(WoW) Guild Drama
This one gets flagged friends-only. Even at that, not everyone may want to read. But... it's distractingly on my mind.
I've said many times that our WoW guild is akin to a family. That's good in a lot of ways, but it makes any disruptions all the more painful. To put it simply, it sucks when people aren't getting along or are upset.
I've observed certain tensions between a couple close players and our guild leader. To me, this seems an almost unavoidable personality clash. They don't seem to be doing anything to deliberately aggravate him, but their typical actions do regardless. So he gets upset and snaps - whether it's threat of /gkicking for a behavior or leaving a raid in a huff. I can sort of understand this, as their behavior rubs me the wrong way sometimes too, but that's too much.
So that's been brewing for a while.
Then we also have another member who recently took up raid leadership from our guild leader. I don't know what all went into that discussion and decision. My instinct says "not enough." I think the offer was made to take some of the load off, so our guild leader doesn't have to deal with "playing favorites" and selecting who gets in each week if we end up with extra people. While it's done that, it also seems to have made him feel less needed/useful as he's now "just one of the DPS." Unintended side effects...
The current raid leader performs okay, with no fear of telling people "if you have an issue with why you weren't picked, talk to ME." They could stand to work on fight summation and duty assignments, yes. But I don't feel we're performing significantly better or worse for the change.
But... the last few weeks when someone has been benched, almost no one has taken it well. Our guild leader was in a huff after being sat out for oversleeping and showing up late, even going so far as to call for a guild meeting (which I missed and really didn't get a sense addressed raid selection). At least one other person sidelined recently showed some attitude and complained about being left out in guild chat before logging off.
So there's the build up...
Last night we struggled through some trash and paused before Atramedes. The raid leader was on the phone. One of the "trouble" players was going on around which way DPS would be moving to avoid a breath attack, spending a silly amount of time arguing they should move right/clockwise while our guild leader was pointing out (I think) that clockwise will be left as far as camera facing. This is where a raid leader saying "hold up - go this way" would have been good. But their attention was elsewhere and our guild leader reached his aggravation limit (possibly due to things outside the game, too) and abruptly left the raid.
Now, while I was getting plenty annoyed with the discussion too, that... left a lot of people wondering what happened. Someone even suggested he might have been disconnected (though that would manifest differently). It worried some people with the unknown. It upset me because I had a fair idea what happened. It left the group in a lurch until another guild member logged on and could fill the spot (which, thankfully, wasn't long). There was no ranting on guild chat, which might be an improvement, but not by much. And that sort of thing is bad for morale of a raid group. Headaches all around.
Fallout:
- Those personality conflicts are more apparent to people. One person I've talked (and who knows how many I haven't) to seems reluctant to group with the guild leader and those people who set him off at the same time, and who can blame them if this is a recipe for failure?
- Several people are losing faith in our guild leader, finding these outbursts and departures to be selfish, childish, and disruptive.
- Tangentially, this puts our current raid leader in a position where they almost have to sit out the guild leader if there's any choice, because he's literally proving himself to be the person most likely to cause obvious disruption and bail on the group.
The guild can probably keep progressing without him present in the raids, but that doesn't feel right to me, and gives him less to do/look forward to in the game. He could potentially take back raid leadership, but I'm not sure that would go over well with several members at this point. He could /gkick the people who set him off, but we'd probably lose a few others and end up with a gutted raid corps of maybe half the number of people needed.
I think the ideal outcome would be for him to quit acting out and prove to everyone who doubts at this point that he can learn from the incidents and be reliable. That, however, would take time and may require behavioral changes that are too much.
So... I don't know. At this point, my imagination plays out far more negative outcomes than positive ones. It also occurs to me that "guild implosion" might be the sort of event that would actually make me drop my subscription to the game.
I've said many times that our WoW guild is akin to a family. That's good in a lot of ways, but it makes any disruptions all the more painful. To put it simply, it sucks when people aren't getting along or are upset.
I've observed certain tensions between a couple close players and our guild leader. To me, this seems an almost unavoidable personality clash. They don't seem to be doing anything to deliberately aggravate him, but their typical actions do regardless. So he gets upset and snaps - whether it's threat of /gkicking for a behavior or leaving a raid in a huff. I can sort of understand this, as their behavior rubs me the wrong way sometimes too, but that's too much.
So that's been brewing for a while.
Then we also have another member who recently took up raid leadership from our guild leader. I don't know what all went into that discussion and decision. My instinct says "not enough." I think the offer was made to take some of the load off, so our guild leader doesn't have to deal with "playing favorites" and selecting who gets in each week if we end up with extra people. While it's done that, it also seems to have made him feel less needed/useful as he's now "just one of the DPS." Unintended side effects...
The current raid leader performs okay, with no fear of telling people "if you have an issue with why you weren't picked, talk to ME." They could stand to work on fight summation and duty assignments, yes. But I don't feel we're performing significantly better or worse for the change.
But... the last few weeks when someone has been benched, almost no one has taken it well. Our guild leader was in a huff after being sat out for oversleeping and showing up late, even going so far as to call for a guild meeting (which I missed and really didn't get a sense addressed raid selection). At least one other person sidelined recently showed some attitude and complained about being left out in guild chat before logging off.
So there's the build up...
Last night we struggled through some trash and paused before Atramedes. The raid leader was on the phone. One of the "trouble" players was going on around which way DPS would be moving to avoid a breath attack, spending a silly amount of time arguing they should move right/clockwise while our guild leader was pointing out (I think) that clockwise will be left as far as camera facing. This is where a raid leader saying "hold up - go this way" would have been good. But their attention was elsewhere and our guild leader reached his aggravation limit (possibly due to things outside the game, too) and abruptly left the raid.
Now, while I was getting plenty annoyed with the discussion too, that... left a lot of people wondering what happened. Someone even suggested he might have been disconnected (though that would manifest differently). It worried some people with the unknown. It upset me because I had a fair idea what happened. It left the group in a lurch until another guild member logged on and could fill the spot (which, thankfully, wasn't long). There was no ranting on guild chat, which might be an improvement, but not by much. And that sort of thing is bad for morale of a raid group. Headaches all around.
Fallout:
- Those personality conflicts are more apparent to people. One person I've talked (and who knows how many I haven't) to seems reluctant to group with the guild leader and those people who set him off at the same time, and who can blame them if this is a recipe for failure?
- Several people are losing faith in our guild leader, finding these outbursts and departures to be selfish, childish, and disruptive.
- Tangentially, this puts our current raid leader in a position where they almost have to sit out the guild leader if there's any choice, because he's literally proving himself to be the person most likely to cause obvious disruption and bail on the group.
The guild can probably keep progressing without him present in the raids, but that doesn't feel right to me, and gives him less to do/look forward to in the game. He could potentially take back raid leadership, but I'm not sure that would go over well with several members at this point. He could /gkick the people who set him off, but we'd probably lose a few others and end up with a gutted raid corps of maybe half the number of people needed.
I think the ideal outcome would be for him to quit acting out and prove to everyone who doubts at this point that he can learn from the incidents and be reliable. That, however, would take time and may require behavioral changes that are too much.
So... I don't know. At this point, my imagination plays out far more negative outcomes than positive ones. It also occurs to me that "guild implosion" might be the sort of event that would actually make me drop my subscription to the game.
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