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.
And then there were eight.
I benched myself from last night's raid.
We finally managed to recruit a second holy paladin — or, rather, Malamo managed to recruit a second holy paladin by convincing his 3v3 partners to raid with us (most likely by refusing to unbind KAMEHAMEHA! from Lightning Bolt until they agreed to apply >.>).
Not only does Tingwei seem perfectly sane (*fingers crossed*), but she rounds out our group nicely, giving us two raiders of each healing class and the cushion we need to accommodate occasional absences (without having to do silly things like send our 15 million DPS ret pally to his discipline priest for the evening).
However, adding another healer does take our total number to eight, which is two more than we find we need for most content. We're either going to have to look at utilizing our dual-specs (which will take raid spots from the "real" DPS) or start taking turns. Given that we also wait-listed DPS last night, I felt that the latter was the better option and decided to set the precedent by stepping out first.
If the guild leader is the first to ride the bench, then surely others will think twice before complaining about it, right?
... one can hope. ;.;
And now, for something a little different …
I've been horribly remiss when it comes to updating the guild website — so much so that our Death Knight officer, Ouchilicious, finally took matters into his own undead hands.
His ToC "screenshot" is too good not to share:
I can't be sure, but I think the dead cow in the lower left-hand corner is Elam ...
My first glimpse of Black Temple
The first time I experienced Black Temple, I wasn't a raider; I was a tourist.
Surreality was still working on SSC and TK when the T6 attunements were patched out of the game. Many guilds at our level of progression leapt at the opportunity to skip ahead to Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, but our ragtag group of lore junkies and obsessive completionists was determined to see Lady Vashj and Lord Kael'thas defeated before retiring Tier 5. (Besides, I had read on the realm forum that 3/4 TK and 5/6 SSC translated from WoW into English as "we don't do anything hard," and I didn't want Surreality to be looked down upon as one of those guilds. The "months behind" badge, on the other hand, I wore with pride.)
Even with attunements lifted, Black Temple seemed a far distant goal. It loomed over us, both literally and figuratively: an inscrutable monolith, mysterious, seemingly impenetrable — wonderfully, awe-inspiringly epic. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a daily ritual, but I often found myself veering north and east from the Sanctum of the Stars, putting my one-woman crusade on behalf of the Netherwing off for just long enough to hover in the shadow of the former Temple of Karabor and dream of the day that I would slough the mud and muck of Serpentshrine Cavern off of my boots and ... crawl through the mud and the muck of Illidan's sewer.
In those days, Surreality had become something of a haven for the alts of hardcore raiders, who enjoyed our relaxed guild culture and often hung out with us outside of raid times. (Or at least, that's what I told myself. Maybe they saw it as the equivalent of reading to kindergartners: WoW volunteerism, as it were.)
One night, the most egregious among them — a Tier 6 shaman many of us regarded with something akin to hero worship — offered to take us on a guided tour of Black Temple, using his main guild's raid ID.
To this day, it remains some of the most fun I've ever had in-game.
First, there was the sheer awe-factor. I was in Black Temple! Me! Black Temple! Sure, it's old hat now ... but at the time, Black Temple was the domain of the elite. The <Fires of Heaven>'s and <Forgotten Heroes>'s of the world raided Black Temple — not me! And yet here I was, a fledgling warlock in Frozen Shadoweave and that slutty red dress from Magister's Terrace, towing my imp around like a teddy bear and gaping at the ghosts of vanquished trash mobs.
And then, there was the light-heartedness of it all. It was so. much. fun. to be running amock in the scariest zone in the game, pretending we were raid bosses and intrepid adventurers and erstwile heroes, telling each other that this is where Gurtogg Bloodboil will be and this is where we will save Akama — or die trying — and oooo, look, are those ghosts on the ceiling?
* * *
I've come a long way since then, obviously, but I was reminded of this experience yesterday when responding to Light's comments on a recent (and apparently controversial) blogpost.
"The thing I notice the most about WoW players is that they expect Blizzard to hand them everything in terms of how to make the game harder or more interesting," Light wrote.
I replied with the now-standard counterpoint: "The thing I notice about WoW players is that they expect Blizzard to take them on a guided tour of all the content in the game..."
... and yet, ironically, my first glimpse of what remains my favorite content was — quite literally — a guided tour!
Why then, as Juzaba asks, do I begrudge others that experience?
I don't.
What I regret about Blizzard's paradigm shift is the knowledge that I will never again feel the kind of awe I did upon entering Black Temple for the first time — or the third1, because when I returned as a bona fide raider (with a jagged shard of Kael'thas's soul tucked into the pocket of my robes to prove it!), it was just as epic. But if every challenge in the game has an easy-mode counterpart, then the truly "new" experiences will be few and far between and every hard-mode victory will feel at least a little hollow.
Surreality is currently working on the heroic Twin Valkyrs. It's a hard, fun fight. I'm enjoying myself, especially because I can feel us progressing. We're learning with each new attempt. I can't claim that every wipe is productive (some are just dumb), but most are. The fight hasn't clicked yet, but it will — and when it does, I know I'll be happy and exhilerated and relieved, all at once.
But, still, compared to my TBC experience ... I can't help but feel that this is methodone.
If the new model is working for you — if you find the easy-mode/hard-mode dichotomy a perfectly acceptable, even brilliant compromise — then I'm happy for you. Truly. I'm not asking Blizzard to re-tune the raid content to my specifications; I'm simply expressing regret and a vague sense of loss over the end of an era.
- Remind me to tell you about the second, some time. For now, suffice it to say that it involved two warlocks, a prowling cat druid and a very naughty game of dodgeball with two Eyes of Killrogg. ↩
Legendary.
I am the single most indecisive person I know. I blame it on my Libra stars: a balance-seeker through and through, I will weigh not only every available option, but every conceivable variation of every available option before commiting myself to one.
... And yet when we learned that the next legendary would be a healing mace, there was never any doubt in my mind as to who should receive it. There were no alternatives to consider; no cosmic scales to tinker with until they tipped perfectly even.
For once, my inner October was perfectly and confidently decisive.
Although Surreality has a strong healing core and six excellent healers — each worthy of the honor for vastly different reasons — only one of them has been with the guild from the very beginning: from that first tentative foray into Karazhan, when he agreed to heal our weeknight raid in spite of a living a full hour ahead of server time and and four hours ahead of the rest of his team. (He cat-napped after work and set his alarm for 2 AM in order to honor that commitment, but honor it he did!)
For over two years, he has been a constant presence in and invaluable asset to the guild: as an officer, as our healing lead, and as a friend.
This is, after all, the man who operates on the "Happiness Principle" and will pass upgrades or vanity items to anyone he thinks will derive more happiness from them than he will.
This is also the man who volunteers to heal instances and raids for the guild's entire host of alts, long after they've ceased to be of any personal value to him — and then sits out those he does need simply so others can experience them. (And unlike me, he doesn't mope about it for a week afterwards. >.>)
He herds cats.
He accompanies our raid leader into cleared instance ID's to fine-tune strategy and positioning.
He donates hours of his time herbing and fishing to keep the guild bank stocked with flasks and potions for those long progression nights.
He has spent many a night consoling me through guild drama, boy drama, family drama and every other kind of drama: offering support and a fresh perspective — and occasionally playing Devil's Advocate — when they are most needed.
I know they're only pixels, Annah, but they carry the respect and gratitude of the guild with them. Congratulations on Val'anyr. No one deserves it more.
Surreality is recruiting!
Surreality is a progression-minded adult raiding guild on the US-Black Dragonflight server. In the past, our tagline has been “serious raiding on a casual schedule.” However, we have recently come to realize that our core raiders tend more towards the serious and less towards the casual, and are hoping to attract a few like-minded players to round out our raiding roster. Our 10-man team clears the Trial of the Grand Crusader every week. Help us make it possible for our 25-man to do the same!
Raid Schedule and Progression
We raid 25-man content on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 9:30 PM to 12 midnight (Eastern Time). We do not schedule 10-mans on Group Calendar, but do manage to run anywhere between three and four impromptu ToC 10 raids each week.
We’ve cleared Ulduar 25 through Yogg-Saron, with a handful of hard-modes complete (including Flame Leviathan +4, XT-Deconstructor, Hodir and Freya -1). Trial of the Crusader 25 is on "farm status". A full clear takes about an hour — leaving us far too much time each week not to be working on Trial of the Grand Crusader!
This is, of course, where you come in.
The problem with Ulduar is Naxxramas.
I love Ulduar.
I love the scenery. I love the lore — what I understand of it, anyway (I've never paid too much attention to that aspect of the game, which is ironic for someone who considers herself a compulsive role-player). I love the boss fights with their fun, occasionally gimmicky mechanics; the trash pulls that require creativity and thought; the unexpected humor (XT-002's voice, AoE mobs named Trash and V0-L7R-0N spring readily to mind); and especially the newness of it all.
I love that healing is hard again; that I have to utilize my rotations rather than simply spam Chain Heal on the melee.
What I don't love — and what actually caused me to end last night's raid in tears (something I don't dare confess to the guild-at-large) — was the Naxx-inspired cockiness that we took into Ulduar with us the first time we zoned in, and the inevitable crash that followed it.
I don't think Ulduar is "too hard." On the contrary, compared to SSC and TK — The Burning Crusade's sophomore tier — Ulduar's easy modes are... well, easy. Laugh if you like, but we didn't down Void Reaver the first time we attempted him. It took two days for us to master that particular fight, and we raced the enrage timer every week for a month before we could consider the "Loot Reaver" on farm.
I stopped counting after the first few dozen deaths (and I was playing a warlock at the time, so they were plentiful!), but I rather suspect that A'lar's trash wiped us more times than Razorscale, Deconstructor and Ignis combined.
So, no, the problem isn't Ulduar itself.
The problem is that Naxxramas was so easy by comparison to the raids that preceded it that we actually forgot what it was like to progress through new content. Once upon a tier, we congratulated ourselves when it "only" took a week or two of raiding to defeat a new boss. Now, we feel like we've failed if it takes more than two or three attempts, let alone nights.
Tensions are running high in my 25-man raid. We're making decent progress — nine bosses fell (or were redeemed) in our second full week of raiding — but we're certainly not one- or two- shotting encounters like we were in Naxxramas when it was new.
To be fair, most of us don't want to. We complained bitterly that Naxx was "too easy"; by the time Ulduar was released, we were desperate for a challenge. (Granted, Sartharion 3D was a challenge — but it was also a hard-mode, so we tended to view it as an encore performance rather than a legitimate step in our progression.)
Still, there's a difference between wanting to wipe in Ulduar and actually wiping in Ulduar. In the heat of the moment, it's easy to forget that this is exactly what we've been crying for, and start to lose our patience and eventually our tempers. This happened repeatedly in Saturday's 25-man raid, as the same officers and veterans I count on to help me lead when Keaton isn't around (and he wasn't this weekend) tore into each other for perceived slights, mistakes, lapses in judgment and even disagreements over strategy. As hard as I tried to run interference — reining in tempers, soothing ruffled feathers, mediating the inevitable disputes privately while remaining outwardly positive — I failed utterly to control the raid and ended the night thoroughly exhausted, demoralized and in tears.
Even Sunday's Ulduar 10 was rough. We cleared everything before General Vezax in just five hours, with a dozen wipes along the way — most of them on Mimiron. Given that this was only our second week of raiding, I think this is outstanding; GuildOx agrees, and ranks us as #1 Horde-side and #6 on the server (which is pretty awesome, if you ask me). Nonetheless, the bickering that was so prevalent in Saturday's Ulduar 25 raid polluted our usually relaxed Ulduar 10, and far from enjoying the new content that I claim to love, I find myself dreading it.
Don't get me wrong: I really enjoy the people I play with. I've said over and over again that they absolutely make the game for me, and it's true. It's the short-temperedness and the peevishness among my core raid — two very recent developments — that are slowly spoiling the endgame for me. It may be a bit of a cop-out to name Naxxramas as the culprit, rather than the players themselves (or the guild leader who is accustomed to leading by example, and floundering now that she needs to take a more hands-on approach...), but I sincerely believe that the precedent that it set six months ago is hurting us now.
* * *
As I was writing this (in between SQL queries at work >.>), Matticus posted a theory about Ulduar frustrations that has since been picked up by WoW Insider:
Many guilds have forgotten what it's like to hit a progression wall. Raiders who felt good about themselves and their abilities started having doubts about themselves.
This is what we're experiencing. Exactly.
For us, the problem lies in the fact that these doubts have manifested as fits of temper — and, in some cases, depression — that are quickly snowballing through the raid. I'm going to have to give some serious thought to combating them, because I refuse to let Naxxramas of all things break my guild six months after we trounced it.
Well, that's cryptic …
With the notable exception of Keaton, none of my guildmembers are aware that I blog. At least, I think they aren't. One of my hunters is a frequent commenter over at Gevlon's place and occasionally Drotara's, but I doubt he's followed the links back to me yet. (Or if he has, he's been discreet about it, which I appreciate.)
On the other hand, I do know that at least one of my guildmembers also maintains a WoW blog, which he updates infrequently enough that I recently removed it from my blogroll. Nonetheless, I'm scratching my head over his most recent post, which just went up today:
Geez. Louise.
Can someone please give me a home? I need to find a good server.
I know he loathes the PvP server culture, and has tried at least once before to make a home elsewhere. I'm (selfishly) hoping that's what this is about, because I'd hate to think I missed some bit of guild drama that could be driving him away. I thought we were back on an even keel, but who knows what happens when I'm not online.
Then again, if it is guild-related, then it's at least something we can work on — in contrast to the over-arching server culture, which is beyond all hope of redemption. I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to transfer off; if I weren't so invested in my guild, I would too! You know things are bad when the #1 Horde guild on the server hosts trade-channel PuG's for nothing more than the dubious joy of ninja-looting all of the drops to guildmembers who don't need them (and, in many cases, can't equip them) over PuG's who do, and then mocking anyone who dares to complain about it in trade chat and on the realm forum.
Anyway, I can't comment on his blog because it's blocked at work, but I'll make a point of talking to him tonight. In the meantime, I'll just ... obssess quietly over it, I guess.
/sadface
Priestly love?
"Where did all of these priests come from?" —our shadow priest, upon noticing that we were running two shadow priests, two holy priests and a disc priest in a recent Naxx-20 clear
"Well, when a mommy priest and a daddy priest love each other ..." —our smart-ass resto shaman (who boils water like a pro!)
"... or get really, really drunk ..." —our other smart-ass resto shaman (is there any other kind?)
"We have five hunters, too. Half of the raid is priests and hunters ..." —our survival hunter, clearly feeling left out
"Do you want us to tell sexy stories about your parents, too?" —one of the shamans (I can't tell them apart anymore!)
Yep, still love my guild!
(And still working on a real post. Promise.)
She's just three apples tall.
Our Brazilian magelet logged on this weekend to do some serious leveling. She took time off at the end of The Burning Crusade, but is back with a vengeance. (We've missed her on Vent! Raiding just hasn't been the same without her random, pre-pull serenades. You haven't lived until you've heard the Johnson & Johnson jingle, immediately followed by Dory's mantra — just keep swimming! just keep swimming! — and then some Green Day. All in Portuguese.)
As you might expect from someone new to Northrend in a guild full of players who have leveled multiple alts to 80, our magelet is full of questions.
Should I start in Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord?
... How do you pronounce Howling Fjord, anyway?
For the record, I'm pretty sure it's fee-yord.
DHETA? Really?! Have all these druids lost their tree-loving minds?
Hey, can someone help me with this group quest real quick?
And, most recently:
Why is there a ... leaf ... on the guild tabard?
Our American critchicken (who is the process of growing bark; welcome back to /surrheal, Dio!) clued her in:
OH CANADA?
The magelet said it best:
¬¬
I love my guild. <3
P.S. She's a blue-skinned troll mage who shares a name with the Brazilian version of Smurfette. Hence the references. ... also, don't search for Smurfette in Google Images. The 80's will never be the same. /shudder
Now please excuse me while I carve my eyes out with a spork and rinse my brain with bleach.
Assuming I survive, a real post will follow ...
Alts! I haz them.
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Surreality Blogs!
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