Anyone who never saw the movie “Batman” with Jack Nicholson just went “Ewwwww.”

I wrote the last post just before bed, moments after announcing in the guild forums of Sidhe Devils, the guild that Cassie and I led for the last several years, that Cassie and I are closing the doors on Sidhe Devils permanently.

Sidhe Devils is done. Rather than turn over leadership to someone else, we’re going to close the doors and ask folks to move on to more active, vibrant, forward looking guilds. We’re going to liquidate the bank, mail out the gold to the players that are left, and bid everyone a very fond farewell.

I’ve always tried to be open and honest here on the blog about the issues of the day and what’s been on my mind. But when things are really down, and involves the feelings of friends, I tend to avoid the subject. It’s fine to talk about how I feel, it’s not okay in my book to hurt the feelings of other people.

So, I don’t talk about some things.

Here on the blog, the elephant in the room that I’ve been stepping around was where Sidhe Devils was at as a guild.

A lot of stuff happened months back. While it may seem to have come out of nowhere, from our point of view it had been building up for a long, long time.

I’m still not going to point fingers, or place blame, or try and defend anything that happened by anyone. Other people can put spin control on whatever they want; what happened, happened. Where it went from there was the personal decision made by each individual person, and everyone had their own reasons for wanting to make a change.

There, did that vague things up enough for you?

For us, everything started when Cassie and I left a guild that was very big, very successful, had some really good people in it that we loved, a guild that had just made the move to go from casual on the way to becoming a progressive raiding guild. 

We did that because we wanted more time for ourselves; more time to be able to step away from the game on our own terms, more time to spend with our son and enjoy the summer, more time to be flexible and make the game revolve around our lives, instead of having our lives revolve around the schedule of the game.

We stepped away from Legatum Ignavis, with no hard feelings on my part, and whenever we’ve talked about them here on the blog since, it’s been with respect because they were a great group of folks. But they weren’t right for us.

When we left, we simply moved our characters into the handiest place that we had available; our alt guild. Sidhe Devils.

Never more than a place for the alts of 5 or 6 people to hang out on those most rare of occasions when people weren’t on their mains, we just moved on in and set up shop and decided, “Why go somewhere else?”

The whole point was to make the game move around our real life. If we wanted to do something, we’d just pug it, or only do things that we could do with our friends. And if we weren’t on, even for weeks at a time, nobody else would ever miss us.

Well, you know where things went from there. Over time, I talked about hanging out in the guild on the blog, looked at inviting a few folks here and there that said it sounded like just the place for them, and in time we set our goals down on a charter and invited any other souls of like mind and intent to come join us and chill out.

Chill out in a place that, and you’re SURE you understand this, we’re not going to raid. That’s not the point of the guild. You SURE you’re good with that? You’re not going to get bored? Okay.

Where we went wrong was in becoming guild leaders.

We never intended to raid. We never wanted to organize anything more strenuous than a 5 person Heroic with anyone that happened to be on.

We wanted, right from the beginning, to always put real life first, and that included being able to do our own thing on our own schedule and work playtime in WoW in around the rest of our life. To be gone for three weeks with no worries, because it’s no big deal. Just like every other player takes for granted.

What is significant about this is that in order to be a guild leader, at least one that takes the responsibility seriously, it does become a full time job.

The most critical part of being guild leaders we hadn’t anticipated was how a guild leader is expected to be online in the game as much as possible.

Notice I don’t say it’s demanded. But it IS expected.

And if a guild leader or officer doesn’t show up for a day or two, the person WILL hear about it from someone. Who will really hear about it, if there are multiple officers, is the guild leader.

“Oh, I was looking for an officer to invite my alt, and nobody was on for two days.”

Oh, was that two WHOLE days that I wasn’t on all night? Oh my!

It’s very easy to lose yourself in running a guild.

As the guild grows, as numbers increase, the amount of time spent trying to do the things you think should be done to keep things running smoothly grows with it.

Spending time actually in game to be available for whispers, questions, etc is the largest part of it, but replying to requests to organize events and activities also gets up there.

It doesn’t all happen at once, but running a guild, which may seem like no big deal at first, does get to be an incredibly time consuming process.

After a while, and Cassie being the clearer-minded of the two of us noticed it first, we realised that we’d gotten ourselves into a big commitment to the game. The guild was running, and was full of people we considered friends, and we had assumed the responsibility of keeping on as we were. But in doing it, we had lost a lot of ground in making real life our priority.

We weren’t just on as much as we had been in Legatum… we were on far more often and had much more of our lives wrapped around WoW instead of the reverse.

The answer, to us, seemed pretty obvious. We had to break up the non-critical tasks of being guild leaders, the parts that did not have anything to do with inviting, removing or censoring other players in the guild, and find people who were within the guild that were willing to take some of them on. Every task that was taken off our shoulders and spread around would help.

It wouldn’t address the fact that we felt an obligation to be online and available, but it would help us have fewer line items to worry about. 

Sounds like a plan, right?

Time after time, we asked for help.

The responses we got were what you might expect. Some people volunteered fast for the items that would take the least time and effort, others volunteered to organise and run raiding because that’s what they loved, still others volunteered to do lots of stuff to help, and finally we had people volunteer to take over things we didn’t ask help with in the first place, demanding to be made officers because they knew so much more than we did on how to do it right.

Yeah, I know.

Well, we did what we could. We ignored the people that wanted to help by taking over what we didn’t ask help with in the first place, and we gratefully thanked everyone else and got things underway.

Frequently, some of the people that said they’d help we never heard from again. Others, especially the ones that took over raiding, really ran with that ball. A lot.

So, some things just didn’t get done at all when people said they’d take care of it, leaving us with extra work trying to figure out what was going on and get it back going again, long after things should have been handled. And on the raiding side, suddenly raiding became a big go go go deal, and since it was the only activity that WAS getting serious attention, it became the focus of the guild.

And of course there was our annoyance with people in the guild that kept pushing about wanting to take over, or gave unasked for and unwanted advice on how we were doing things wrong, people who wouldn’t step in to help on things we actually ASKED for help with.

The net result of our effort was that we had more work to do than ever before, and people that were running raiding didn’t see why the ever increasing frequency of scheduled raids or the hours committed to it was a problem. But these are friends, and it’s best to just let it go, rather than say something, right?

It all came to a head with us during the Raid for the Cure.

When I suggested it on the guild forums, there was a definite dividing line over the event. There was a small group of people that ran with the idea and took it to heart, and worked to make it happen. These were the people that normally took part in lots of various social guild events.

And then there were the people that couldn’t even be bothered to respond to the thread, let alone take any part in the event, or even show up for it. Sorry guys, have to miss it. Just like every other social event. Oooh, but schedule a raid, and they were all over that.

That right there spelled the end of our pretending that the guild was what we thought it was. We clearly had people that wanted to raid and couldn’t care less about the rest of it. And they were welcome to be that way… but somewhere else, because that’s not what the guild we wanted to run was all about.

From there, it all pretty much fell apart by the numbers. Cassie and I wanted nothing to do with running a raiding guild with people like that in it, but when we tried to leave, said we were leaving, and made it public, we were reminded that there were a lot of people that said that it was the social part of the guild they liked and wanted us specifically to stay.

We had two guilds in one, two different approaches to playing the game, and something had to break.

Well, we broke it.

We changed everything, announcing we were staying in the guild after all, went back on our plans, yanking the band aid right off the wound, and among a host of other things aimed at returning to the roots of the guild that everyone was told when they joined, announced the immediate shutting down of raiding until we got things sorted out.

Yep. That did it. We’d succeeded in one thing; we had a lot less people in the guild to worry about.

People took off in droves. In floods. They started a new guild, got it set up the way they liked, and founded a new home for the members of Sidhe Devils to go to when they were fed up with our messing around.

We know that the vast majority of the problems are our fault. It is what it is because of how we handled it, and the way we handled things was at all times being driven by our desire to find a way back to having fun, and being free to devote much less of our lives to the game.

Our underlying goal had become centered on one thing; to be able to have the exact same rights in playing that every other player enjoyed and expected. To be able to take a few weeks or months off if we felt like it or had better things to do for a while.

Every other player takes for granted that they can leave if they want, to go on break, to relax for a while. When you’re responsible only for yourself, it’s fine. When everyone else counts on you, and has expectations OF you, it’s a far different matter.

Cassie and I have talked about it a lot. And what we decided was that we needed to learn a serious lesson from this. We needed to take this experience to heart.

We never wanted to be guild leaders in the first place. We never wanted to be in charge of anything other than ourselves. We never wanted to forge a raiding guild, or a social guild, or any other kind of place.

But once we set ourselves up as the people who invited others in, we assumed the responsibility and the duty of making the place in reality what we said it was, the best we could.

In the end, our struggles, our mistakes brought everything crashing down.

Lesson learned.

Cassie and I have returned to our center. The game moves around our real life, our family, and especially with the start of summer, we’re not going to be on nearly as much. It isn’t our focus. It never should have been, and once we figured out that’s what it was, we fought against it every step of the way.

With that in mind, last night we made the final decision. It’s not fair to people to be part of a guild where they think that it may someday grow, it may turn around, it may get lively and vibrant and full of life once again, when the leaders have no intention of putting in the time and effort necessary to make that happen.

It takes more than two people, however well intentioned, to build a community. It takes everyone wanting to chip in and help make it happen.

So, that’s why we announced the guild will be closing up.

It’s not how we wanted things to work out, but it’s real life. Things happen, and you deal with it. We did a lot of things, made a lot of decisions, and every time we did the one goal we had to base them on was, “Will this help make the guild a friendlier, happier place for the majority of people who lay in it?”

Sometimes when we asked that question of ourselves, the answer was to ask someone to leave the guild. Sometimes, when we asked that question, the answer was to try and cut back on raiding, or on more advanced progression, or on the frequency of events. Sometimes, our answer was to try and ADD events.

The one question we never asked was, “If we left the guild, will it make the guild a friendlier, happier place for those that are left?”

I think maybe we should have. Things might have turned out much differently.

We could still turn the guild over to someone else, but at this point, it has been such a central part of our lives, we’ve spent so much time worrying about it, and blogging about it, that we’d much rather let it go quiet. To slip once more into the peaceful slumber from which it once came.

Hopefully, Sidhe Devils will remain something that Cassie and I can both look back on and remember with fondness as a place filled with fun, with good people, and good cheer. We’d like to remember it as we thought it was, and for the wonderful things some of it’s members pulled together to do.

As with any big change, it’s been hard. And there are a ton of hard feelings over it all, I’m sure.

But we really do think that, no matter how rough it was to get to this point, it’s for the best.

Comments closed. I’m just not interested in having every person I ever removed from the guild come back  here now to choose this as their venue for talking about it. You never bothered to say shit to me in person or via email, or if you did I told you exactly what my reasons were, and you had ample opportunity to say something then, or in the many months since. Deciding to do it now when the whole point on my post was to get closure and move on just says “ooh, I still want more drama”, and that ain’t happening in this way, in this place. Email me like an adult, or talk about it on your blog with your own spin on it, whatever.

Geez, grow up. Look, if you have all sorts of things you really just HAVE to tell me about what a horrible person you are just SURE I am… email me like an adult. Open a dialogue. Act like you are both serious about wanting to discuss my behavior with me, and like you actually care. Posting it here in a public venue as your first and only choice just says that you don’t want to talk to ME, you want to talk to visiters of my blog about me, in some passive aggressive immature little way. Give it a rest, or grow up and email me. Or what the hell, go the rest of teh way and make it a diatribe on your blog, so you get your spin in and get all your fanboys and fangirls behind you. That’ll teach that mean old Bear a lesson! PS… since I’m not talking about any names here, I ain’t making this drama. I’m making it clear; if you have an honest problem that you want resolution for, email me. I am always available at the exact same place I have been for years and years and years.

Congratulations, Azriaga of Hellscream.

Instead of telling us you were leaving the guild, like a mature adult would, or stealth quitting like a person afraid of confrontation would, you logged in, took 18 Frozen Orbs and an epic tanking ring worth 1400g out of the guild bank, and then server transferred out of the guild without a word to any officers. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Yes, congratulations indeed. You have served to reinforce a lot of my feelings about playing with people, lately.

You asshole.

I don’t know about a perfect storm, but it sure as heck was a dark and thunderous weekend at the Bear household.

As you can imagine, the tumult we caused by deciding to leave as Guild Leaders of Sidhe Devils brought a lot of uncertainty to the guild.

You would think, having made our decisions with the best of intentions, that we’d be hovering all weekend, immersed in the game, hoping to talk with folks, answer questions, and be there for people during the transition.

Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you?

Sadly, that turned out to not be the case, and it became a stellar example of how ”proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance.” Because we DIDN’T plan properly prior to our announcement.

And so, we had piss poor performance. Wow, go figure.

We made our announcement about stepping down as guild leaders without considering what we already knew; that this last weekend, and indeed this upcoming week as well, are scheduled to be the very busiest for me at work of the last year.

Normally, as the Maintenance Manager I work a reliable Monday – Friday work week. I might work late, 10 or 12 hours days at times, but the weekends are almost always free.

This last weekend, however, I had a team of engineers flying in from Japan to perform a 3 day overhaul and intensive maintenance cycle on one of the most critical pieces of production equipment in the plant. Over $40,000 was invested in this 3 day maintenance cycle alone, and I was the coodinator at the heart of it. From Thursday afternoon until Sunday night, I would have a team here at the plant performing maintenance and calibrations, and they would be gone by early Monday morning. Everything I wanted addressed had to be done by Sunday night, or it wouldn’t get done.

I ended up being at work until after 8 PM on Friday working with the team and making sure day one went well, ordering parts, fixing bearing blocks, yadda yadda.

No problems, right?

Yeah, well, Alex had been sick for the last week, and he wasn’t getting better. By Thursday, we were getting worried about his fever and upset stomach and chronic cough. On Friday, Cassie took him to the doctor… and, of course, yes he is sick and is now on penicillin, the kind that he’s NOT allergic to. Not a happy little trouper (although he likes the flavor of the medicine. Apparently, medicine flavors have come a long way.)

So, Saturday became a lot more important about spending time with him and taking him to Home Depot and having fun and letting him relax. Instead of going in to work, I let it slide, let my crew take care of it, figured I’d spend more time in on Sunday.

And of course, that let me log in to see what was up. And… silence. Okay. Nothing being said at all on forums, except for a few very nice folks volunteering for administrating the forums, or providing a vent server, other things related to running a guild, but no discussion at all about actual guild leadership. Cassie and I were getting worried, because we expected that there would be some kind of discussion going on. I mean, there are over 70 members of Sidhe Devils, only 7 to 10 are usually online at a given time, and they play across three time zones. Where else is there going to be a discussion of it?

Of course, if we don’t want to do it anymore, why would we think others would be crazy enough to do it? What if nobody steps forward? We can NOT just dump guild leadership on some poor person and run screaming, after all. Hell no.

Then, late at night on Saturday, we had two groups post almost on top of each other with their proposals of assuming leadership, neither of whom were aware of the other’s plans.

We logged into vent to chat about it with folks, and started comparing notes of conversations we’d had with various people… and along the way, we realized that we’d made a pretty big mistake. The most frequently heard statement was that people specifically joined Sidhe Devils, not necessarily because we were in there, but because of what we’d long said we were about as a guild, and it was that attitude in the guild that was the attractive thing, and that if we leave then it might or might not stay the same. But, oh, by the way, here are some new issues that we’ve noticed when you aren’t around that are worrying us. 

Oh, and do you really have to go? This is your guild, it seems wrong for you to be the ones to leave. So many people think of Sidhe Devils as “Wind and Cassie’s guild”. But if you really HAVE to…

Sigh.

By 3 AM on Sunday morning, we’d waffled back around to deciding to stay in the guild as guild leaders, because let’s be honest, we love the people in the guild, we really, really do, but to really, and this time we mean it, lean on other officers to take some of the burden of dealing with issues off of us. Right away, the biggest issue would be to have someone administer the forums, and to work directly with someone else on applications, and cut us out of that loop.

Cassie drafted a very nice write up on our changing our minds about leaving on Sunday morning over cereal, while I taught Alex how to paint the neat wood wagon he’d made at Home Depot. He picked this incredible fire engine red color. Maybe Cassie can post some pictures, I think he did a great job. A very proud little boy.

And then, as I raced out the door to get to work, I asked Cassie to go ahead and post it so people would know what we were thinking.

Ten hours later, it’s past nine o’clock, and I haven’t been back home of course, and Cassie’s computer died. She can get into forums, but not the game, and people are “quitting Sidhe Devils all over the place”.

Well, with my head in the middle of a gearbox upside down, that’s the impression I got from the cellphone conversation, anyway. Oh, and did I mention her work computer, with which she makes a living, is dead?

Yes, we’ve got a backup USB external hard drive with automated daily backups, but it’s late on Sunday night, and if it’s a hardware issue, I don’t have spares on hand when I get home. Sigh.

Let me tell you something.

Being at work at 9 PM on a Sunday night with a crew of Japanese engineers who speak no english (thank God for the translator I hired), a sick son and a wife with a dead work computer that needs fixing at home, and a guild imploding because you’re clearly not adept at thinking things through, and absolutely no way to do a damn thing about any of it, except the work part?

That right there is what I call a fine feeling. Spiffy.

Once I bid farewell to the engineers and the translator at their hotel late Sunday night, I drove home, deciding I was done blogging and playing the game. Just over. This kind of stress, worrying about people quitting without even the possibility of being able to be there to talk to them because all this real life stuff happened during the virtual stuff, worrying about the guild when I’ve got real life stuff that just has to come first? This is crazyness.

And then I get home, and I ask Cassie how many more people quit the guild, and how bad it was getting, and she asked me what I was talking about.  Sure, a couple people did quit, but more just said they were worried about what we meant or what we were intending to do, but were glad we’d be staying. Everyone was nice. She’d had a nice talk with several people through email, and even on the phone. Where did I get the idea the guild was imploding?

…..

I finally got to log into the game and look at the forums at, what, 10:30, and there were about 10 people on, the ‘night crew’. Just having fun, doing stuff. Poor Azriaga told us what happened to his car, and I plotted with Stop to, um, ‘cheer him up’.

Then Cassie and I did Argent Tournament dailies, and off to bed, to prepare for the rest of hell week. And make no mistake, the rest of this week will continue to be hell. Alex is still sick, I’ve still got tons of events at work I’m coordinating, and critical machines that need emergency repairs.

But I did fix Cassie’s computer. And Alex IS getting better. And his wagon IS cute.

And the guild is still there. Maybe a little battered, a little bruised from rough handling. But still the folks that make up the guild are what counts, and for the most part, we’re still here. 

At least, they were when I went to bed last night. Who knows, things might’ve changed. 

Another day in the trenches, another opportunity to take a swing at things, another dance among the broken glass, finding enough time to do everything that needs getting done, and knowing that if I miss something, I’ll find out when it starts to smell.

Hopefully, another chance to find a way through to fun without stress.

I think we can do it.

After all, we’re getting more than a little help from our friends. :)

Azriaga, just tonight you were telling us in guild chat about that darn raccoon that smashed your little Scion all to shreds, totalled your bumper, took out your A/C, and all sorts of other mayhem.

Well, a lot of us in the guild couldn’t figure out how a little raccoon could do so much damage to your car.

I found out!

I’d help you get even, but I think we’ll need to form a raid to take him on. He looks mean.

I wanted to let everyone that follows this blog know that changes are going on in the lives of Cassie and myself that will affect what happens here in some way.

This is a warning for you. I really don’t have any idea where things will end up.

Last night, Cassie and I announced in our guild forums that we were going to step down as guild leaders of the Sidhe Devils guild.

What we’ve been doing for months now is talk to each other about where the game of WoW is fitting into our lives.

What we finally came to terms with was that when we both first started playing, first myself and then Cassie, we were beholden to nobody but ourselves for our playtime decisions.

First and foremost, we logged into WoW in order to enjoy playing the game for fun. Every aspect of the game was present to further this feeling of relaxation, enjoyment, escape. A break from worry and stress.

The essential aspect of a break, is that it provides a way to relax and recharge after the stress and worry of real life gets to be pretty big.

What happened to us was that, as more people applied to and were invited into Sidhe Devils, it went from being a very small guild of friends that required very little in the way of administration or oversight, and became a pretty large guild of people that we knew mainly from applying for their own reasons, and friends of theirs, and people who thought it sounded cool, or people that had wanted a new guild who were told that Sidhe Devils was a fun, relaxed place to be.

And that was fine. There were a few problems, but by far it’s been a good thing.

Our mantra was real life comes first. A close second is, be good to each other.

Along the way, we tried very hard to stay true to that feeling, but when you go from a small guild of close friends and family and grow it into a large guild full of people that you may never get to know aside from seeing them log in and out of game without a word most of the time, the way we looked at things like behavior couldn’t just stay on the “we know it’s all good” plan.

We had to start looking closely at applications, to look for signs that folks we didn’t know who were applying wanted to be in a fun guild for reasons other than scheduled raids, for example, since we don’t do that. Or that they were immature or didn’t really give a shit, and just wanted some place to score some runs and phat loot. You know what I mean.

That put us in the situation of having to judge people. Right there is where the entire thing began going straight to hell for us.

In the game itself, suddenly, impersonal situations cropped up. People are playing with people they do not know, and problems come up. Friction, misunderstandings get folks cranky. People have bad days, and because they don’t know each other, a misunderstanding turns into situations where lots of folks become upset.

It became what all guild leadership positions become; a guild where the officers either take an active role in investigating conflicts, which again involves judging people, and inevitably results in hurting someone’s feelings, or where the officers step back and do nothing, and you hope that people are good to each other, and that you don’t get a lot of ever more upset folks who feel that nobody cares if someone is rude, or offensive, or a ninja, or just a prick. 

Again, the playing with our friends part, including the new folks we were priviliged to meet; great. Just wonderful.

But we became a big guild, without ever really thinking about what it meant to be guild leaders of a big guild, and what it would take to try to tackle those responsibilities properly.

It grew slowly, so the work load grew slowly, and we didn’t even notice… again, until the first time we looked at each other and asked ourselves who the hell we were to judge other people, or make decisions that end up affecting the playtime enjoyment of other people in the game.

Playing WoW as the guild leaders of Sidhe Devils became a full time job. We routinely spend hours every week, mostly out of the game, reviewing applications, talking about reported behavior issues, worrying over how to do the right thing and the best thing and somehow not hurt anyone’s feelings, and above all, make sure that if someone in the guild acts to directly hurt the feelings of someone else, especially with inappropriate behavior, that it is addressed. Immediately, if possible.

I think this situation should sound very familiar. Every person that is a guild leader, an officer, or is in a position of authority or responsibility in a guild in game deals with the exact same issues every day. We’re certainly not special in what we work with.

What we have decided is that we just no longer can put ourselves forward as the self-appointed bosses that police the behavior of other people. To be the ones that decide whose applications should be accepted, and whose should be declined, to try and reduce the chance of future problems. To decide how to talk to people that other people, not us, complain of behaving intentionally offensively, and what to do about it next when, inevitably, the person says they had no idea, never meant it, didn’t happen, etc. 

We no longer want to affect the fun of other people by judging their behavior, by making decisions that affect other people in a negative way.

The problem isn’t the people in our guild. Far from it, a greater group of people I’ve never known. We have so many wonderful friends in the guild, and actually logging in and playing, that’s all great. It really is. Playing in the game is perfect.

It’s being in charge of having to judge. I know I do not feel, and I’ve said it many times in the past, that there should ever be drama because of having fun in a video game. And yet, as the guild leader… it’s my job to look for, root out and prevent drama if possible.

We both hate it. HATE IT.

I can’t think of a worse way to spend an evening in a video game than being on vent, talking to someone that I’ve had other players complain about, explaining that I need to talk to them about these complaints, and have them break out in tears, upset and sad and crying because of having this being dropped on their heads.

It only took one time like that for me and Cassie to look at each other and ask what the hell we were doing, and why.

And it’s almost never just a question of someone doing something obviously wrong, booting them, and moving on. As horrible as that is on it’s own, at least that would be clear cut.

One problem we had, that really kicked off the stress levels for me in a massive way, was when a good person in the guild, a really nice guy, had one of his characters involved in proven guild bank item removals, and AH selling. And I mean an entire operation of removing items from the guild bank, high ticket items, and immediately posting them under their own name in the Auction House.

I had to talk to them… and I didn’t want to. But it was my job to. It was my responsibility. And it turned out that it was their very young son, that was allowed by him to play on their account, on a toon that happened to be in the guild, that was doing it without the dad knowing.

It’s easy to put on a guild charter that a player will be held responsible for the actions performed by their characters, regardless of who was playing the game. But it’s a vastly different thing to be talking to someone in vent, and be told that the issue is that their son is playing on their in-guild character… and have to try to find some solution without hurting anyones feelings.

I am not the boys father. It is not my place to suggest any solution, in any way, outside of game. And you don’t really know the person, so is it really a son, or is that just a convenient excuse? How do you really, really know? When you set yourself up as the judge, you’re saying you can tell, aren’t you? I have to believe the father didn’t do it. The son did not apply to join the guild. You wish that only the people that applied to join the guild and were approved are actually in… but how do you knwo? AND, again, who are we to suggest to someone that they are welcome… but their children aren’t? Or their wife? Or brother? Or third cousin twice removed?

How dare we?

But at the same time, I have to do something to stop it happening again.

We had another, similar situation except that I was not online when events took place, and instead of items being taken from the guild bank, instead I was told that during a guild 5 person holiday run during Brewfest, one of the guild members ninjaed loot drops and then logged off. When investigating the complaints, I again am told that it wasn’t the approved guild member, it was their son, and the son is allowed to play on the in-game character without having sent in an app or being approved. 

And now some folks are upset at having that situation in the guild. Or are they? Some folks have conflicting stories of what happened, and I wasn’t there, and again, who the heck knows what was going on at the other end of the person’s keyboard? From the description, maybe the boy just got called to dinner and went afk and then disconnected, not realizing what had happened. Or maybe he didn’t know what was happening in the first place. Who knows?

So, what do you do?

These things happen. And you have to decide how you’re going to respond. Do your best to find a solution and inevitably hurt someone’s feelings, or do nothing?

It’s the no-win scenario. No matter how things turn out, we are the ones stressing over having to talk to someone about an issue, and somebody is going to get hurt feelings.

Over a video game. Over what is supposed to be fun and refreshing.

We’re the ones in charge. We’re responsible.

We don’t want to have to be the person to make those decisions for someone else anymore. We don’t want to judge other people. I can’t stress it enough. We don’t want to ever, ever think about the behavior of anyone else in the game in a judgmental way. If someone does something we don’t like… we want to have the option of… doing nothing. Nothing at all.

We want to be able to not let it bother us, because it’s not our problem. They’re not our child, we’re not their mommy, and if someone is an asshat, that’s they’re problem to live with. And if someone has drama… let it be theirs.

We talked for hours last night, and we just don’t see any way out except to step down as guild leaders. 

So that’s what we’re going to do. 

I guess you could say that we take things too seriously, or that we worry about things we don’t need to, or that by leaving we’re being selfish.

We’ve certainly said those same things to each other plenty of times.

But no matter how many times we tell each other not to worry about it, not to let it bother us, not to get worked up about about what someone said to someone else, or how someone acted to someone else, or what someone wrote on their app and just invite them… we still end up going around and around, worrying.

I think there is no finer guild than the Sidhe Devils, anywhere. And that’s the truth. If you can’t make it as a guild leader here, you’ve got no business being one, because these are the best damn people I’ve ever met.

So I’m left with the conclusion that as guild leaders, we’re failures. We can’t handle it.

And I’m okay with that.

What we hope is that the Sidhe Devils are not, as has been said, a cult of personality around me or other bloggers that will fail without us, but that instead it is what we always wanted it to be, a guild full of really nice people, and that everyone will continue on, having fun and enjoying the game as before.

I don’t know. I think so, but only time will tell.

I would sincerely hope that people are not just in the guild because I am. That’s silly, because I’m not that special. Clearly, I’m not.

Just ask any of the people I’ve removed from the guild in the past, or the people whose apps we did not approve, or did not approve fast enough, and they’ll leap forward to tell you how unspecial I am. That alone should show you that we’re not the people to be the leaders. All the people whose feelings we’ve hurt as guild leaders… all those lives that were negatively affected by us over a video game.

Screw that.

All I know is that I still love the game, I absolutely adore playing with my wife, and I still love all these folks that I’ve played with for so long and come to know well. I hope to continue playing with them for many long months to come, even years if I’m lucky.

But we just can’t be the boss of anyone except ourselves anymore.

For all those people who have felt that we were inspirations, or that we were some great guild leaders, or anything like that. This is it. This is the real deal. This is where we’re really at.

But as much as it feels like shit now, if I never have to talk to someone in tears over vent again, and be the cause of it, it’ll be worth it.

Take care to all of you, and Godspeed you safely home. It’s cold out there today.