Guild Drama: We Haz It

"…like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives." Oh yeah, the veritable soap opera. Generally, I much prefer to focus on positives with respect to my guild; however, when an elephant ambles into the parlor, it’s just a bit difficult to simply ignore it.

Steady readers know we’ve had some problems the past few weeks getting enough people online to put together a 25-person raid. That hardly marks us as unique: Between the dog days of August, back-to-school distractions for collegians and high-schoolers, and "expansionitis," it’s been a tough month for many, many US-based guilds, and more than a few in Europe.

My…what a fertile ground for drama to grow! Our guild leader posted on our forums last week, announcing he was removing his hunter from the guild, while keeping his priest (the GM character) and mage in the guild. Within a day or so, the hunter was a member of another raiding guild.

Of course, such a move didn’t go unchallenged, primarily by our RL; however, other officers and a couple other guild members chimed in as well. One of the points made was that guild members who were known to be shopping for a new guild have been /gkicked in the past, and for the GM to make such a move was hypocritical.  A counter argument, made very well by at least one commentator, is that the game is supposed to be fun, and everyone has the right to do with their characters as they wish. The GM stated he remains committed to the guild, that he is looking for more people to bring in to the guild, and hinted at the possibility of a merger with another guild.

Once upon a time, I’d probably have weighed in heavily on one side or the other. Perhaps I’ve grown up as I’ve grown older, but my position at this point is one of neutrality. Rather than draw conclusions based on few facts and many suppositions, I’m going to let actions speak for themselves. 

For example, last night, we had 21-22 people on at raid time. The GM and RL were both conspicuous by their absence. In Officer chat, I made the point that we owed it to the people who were online to attempt to put together something, even it it were only Gruul’s. I received support from other key officers, and we were about to start building for Gruul’s¹ when the RL logged in. He quickly observed that once again we didn’t have enough people to form a raid. 

I reiterated that if we didn’t at least try to do something, with more people on than we had seen in weeks, the credibility of the entire officer corps would be called into question—not just that of the GM. With assent from a couple other officers, the RL quickly agreed. And about that time, the GM logged in, as well as a few more people. In fact, at one point, we had 29 people online!

Luckily, we only had one person already saved to Gruul’s.² It took a little bit, but we did manage to put together a full raid (yes, including the GM). Fortunately, we stayed focused, and managed to keep guild politics/drama out of it for the evening.

Even better, after a shaky start on the first trash pull, we managed to knock off the rust and have a very successful run. No epics were sharded, and quite a few were upgrades for main specs.

What I took away from last night (and I hope I wasn’t the only one) is that having people online to raid, and actually raiding, is good medicine for a whole host of ills. Here’s hoping the patient continues to recover.