Unfortunately I was just really busy, and sick the past few weeks and didn't get much of a chance to blog. So let me catch you up on what has been taking up the lions share of my time recently. I had commented previously that my guild had started to hit Naaxramus hard, however that started off somewhat rocky. Myself and a couple other friends then started a mostly static 10-man raiding group and we were actually the first group in the guild to clear Naax. And we continued to have good success raiding it twice a week.
It seems our little raiding group was the topic of considerable conversation in the guild amongst the officer corp however. And from what I had heard, none of it very good. It seems most of the officers didn't like what we were doing and were taking the opportunity to cast stones our way, unfortunately without realizing the irony in their opinions.
I had been in this guild for about three years, and had actually been the main tank (MT) on my Druid throughout most of the Burning Crusade (BC). Yet despite the effort and dedication that took I never really broke into the "clique". The guild had originally been formed by five family members and a few close friends. Its only natural that these people would be a little more close to one another than anyone else you just meet on the Internet. But others that came over from their previous guild and had close ties to them were also included in this "clique", though many of them are some of the nicest people one could imagine.
Decisions were made regarding raiding--everything from the DKP system, to who was queued to raids, to what was to be raided on a given week--were made by the "officers" without any input from the rest of the team. And people I had brought into the guild to fill holes the guild had were treated shabbily in my opinion. One of those was a tank that I worked with and was one of the tanks in a successful raiding guild on a PVP server. He actually transferred his Protection Warrior and hunter from that server to come raid with us when we were in desperate need for more tanks. Despite that knowledge, the guild ended up continuing to recruit more tanks and we ended up with a glut of tanks again. And my friend ended up getting the short end of that stick. And two other friends that I worked with who had joined the guild also were treated in a similar manner. None of them ever received a static or even semi-static raid spot. My tank friend was often asked to raid on Gruul, but only on the King fight for instance. Then he was asked to leave so a DPS could replace him. I can certainly sympathize because that entire dungeon was just badly planned, but to have to undergo this treatment week after week is inexcusable. Other tanks were not asked to rotate so that each of them would get a chance to actually complete the raid and get some gear. And ultimately he left the guild and transferred back to his old server in disgust. And frankly I was very upset about his treatment, as well as the treatment the others I had brought in were being given. Particularly when a small number of others that were recruited by key members of the "clique" were given static spots on the raid team after only being in the guild as short as two weeks.
You see that is just an example of how the guild has operated and been managed for the past three years, and those sorts of issues have greatly upset many people other than myself. And many people have left the guild including a handful of well known and liked people within the past few months. And when these things flare up, the officers act surprised and dumbfounded as to why people could possibly get upset enough to leave. Yet when the issues are clearly communicated to them they act indignant, deny the message, or gloss over the entire episode entirely.
And such is what we have been going through in the guild yet again for the past few weeks. There are a few 10-man raiding groups that are running--largely independent of one another for weeks now. But the guild started up active 25-man raiding a few weeks ago. Completely unsurprisingly most of the raid spots went to "clique" members, including to some who weren't even ready for raiding when it started. They ended up allowing others to fill those spots, and then displaced those people when the "clique" members were ready. Because we're a casual raiding guild, there are more people in the guild than available raiding spots, so outside of of the handful of spots that are open for people to apply for every week everyone is largely on their own for raiding. And so it was with our little 10-man group that was happily clearing Naax every week with no fuss, no muss, and absolutely no drama.
That was until it was decided by the majority of the group that they wanted to bump up to running 25-man content. I won't get into the nitty gritty details, but one of the members of our group took it upon himself to open up a line of communication with the Officers and began to "make sure the officers were on board" with it all. I have no idea what someone would feel it necessary to do this, because none of us felt we needed permission to raid on our own. But it opened the can of worms again and comments that we were causing problems in the guild were thrown around. How ironic.
Ultimately the Guild Master told us that we would not be allowed to run any 25-man content unless the officers were in control and we followed their rules. Needless to say we did not agree and our raid leader was asked to leave the guild. A bunch of us followed. In fact it was the largest exodus of people from the guild at one time I have witnessed in the three years I was there. Yet two days later one of the "clique" posts in the raid forum that "good things were happening (in the guild)". She painted a completely rosy picture of what just happened, and it illustrated precisely how out of touch they all are with the rank and file in the guild. Truly sad. We of course started our own guild and should be resuming 25-man raiding next week.
Outside of all that I have been very busy lately with achievement chasing. You'd never know my Death Knight is only two months old.
