A *sigh* really long time ago, I was a freshman in college. My football-player/wrestling-team roommate -- To know me is to know how bad that pairing was -- comes home from his Jr Philosophy 101 class having achieved an actual intellectual epiphany. He tells me that belief constitutes reality. His example was the idea of the earth being flat. So many people believed it that it might as well be true. This moment of intellectual clarity snowballed into into a serious discussion about paradigm shifts.
What does this have to do with raiding guilds? Wait for it...
Raider "years" are like dog-years on some kind of exponential curve on HGH. Every week is like 3 or 4 years and sometimes things speed up even more. Because they happen really, really fast, everything gets really intense. Worse still, our time is short. We are hurdling to the next patch & soon the next expansion. There's this overwhelming need to achieve NOW!!!
Actually, it reminds me of High School....only I like raiding!
Emotions run high. Sometimes people do things we just don't like. Sometimes bosses don't drop as fast as we want. Much like water molecules places under pressure & heated, we get frantic and need to explode from time to time.
Small little dramas play out on guild forums, in Vent or in /guild chat on a weekly basis. Sometimes several things crop up at the same time. Because of this hyper-stimulated reality, any of these little things can become big things quickly. Worse still, observant individuals can see these separate occurrences and draw the conclusion that there's full-blown "guild drama." Those members then share their concern with other members and then suddenly false assumptions become the reality. Is perceived drama real drama? If enough people believe so, then yes...the world might as well be flat!
You were wondering how I was going to tie all that together!
To put it another way...
On any given day anyone can log on or read the forums and have their own little Chicken Little moment. The key to surviving and not becoming Chicken Little is to learn to not sweat the small stuff. What constitutes the small stuff? Here are some examples:
Small Stuff #1: The Awkward Breakup - We had a member leave this week for a first-tier guild. Some members question the way he did it. I wasn't too pleased either, but I thought about my own "bad" exit from my previous guild. To bad-mouth him would be to give into my own hypocrisy. He took his shot at running with the "big boys" and got it. Good for him. We lost a dissatisfied member. Good for us. In the fullness or raider-time, this was a blip. It was a non-event. Who knows what the face of a guild will look like in a few months. This is small stuff
Small Stuff #2: The Slighted Member - A guildie wrote a really frustrated sounding post this week about not getting respect or support. Take this with the recent departure and Chicken Little says, "The guild is falling!" Certainly, this is a problem. Steps need to be taken to help this member if we can, but this too is still small stuff.
Small Stuff #3: Mods - This is my own personal story. Another member still refuses to use Void Reaver Alarm. The mod only works right if everyone uses it. In other words, this other player is hurting me. It feels selfish and I wanted to quit the raid the other night because of it. Leadership is aware of this. They will deal with it. There's nothing more for me to do. I can't control him or them. I can only do what I think is right. This is small stuff. No really, small stuff...gotta keep telling myself that! Small stuff!
Look back at these stories. See how easily any one of them can become a drama in the hyper-fast world of a raiding guild? Imagine if they all happened in the same week. Imagine looking at tomorrow's sign-ups for Vashj pulls and worrying that it might get canceled. Think how easily any one of us can lose perspective in the face of all that.
Actually, sign-ups are light for Sunday's pull...Wait, all that stuff was this week.
OMG!!! THE GUILD IS FALLING!!! THE GUILD IS FALLING!!! ;-)
The lesson here is that perception may be reality, but it's a clouded one full of misunderstandings and lost tempers. Learning to look past the little things allows us to change our prospect and stay focused. Knowing how to acknowledge that we are over-stimulated and thus extra-sensitive keeps us from doing stupid things like starting potential flame wars from passive aggressive posts. The goal is to have fun and slay monsters. The second we forget one, we generally fail at the other.
Seriously, some psychology post-doc should do a study on effects of being in a raiding guild.
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5 comments:
Heh - nicely done, Beroth. It's been a unique week, that's for sure. I wish I'd been something other than sick with the flu to deal with it all better.
K
Bah... this isn't unique... you just haven't been around long enough!
Drama follows you everywhere. It's in guild, it's in game, it can spill over into real life depending on the drama.
Seriously though, if we lend to supporting the drama through lack of communication or lack of response then the world does become flat and we live our own perceived reality. If we respond to it, address it and see if anything can be done to remedy it, it passes like everything else.
Agreed though... awesome thoughts on our latest venture in "Guild days of our lives."
Somehow I think I'm the one who's been labeled "Chicken Little" in this blog for commenting on the timing of everything that's happened in QSS in a private e-mail to Beroth. If so, he's misunderstood that I was making a simple observation.
What Beroth sometimes fails to remember is that I've been in raiding guilds a lot longer than he has. I started with Nightslayers of Garona way back grinding through MC. Anyone remember them? They're not around anymore and only a handful of my guildmates from those days are still playing. Paradigm Shift? There were my next guild. They around? Nope, not anymore either. All ancient history now.
I am well aware of that what Aliina says is true. This stuff happens. I've been in guilds that have fallen apart because of it. I've been in guilds that have survived and even prospered in spite of it.
I did find Beroth's observation about "dog years" to be spot on. (Yeah, I made a bit of a pun there.) That's one of the reasons I've been pointing out in my posts on the guild forums for QSS that it really has been only two months since we went "hardcore." At most 8 pulls on any of the new bosses, since they reset weekly. Not a lot of experience, not a lot of practice. Yet it seems that there are always a few that think that we're still not going fast enough.
Oh, well. Can't please everybody, and it's foolish to try. Everyone's got to play the game that's right for them.
This post was not directed at you, Nord. It was being worked on before your email. You spurred me on a bit, but nothing more.
Not to imply that these are all total non-issues, or to belittle the people involved, but all in all these are minor blips on the radar. The "dog-years" analogy is interesting, and very applicable in terms of raiding fatigue and stress. In terms of guild life, I feel a better analogy is that of something with an unusually long life span. Some things that seem a big deal now end up being so insignificant that nobody really remembers them much later (I don't want to belittle anybody referenced in this post with that comment, but I am trying to make a point). Eventually, the forum post from a dissatisfied guild member will fade from page one and subsequently become "out of sight, out of mind".
In terms of other "drama" issues, this really is a temporary setback. We lost a good player, a good guy, and a big help in raids. But, we can eventually recruit another toon and restructure to fill his role in raids. Hardly a "the guild is falling" moment, we just need to adjust, kind of like when people die in boss fights.
As far as VoidReaverAlarm goes for QSS members, I made a personal version that doesn't turn my screen blue, but still sends data to others. From the 1 chance I had to try it, it seems to work, so leave me a private message on the QSS forums if the blue screen pisses you off, and I'll give you a copy.
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