Comments on: Continuing our talk on raiding stress…

By: Heilerin

Heilerin — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:47:05 +0000

Keep one thing in mind: it sucks for them to not have you tank all the time, but it sucks even more if BBB gets sick and tired of it all and decides to take a break from the game because he does not feel like playing any more.

By: Jezrael

Jezrael — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:51:57 +0000

I can empathise BBB. Work was pretty stressful this week and then I logged in Wednesday night for our Kara run to be told once we’d already started that we would be clearing. Usually we do a 2 hour run and come back the following night to finish up. The fact that I wasn’t asked but told irked me too. I stuck it out but only because my sweetie needed the badges towards FR gear for lock tanking Leo next weekend.

At to solutions – I think it really is a combination of you being assertive about saying no and the guild enforcing specific scheduled times. If people don’t show up for the assigned times it’s THEIR fault not yours and they are the ones holding back progression. You shouldn’t feel guilty at all about having a real life with real responsibilities. Hope everything gets worked out and you can feel more chilled :)

By: CapnTuna

CapnTuna — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:18:19 +0000

The only way to educate new members is to let them run. The only way to gear them up is to let them run. Allow them the same opportunities to succede or fail as you did getting to where you are gearwise today. Do “less stressful” 5-mans to help subs gear up.
But even on the nights you don’t run evesdrop in Vent for some tasty blog fodder. Who knows, you could be training the next Leeroy Jenkins.
As a final word if I sign up on the Guild calendar that I’m not running, I’m not running.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 05:45:52 +0000

Great posts! once again, you hit the nail right on the head in regards to what my wife and I were going through before we switched guilds.

What is everyone’s take on NOT signing up for a raid but being online. IE wanting to do dailies, or quests, or alts, but not wanting to attend the raid?

my personal thoughts on this is that, if I or my wife don’t sign up for the raid, but we are online, and are needed, it’s up to us weather we go. Unfortunately my wife being a healer, she felt forced to go to the raids that she didn’t sign up for. and the guild leader wouldn’t give her any slack. the GM said if she is online, she was forced to participate in the raid, whether she signed up or not.

Thus led to us leavening.

-steve

By: Springwater

Springwater — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 04:18:28 +0000

I first would like to thank you for your blog. It is fun to read and full of very use full information.
With that said I do understand the way you feel I am the Druid class leader in my guild and one of the 2 main tanks. A couple of weeks ago I had to go out of town for work and I post in the forms that I would not be able to run Kara or Gruul’s that weekend since I would not be back till Sunday late afternoon.
I got back into town Sunday around 12:00pm server time and called a RL friend that I knew would be in the run which starts at 11am server only to be told that they are still trying to down the High King and that I was needed. I told my friend that it would be one and a half hours before I will get logged on. I got home at 1:30pm sever and logged on to vent while I started the game. I got an invite to the run and a summons right away and off I went. The mood of the raid group did pick up alot after I joined the raid, we had 3 more tries at the High King and did almost downed him (we have killed him before this run). The run was called for the day and in the officer chat I could not go out of town and miss any raids. Now this was said as a joke but after getting the recap of the run in O chat and whispers form alot of others there was some truth to me not missing the raids. The next week we went to Gruul’s and it took us 3 shot at the High King to down him then we took 3 or 4 shots at gruul’s for our first killing of him.
I feel that I do not have the time to do all the prep work for the weekend runs ie getting the mats for pots and fishing and killing things for the meat for the food buffs and doing the dailys to get money for repairs. I am always asked to tank instances all the time and I feel I have to drop what I am doing and go help. I would like to lvl my mage. Take your time off from the game and enjoy the time away we need to so the game will be fun for us. The guild will have to step up and fill your big paws if they want to advance in the raiding game. Hang in there BBB. And thanks again for your blog.

By: Taueth

Taueth — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:16:23 +0000

Oh, and they way they encourage attendance is through ranks and raid invite priority. Officers make 90-100% of raids, then veterans (people who have been raiding with the guild forever), then regular raiders (high attendance), then irregular raiders (geared and experienced, but can’t make every night). So, regular raiders and higher get invite priority over irregular raiders. It encourages people to attend raids.

By: Taueth

Taueth — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:08:48 +0000

Here’s a thought. I’m not sure if this would work in your guild, but in my guild there’s a regular raid schedule and people post when they *won’t* be there. Thus, there’s no ‘maybe if we wait X-very-important-raider will log on’. X has already posted on the forums, saying he won’t be on, because he is one of those regular, key raiders. It is simply assumed that everyone knows the raid schedule, and that they will be online. To be absent is the irregular action.

My guild has a raiding pool that’s about 35 people or so, which gives them enough wiggle room for 25-man raids and inevitable absences. These are all people who are geared and experienced, and competent for the content. Perhaps you could suggest your guild open raid recruitment, to have a pool of raiders available? If you have a larger raid pool than 35, say 40, you could probably assume that even if people only show for 50% of the time, you’ll have 25 raiders for three days of a week. However, this may simply not work with your guild’s social structure. Unfortunately, a guild can either expand to sustain low-attendance raiding or have a relatively small raiding pool with high-attendance people. Can’t have it both ways. =/

By: Arais

Arais — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:34:17 +0000

BBB, I have to say, you’re absolutely right about being assertive that you want time off from raiding. Our guild raids 4 nights a week, plus ZA on an off-night and Kara on weekend afternoons. Before we ran ZA on that off-night we did Kara then too. Being an officer and a raid leader I felt I had to be on for every run…

Now, being a hunter, I wasn’t needed for every run, but I decided to roll a feral druid(helluva fun, but the downsides were to come later) when we were having a hard time with getting tanks online. I got to 70 and started running 5mans to get geared up. Eventually getting to a Kara ready state around August-September, and started running it with the guild.

Needless to say, running a raid, needing to tank, and not being able to have fun because of responsibility I felt I owed to the guild by being there every raid to tank or dps was starting to hit me heavily.

At a certain point, I had enough. I still wanted to raid, I love the guild, I love the people, but as you say, the stress of HAVING to be there was too much. So I stopped running 10mans, I started leveling some alts to have fun with friends.

Today, I’m much happier, I raid on our scheduled nights, and basically tell people “I don’t feel like running anything tonight, thanks though!”.

Anyway, you’re not alone out there in your situation!

By: Daric

Daric — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:24:34 +0000

I check out your blog once or twice a week. I normally just lurk, learn a bit, chuckle at some of your observations, and move on. But I just had to respond to this post and share my experience. Lengthy post, but I think it’s an interesting story.

I’m in a pretty informal raiding guild on Vek’Nilash (Kara and Gruul’s on farm). Our GM became really focused on moving us forward as a group and wanted to help some of the new people get more experience and gear so we could continue our progression. Before we knew it, there was a raid scheduled for almost every night of the week–two Kara groups going two different nights a week; Gruul’s once a week; a foray into ZA here and there.

Then it happened. Our GM came a couple of weeks ago and said he had to cancel his account. He was playing WOW so much (going on almost all of those runs I listed above with his two level 70s) that his marriage was falling apart. He needed to stop playing to get his personal life in order. He passed the GM title to me since I was the only senior officer on at the time. I felt like Ultra Magnus in the original Transformers movie when Prime has him take over as leader–I didn’t really want the GM-ship, but didn’t really have a choice.

My initial plan was to get all of the officers together and figure out who should take the GM title permenantly. We decided to suspend all of the guild raids for a week so the officers would be completely available to answer any questions that people might have about what happened (my biggest fear was that there would be a mass exodus after the GM left)….and a bunch of guildies told me how glad they were that we cut back our raid schedule! It turns out almost everyone was burned out by all of the raiding, but no one wanted to say anything. So, it looks like we’re going back to just one Kara run and one Gruul’s run a week as the only “official events”.

I guess my point is that there are times where you have to take a break. Out of all the officers in my guild, I’m the one constantly reminding everyone that this is a GAME, and when it starts to be more than that (and it has at times), I take a break for a few days.

By: Ahmen

Ahmen — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:14:59 +0000

My guild pushes the sign up thing. We use rapid raid and people sign up. If we know we’re gonna need extra people the RL asks a guild we’re friendly with and people step in. We adhere to that sign up though. So the people who sign up get priority over someone who may just happen to be on.

I do get why you’re frustrated though. Don’t be afraid to tell them you need time to do other stuff. Shadow Priests are very fun.