Guildleader chores - Casualties of raiding

When raiding started up again we had a massive number of people coming turning up to raid and people I had told that they could only come if there were spots started demanding raiding spots and I my usual calm meter was having spikes of irritation that often resulted in me unloading on some poor hapless WoW friend!

Complaints were NUMEROUS and varied

• Too many people in raid who were not of the right skill level
• Shouldn't be letting these people raid who weren't here in the last raid
• New people shouldn't be allowed to raid over senior guild members
• Didn't like some of the people in the raid because they were rude/obnoxious/elitist/bad players
• People shouldn't have to sit out, a raid spot should mean a permanent raid spot
• Highest DPS should be allowed to go

I just listened, thanked them for their opinions but continued on my path.  People will leave, I said, if they were not happy.  Some said that even good people would leave as well - but I knew that those who really were good would stay.  Patience and foresight are two things that I have in abundance and I waited to see what would happen.

Some of the issues solved themselves.  I am strongly against two teams raiding alongside one another as it leads to guild splits and elitism - people said that wasn't the case but many guilds have collapsed over less, and when we tried to do that ourselves in Dragon Soul it was a disaster which lead to a number of people stopping raiding because when there was a choice of two teams people had the perception that one was better than the other and they got upset when it.

One of the hardest things for people to swallow was progression. I made it clear to everyone that we are not one of those top end guilds who are all about progression. And sometimes I think it goes in one ear and out the other. There was heaps of concern about our lack of progression, but it was only 2 weeks into the expansion and we only raid 2 hours a night so we won't get a lot of progress. There was some tension as there as we tried to work a viable solution.  I was against a separate group within the guild doing progression without the others, because that would create elitism and cliquishness. However, I was not against them doing it with their friends in other guilds, and they did just that, and I think that assuaged their need for harder content that we weren't doing.

This may seem harsh but I encouraged them to leave the guild - not because I wanted them to leave, but because I had wondered if they had the feeling they had outgrown the guild.  And every child grows up and leaves home! I told them that what I wanted them to be happy, and if they stayed and weren't happy, their unhappiness would filter into the raid and ruin the good feelings we had in raid. It's their money they pay to Blizzard, and they should play how they want, and if the guild was too restricitve, then I really didn't mind if they left to go try it out for themselves.

However, looking at things that way, I realised that one of the unspoken guild rules that I used to firmly believe in, was really just me being prideful.  That unspoken rule was that of leaving the guild for greener pastures, and that being a one way door.  I used to dislike people who just came to the guild, got gear and then left for a "better" guild.  I valued loyalty and commitment, and for those who showed those things, I would go the extra miles for them. However, when I considered this situation with those who wanted to do something more within the guild, I realised that I wanted them to try it for themselves, but they were welcome to come back if it didn't work out - because they didn't want to leave the guild, they just wanted to do more with raiding and I wouldn't let them because I was trying very hard to foster the togetherness of raiding, rather than a separatist approach.  For those non believers, I can see where you are going to go - there are those raiders who are probably not as good as other raiders and they probably shouldn't be raiding.

Some people say it's easy to pick out those people from the first raid.  If this was a real life situation, like a job performance review, you'd have to give them a decent opportunity - they could have been having a bad day! So you collect evidence - a week or two of raiding would be enough - and then a lot of those people who found learning fights not really fun compared to what Flex raiding was in Siege of Orgrimmar, they would just filter out on their own.

So in our first few weeks we had a buttload of people turning up to raid and I had to sit people out. In the last few weeks we haven't had a full raid of 30 because we've had a few raiding casualties.  Jazz and Nath have had to stop raiding due to work reasons and personal reasons; Haevela has had to stop due to work hours; Kahrax decided he enjoyed PvP more; Ravzz and Bacon weren't enjoying the raiding environment; and Souglyy and Vexil are changing guilds. I guess it's also the holiday season and people have holidays, Christmas parties and whatnot on so that would think the numbers also.  I guess I'll see when the new year rolls in what it's like.

But the raid feeling has been a little bit more relaxed the last few raids, which has been great.  We also ran the casual raider Sunday run which was VERY different to the main raids - different players, and a different raiding atmosphere. We probably took on a little more than we could handle - we had a new tank, Arelion, and he was learning the fight so we did it on normal then we bashed at Heroic for the rest of the night as we had to get everyone used to the fight. Kaida was there, and Urami, as well as Zurajasti, Endos (Taxar), Sharne and Faulen.  The officers were well represented with Kyjenn, Hwired, Aimei, Moopie and myself and the healers we had were all from the main raid - Koda, myself, Siness and Bish - with Dragonray and Cptsars also offering DPS support too.  After the second go on heroic it felt like we could get this down - just needed people to be a little better on getting out of the melee for the chain hurl.  Yig was so bad at getting out of it that we gave up telling him to get out and just put him in the chain group. Considering this was Arelion's first tank we thought he did rather well, with only minor pointers for improvement (mainly positioning and doing the arena stands) but after our 1% wipe we decided to persist and we got it down close to the end of the night. The casual raid is not EPGP'd so I think that I'll set the loot to personal so that we don't have to worry about that stuff.  I expect in the new year we'll have alts come but not at this stage.  I was hoping Sabre would be there - but he must have been caught up.  I do miss Sabre, hopefully he'll be back soon.

Raiding break now over the Christmas and New year period, I guess it will be a good time for me to catch up on things like Molten Core, reputation farming, maybe even levelling Minndy so my Garrison will be vaguely useful. I can't wait to see what next year's raiding will be like!  I'll be dying to sink my teeth into some kills!