Somebody Set Up Us the QQ Bomb

So, obviously there was no interface post this weekend. Turns out the missus had the weekend off from babysitting, so I was playing with her most of the weekend. Lesson learned: no more announcing posts ahead of time. Lets just say the UI post will be coming "soon".

Anyhow, today I want to expand on a post Matticus made recently on Leaving Your Guild the Right Way. While he looked at it from the angle of somebody who wants to leave the guild on good terms, or at the very least someone who doesn't want to burn all the Bridges of Madison County, I want to discuss a very different type of departed guildmate. Someone I have come to refer to as the /Gquit Bomber.

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A /Gquit Bomber is a person who has a score to settle, either with individual guild members, or the guild as a whole. More often than not, the target of their anger is one or more of the guild officers, but it may also be someone who benefitted from what they see as a great injustice. Such injustices range from loot disputes to raid invite favoritism to feeling slighted by guildmates, to pretty much anything you can think of. Sometimes the concern is a valid one, other times it is merely the perception of the Bomber. The only unifying factor is that, whatever the injustice, it is something important to the Bomber. In fact, sometimes people who the guild kicks out turn into the worst Bombers of them all, your turning them away being the biggest testament to your unfairness EVER!

Now, not everybody who feels they're being opressed in some way will become a /Gquit Bomber. Some may stay and work out their problems. Others will at least show some degree of maturity and simply quit the guild. Bombers, however, decide to make their leaving personal. Its not enough to simply leave the situation behind them and start fresh elsewhere, they have to make their former guild suffer for the criminal way they were treated.

The most effective way for a Bomber to hurt your guild is by getting other members, especially active raiders (if you're in a raiding guild) to leave, or to at least hinder the recruitment of new members. The former is often done by direct contact with those they left behind. New members, fringe members, and those who have experienced similar treatment (but perhaps not considered it unfair at the time) are the most likely targets. Often times, this can go on unbeknownst to the guild's leadership, at least for a while. Eventually, word usually gets out that somebody has been trying to get people to leave the guild, either due to someone ratting the person out, or sometimes due to another member following in the footsteps of the first.

Hindering new recruitment, however, is something most often carried out on the wonderful morass known as the Blizzard Realm Forums, though in-game smear campaigns have also been known to occur, especially in the equally murky swamp of the trade channel. If you have a recruitment thread, expect to see it bombarded with haterade. Either way, you're likely to also get a few new forum threads dedicated to how horribly your guild treats its members, written either by the member themself, or their favorite level 3 troll alt.

Now, if you're a member of a fairly small guild, you may never have to deal with people like this. As your guild gets bigger, however, these folks tend to get more frequent, and the fecal matter they stir up tends to get more and more. . . fragrant. The reason for this is twofold: smaller groups tend to be more tight knit, and thus people are more likely to work out their problems with their close friends, and bigger groups usually have bigger reputations, and for a Bomber to smear a guild's reputation, there needs to be one there TO smear.

Now, lets just say that you currently have a mad Bomber or two on the loose, like Prophecy does at the moment. What do you do? Well, while a guild's response has to be tailored to the person you're dealing with, as well as the guild's philosophies and reputation, the first thing you need to do is to treat this person like any other forum troll. . .

DO NOT FEED THE TROLL!

This first step is crucial, just don't respond to them at all, at least initially. This is because the bomber can't do much, if any, damage to your guild on his own. He, like any other forum troll, relies on a tactic of baiting you into responding, and then making you look bad via your own response to them. A troll that nobody responds to is about as effective as a missile without a warhead.

Now, the problem is, in a guild large enough to bother attacking like this, its very hard to keep all of your members from feeding the troll. And even if you do succeed at controlling your guild's members, SOMEBODY on the forum is going to bite on it. So while its good for the general guild membership to just leave the situation alone, guild leadership should generally be ready to combat the problem carefully (though completely ignoring the issue has been known to have some success with certain guilds).

One important thing to remember is that you're dealing with somebody who doesn't really have anything to lose. Your guild's reputation is on the line, but the Bomber isn't likely to have a reputation to speak of (or if they do have one, it is usually not a good one). Dont let them bring you down to their level, that'll just be a victory for them.

As for how to actually respond to the Bomber . . . the only hard and fast rule that comes to mind is to never fight a battle you dont know how to win, and dont ever try to lie your way out of it. Sometimes its better to ignore the troll, even when you're directly responding to them. For example, if their big argument is that there is loot favoritism, and member X has won 6 pieces of gear in the last two weeks, and member X really DID get those 6 pieces of gear, dont lie and say they only got 2 pieces, admit they got all 6, but explain why it wasn't due to favoritism. Maybe that person was the only one who needed any of the stuff. Maybe the people he was competing with on the loot got together, realized he needed all that stuff more than they did, and voluntarily stepped aside to get a guildie geared up. If you use a loot council, explain. . . well, honestly, if you're using a loot council, get used to these sorts of things *shrug*.

I guess the ultimate truth here is that you dont have to win any arguments to beat a hostile /Gquit Bomber. All you have to do is defuse their ammunition. Sometimes you can do so by pointing out the flaws in their perception. And honestly, sometimes your best bet can be to admit mistakes (if their concerns are legitimate). After all, what better publicity can there be for your guild than showing how guild leadership listens to the concerns of its (ex) members and addresses them. Just make sure you dont come off as giving in to terrorist deamands, though.

Oh, and if Prophecy's current /Gquit-Bombers-At-Large happen to read this, give it up, trolling a guild made up of forum trolls is just plain stupid. Continue reading 'Somebody Set Up Us the QQ Bomb'

Respecs: Bad for (the Raiding) Business

Respeccing is a fact of life in WoW. There are very few people who have not, at one time or another, gone to our class trainer and clicked that unlearn talents button, paid our money, and seen our spec return to whence it came. At the very least, most people have spent a gold on fixing some misclicks made while levelling, or to switch from their levelling spec to an endgame spec of choice. In this respect, the respec is a valuable tool to all players. But there is a price to pay for the infinite availability of respecs (aside from gold; Lets face it, 50 gold is chump change in Outland), and that price is paid most heavily by the raiding guilds.

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Now, to be fair, there are some great advantages to be reaped, even by the raiding guilds. Respecs allow raiders to switch from a grinding-oriented DPS spec into a more raid-focussed one, by dropping raid-unworthy talents like Spirit Tap, Wand Specialization, or Improved Voidwalker, to pick up more raid-focused talents (well, ok, Spirit Tap is a bad example, as the only other alternative is actually even LESS useful in raids, generally speaking). It also allows healers and tanks to use a DPS spec to level, and then switch to healing/tanking once they hit the level cap (At least warrior tanks, Prot pallys and feral druids are great at levelling).

It also allows for flexibility when a particular character encounters a fight for which their spec of choice might be a disadvantage. Warlocks, for example, might choose to spec affliction when learning the Gruul encounter to improve their DPS on such a high mobility fight. On hydross, however, they may decide to spec full-on destruction due to the problems that any form of damage over time can cause on transitions. And when you get to Leotheras? Better have someone specced SL/SL to tank demon form!

However, especially early on in Prophecy's raiding, respecs tended to be more of a curse than a blessing. Our number one problem, which has thankfully become less so as time goes on, has been healers respeccing to DPS roles. Oh, sure, it usually starts out as a "oh, just let me go feral this week, I'll switch back next time", or "I just want to see how I do on the meters as Ret". But for a long time, it seemed like any time any of our healers got a taste of damage-dealing, they were lost to it forever. Strangely, we never had that problem with tanks, but that may just be a part of the masochistic mindset we have.

Even DPSers respeccing, though, can be problematic. First of all, even when switching from one DPS spec to another, a character's gear will generally be subpar for their new playstyle. An affliction warlock's gear doesn't have the crit required to make Destruction really pay off, and a beast master hunter wont have NEARLY the agility of an equivalently geared survival hunter. But, even if a player has gone through the effort ahead of time to collect appropriate gear for their new spec, they aren't going to be on top of their game until they get used to the new spec. The affliction->destruction warlock is likely to pull threat more often due to his newfound burst threat from his shadowbolts, and that BM hunter is going to have to get used to a more involved shot rotation, for example.

Possibly the biggest hassle, however, isn't something the individual player has to deal with, but instead goes up the chain of command to the person in charge of filling the guild's roster. You cant just take 3 of each class blindly from a guild and call that a raid, you have to look at each person's chosen role, both the holy trinity positions of Healer/Tank/DPS, and the more specific benefits any particular spec brings to a raid. That hunter from before might have the gear, and the skill, to play a successful survivalist, but if the guild is already bringing two SV hunters to every raid, and he was the only person able to give the physical DPS group Ferocious Inspiration, it doesn't matter if he is the best survival hunter in the world, he is gimping the raid.

Personally, I have offered on many occasions to respec to full restoration to help the guild when we've been short on healers. And on all but one occasion, I've been turned down, or made to respec back to feral after one raid. The biggest reason my guild is so reluctant to let me heal is that they've come to rely on me as one of the most reliable tanks they have. By respeccing to heal, even though I have solid (though not optimized for resto spec) healing gear and a decent (if somewhat rusty) knowledge of the role, I would be leaving a hole in the guild's roster that is hard, if not impossible, to fill.

So remember, next time you're thinking about a major respec to your raiding characters: Its not just about your personal performance in raids, but about how well your unique skill set works with the rest of your raid. 25 FotM characters does not generally lead to a balanced, functional raid group. Continue reading 'Respecs: Bad for (the Raiding) Business'

What People Fail to Realize About Guilds and their Leaders

First off, let me just state that this is by no means intended as some sort of attack on my guild's membership. I love Prophecy. . . hell, I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did as the GM if I didn't. Some of this may be inspired by my experiences leading Prophecy, but most of it is more generic, and spans all the guilds in all the games I've played. I just wanted to make public some of the things I think to myself when the fecal matter meets the rotary air circulation device.

• Guild leaders pay the same 15 bucks a month you do: Believe it or not, Guildmasters dont get paid 6-figure incomes to fulfil their role. In fact, they pay just as much for the privelege of logging in each day as you do. You are not one of their customers, and as such you shouldn't expect 24x7 service from them, even if they're logged in. Hell, even the people who ARE paid to moderate the game have response times ranging from bad to abysmal!
  
  
• There is no such thing as a degree in guild leadership: There isn't even so much as a brochure handed out to the new guys. At most, we have an online community to draw from for ideas on how to best lead our guild members, though more often than not, the stories you find online only deal with what NOT to do. Don't expect your leaders to have the magical formula that makes everything run perfectly. I assure you, if it existed, somebody WOULD be making that 6-figure income selling it!
  
  
• Guild leaders are not psychic: Last time I looked, guilds had leaders with names like Surania, Cheetara, or Killerets. Rarely will you find Kreskin, Geller, or Cleo in the upper ranks. What this means is, if you have a problem with something going on in the guild, and its not being addressed, thats probably because the folks in charge don't actually know about your problem. Voice your concerns, and dont be surprised if it takes a few tries to actually get the problem addressed, as your voice is one among many.
  
  
• Guild leaders are not peer mediators: Often times, when somebody has an issue directly related to their interactions with a fellow guild member, their first reaction is to bring up their issues with the guild leader. And while sometimes that may be an appropriate first step (Usually when the problem is something like sexual harassment or general asshattery), small interpersonal problems should NOT require a third party to be settled. Have a problem with the shadow priest playing favorites when he makes groups for the daily heroic? Talk to HIM about it! Upset because that cute shamaness you've had your eyes on is now dating your best friend? Thats nice, you expect me to do what, exactly? You handle your personal problems, and leave the Guildmaster to deal with the problems that affect the guild as a whole.
  
  
• The stress of leadership grows exponentially with guild size: Small guilds, like what Prophecy started out as, are relatively easy to lead. Everybody knows everybody else pretty well, and everybody can have a say in guild affairs. Raiding-sized guilds, on the other hand, keep Bristol-Myers Squibb in business. Thus, the larger your guild is, the more stressed out you can count on your guild leaders being. Try to be understanding if they occasionally get snippy, reclusive, or whatever, because sometimes it takes a lot of effort just to log in to a guild full of people who need you.
  
  
• Its just a game: This one is for my fellow leaders. If the mere idea of logging in gives you a migraine, don't. If this is you, cancel your account before you give yourself a heart attack. The worst thing you can do for yourself is to start taking WoW too seriously, and to actually stress yourself out over it. You're paying 15 bucks a month to have fun, not to have a second career.

In conclusion, I'd just like to give a big round of applause for my comrades-at-arms from all guilds. I know all too well what running a guild entails, and I wouldn't wish it on anybody!

Continue reading 'What People Fail to Realize About Guilds and their Leaders'

And to follow it up. . .

I dont expect to be having many two-post days, but its kinda silly to have a blog with only one, rather boring introduction post in it. So instead, there shall be TWO boring introduction posts, this one a bio-in-brief regarding my WoW Guild history. Be warned, this is a long one, as I've been playing for nearly 2 years now, and I'm not known for being short-winded. I promise, next time I'll post about something more interesting and less. . . journalish.

I started playing in. . . late March or early April, I guess, of 2006. I had finally gotten fed up with D&D Online and figured that any other game out there had to be better (Though, in retrospect, even DDO was better than Lineage II). So I picked up a copy of WoW, installed it on my machine, and hoped for the best.

Before even buying the game, I had done some research to try to figure out just what I wanted to play. Now, before WoW I only ever played casters. But I was toying with the idea of trying out this whole melee thing this time around, just for a change of pace. So, having come to the conclusion that I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do, I rolled a Druid, figuring a hybrid class would let me explore all the options. Why a female, and a Night elf? Well, I have a sort of stock RP family I carry from game to game, and Surania (The personification of my fiancee) was the closest fit for a druid (She's the reason we have most of our 8 pets). And since Surania is a high elf in her purest form, Night Elf was a much better fit than Tauren.

As with most games I've played, I quickly got addicted to WoW. And before long, I found myself in my first WoW guild, the . . . Twilight Congregation, I believe we were called. An RP religion, but they were recruiting (As most guilds were, since SwC was only 2 weeks old at the time), and I didn't know any better. It wasn't long before I encountered my first major guild drama, the guild's GM and second in command both deleting their characters, having not even bothered to transfer guild leadership, instead leaving a note to the members to "Make Surania the Guild Leader". . .

Now, first of all, I didn't WANT to be the head honcho. I was still exploring a new game. And my one experience with guild mastery in the past (reviving The Codex of Wisdom in an obscure game by the name of Ashen Empires, originally Dransik) failed horribly. I did what I could to salvage the guild (Starting with Petitioning the GMs to assign me leadership of the guild, as deleting a guild master character leaves the guild paralyzed), but after a few weeks, I gave up, and urged the remaining members to do likewise, as the guild was truly a sinking ship.

I had reached level 45 or so by that time, and had been shopping around for a raiding guild anyhow, so it wasn't long before I joined my second guild, and my first "Raiding Guild", The Phoenix Order. This is also where I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted, of all things, to be a tank, as I met my first dedicated Feral Tank, Charle. I never got to see him in action, unfortunately, but his mere existence gave me hope that it was possible even in a gaming culture that discouraged "offspecs". Actually, I never got to see TPO in action at all, as the guild was having a hard time recruiting raiders, and ended up being absorbed . . .

I think I was the last TPO member to actually join the guild that absorbed us, Patronus Veritas, but I did eventually follow the crowd. I dinged 60 while I was in PV, and did most of my Pre-expansion raiding with them. Mind you, the extent of my pre-expansion raiding experience was clearing most of ZG and AQ20, and reaching farm status on Ragnaros. And, while the guild let me collect feral tank gear, it was rare that I actually got to tank, especially in MC, since after all, Warriors were the only viable option for tanking (Despite the fact that I could tank circles around at least one of our warrior main tanks).

I was content with the guild for a while, understanding the culture that surrounded their decision to not let me tank much, and finding sneaky ways to flex my tanking muscles in unofficial capacity, but after getting told to DPS on both Garr and Sulfuron Harbinger in one MC run, while a DPS warrior was forced to offtank on those fights, I got pissed off and, in a fit of Emo, /gquit, hearthed, and logged off. . . right before Sulfuron was pulled. I still maintain friendships with many members of that guild (in fact, a few old members are now members of Prophecy), but I refused to raid with a guild who would put in a DPS spec warrior to tank while a tank spec druid did melee DPS (Remember, pre-1.12, cat and bear druid specs were rather different).

Anyhow, after a week or so, I decided to join the Blades of Oblivion, after an old paladin tank friend from the TPO days convinced me to join him. I figured if they let him tank, they'd let me tank too. And I was right. My first week there, I got to tank the Ossirian fight in AQ20 (A fight which PV still hadn't successfully done, despite having Ragnaros on farm). Mind you, I did it in my resto gear on accident, but we killed him anyhow. Alas, it was only another week before the guild was literally split in two, the split happening due to the Guildmaster's extremely harsh, militaristic leadership style. My paladin friend stayed loyal to the guild, but I personally had to side with the rebellion on this one, as I had already been contemplating leaving because of the GM (whose name escapes me, I guess I finally purged my mind of him completely).

The mass exodous led to the formation of a new splinter guild named. . . yep, you guessed it, Prophecy. We ended up with something like 15 members initially, but before long grew large enough to run the 20-man raids. Despite only having been with my guildmates for a week, I was elected druid class lead for the simple reason that I was the only druid in the original roster (That, and I tend to be a very likable guy I guess). We mostly ran ZG, and were known on the server for our half guild-half PuG runs. After a few months though, we started running into problems. People were getting burned out on ZG. Others were just not raiding because TBC was going to be released soon. And the biggest blow of all. . . in early December, 2006, our Guild Master mysteriously disappeared.

We all seemed to pretty much avoid the purple elephant in the middle of the room, and our membership slowly dwindled. By Christmas, we were down to maybe 15 members (off of a high of 35-40), and we were pretty much dead in the water. Not wanting to see the guild die of attrition, I stepped up to the plate and actively worked with the rest of the remaining guild membership to rebuild. The first step was to get the title of Guild Master into the hands of one of our members. . . and since I was spearheading this rebuild, and had prior experience in dealing with the GMs on such issues (From TC), I got stuck with the title of Guild Master. Not wanting to be the head honcho, but not wanting the guild to die either, I accepted the position, but under the condition that the guild's structure change to that of a Tribunal, with one of our warriors taking the second "GM" position, and a third to be filled later. We also changed over from having 8 class leads to having 4 "Role Leads", one for healers, one for tanks, one for melee, and one for ranged. Eventually we had one of our paladins take that third Guild master slot, and we gradually re-bolstered our numbers and ventured into Karazhan.

Around the middle of last year, we decided it was time for a restructuring of the guild, as most of our official positions had very vague responsibilities, and we tended to step over each other when getting things done. We ended up going with a 1 GM, 4 officer system, with each officer having a specific area of expertise (Raid Organization, Loot Rules, Recruitment, and Public Relations), and I gratefully stepped down as GM to become the guild's Loot Master, with the Paladin GM taking the helm.

I thought I was out of the GMing business for good. . . but I was wrong. A few months later, the Guildmaster left us, and the reins were dropped in my lap. But I went along with it, and led the guild up until last week, when I finally got to (well, was asked to, mostly due to my inability to be around during peak play hours) pass on the reins to another officer, retaining my duties as Loot Officer. Can't say it was a bad run, though, I got to take a lot of credit for the progression of a bunch of GREAT people who, while not the most progressed guild in the world, had as of the time of the transition downed two bosses in Serpentshrine cavern and ALL of the T4 instance bosses (Including Magtheridon).

In a way I miss being the GM, but at the same time I'm relieved to be rid of the pressure of holding the reigns. Never been much for being the boss, I prefer middle management. Which isn't to say I wouldn't do it again if my guild needed me. . . I just hope that day doesn't come.
Continue reading 'And to follow it up. . .'

Obligatory Introductory Post. . .

So. A Blog huh? How did I end up talking myself into this one? Oh, right, I guess it started when I stumbled upon Another Feral Druid's Blog and ended up becoming a regular reader. The more I read his blog, as well as those he himself read, the more the idea of having a blog of my own grew on me . . . especially after some of the treatises I started leaving in response to posts. And earlier this week, I decided to take the plunge, and here I am.

But, you might ask, who the heck ARE you? Well, I am many people. In game, I am Surania Lorezon, Night Elf feral tank extraordinaire of the Steamwheedle Cartel server (Well, I don't know about that extraordinaire part, but everybody I tank for seems to love me *shrug*). Well, usually. Sometimes, I'm Kirari Jacol, the snarky gnome Affliction Warlock. Or Kibler, the huntress, travelling with her two pets Bacon (the pig) and Bits (the ravager), all puns obviously intended. Or any one of a number of other alts I have. . . those were just the ones at 70.

How do I have time to level up so many alts? Do I not have a life? Well. . . yeah, pretty much. I admit it, I'm an addict, and I dont have much of an out-of-game social life to pull me away from the game. It doesn't help that I work a 3-11:30pm job, and thus having a social life is nearly impossible. But really, I find that WoW gives me MORE of a social life than I'd otherwise have, as I've found a wonderful (and rapidly growing) group of friends to spend my time with in-game, we're practically family. . . right down to the feuding.

Of course, its not enough for me to just PLAY the game, I had to go and become an officer of my guild, Prophecy. And not just an officer, up until recently I was the dang Guild Master. Talk about fun *grumbles*. In fact, its my experiences as an officer that inspired me most to start this blog, and most likely will inspire a great number of my future postings, at least at first. The most bizarre thing is, people actually seem to think I'm a good leader. Weirdos.

When I'm not playing Warcraft, I'm usually either at work (reading Blogs) in a General Motors Fuel Cell research facility in Honeoye Falls, NY, or at home spending time with my fiancee (Who also plays), my 3 Rabbits (Nosey, Smokey, and Oreo), 2 Cats (Pounce and Bear), Guinea Pig (Patches), Chinchilla (Twitch), and Parrot (Beaker). Did I mention I live in a two-bedroom apartment? Yeah, its a madhouse to be sure.

Now, for one warning. I have this nasty tendency to not follow through with things like this. I once had a LiveJournal that lasted a couple months, a couple of online D&D campaigns that died before they really got off the ground, and I really haven't looked at my MySpace page since I made the silly thing. Now, since I have a great deal of free time at work, something I didn't have the luxury of for the rest of those things (Save the MySpace page, but I can't access that service from work), I hold out hope for this project, but we shall see.
Continue reading 'Obligatory Introductory Post. . .'