World of Warcraft: Post Pre-Patch Ponderings

The post title? I couldn't resist.

 So, new patch! I don't know about you all, but I felt like this patch was a doozy. I logged in and had absolutely no idea wtf to do with my hunter. All her talents and abilities were different. It was like starting over from scratch. Logging in with my mage, monk, and warlock all caused similar feelings.

Then I started in on the new transmog system. First of all, LOVING my new closet. I should've kept track of how many hundreds of gold I've spent on changing my various toons' outfits. I also discovered that I have a mismash of items. Lots of chest pieces that don't have matching pants, etc. etc.

My raid team decided to go ahead and attempt raiding the same night the patch came out (our regular night). We ran HFC on normal Tuesday night and then on heroic Wednesday night. It was ok. Everybody's numbers were lower than normal and we were a bit sloppy but we still got some bosses down. That was with virtually no practice with our new(ish) toons. I think this week will be better.

I'm loving healing on my monk though. So. Much. Fun!! I even had fun with my lock on destro.

On a side note, I created a page for my guild. We're looking to boost our numbers with some active, fun, friendly, people. If you're looking to raid with nice people in a slow progression environment, then we might have a spot for you. When Legion finally drops, we'll most likely be looking to fill raid team spots then too. Either way, until we chat, I make no promises as far as raiding is concerned. However, if you're looking for a friendly place to hang, a guild to grow with and help grow, and a place where you'd actually have some input, gimme a buzz. Check out The Guild Page for more info. Any feedback, either here or on the page, would be most welcome.

Update: Guild Situation

Last time I discussed guild stuff, recruiting, and/or raid team stuff, I talked about guild drama and the bumps we've had with our raid team. I figure an update, seeing as how that was like a year ago, is in order.

Things have been quiet. Too quiet. My guild is down to 126 people and of those, only about ten individuals still log in (Individual players, not including all their many alts). Over the past few months, I've been kicking people out that have been inactive for 12+ months and demoting people to the lowest (and thus, the least access to guild stuff) rank for being inactive 6+ months. I wish I had numbers to give you here, but I can't login today cuz my computer is broke.

I, myself, have been less than actively active. I had a lot of stuff going on with grad school and then my dad passed away in March. Because of this, I didn't see the point in trying to get more people to join the guild. It seems like when I don't login every day, as the guild master, people leave the guild more often. It's as if, if people don't see the GM every day, they don't want to be in that guild. Maybe I'm imagining things or putting too much responsibility on my own head. I dunno. But I don't feel right bringing new people into the guild if I'm not there to interact with them and support them. Ya know?? As a result, my guild is really quiet.

As for the raid team...We can't seem to keep good, reliable healers. They come and go more than anything. It's frustrating. Is it because our team is too hard to heal? What is it? We have about 14, what I would call, regular team members. I like most of them for the most part. I think I've managed to rub a couple of them the wrong way, but that's life. My only complaint is that a couple of our people seem to refuse to learn and progress with their respective toons. We've been in HFC for over a year (is that right??) and these certain somebody's are still making the same mistakes. We've only gotten the 2nd boss down on heroic ONE time. ONCE! Usually, I'm okay with the speed of our progression, but that's just plain frustrating. My hunter main stands at an item level of 720 and there's absolutely no way to get her new/better gear on normal level. With Legion coming out next month, I really have no hope of furthering her along. This being my very first experience at raiding, I have to say that I'm somewhat disappointed with the end results. We've never even gotten Archi down on normal mode. We should've at the very least gotten that far.

Where to go from here?

Good question. Should I start trying to bump up my guild's numbers now? Wait until Legion comes out? Be happy with the people I have now because they're mostly awesome?

Should we kick the under-performers from the raid team for Legion? Wait and hope they improve with Legion? Like I said, this is my first experience raiding and it's my first experience running an open guild. Advice would be much appreciated.

Bumps & Bruises: Guild Drama

From what I've read, seen, and experienced for myself, my guild has very little drama comparatively. We've been active, officially, for six months now and I've only had one user, one bank abuser, two rage quitters, and one booted to the door. I'll explain.

The User

This person joined the guild, acted all enthusiastic about my raid project, and was generally a nice person for several weeks. However, once they got a few pieces of gear and an iLvl increase, they jumped ship. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, EXCEPT for the fact that they misrepresented themselves and used fellow guildies for gear upgrades. This is bad behavior in my book. Not only that, but they left us high and dry with no notice, lacking a 2nd healer.

Bank Abuser

This one should be pretty obvious. This person withdrew stuff from the guild bank that they couldn't possibly use. Hello!!!! I can see what your professions are and what level your character is. Then, when I asked them what they needed all that stuff for, they left the guild. Good riddance!

Rage Quitter

This is one that actually makes me a little bit sad. This person was, for the most part, a great guildie. They had been with the guild for a really long time. The problem was that they made a habit of no call/no show on raid nights. One or two times, while annoying and disrespectful to the team, is one thing. Several nights with absolutely no apologies is another. At least own up to what you're doing and apologize. When I finally called them on their shit, they got butt hurt and left the guild. Way to be an adult. I'm sad because I genuinely enjoyed playing the game with this person and miss their company. Their drama, however, I don't miss.

The 2nd quitter left because they took something personally that wasn't personal at all. After several in game mails where I tried to convince this person that I wasn't singling them out for anything, they left anyway. Can't keep everyone happy I guess.

Booter

I think I tolerate a lot. Unless you're a GM, you really can't appreciate the behind the scenes stuff that happens in a guild. The Booter had been an ongoing problem for a few months. Inappropriate conversation and giving off a creeper vibe. Seeing as how I was the sole recipient of this behavior, I tried giving the person the benefit of the doubt. However, their bad behavior escalated into constant bitching and whining, bashing the raid team, bragging about how they were the end all, be all of raiders, and then sexually harassing another guildie. Time to go. I felt weird actually removing someone from the guild, but several lines had been crossed.

I don't think five problem members is all that bad in the grand scheme. That's not even one per month. I hate to say it, but other than the 2nd rage quitter, the others brought me a lot of drama and it was a relief to have it be over. At the end of the night with the Booter drama, I had a huge headache and my hands and feet were so swollen with stress and tension, they were painful. I wish people could realize the impact their words and actions have on others, even in an online game setting. I may be the GM, but I am still trying to have fun here. 

Casual vs Hard Core vs Free for All

Recruiting, as I said in my last post, is an ongoing endeavor. Once I started getting people to join the guild, I had to look forward to building a raid team. Once again, I had some pretty idealistic goals for what I wanted in my raid team. I wanted:

• Players who were new to raiding and anxious to learn.
• Players who were familiar with raiding, possessing of loads of patience, and willing to teach.
• Players who recognized that boss encounters require some preparation like gearing up and watching videos to learn mechanics.
• Players who wanted to progress through bosses but were willing to be patient through the learning and preparation process. 
• Players who didn't live and breathe numbers and statistics.
• Players who took responsibility for their mistakes and learned from them.
• Players who didn't point fingers and get bitchy when we wiped.

I was, and still am, asking for a lot. For the  most part, I found just the people I was looking for too. There's been some bumps in the road and progression is slower than I had anticipated, but we're moving along, bouncing around in High Maul and BRF as we like. When we can't get a boss down and get frustrated, we stop and try a different one. I'm sure there has been talk that has occurred outside of my hearing, so to speak, but I think most of my team are happy with the way things are going. I've actually had some tell me that they've been in hard core raiding guilds before and much prefer it the way we do things. They like the fun and friendly atmosphere versus raiding in a high stress environment.

I'm painting a pretty picture here, right? Well, there have been some bumps, like I said. As the weeks have progressed and we've been learning how to work as a raid team, I've had to reassess and make some adjustments. I'll tell you all about that in my next post.

Guild Recruiting: It NEVER Ends!!!!

Fast forward again to December 2014. The husband and I decided that we were finally ready to start inviting people to join the guild. Fleas on Rats was going live! Just a little FYI, side note here:  While I consider my husband to be co-owner of the guild, he is more of a sounding board for me than an actual manager. He prefers it that way and this is fine by me.

How to Begin the Recruiting Process

I had done the bare-bones minimum in research on how to recruit. I figured, how hard can it be??? Sometimes my naivete and complete dumbassery astounds me. Recruiting is H-A-R-D. I could have made it easier on myself by choosing a lemming-type, conformist-type, typical guild name like Fluffy Bunnies or Lemonade Kids (I should say, "no offense" here, but would I really mean it?), but I chose something that actually means something and, in the end, I think is representative of what it means to be a killer horde. What's more killer, harder to escape, creeps up on you with no notice, than the plague??? A PLAGUE ON YOUR HOUSE!!! Nobody wants to hear that. 

Anyway, back to recruiting. I chose the traditional route of spamming trade and general chat with recruiting messages. I say "spam" here because that's the general term for it, but I don't think what I did fit the definition. I didn't repeatedly post my message until I was locked out. I posted about once every ten minutes or so. And let's be honest here. What's more annoying, the occasional guild recruitment message or the anal spams or the blessed thunder fury spams or the general douchebaggery that is par for the course on trade chat??? Maybe your server chat is different than mine, but personally, I'd rather see guild recruitment posts. 

Besides, it worked. I started recruiting some great people to my guild, but it wasn't going as fast I would have liked. So, I posted a message to the guild recruitment forums. Over the months, I've gotten a handful of hits from these posts. Right now, I have three active posts on three different boards, on two different websites. Compared to the amount of people I got from in game posts, the forums are more work with fewer results, but still, a necessary evil.

Words of Wisdom

I wish I had a brilliant suggestion for recruitment. In the grand scheme, I haven't put in a lot of time recruiting. I've been at it steadily for four months now, but compared to some guilds, this time is nothing. It is, like I said, a lot of work. You have to find the right tone for your forum postings. I try to go with a more professional sounding tone with some sarcasm and more casual language. My goal is to recruit adults who have the same philosophy as I do about raiding (which I'll go into later). I'd prefer that they are social and friendly with a sense of humor. While I try to keep my posts on par with people who have at least an 8th grade reading level, I also try to keep a bit of levity so that prospects know I'm not a stick in the mud. This type of writing is difficult, believe it or not. Also, I continue to post in game, on trade, general, and now that it's back, looking for group. I absolutely never post on all three channels at the same time. I stagger my messages so that I'm posting about once every five minutes. This equals about once every 15 minutes per channel. This is not, by my definition, spam-like behavior. FYI, creating a macro for each channel is very handy. 

Aside from the above, I also would recommend:

• That you leave in game recruiting message posting to one guild member. If you have more than one person posting at a time, you risk overlaps and spam. 
• Change your message(s) up every once in a while. 
• Keep your forum postings up to date. If you've changed your recruiting goals, then post a new message. Try and delete the old ones if the forum allows it.
• Be diplomatic. Don't stoop to other player's level of immaturity when you get a negative response to one of your messages. 
• Be patient. Unless you're extremely lucky, be prepared for recruiting to be an ongoing GM activity. It takes time to find the right players. Even if you currently have your guild pop where you want it and your raid roles filled, players come and go all the time. It's almost a guarantee that you'll have to recruit again at some point. 

The Fear and Having Unrealistic Expectations

 The transition from the Quel'dorei server to Zul'jin was eye-opening. I had never had any toons on a high population server, always choosing a medium pop server so that I would never have to deal with login queues. (In retrospect, this is a completely dumb reason to choose a low-med pop server.) I remember my first visit to Orgrimmar and being dumbfounded at the amount of players hanging out there. 

This server change involved moving my main plus about two alts. My husband also made the transition with his main and I don't remember how many alts he had at the time. (This was a while ago and I'm old and my memory sucks.) The first order of business was to decide on a guild name and go through the process of starting a guild. We knew that, at the beginning, the purpose of the guild would be to use it as a way to support our leveling our alts. I didn't want to immediately begin inviting people to join. We had an empty bank and a very limited amount of gold. Who would join this guild and then stay once they saw that?

My vision for a guild was, and still is if I'm honest about it, idealistic. Let me bullet point it for you and you'll see what I mean.

My Must-Haves for a Guild

• Small community - no more than 150 players.
• People that behave like adults
• Limited to no drama
• Talkative, active, social, friendly players
• A guild bank that supports leveling up that people actually use
• Planned events that people actually want to attend

This is just what I wanted, in general, for a guild. This doesn't even being to cover raiding. So, the husband and I began stocking the guild bank. By this time, Cataclysm was out. We also worked on getting at least one toon each to max level. I figured, a GM should be at max level. Jump forward in time...

All through the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria expacs, we didn't put forth any real effort to start inviting people to the guild. Why? We made two cross country moves. We were both nearing the completion of our undergrad degrees so school work really ramped up. I had a snarly teenager on my hands. The husband deployed to Afghanistan. These, on paper, are all really good reasons to not have the time to devote to running a guild and putting together a raid team. I could get away with leaving it at that, but I'll be honest with you in the spirit of transparency. The ultimate reason was fear. I was afraid that I didn't have the follow through to make this successful. I didn't think I'd be able to find any other like-minded players out there that would want to join the guild. I go through times with the game where I don't login for a few weeks at a time. What would happen to the guild if I experienced one of those slumps? Yes. This is "just" a game, but in my mind, once you decide to become a GM, you have a certain responsibility to the players in your guild to be there and to make sure the guild is a place they want to be. If you don't believe that, what's the point of starting a guild at all? 

Talking with other GMs didn't help. They confirmed that I had unrealistic expectations. Most happened to like my vision for a guild but all had no faith at all that I'd be able to make it happen. They all told me that running a guild is a lot of work with little positive feedback. They said that you put in hours of behind the scene work on a guild that, unless you are or have been a GM, players won't appreciate. Basically, being a GM is a thankless job that sucks the fun out of playing. What in the holy hell was I thinking???

On Being a Guild Master

As if I didn't have enough in my life to drive me insane, I decided to open up one of my bank guilds and try to make it a casual raiding guild. I began this endeavor the first week of December, 2014. Now, four months later, I have two partial raid teams going on, on different days of the week. Sheesh. That sounds even crazier when I see it in black and white.

I want to take the next few blog posts and share my journey with you (whoever's still out there reading this blog). I don't know if this is going to be some helpful advice or cautionary tale of what not to do. We'll see what I say. I'll start with a little background info.

I had, over the years, tried out several guilds. I eventually found a guild that had nice people in it and minimal drama. You only have to read the trade chat in World of Warcraft one day to see that this game is fraught with teenage-like drama. Add in the trolls, and you have to wonder why anyone tries to be social at all. Anyway, this guild worked out well for quite some time. At least two years and it was a tremendously tough decision to leave it. However, I was looking to experience some of the end game content. I had never raided. All through Burning Crusade and WotLK. No raiding. I tried putting feelers out to my fellow guildmates to see if anyone would be interested in trying out some level appropriate raids. Aside from their focus being mainly pvp content, the GM was pretty adamant that this guild not become a raiding guild. I didn't want to step on toes, but I wasn't satisfied having a max level toon with nowhere to take her. It was time to move on. In addition to leaving the guild, I also did a server change. I thought starting out fresh on a higher population server would be the best way to go. This was a really great decision. Honestly. No sarcasm.

So, I was guildless and on a new server. Now what? 

Trying to Understand the Function of Guilds

Credit goes to Dr. Jenny Fremlin

If you've stuck around with me long enough, you know that I have questions surrounding guilds. If you don't raid, what purpose do they serve? I was in a guild for a pretty long time that was a 100% social guild. We occasionally ran raids as level 85s but it was strictly old content because hardly any of us were experienced raiders and hardly any of us were geared to run Cataclysm (at the time, this was the most current expansion) raids. There were times where we couldn't even manage to get through Cata heroic dungeons as a guild without wiping repeatedly. It was sad. From what I could tell, the most active members were primarily interested in PvP and were geared and experienced as such. The husband and I were looking for more than that. While we occasionally enjoy PvP, our primary focus was social and leveling but we were very interested in learning how to raid. This was something that our guild and more importantly, our guild manager, was totally uninterested in. Rather than try and bend the guild to fit us, we left. It was so far from being personal. I really miss those people. But being in a guild that didn't fit us, that we had outgrown, led to dissatisfaction with WoW in general.

After Pandaria came out, we left the guild and paid for a realm transfer. We decided to found our own guild. Our entire purpose was to have a place for our alts and a bank that we could do with what we wanted. After leveling the guild to 25 and more than just two members to level 90, we plan on recruiting. What we're looking for in members is as follows:

• Fun people that enjoy playing a game and not analyzing it to death.
• Respectful people that understand that when you're running a level 85 dungeon on normal with bad gear, it's because you're trying to get better gear for cripes sake. 
• Respectful people that understand when you're in a level 85 dungeon with bad gear, that you probably don't know all the fights because IT'S A LOW LEVEL DUNGEON THAT YOU'RE TRYING TO LEARN AND GET BETTER GEAR.
• Fun people that are interested in being respectful, social, adults who are interested in playing a game.
• Fun people that are looking to learn together.

I know. I'm idealist and probably unrealistic but my husband and I can't possibly be the only gamers out there that are like us. I remain hopeful.

The other day, @Matticus posted this on Twitter:

Everytime I leave my guild alone for more than a few days, I dread to see what trouble they get into upon my return.
— Matticus(@matticus) May 15, 2013

 It led me to wonder, what are other guilds like? Guilds that have actual leadership and direction? I really think this is an aspect of MMOs, and not just WoW, that I have yet to experience.

I found this paper that was written in 1996 about MUDs which was entirely too interesting especially when comparing it to the current gaming experience of MMOs. Essentially, nothing much has changed in what the gamer is looking for in the 17 years since this was written. You should read it.

I would love to hear about other people's guild experiences.

Guild Woes

Maruka has been in the same guild since...well, it's been years. Almost since the inception of the guild. The hubs and I were one of the first members if I remember correctly. At the beginning, this guild served our purposes. It's a social guild and since we weren't interested in raiding, it was great. The GM is really nice. Extremely nice. The other people are nice as well. We chit chat and whatever. I like almost all the core members of the guild. You know there's always at least one person in a group that you find annoying. Overall, based on social aspects alone, I would give this guild a 9 out of 10 rating. We get the occasional whiner/beggar/person who takes advantage of the guild bank/nasty mouth guildie that I usually suspect is actually ten years old, but drama is at a minimum.

Saturday night, we actually had nine people on at the same time. Lately, the average has been about two, lol. One guildie kept asking us to get a group of 85s together to run Naxx. I'm at the point with Maruka that I am totally uninterested in running old instances purely for achievements. And as an 85, what else is there? I certainly can't use the gear. Plus, when I see the gear drops that I missed out on, it puts my panties in a twist. So I said that in the most gentle way that I could and this started a conversation about wanting to start running Hour of Twilights together as a guild so that eventually, maybe, possibly, we could actually start running level appropriate raids. Sounds like a positive move forward except for the fact that I brought this up about a year ago and nothing ever came of it.

I'm trying to figure out what the problem is here and I really think it's me. I'm trying to mold this long established guild into something that I want which isn't right. It's not my guild. Yeah, I'm an officer but that's mostly just a courtesy title more than anything. I've thought about shopping for a new guild, but I'm reluctant to leave the familiar behind. I also don't want to offend the GM and I'd really miss quite a few of my guild mates. It's a conundrum and I have no idea what to do about it at this point. 

My Ideal Guild

• Family oriented = 99% adults, not using foul language simply because it's funny, not condescending, superior assholes.
• Inactive members (people who haven't signed on for months leaving no word as to when or if they'll be back) get booted. 
• Guild repairs have a daily cap. 
• Guild bank withdraws are allowed on tabs with every day stuff with a daily stack cap. Personally, I don't like making deposits in a GB if I have to ask to withdraw a stack of wool cloth for tailoring. At the same time, I think it's shady when a guildie withdraws stacks of cloth, leather, ore, and herbs, all in one day.
• Groups are organized for running regular randoms, heroic randoms, AND raids. At several level intervals. Not everyone is a level 85 for cripes sake.
• There's a guild website and/or forums that is actually useful and it's utilized by members.
• Guild activity perks such as helping out with riding training costs. 
• Ranks that actually make sense or no ranks at all.
• And for my sanity, I need a guild to be low pressure. Organized with some expectations, but low pressure. 

Until I figure out what to do, I'll probably just leave well enough alone. When I really start to get frustrated, I'll just stop playing Maruka for a year or so and use her as a bank toon again, lmao. Oh wells.