I find myself in one of those introspective moods this week. That comes with good reason. First and foremost let me say that the last week has been filled with turmoil largely caused by myself. The really depressing thing is that I try very hard some times to try to avoid causing major strife and pain for people and almost like clockwork, BOOM… mass chaos.
Last week Thursday I announced I was leaving my existing guild. Its not an easy thing to do. In my position, for better or worse, a lot of people place their hopes and successes on your shoulders. Their game in many ways revolves around your involvement and your continued involvement.
How did we get here?
Ok.. its only fair that I kind of give you the skinny as it has a direct impact on what I do here. Let me introduce myself… Hi! My name is Starman. I’m a raid participant!
Now… you’ll probably note that there’s a distinct change in that sentence right?
For my long time readers, back in February I suffered a bit of a meltdown. Well not exactly a meltdown, but I reached a breaking point with my guild at the time. I was being pulled a lot of different directions. I had a few people leave, and I had at least a couple of loose cannons I just couldn’t reign in. Given that one of them was married to the Guild Leader, it wasn’t conducive to the type of situation where you feel like you can just can gkick them and move on.
So I decided to make a break from the guild. I talked it over long and hard with my wife. I planned an exit strategy. I announced it in upper management. I executed the strategy and poof.
Now what came next was a decision my wife and I discussed long and hard. I really had three options.
- Build my own guild.
- Join a friend of mine who was breaking out and forming a new guild.
- Find some other random guild that I really didn’t know much about.
I was extremely busy at work and honestly I didn’t feel I had the time to start up a new guild. Both my wife and I knew the amount of work that would go into it. It just didn’t sound like a good idea. Since I really didn’t know that many other guilds, I thought option 2 sounded pretty sexy. The guild master and I got along well. We talked a lot. I took over the raid progam and he took care of the day to day starting the guild stuff.
Fast Forward….
Starting up a guild is always a challenging thing. There is a lot of blood sweat and tears that goes into it. People get stretched… strained and in the end, the ultimate survival of the guild relies on reaching a sweet spot in the size of the guild and the direction of the guild and the dedication of the people in that guild to the goals of the guild.
We hit that sweet spot somewhere in June of this year. We had at least three dedicated healers. We had a couple of tanks and everyone was firing on all cylinders. We moved into Ulduar. We started smoking through the content and life was good. The pace we were setting through the content was very accelerated only because the people we brought learned it fast and moved through it fast.
Enter July…. July was a heavy turning point for us. The summer slump hit us hard. I had a week or two of vacation scheduled with the family. By the time I returned, my 13+ team signups were down to 4-5. We ended up canceling almost all of July due to inability to put together a viable raid team. During this time one of our healer vanished entirely. Another one burned out and went to DPS.
That put an incredible strain on the one remaining healer. Suddenly we had our top DPS converting to help out and heal. Every week turned into a struggle to recruit, refresh the healers and try to get people backon the characters they loved.
The Soul Grinder
I made a statement to my raid team that the last few months had been soul crushing for me. I have this problem. I take a bit more on myself than I probably should at times. Its a fault I have. Its not because I don’t believe in other people to get things done. Its that when I see something not getting done, I just kind of step in to do it.
This isn’t always the best teaching tool, but its a fault… work with me here people. I had at least one raider point it out to me… and they are right. I probably take too much on myself.
It was a fairly large struggle to get back to running a viable raid team. We constantly fought to get back to normal. While we still only had a single dedicated healer, we were adding people to the roster who could fill in and heal. So we had about 5 people who had off specs who could heal.
The frustration really landed hard when one by one, people would burn out… need a vacation, have school or whatever life brought forth. Sign ups drooped to 6-8 signed up. Consistently we had to lean on the same people… over and over. They never complained. They never said a word, but you could tell they were getting frustrated. It kind of tears you up inside if you view these people as friends of yours and you’re constantly having to ask them over and over to give up a bit of their fun to help the group.
There’s only so much people can take before that frustration builds to an unbearable level. We had big successes. There were times that we just absolutely nailed stuff and every time… it looked like things were moving the right way… then boom… another setback.
Break Throughs and Burn Outs
We’d been recruiting for months with little luck. We picked up the occassionaly person, but really hadn’t had any real luck. Finally we had a solid break through. We picked up three very solid players. We filled in a recently vacated tank spot. We had a new DPS and BOOM!!! A HEALER!!!
This was just what we needed. With 4-5 backup healers and 2 solid healers, we could finally get people back on their mains. Should be a nice easy stroll right? Then our main healer we had been leaning on for months burned out. Almost the day we introduced our new healer to the group.
What followed was basically more of the same for the soul grinder. Its hard for me to describe the emotions that kind of followed. I was training a new raid leader who was doing a bang up job. He was learning things quickly. He had a good eye for it and was really coming along nicely. It did take stress off me, but stress still builds when you know you’re forced to make the game less fun for other people.
You very quickly get stuck in no win scenarios. People bitch when you cancel, but then log in to find 15 people online. People bitch when you pug. They bitch when they can’t be on their main. It turns into a very vicious circle where no matter what you do, you can’t make people happy.
Moments of Clarity
Monday of last week was actually a really good day. We finally had a chance to go into Onyxia’s Lair as a guild and we downed her. People got loot… it was a good day. Then we went on to 10 man TOC and we did our guild first kill of Lord Jarraxus. This is great stuff.. Tuesdays raid went pretty well. We had a few hiccups, but overall it wasn’t the end of the world. We had to stop a bit early, but people were just cranking through the content.
But…. By Wednesday I was just at the end of my rope. Our sign up numbers were sagging again. And then some friends and I did the unthinkable… we got all sorts of shades of stupid on one another. Two of my friends who had followed me over to this guild decided to attend another guild’s raid. Now… for long time raiders this may sound blasphemous. This may seem like they are committing cardinal sins. They weren’t. They were frustrated. They had been two of my people who had filled in consistently on raids to heal. And for one night… just one night they needed to be playing their mains… so they went where they knew they could do that.
At the time, of course, all my frustration from the past months had come pouring out. Its the beautiful thing about being a human being. We store our own frustrations away until we just can’t take it any more. Is it right? Probably not. Its certainly not a healthy way to live overall… but its a human condition… We learn to deal with it.
So the long and the short of it is…. some friends of mine didn’t vent their frustrations to me.. which lead them to go off on another raid while we were struggling to fill our raids. Which in turn lead me to be mad about it. We’re all human. What it really accomplished at the end of the day… was making me realize how frustrated I was with being frustrated. I was tired of making people fill in. I was tired of trying to keep it all together and then being crushed when the next person broke down or had a bad day/week/month.
I also didn’t like that I got mad at people I really like over wanting to just have fun while in a casual guild. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. In this case it was misplaced frustration over the overall situation which turned into anger directed at the wrong person(s).
How not to walk away…..
By Thursday morning I had already decided that I was just going to hang my hat up on raiding on Whisperwind. It wasn’t a decision I reached lightly. I had thought through it pretty seriously. I had basically two issues.
- I knew if I just took a break, I’d end up back in the exact same situation. I’d do it to myself again. I’m at least honest enough with myself to know that.
- I knew that there were more than a couple of people who had come to the guild because of me. They were there to raid with me. They were there because I was there. Period… end of story.
What I didn’t want to do was walk into a new guild and bring a huge surge of people. This would also have the effect of decimating the existing guild which I still believed in. They were solid players. And I wanted them to stay together and play together even after I decided I just couldn’t raid in my current situation. So I made the decision to pull my main character off of Whisperwind and transfer to a horde server with a friends I knew from real life.
So what I did was post what I deemed was a pretty positive message in the raider section in the hopes that they would stay together and I would be able to just pull my main off for raiding purposes while still coming back to be social and chat. Two points I failed miserably at were…..
- Remembering to tell my wife… BEFORE.. I posted that I was leaving… married, engaged and dating guys… please learn from my example… NOT A GOOD IDEA.
- Failing to spell out that I was only really planning on pulling one character and stepping away from raiding in my existing guild. In other words failing to spell out that I was planning on still leveling my alts on Alliance and chatting it up with all my friends from time to time.
Of course the one of the two people I traded barbs with immediately took it as their fault that I was leaving the server entirely which had to be the furthest thing from the truth. They promptly guild quit along with their significant other (another good friend of mine). Another person who was probably already on their way out, decided to use my announcement as their time to announce they were leaving. Another person.. who seeing four of the people they chatted with most leave also decided to leave.
By Saturday I logged in to find myself completely deguilded. It wasn’t what I planned, but… given hindsight… I should have expected it.
The 60/40 Rule….
I like to think that hind sight suffers from what I call the 60/40 rule. It doesn’t matter which is which, but when we look back at the million of things we could have done differently, we know that there’s probably a bit of truth in what we tell ourselves…the other bit is the things we make up to help ourselves feel better. Or the story we craft about why things happened. I guess it could be an 80/20 rule or a 90/10 depending on the person. Does it really matter?
The point is that in any major event you look at a few key things.
- Do I feel better at the end of the day? In other words, in this case, we’re paying to play a game. Am I happier doing something different than I was a while ago. (This may take a while to answer and your milage may vary…)
- Did I learn something? Did I learn something about myself? Did I learn something about other people? Did I learn anything of value?
- Are you willing to change moving forward.
While I could type a lot more… its probably best saved for a different day. We’ll dig more into what I learned a bit later this week.
I’m running a bit short on time this week due to having a certification exam to study for by next week Monday.
Entries (RSS)
Thank’s for sharing the story. You seem to be seriously burnt out and I hope you’ll find a good home where you can be a happy raider, without much responsability except for not standing in fire and coming prepared… You deserve it.
/hug
Larísa´s last blog ..Cataclysm Release Date: February 1st, 2010
This was a rough post for me to read, Star. I’m going to try to give you my completely honest opinion. Keep in mind that I’m 2 months removed from WoW and Whisperwind, so I don’t really know how things are there anymore.
Do you think it’s time to give the whole “raid leading” thing the boot? I’ve been reading your blog pretty much from the beginning, and I have to tell you that you burn out a LOT from raid leading. You knew it would be tough to start out with a new guild back in March or whatever. It’s not easy to start a new guild, especially with the game and server as mature as they are. You also HAD to know that the summer would really hurt a smallish guild with their raiding schedule.
In short, what I’m saying is this: you need to take step back and look at yourself and your own expectations. Maybe it’s time to pull back and try to enjoy the game as a player, and not worry so much about progression or about signups or whatnot.
This is also why I was always shocked by people who gave Miser a lot of crap. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to keep it all together as well has he has for so long. It’s a thankless job, and a difficult one.
Maybe it’s time you stopped wishing that job on yourself.
PTD
PTD´s last blog ..The Brothers Bloom Review
Well I’ll be honest. For the time being… thats exactly what I’m doing.
I’m being a player. I’m enjoying the game and I’m doing what I love… which is tanking.
I’m honest with myself though. I have a streak in me that needs to design and build strategies. Its something I’ll always do. Its just a piece of who I am, but its possible to do that while not necessarily being the guy organizing it all.
I think the problem comes partially from not being in charge of only running raids. Designing an entire program is a far cry from just showing up to run your raids. (Ok that’s not a fair assessment, but you get the idea.)
But yeah.. you’re right.. for now its time to hang up my mantle of raid leading and just be a player for a while. I enjoy raiding… so shoot me
Well, I’m sad to see you left WW with your main, what will I do if I come back?
Well I do have 3 other level 80s on that server. I’m sure I’ll be around some… but you’ll do the same thing we did every night PTD…… Try and Take Over The World!!!!
Sad to hear your burned out Starman.I think everyone who has organised raids have been where you are with the last minute dropouts and the sudden quits that deprive you of key people, then everyone get bummed that a raid gets binned.
I think you will enjoy the chance to be one of the foot soldiers who turns up and does their job to the best of their ability but doesnt have to put up with all the other hassle that goes with it.
I often wonder in this game why sometimes it ends up being more like work than fun. I comment a lot that I spend all day managing people and sorting out issues then come home and do it all again virtually!.
Zetter
Zetter´s last blog ..Healing in 25 mans
My long term guild fractured in April, I was their RL and we’d achieved pretty much everything we wanted to as a 10 man force. My burn-out was magnified by our 2nd RL having really different playstyles and philosophies to mine…when I came back the guild was running as two factions, my hardcore, his casual. So we ended up divorcing and they scattered and my bunch formed a new guild, with Ulduar arriving we got prepared and ran headlong into Naxx achievements and early Ulduar progress. Pretty soon we’d hit top 20 guild status on realm and were attracting players. But that was based on 14 players, and summer killed us too. Feedback suggests this was a really bad summer for smaller guilds. Ulduar was either unreachable or didnt sustain, the lack of raiding variety meant boredom and burn out, and if my realm is anything to go by, enormous churn throughout the raid population. Long term guilds have gone, new guilds have formed and gone top 5, others have 15 glorious minutes and dissolve.
We accepted our defeat in late April and took most of our raid core to an old established name that had come close to folding too….and GMs, RLSs and officers became players aagain.
Now..I raid 3-4 times per month, I’m still content cleared (Algalon excepted) and still enjoy my raidtime, just not as much as was needed for the first 7 months of the year, when EVERYTHING was about progression raiding.
The game is to be played, to be replayed and to be explored, just recently I got to tank DM as a level 19 Pally with a proper 16-20 group and had a ball. Endless reruns of Naxx and Ulduar and now ToTC leave you jaded and frustrated. If its a cake walk then you are just getting iriitated by 1% issues preventing obscure achievements, if its still challenging its because you’re rotatating players and people aren’t listening.
Go casual, roll an alt, remind yourself that theres fun in Barrens, in Westfall and in Shadowfang.
Put some variety back into your game.
In my experience there are way too many people in the game right now that want to start up their own guilds rather than join a guild that already works and may just need a few more good players to really get things in gear. There’s a lot more people now than there used to be that think they can just grab 10 players and do 10man raid content with no more plan than we are going to raid these certain days, but no one has to go; we’re going to be casual so do whatever you want, join other people’s raids if you want, and you’ll still have a spot as a core raider waiting for you no matter what.. no commitment to the guild is necessary.
This kind of thing really attracts the easy burn out type of players, these people are usually “burned out” from the content at the exact moment they complete a tier set or get all the gear they wanted out of that particular raid set. As soon as the next major patch comes out with new raid content (and a whole slew of new and better gear) they suddenly are refreshed and enjoy the game and raiding again, which of course will just lead back to the same situation all over again once they get what they came for.
These aren’t the kind of players you can build a raid team around, you have to have people that are willing to commit to raid times and schedule to be on your raid team, at least able to commit to raiding those time more often than not. If you can’t find these types of players, you’re probably better off joining a guild that already works… its so much more enjoyable when raiding just works and you are playing alongside other people that just enjoy raiding together. It doesn’t mean the guild leader failed if he/she can’t get this kind of team together.. it could very well just be the timing.
Yeah, it was fun watching it grow, and it sucked watching it die. Was the better social time I have had in the game to date, raiding could have gotten there, but not without allot more heartache and pain nobody needed or wanted to deal with. The aftermath as you can tell by the armory, those that wanted it went to the place we were already getting it from (married the mistress?), although some of us came from there in the first place so now have to knock on the door and wait for it to open again.
Hey Star,
Sounds very much like issues i’ve been through myself, there is one problem for players like us though, that while we will enjoy just being a player for a while the raid leader in us will start to push forth and you will find yourself sometimes struggling not to step forward and take charge of a situation that is going wrong.
I’ve decided to embrace that, accept that for the length of my WoW playing I want to lead raids, even with the stress and drama and the extra pressure, purely because being just another player is not enough for me, and probably because im a bit of a control freak and a bit bossy in nature!
Now myself, my brother, my missus and my brothers missus (phew!) have formed a guild with a few of our long time wow buddies and a few irl mates as well. The ones that turn up and are reliable are the ones we know from old, new guys come and go but the same old faces stick around.
I’m not sure what your feelings are on recruiting but we have decided we dont advertise, we only take referrals from friends and we dont take young players, essentially we think the older generation have more patience and tolerance and a bit more staying power. Plus our guild chat gets somewhat adult at times in terms of content with humour etc, so its not suitable for kids.
What i’m trying to say is that we rely on each other to step up to the plate and do the job, you cant take it on yourself to make it work all the time, the joy of leading should come from failure as well as success, for without failure how can we regroup and see who are truly loyal to sticking together as a team no matter under what guild tag banner it may be.
Those people that followed you are the real team, they are the ones loyal and the ones that you have truly been a leader for.
I hope your break from leading will give you time to reconsider, from what I have read it seems the World (of warcraft) would be a darker place without your leadership.
Cyb.
A normally not so vocal reader
Cybac´s last blog ..Raid Leader: Motivation and regrouping
I agree with Cybac here, you have to start with a core group like this. If you don’t already have a dependable core group of close to 10 players, its probably not the right time to start a guild, if you plan on raiding. I’ve seen so many guilds have to transfer to other servers because they can’t find new players to fill their raid with so many people splitting off and forming new guilds and bringing 4 or 5 players with them and then both guilds end up failing.
The new guilds are forming mostly just because someone’s previous guild didn’t do everything their way, not because it really made any sense to start a new guild. This is mostly just an observation and not necessarily related to this particular situation being discussed. Sometimes it’s better to take up a leadership role in an already working guild than start a new one, some people should ask themselves if there’s really a void on this server that a new guild could fill for the raiding community before starting one.
Oh I actually appreciate both your responses. They are pretty well thought out. From my perspective there are probably a million things that could have gone better, but at this point what’s done is done.
I actually ended up moving on to a guild that had a fully formed raid program. Will I step up to a leadership role eventually? Its probably inevitable. But I like to think I’ve learned enough that I’m not going to just fire off and do something just because.
For us the problem has always been having that core group of 10. We’ve come close, but getting that magic 10 or near 10 has been a problem. If we’d gone a different direction originally, I think we’d probably likely have that near 10 number and a lot of this wouldn’t have shifted the way it did, but hey… hind sight… its the lies we like to tell ourselves.