Guildleader Chores - Current guild dynamics and why being underhand never works!

The other day I went to do a Heroic SoO late as a PuG with Tribo, a guild on Blackrock who are 14/14H. Their GM is my friend and I often listen late at night to their raids and watch their Twitch stream as they fight to get ideas on how to do things.  This Flexible and cross server raiding thing is a great thing, and will always be one of the highlights of Mists of Pandaria.  These guys raid after my raid finishes so if I can start playing after everyone has gone to bed and I'm having one of my low sleep days.

They were on a bunch of alts whereas I was on my main and one of the paladins whispered me and said "Long time no chat, Navimie." I looked at his name and tried to remember him - the name was vaguely familiar but nothing was clicking in my memory.  On closer inspection I realised that he was unguilded and he was also from Saurfang - and then the ball dropped.  This guy was one of the paladins I had been trying to recruit months ago but he hadn't taken up my offer.  One thing I do remember was I was chatting to him whilst he stood in Orgrimmar but he didn't reply me - it turned out his wife was on his toon and doing his dailies for him which is why she wasn't answering.

So I chatted with him a bit - my friend was apparently very keen for him to join Tribo - and I was surprised because he was Australian East Coast and Tribo raids at REALLY late times, as they raid Perth/Singapore times. I said to him they were a great guild and he should join and he said that he would rather stay on Saurfang if possible, and I thought well, he could come to us if he liked, but I would feel bad for my friends - I don't want them to think I took their healer!  I told Tribo's GM that I knew this guy and he seemed pleasant enough as I had tried to recruit him some months ago. She was pleased to hear that.

As we healed through SoO I thought his healing was decent and when he asked me if I needed a healer, I said honestly, yes, I did. And I went through "the talk" as we raided, and he seemed to be reasonable, as I had suspected before.  I told him that he was welcome to join, if our times were better, but to make sure he said something to Tribo first that he was coming to Frostwolves because the last thing I need is their GM to think I stole him - though it IS exactly what I did.  I invited him at the end of their raid and I invited his Mrs to the guild as well and I told him to turn up on Monday for Mythic raid because I was short of healers for Iron Juggernaut.

Monday rolled around and I'd seen him online during the day so I was suprised he wasn't online for raid. We managed to muddle through without him but I was a bit irritated.  I had specifically asked him to be online for mythic raiding!  His wife logged on and I asked her where he was and she said he was online.  I went through the guild list and realised that he wasn't on the server anymore...

"Did he leave the guild? I can't see his name..." I said to her.

"One moment let me ask him," she replied.  She returned shortly after to say that he transferred over to Blackrock because they offered him gold!  I laughed.  Oh well, at least it happened before I started relying on him!  But that probably serves me right - I should not try to take things which were going to be taken by others!  Lesson learned!  Even Luxy said to me "What did you expect Navi!  You stole him from another guild, someone like that would be easy to steal away, don't you think?"  And she's right :P  Though, I think his Mrs will stay with us - and that's totally fine, she seems rather feisty and fun.

Guild seems to be rather settled to me, lately.  There were a few farewells - Shiz, Voros and Glow left the other week to go back to Alliance as their old guildies had returned.  I shall still see them on battletag so it's not really good bye, though I shall miss them!  The Caelestrasz guys have settled in well, chatting to everyone, and I don't see any huge cliques or alienisations happening.  Of course everyone has their groups of friends within the guild they prefer to hang around with - I would never expect anyone to make effort to group or chat to EVERYONE in the guild, that's MY job - but what I worried about most was people thinking they were too good to speak to others.  I haven't seen that at all, so far (or perhaps people are just well behaved when I log on).  Speaking of new recruits, I was very happy when when three ex-Scion members joined - after all that asking and eventually resigned to the fact they weren't coming they turned up when I least expected.  Duck, who is good friends with Alca, joined the guild a week or two ago and between him and Alca they convinced Una to come along as well. I've been taking Una and Alca to Mythic raids and I think that's kept them interested for now. All three of them have told me they want to be casual raiders, and that suits me just fine.  However, Drauka and Ravz are both missing - only Haevela is around regularly and I saw Daeneirys pop online for Hallow's End stuff in the last few days.  And speaking of returning, Falln has rejoined the guild on his warrior - adds another raider to the midst.  Falln said he wanted something a bit more casual so we shall see!  Brahski has yet to turn up to a raid - I am still skeptical about him being here, but he assures me he wants to be here.  I find it difficult to believe these ex-hardcore 14/14H people want to be in a guild like Frostwolves.  

There are couple of socials that I think would benefit from coming to some heroic SoO and hopefully I will be able to dig them up during the week (coughs at Bio and Thohand). I hope everyone can get an heirloom to go into WoD with!

However, what I said a few months ago has come to bite me in the backside.  I had too many healers a few months ago - and now I seem to have a huge paucity of them.  Initially I thought I had me, Morz, Koda, Amayeti, Asys, Ravz, Glow, Daeneirys, Tensai - that seemed like a lot! But Asys left the guild to go to Blackrock, Glow went back to Alliance, Ravz is on a break, Dae is social only and Ama has not been online yet.  Tensai likes playing his alts and he also has classes till late.  Looks like Luxy may have to heal in WoD after all...