Casual Raiding and you a WoW blog

Leading By Example

2008-07-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened over the past month or so for our new guild. Our merger is complete and we have added many new members to our ranks via recruiting. Overall it has been a huge success! As I mentioned in my last post we have been tearing through the early 25 man content and a few nights ago on our first night of attempts we were able to down Fathom Lord Karathas on our 5th attempt. Which in my eyes is a huge accomplishment. Again this was a first kill for most of, if not the entire raid.

The feeling of dropping a new boss on the guilds first night of attempts was amazing! And it was done in a way that got me thinking about why we have been so successful over all to this point.

That night we saw raid members passing on clear upgrades to others who it could benefit more. We saw one of our top DSP toss on his healing gear without missing a beat and take on raid healing. We saw yet another of our top DPS step out to bring in a necessary 4th tank for the FLK event. It was a night of people leading by example. And the great thing is that has continued. People who have never used the website are logging on and posting gear guides / dps guides etc.

In a blended guild environment one thing that is crucial is that the guild as a whole respect and trust the leadership. As a leader it is your responsibility to earn that trust and respect. Not the guilds responsibility to give it to you. So how do we go about earning our place at the helm.

1> You must be beyond reproach. What I mean by this is if you make a rule you follow it. If you want people coming to raids prepared you better do so.

2> Honesty is the best policy. Nobody is perfect and further more nobody expects you to be. You will make mistakes, you will cause a wipe, you will wrongly distribute that BoE pattern to someone who is just going to sell it (yes.. I have done all these things). And all you can do is step up the the plate and accept responsibility. Remember you are the leader the buck stops with you!

3> Put in the work! To many guild masters feel it is the guilds responsibility to support them. Keep in mind this is a voulnteer orginization as it were. And guess what you have the responsibility to serve the needs of your members, not the other way around.

4> Get to know your crew. Simply saying hi to someone and getting to know them will go a very long way. Building a rapport with your members will allow you to give both praise and criticism without offending. This is key to the long term success of a guild. I struggle with this at times because I am not that outgoing. However it is something I have found to be profoundly important.

And the most important thing in my eyes is to set the example. Be the one to skip the uber 2 hour kara farming group to host a "lets gear up the noobs run". Be the one to say, "hey link me your X,... you know what I pass because it is better / more needed by you". Be the example of what you want your members to be, and look out because it may surprise you but others will follow suite.

We have 3 guild masters and each one has different strengths but all 3 work very hard to have the respect of the guild, and our last run proved if you set the example and you will see that example reflected in others.

More to come peace out while we go rock Leotheras' world!!!!

The death of a guild

2008-07-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

I blame myself for the ultimate death of our guild. Being continually pulled in different directions by friends looking to do nothing but run their own agenda took me to my breaking point and I became a ghost. I was having Internet connection issues which made it easier for me to disappear dumping the drama on one of my closest friends. This was unacceptable and I realized that finally and we began to look for a solution.

We wound up with a few conflicting ideas. One was lets just clean house and go back to the glory days of rocking Karazhan and focus on ZA. The other solution was lets merge with the other guild and move forward. What we found was that 95% of the guild wanted to continue with 25 man progression. Yet due to personality conflicts a merger could never happen.. JOY yet another standstill..

Ultimately we decided it was time to put the old dog down. There was nothing more we could do. It was time to move on. This was hard for me because it meant I had to come to terms with failing. But failing is not always a bad thing as long as you learn from it.

It was time to form a casual progression guild. Our approach was pretty simple. Take what we learned and implement it. Now when I say casual I don't mean the free for all type environment we had previously set up. I mean a guild that does not require every minute of every day.

Some of the things we learned:

Less is more when it comes to guild leadership:

Before we had basically 9 guild masters which I realize was foolish to think that we could get that many people on the same page. Now we have 3 people who meet and vote on any major decisions with a majority rules model.

No token officers / delegation is key to success:

Before all of our friends were officers, most of which did little to nothing for the guild but had more input into the guild than the average member. After a lot of discussion we settled on 4 total officers. Each has a specific responsibility to help administer the guild. We have a bank officer / recruiting officer and two officers who are responsible for picking class leaders and dealing with those issues. No matter how good you are you can't do it all. You will burn out and your guild will suffer for it. Keep the number small but pick people you can trust to help the guild move forward. Being an officer should not be the result of a popularity contest but those who truly want to help the guild succeed.

Clearly set expectations put them in writing:

Before our only rule was there are no rules.. yes again I know EPIC failure. We decided it was critical that we define what our guild was going to be. We had a few meetings over vent and passed around a document via email which then was posted on our website. Every new member MUST read the post and agree to it. We covered recruiting / personality fits / loot rules etc. If you are interested in what we came up with hit me up and I will post a link to our guild website.

Once the ground work was done we opened invites to both our past guild and the guild we were doing 25 mans with and to my surprise we had almost enough people to begin raiding that first night. It was amazing. Everyone read the Guild Policy document and people were truly excited.

I realize most of the discoveries we made should have been common sense but I would doubt we are the first, nor will we be the last to go through these issues.

As an update our new 25 man guild is doing awesome. We have class leaders that are really stepping up. Our GM team gets along great, and our officers are really helping things move along.

We have been raiding for just a about an month and the hit list so far contains:

High King
Gruul
Mag
Lurker
Tidewalker

The tidewalker fight was especially sweet since it was a first kill for almost all of us if not all of us.

BOOM to BUST

2008-07-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

The ALPHA and OMEGA

After seeing yet another "casual friends and family guild" go the way of distrust and DKP, one of my best friends and I said.. ENOUGH. We want to have our very own casual 10 man raiding guild. Where we are in control. We WANT to do Karazhan and just have some fun. But we want to start over and do it right from the beginning.

So a new guild is born. A re-roll guild based on high principals and explicit goals. "We will remain friends and family. We will remain casual. We will be a 10 man raiding guild".

Personally I figured, here we go again. Back to our 5 real friends dreaming about what could be but never taking the steps to make it happen. Well to my surprise there was a lot of interest, my friends came over. People who I had become on-line friends came over and before we knew it we were leveling like mad with our first Karazhan run merely weeks away.

Three weeks after our first ever Karazhan raid we got our first Prince kill. And 2 weeks later we were full clearing. Impressive? maybe not by WoW standards but by mine it was insane. Considering 95% of the guild were re-rolls and started Kara in greens and blues.

Well it did not take long to notice we had some issues. We did not have strict rules of any kind and so a lot of things were dealt with by saying.. "ohhh that's just the way he/she is they are our friend we just have to accept it".

Well we did it!!! We got what we wanted we were happy, well some were happy but then guess what happened.. A chorus of WE WANT MORE from one half and a chorus of WE WON"T CHANGE from the other half. This went on for some time and finally I had had it so I took a 2 week break. I hate being torn between friends, I felt like the 5 year old in the middle of a divorce being forced to pick a parent. Well guess what I choose neither.

I finally came back because I love the game and the tune had changed. Now it was WHY ARE YOU BLOCKING OUR PROGRESSION. Needless to say I was like WTF!!!!! Just two weeks ago you said ".. we will never do X" and now you are blaming me for not making it happen.. how fun. So we formed a guild alliance and off to 25 mans we went, with good success.. But then it got hard, we had taken down the easy 25 man bosses and now the progression grind was necessary to continue.

And then it began the slow deterioration of our amazingly successful laid back fun family guild. Friends began using each other and causing more and more issues. People who were against any rule of any kind began giving ultimatums "I WILL not run with so and so", "why is so and so allowed to come they suck!" "why do you not enforce x rule" to which I responded, if we can't enforce it with YOU how can I with anyone else?

Yup we hit the wall and like all good selfish casual raiders do, they blamed the set up and refused to participate in anything that was not guaranteed and easy. Ultimately bringing something that I was very proud of to a crashing halt and messy end.

So what is the morale of the story?

Realize your goals will change, how foolish is it to believe that unlike life once you attain your goals you will be content?

Realize that it is OK to have enforceable rules between friends, society has rules to maintain the peace why is a game so different? It does not make you not friends or show distrust, it allows friendships to continue beyond the game by removing temptation and making things not personal.

When your goals and that of your friends change in game, don't be afraid to move on to do what you want to do. If they are really your friends they still will be even if you do something they don't.

Sorry for the length.. TO BE CONTINUED in my next post.

The Introduction

2008-06-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what I am doing here so please be a bit patient as I find my groove.

I am a 32 year old IT professional, in the past few years I have held the titles Director of IT / Innovation for a company with ~1500 employees and Strategic Systems Architect. Now I mention this because it makes what I will say next seem very silly and probably will provide some insight into me as a person. There are two things I have avoided like the plague. 1> blogging and 2> social networking sites.

Recently it has been “suggested” I spend a bit of time doing both. So this is my attempt at creating a blog. As I told a friend today I do not feel like I have a lot to share that would be of much use to the general public, however he assured me someone may benefit from something I might say.

So you may ask why a WoW blog. Well because I am not sure what else to write about.

Now onto my WoW experience. I picked up the game 1 week after release. I started playing because a few friends at work did and have played on and off with them over the past few years. In my time playing I have been in the following situations.

A tiny guild with ~5 real life friends

A handful of merged guilds consisting of 10 – 15 people basically my friends + another group of friends.

A handful of casual raiding guilds and a couple hardcore raid guilds.

I have been an officer / class leader in two fairly hardcore raid guilds that had good success.

GM of a very successful casual 10 man raiding guild that made the jump to 25’s successful before people lost focus.

GM of what has the potential of being a VERY successful “casual” 25 man raiding guild

I have quite literally played virtually every class to the level cap and have done at least 10 man raiding with them all.

I think this blog will probably focus on my time as a GM and some stuff about my lock and warrior.

Anyway thanks for stopping by and hopefully someone finds something useful.