could be while still taking everyone's schedules and personal preferences into account.
In spite of these efforts, a perception soon emerged within the guild that there was an "A-Team" and a "B-Team." In hindsight, this was most likely because all three of the guild's leaders were on the so-called A-Team. This was 100% the result of our individual school and work schedules, which favored weekend raids — but no matter how many times we explained this, it was still seen as symptomatic of an "officer's clique."
Meanwhile, at the core of the B-Team was a group of friends who had played together in the past under different tags and built relationships that transcended WoW. Most had exchanged phone numbers, and a few knew each other in real life. They were already perceived as a social clique by many; once they were formally organized into a Karazhan team — one they perceived as being the lesser of the two — their loyalty to each other increased in inverse proportion to their resentment for guild's officers. As a result, the B-Team became increasingly standoffish and often shunned guildmembers they considered "outsiders."
Things came to a head the week Zul'Aman was patched into the game, when my (former) co-lead attempted to organize a single ZA group consisting of the strongest members of both Karazhan teams. He felt (rightly, in my opinion) that neither team alone would make significant headway into the new instance. It wasn't so much matter of skill or gear at that point as it was of class composition: in those days, at our level of progression, Zul'Aman required two MT-quality tanks and three healers, with a mage or druid for crowd control. Each of the two Kara groups were running with one tank, one off-tank, two healers and a shadow priest as primary CC.
In order to stand a chance at clearing ZA, it was clear to my co-lead that we would need to mix things up — and given that the A-Team/B-Team mentality was causing hard feelings all around, I personally felt that combining the teams to some extent would be good for guild morale.
The clique wouldn't hear of it. Its members wanted to progress from Karazhan to ZA as a team, and some went so far as to refuse to join another group for any reason. After a long and emotionally fraught Vent meeting, the B-Team ended up leaving to create their own guild. (To their credit, they cleared Zul'Aman before we did — but not before making significant changes to their roster to accommodate the unique demands pre-nerf ZA placed on an entry-level raid.)
As for the rest of us? Burnt out on Zul'Aman before we even set foot (or hoof or paw, as they case may be...) in the instance, we turned our attention to Gruul's Lair instead. With a major source of tension removed from the guild, we were able to recruit quickly — something we had been hard-pressed to do before the split, with the A-Team/B-Team dichotomy fostering negativity and resentment among our members.
What had once seemed like a guild-breaking schism turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as we were able to reinvent ourselves, recommit to each other, and ultimately rebuild: stronger than we had been before, with a renewed sense of purpose and common vision. Shortly thereafter, we made the jump from a 10- to 25-man raiding guild ... and enjoyed a small modicum of success in the process.
And as difficult as it was at the time, I learned a great deal about guild leading from this early experience.
First, I learned that cliques happen. Social cliques, heroic groups and even 10-man teams will form in a guild that is focused on 25-man raid content. Unless these cliques threaten the unity of the guild, they can be tolerated and in some cases even welcomed, because they can and do bring individual guild members closer together.
Second, I learned that there comes a point for some cliques when they cease to be benevolent and become poisonous instead. When a clique develops its own identity, separate from that of the guild, and the clique's members identify with the clique first and the guild second, and place unreasonable demands upon the guild — even holding it hostage by refusing to participate in guild events unless the wishes of the clique are accommodated — then it needs to be confronted, perhaps even excised.
Finally, I learned that in extreme cases such as this, it can be necessary to sacrifice the guild's short-term goals for its long term health. Parting ways with the so-called B-team may have set us back a few weeks in terms of raid progression, but it also allowed us to move forward with a stronger core than we had had before. We rebuilt the guild from a position of unity and confidence, and were the all the better for it. It took months for me to recover, personally, from what I felt was a failure on my part to keep the guild intact. But eventually, I came to realize that the guild split was the best thing that could have happened to us at the time. At the risk of sounding hopelessly melodramatic, it was a liberating epiphany.
Loot Drama: When is main spec not main spec?
I once looted a melee dagger to a Holy Priest. For his lolsmite spec. (Spellpower stacks with AP. Didn't you know?)
We were farming Mount Hyjal (in the vain hopes that Kaz'rogal would finally have a heart) with a mismatched assortment of over-geared mains, undergeared alts and some non-raiding friends and family. The guild bank was overflowing with Void Crystals; we certainly didn't need any more, even to sell. Our rogues were as geared as you can get without farming Sunwell or seeing Warglaives drop (which, alas, we never did). No one wanted the lonely little dagger.
Except for our Holy Priest.
So I gave it to him, free of charge (i.e., GP).
He ran around stabbing things for a trash wave or two, then went back to healing, and we all had a good laugh about it over Vent.
I share this story to prove a point: I'm not a tyrant when it comes to loot. We have rules, and I follow them closely because I believe that consistency is important — but I'd still rather see something go to someone who will get some use out of it (and if not actual use, then at least 30 seconds of enjoyment) than to the guild bank as a shard. Granted, this is less true now than it was at the end of the Burning Crusade: enchanting mats are valuable again, and we're replacing gear quickly enough that there never seem to be enough to go around. But, in general, a situational upgrade or sidegrade or even a few minutes levity in a tense situation is more valuable to the guild than an Abyss Crystal.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a disconnect between this philosophy (which my guildmembers support overwhelmingly in 10-man's, where loot is /random'd and therefore — for all intents and purposes — "free") and the actual bids that come in after a 25-man boss kill. In Heroic raids, where all loot has a cost (GP), players are much more likely to pass on gear, often skipping the smaller upgrades in order to preserve their priority (PR) for more significant ones.
This is especially true now that we're starting to see some of our more active members "cap out" in terms of gear. Since the upgrades aren't as plentiful for them, they aren't receiving GP and are sitting at the top of the PR list week after week. Decay chips away at their respective leads, bit by bit — but as long as they continue raiding, they will still be first up for those last elusive drops that everyone needs.
As far as the system is concerned, this is fair. The Resto Shaman who hasn't taken loot from the last three raids should receive a highly coveted mace over the Shadow Priest who has upgraded several pieces of gear in the same timeframe.
... But what if the Resto Shaman has refused loot not because she's capped out, but because she's protecting her PR and has passed on multiple upgrades in the process? This is EPGP's equivalent of DKP hoarding. By passing on upgrades that could boost her spellpower, intellect, mp5, etc., to the benefit the entire raid, the Shaman is essentially letting those who are willing to take the PR hit carry her through content.
I recently had a Mage attempt to bid off-spec for a tier token, on the grounds that since no one else wanted it, he shouldn't have to pay full price for something that would be sharded otherwise. The tier piece would have been a nice upgrade, but since the Mage refused to sacrifice the top spot on the PR list, he passed the token to a Feral Druid, who picked it up at 10% GP for his off-spec Balance set (which I can tell you right now will never see use).
If I was willing to give a melee dagger to a Holy Priest for free when there was no competition for it, why wouldn't I give a tier token to a Mage at off-spec cost when there was no other main-spec interest?
Because if I did, the next time something dropped that the Mage could bid on, he would have had an unfair advantage (in terms of PR) over someone who received his or her tier token for full GP. Giving the Mage the token for a discounted cost wouldn't have hurt anyone or anything at that particular moment, but it would have affected everyone attempting to bid against him on subsequent drops.
This has been a surprisingly difficult concept to explain, and it still isn't unusual for me to receive an "I'll take it for off-spec ..." /tell from a pure DPS class when I call for bids. Case in point: in last week's Naxx 25 run, three of our four Hunters attempted to bid "off-spec" for the same item — and each hunter was specced into a different tree! Now, I don't claim to be an expert on hunter gear (that's what you have Pike and BRK for), but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if it isn't main-spec for the Beast Master, then it should be main-spec for either the Marksman or the Survivalist. If not, it's probably not a hunter item in the first place.
(Yes, I know. Everything is a Hunter item. Just like everything is a Druid item. Including the staff I lost to a Feral Druid in Wailing Caverns because it had stamina in addition to spellpower, and was therefore suitable for tanking.
... what? Some grudges were built to last!)
Of course, I realize that some pieces are better for some specs than others. While a Beast Master would most likely pass on Haste, a Survivalist would lap it up (to the point. I think there's a cap, but at all of level 68 Falafel Fahalle hasn't seen it it yet.) It isn't a matter of "Is it better for Survival?", because we know that it is. It's a matter of "Should the BM Hunter be able to take a Haste-laden upgrade for nominal GP, and still win the crossbow that all three hunters want off the next boss because his PR hasn't been significantly impacted?"
Again, my answer has always been no.
This is why, as a general rule, we don't allow pure DPS classes (hunters, mages, warlocks and rogues) to bid for off-spec gear. I've made exceptions in the past (back in TBC, when every raiding Rogue was Combat Swords, maces frequently went to off-spec bids), but for the most part, it's full price or shard.
This makes sense to me for several reasons. First and foremost, it keeps things simple. Unlike most hybrids, who need completely different stats for the different roles they are able to fulfill, pure DPS classes want the same basic stats across all possible specs. Some stats (especially secondary stats like hit, crit and haste) may be valued more highly for some specs than others, but a Hunter always wants agility and a Mage always wants spellpower.
As a Warlock, I always want stamina, intellect and spirit. I consider Affliction my main spec for raid purposes and, as Affliction, value spellpower more highly than crit or haste. But if I bid on an item that sacrifices a small amount of spellpower for crit or haste, I still incur main-spec cost — even though the item is a sidegrade for Affliction and an upgrade for Destruction, my off-spec.
My point is that spellpower plate is obviously off-spec for a tanking Paladin, spell hit cloth is obviously off-spec for a healing Priest, and attack power mail is obviously off-spec for an Elemental Shaman. I would have no problem awarding any of these items to off-specs for 10% of actual GP, especially if the alternative is a DE. But for pure DPS classes, where the differences between main-spec and off-spec itemization are less clear (and often open to debate), I keep things simple by enforcing my "main-spec or not at all" policy.
In the interests of compromise, there has been some discussion in officer chat about the possibility creating an intermediate level of bidding — something along the lines of a "Greed 50%", in which raiders could bid on those sidegrades or nominal/situational upgrades at 50% of GP value. Greed bids would have lower priority than main-spec bids (100% GP) but a higher priority than off-spec bids (10%). I know of a couple of guilds that do this, and it seems like a workable solution ... but it would also undermine the reason we went to a fixed-cost system in the first place, which was to eliminate the need for guildmembers to bid against each other rather than for a particular item.
Rather than amend our rules, we've attempted to educate our members about two of the major disadvantages to hoarding:
First, EP and GP decay by 10% every week. This means that even if you view GP as a penalty, it's one that diminishes over time. When Kel'thuzad finally gets around to dropping The Turning Tide, that tier token you took weeks or months ago may very well have decayed to insignificance. A Green Macaw in the hand is worth two Hyacinth Macaws in the bush, as they say.
Second, hoarding undermines the system. If everyone hoards, then no one receives gear, raid DPS/tanking/healing doesn't improve, and bosses don't die (except in "easymode" WotLK — but that won't be the case forever!). On the other hand, if everyone bids on all of the upgrades available to them, PR becomes much more fluid, and no one has to worry that the item they took today will cost them the drop they really want three weeks from now. The system works best when no one attempts to undermine or outsmart it.
"My guild won't let me…"
As a guild leader and avid blog reader, I see this all the time.
It has more forms than a Feral druid:
"My guild won't let me raid on my brother's character."
"My guild won't let me play my Warlock instead of my Paladin."
"My guild won't let me PuG Heroic Obsidian Sanctum."
And my personal favorite (not to mention the one that inspired this particular rant):
"My guild won't let me tank."
First, the idea that your guild "won't let you ______" is absurd. You pay for your subscription, not your Guild Leader. You control your characters, your playtime, your actions and your interactions in the game. Your guild simply does not have the ability to prevent you from doing something that you want to do, nor does it have the power to force you to do anything that you don't want to do against your will.
What you really mean by "My guild won't let me ______" is "My guild won't let me ______ and still be a member of the guild."
The difference is more than mere semantics.
"My guild won't let me ______" suggests that your guild is some kind of totalitarian state that exerts absolute control over you and your actions.
If joining a guild automatically e-mailed your password and secret question to the Guild Leader, and gave each of the guild's officers the option to take control of your character and your interface at any time, and disabled the /gquit command line ... Well then. You might have a case!
But unless my spam filters are re-directing a whole lot of e-mail from noreply@blizzard.com, it doesn't quite work that way.
Sure, I can ask my members not to PuG heroic raid zones, but I can't actually prevent them from doing so. I simply don't (and shouldn't) have that kind of power. The most I can do is penalize them for breaking the rules, either by barring them from future raids or removing them from the guild.
"My guild won't let me ______ and still be a member of the guild," on the other hand, is a fair statement.
Most guilds have rules. Good guilds publish these rules and make them available, if not publicly, then at least to prospective applicants and current members.
Generally speaking, when you join a guild, you agree to abide by the guild's rules. You also agree to be removed from the guild if you break those rules. If these agreements aren't explicit (and they often are), then they're at least implicit.
Either way, this doesn't mean that the guild controls you, but that you've entered into an agreement with it: to abide by the guild's rules in exchange for membership and whatever privileges that conveys — from access to /gchat, to help with group quests, to a raid spot and epic loot, depending upon the focus (and relative success) of the guild.
Semantics aside — I said it wasn't "merely" about semantics, not that it wasn't about semantics at all! — there is often a reason for the things your guild won't let you do (and still be a member of the guild).
"My guild won't let me raid on my brother's character."
This one came up last night, when our sole tree (one of only five healers in the raid) asked to play his brother's mage instead of his druid, because his brother was called into work but still "needed" gear from several bosses in heroic Naxx.
I denied the request for two reasons:
1. First and foremost, we needed the heals! Allowing the tree in question to play his brother's mage would have forced one of our hybrids to respec (at the guild's cost) or one of our DPS mains to switch over to a healing alt. I'm not going to force someone into a spec or onto a character they don't want to play to accomodate someone who isn't even in the raid.
2. The tree is a much more consistent raider than his brother. It makes more sense from the guild's perspective to gear the druid who seldom misses a raid over the mage who shows up for one in every three. The guild is not interested in gearing individuals; it gears the raid, so that the entire raid can progress. There was another mage, two warlocks and a shadow priest in the group who would have made better use of any cloth caster drops anyway.
"My guild won't let me play my Warlock instead of my Paladin."
I read a post over at Greedy Goblin a few weeks ago that is at least partially responsible for this post. Basically, Gevlon encouraged a friend not only to leave her guild because it "forced" her to play her paladin instead of her warlock, but to steal almost 24K gold from the guild bank to compensate her for the hours she spent raiding on her pally, as well.
I understand why she /gquit. In her situation, I might have done the same thing — minus the theft, of course.
What I don't understand is the idea that the guild somehow deserved to be punished for "forcing" her to play her paladin. Far from being forced, she agreed to level a healer and, in return, recieved help from the guild on the long grind from 1 to 70.
Ultimately, she raided on her paladin, saw content, took gear ... and, by Gevlon's account, had fun doing it.
Now, ten levels later, because she thinks she would have had more fun playing her 'lock, she feels entitled to 24K gold in bogus opportunity costs and the moral high road?
Seriously, this has to be the stupidest thing I've read in the Blogosphere to date, and I've read all of Renoobed's Melvin stories ...
"My guild won't let me PuG Heroic Obsidian Sanctum."
As easy as Sartharion is, Sartharion + 1, 2 and 3 drakes is still progression.
We attempted Sartharion +1 unsuccessfully in our last two Heroic OS raids. As long as Malygos remains undefeated, the Sartharion achievements aren't a priority for us, so we gave it three attempts each time — just to assess our progress — before killing Vesperson, downing Sarth in "easy-mode" and moving on for the night.
Still, that's three more wipes than you're likely to endure in a halfway decent Sartharion -3 PuG, so I suppose I can understand why some guildmembers would prefer to PuG OS early in the week, /roll on "free" loot (i.e., gear with no GP cost attached) and pass on the weekend run.
I understand it, but I don't like it, and have made it very clear that anyone caught PuGing Heroic OS will be wait-listed from Heroic Naxx — a much longer instance that's harder to PuG successfully.
For the most part, my guildmembers support the decision. After all, they want to raid too, and can't if a handful of members are saved to a PuG ID. Still, there's a small minority of players who feel the rule is too restrictive, including a certain Death Knight ...
And that brings me to my last "My guild won't let me ______", and the one that inspired this post in the first place.
"My guild won't let me tank."
Shortly before WotLK shipped, my guild's MT announced that he would be making his rogue his new main. He felt that tanking was "too easy" in the post-3.0.1 world, and wanted to play something more challenging. Even if rogue DPS was relatively simple to master, he hoped, then the opportunity to compete on the damage meters would at least keep things interesting.
We only had one raiding rogue at the time, and fury warrior who was more than capable of stepping up to tank, although it would have been as fourth tank in seniority rather than first. (Even without our former MT, we had a solid tank corps consisting of a Feral druid, second Prot warrior and Prot paladin.)
Even though our MT's spot was filled before the change became public knowledge, the moment it did, it seemed that everyone in the guild who had ever had aspirations of tanking spontaneously respecced or rerolled in an attempt to claim his spot. >.<
I might be exaggerating. A little.
The problem I'm running into now is that I have more would-be tanks than the raid can possibly support. I am constantly asking the paladin to respec Holy, the Death Knight to respec Unholy, and the warriors to respec to ... whatever it is warriors do for DPS. None of them are thrilled about it, and I suspect they'll be even less thrilled when I announce on the guild forum that I'm going to start enforcing Main Tank priority on loot — something I've never had to do before, because in TBC our tanks were such a close-knit group that they made all of their own loot decisions, largely by consensus, with PR invoked as an occasional tie-breaker.
Now, the junior Prot paladin (who is usually given a choice between raiding as Holy and not raiding at all) is resentful of our Main Tankadin; our Death Knight complains about being asked to respec DPS every other raid (and attempts to organize a Heroic OS PuG week simply so he can MT it ...); and the warrior we had initially tapped to replace our MT after he went rogue has bowed out of the competition and is raiding on his Frostfire mage. To top it all off, our real tanks are alarmed by the fact that the wannabes are attempting to bid on tank gear ...
If this sounds like a recipe for drama, it is!
What frustrates me so much is the fact that none of these would-be tanks talked to me about their desire to tank — and the likelihood that they would recieve much-coveted tank spots in the guild raid — before they the invested time, effort and gold into their Frost, Feral or Protection gear. I would have been happy to explain to them that our tanking spots were filled, and perhaps forestall this "My guild won't let me tank" nonsense.
Instead, I'm doing it retroactively, and with as much sympathy and support as I can muster (which, frankly, isn't a lot).
But, really, why would you assume that speccing tank and signing up for raids automatically makes you the MT of an established raiding guild? Is there something I'm missing here? Or do I simply have "Pushover" written on across my Undead forehead?
Alts! I haz them.
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Surreality Blogs!
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