Guildleader chores - Excuse me waiter, this isn't what I ordered!

You know, I know exactly how people at Blizzard must have felt in the first few days of the expansion.

You'll remember those days because they weren’t that long ago. People were stuck and couldn’t get into their Garrisons – people couldn’t get into Draenor. Server queues and long wait times – waiting 4 hours just to play WoW? It was a horrible start to the expansion and there were complaints. You saw them on the forums, on social media, on blog posts. People had taken time off to play and couldn’t play at all, what a waste of a holiday. Why wasn’t Blizzard prepared for this? They should have known. They should make more servers.

Blizz did feel bad. Their baby, their golden egg, their masterpiece that they couldn’t wait to show everyone was met with anger, frustration, despair. They gave us a few days free to make up for those days lost which was a nice gesture, and to me, that was enough. I was just happy to see the new content, play the new game. To me, all the waiting was worth it. Sure, I could have been doing other things, but overall, I wanted to see the expansion, and I saw it, it just took me a bit longer to do what I had wanted to do.

And you know what, this week in Highmaul has felt like how those first few days in WoD must have been for Blizzard.

I knew there were a lot of people who wanted to raid. Everyone new that was recruited I told them there would be no raid spots. And yet, everyone was excited and turned up. People who were here in SoO should have guaranteed spots. Everyone else should be taking turns for the rest.
The first day was easy. The second day… it was hard.

I wanted people to take turns. The extra Sunday might have been a mistake, because it was a normal raid day substitute. I was hoping there would be less people, but there weren’t. And then I find people were not enchanted, not gemmed – some may have been honest mistakes, but I used that on Sunday as my culling points to try to get 5 or 6 people out of the raid, when I tried to filter out who was going to come.

One thing I was particularly NOT proud of was that a raider gave up his spot for a waiting in line raider, and I ended up sitting them out. The poor player had cancelled dinner with their partner for the raid and I ended up benching them. Not happy. And I totally get that, but again, I had not promised raid spots to anyone, I said I would TRY to get them in. If I had known that, I would
Others, who had come on Thursday wondered why they were sat. And another who was missing their chants said it was very unfair because they were there in SoO and should not have to give up spots for casuals.

And another one more who I’d had a drama with because of my own stupidity did not speak for the entire raid, probably because they didn’t want me to start in again on the incident that I was discussing, and also because they may have been grumpy.

This is NOT how I want to raid.

I wanted to make it easy for everyone and have a turn sitting out. But I have had objections to that too. I dislike looking like I am abusing my privilege as the GM by putting myself into every raid when other healers have to rotate, but I’ve been told by multiple guild members that the raid may degenerate into chaos if I am not there to reign in behaviour. People have the perception that the raid runs better when I am there, but I’m not sure if that’s true or just a perceived thing, like training wheels or a security blanket.

“You knew there were this many raiders, why didn’t you tell them to go away?”

Because some of these people, are actually really great people. Their attitudes to raiding are BETTER than some of the raiders I have raiding as full time raiders now. They know how to share and take turns, but even they reach the end of their rope when they don’t get a share. It bugs me that some people only see them as usurpers, when I see everyone for their potential and their strengths. I want them all to play together NICELY, and some people still feel like outsiders, trying to make friends. I hate this cliqueyness and I wish I had 2 of me so I could play with everyone and make them feel welcome, but I also need my own time to do my things that I need from game as well. Ugh, wouldn’t life be great if I was single with no kids and unemployed? I could then have all the time to do the game things I wanted to do and also help sort out this business of people not feeling played with. The longer I let it fester, the worse it will be.

I looked at the logs and saw mages and shamans not doing as well as hunters and rogues and monks. I am not about to start raid selection based upon raw number output, because that’s not what I do, but I will need to think of something. It also worries me because people who read this may say they want to sit out to avoid drama, but that isn’t fair either.

The fairest thing is a roster. I force everyone to take their turn and that’s it. You know it’s harder to be fairer than it is to be selfish. No wonder people prefer to be selfish! It’s way easier! If I was selfish I would make them all /roll and put them into the raid that way. Coz that would be bloody easy.
So I’ve decided that EVERY non SoO raider will raid 2 days out of the 3 if I can juggle it that way. And I think every raider will get to raid 5 days out of 6. And I also need to balance those days for the bosses as well, because it hardly seems fair that some people get 2 days of farm stuff and can get loot and others get one day of progress and wiping on a boss.

And I haven’t quite fixed the EP for those who sat out, but I think that will catch up eventually.  It's not hard to catch up and it's a new week next week with new donations.

So, that’s my ranty post done. Now time to get writing on that happy post where we got some boss kills in Highmaul!

Comments

  1. "Everyone new that was recruited I told them there would be no raid spots."
    That's all that needs to be said imo.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The hard thing is that some of the "new" people are guildies returning who are good! Though in theory I know I can rely on them but no guild is an island...

      Delete
  2. I'm sad that people still feel like outsiders, but you shouldn't feel like you are the only one responsible for making new people feel welcome. Everyone is responsible, including themselves to make the effort to join in, and the guild has 6 active officers who are all playing again. They are there to help you with the task of making new members to feel welcome!

    I actually felt like raid had a very awkward feel to it last night, even without anything being made public, it didn’t have the excitement of Thursday, you could definitely tell there were going to be problems right from the start.

    Members who raided in SoO shouldn't be turning up without enchants and expecting they will get a spot based solely on the time they have been in guild. That isn't fair to ANYONE - Older or newer 'casual' (I hate referring to them like that) members, who all turned up prepared for raid. Shouldn’t everyone be making the effort, knowing that we do have a surplus of raiders ready to be subbed in?

    It seemed at times you were busy dealing with things, probably drama in whispers, have people bring concerns to you AFTER raid! We have such a short time raiding after all, dealing with drama after the raid can make things a little less stressful for you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I actually thought the 'Norm' was for raiders to have there gear enchanted and gemmed, and now the right ilvl, and to have flasks/food with them?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I hope these comments work! Not sure why people can't comment lately, it makes me sad :(