My Status

I've been playing Rift and Warcraft for the past couple of months and my overall time commitment to gaming has been essentially cut in half. It's been rather nice making time to get stuff done around the house and to satisfy my internet addiction in other ways (netflix, youtube, general browsing of ridiculous sites).

Cutting my gaming time in half and adding a new game has cut my Warcraft time by 75%. While this has been nice for me on a personal level, it has negatively affected the guild Dee and I run. Apparently, if I'm not online 24-7, people lose motivation and get bored. While this seems absolutely ridiculous because I spent almost all of my time standing around Orgrimmar and not actually doing anything productive or particularly social even, it's sadly not an exaggeration. I had been the most active person overall for years, so me actually having a life and tooling around in another game spells ruin to people - some have stopped giving a shit, some have moves their alts to other guilds simply to see more people online when they aren't raiding here, some have stopped playing all-together, some have started rumors of a guild collapse. Very few seem okay with me not being there all the damned time. Even the people who I log in for have started seeking refuge elsewhere.

So Dee and I are trying to decide if we want to bother continuing on. The general state of unrest isn't the only factor in our decision-making process. Also of consideration is the caliber and attitudes of the people we raid with every week, their commitment (or lack of) to us as a guild, my and everyone else's lack of interest in stepping up and recruiting or working on morale is a consideration. Really... not a single person has stepped up to try to remedy the issues they have or we have - they're just waiting for me or Dee to do it and quite frankly, we probably won't at this point. We have tasted failure and recruited enough idiots on this stupid server already - we'll pass. The liklihood of getting anyone who will actually fit what Dee and I think we need for raiding is so slim it's very discouraging.

What we need to keep the guild together depends on what people want. So what do they want? Fuck if I know because nobody actually talks about what they want - they just complain, leave or solve their own problems without care or consideration of others.

By raiding with other guilds on off days, they've indicated they want to raid on the weekends. That simply won't happen unless we manage to recruit an adequate raiding group or get enough interested alts for such endeavors.
By complaining that there's nobody to talk to in guild chat and leaving on alts to busier guilds, They've indicated they're lonely and want more chatter. They could have created more chatter by recruiting into this guild. Instead, they go for the ready-made easy chatter of an established social guild. Their problem solved. Ours as a guild, made worse. I understand not feeling responsible for guild recruitment, but it does clarify the effort they're willing to put in.
By complaining that it's taking us so long to kill stuff or stating repeatedly that they don't want to keep dying, they've indicated they want a free ride. These types of people are the bane of my existence (and they're usually DPS - those who have to work the least). If you don't work for something, it means nothing.

Now, we would have an easier time getting through content if we had a committed 10 people who made every raid night barring serious injury or illness. We just don't and we won't. Ever. The last time such things happened in my gaming life was the ZA bear runs every 4 days and even then, we still had 1 spot that alternated between 2 people because yea... one couldn't be there every night. It was a really tight group of almost awesome people (lilamb was an idiot, but aside from her, the group was great and she was only there because we needed a ranged dps who could prioritize these runs and be there all the time). Anyway, my point is, utopia doesn't exist people! Get over it!

So... will think aloud more later. been logged onto wow all night, but none of these bored people are online, so... so much for trying to be available.

Okay... a bit more.
By saying the Dee and I are trying to decide if we want to continue on, I mean as guild leaders, not as WoW players. For the time being, we still plan to play WoW, as it is still our obvious game of choice. While this may not seem obvious to those who haven't been listening to what i've been saying, it's obvious to us, as if it weren't front-and-center, we wouldn't be raiding on Fridays, at least, which is when the guild we're hanging out in in Rift raids. If Rift were more inportant or even equally important than/as Wow, we would be giving a shit about raiding there, which we simply aren't.

So, we do want to continue playing WoW, but, at least for me (can't speak for Dee), I play WoW primarily because I like most of my raid group - especially a couple of people without whom I'd have been lost long ago. These people have been very supportive and otherwise awesome friends throughout much of my WoW journey. One of these people, however, Oar, has stated that he's considering taking some toons over to another guild. While I understand the need for social connection and something to do other than hang around in the ghost of a guild during off raiding hours, I can't help but assume they'll eventually take priority over us, rendering us the secondary priority, which will be somewhat of an impetus to just shut this guild down. I mean, if we're not the priority for the people who matter to us (are our priority), why bother? They'll have another place to be, thus rendering the responsibility factor in our decision-making process null leaving only personal connections, the strength of which I've been debating.

Speaking of responsibility, We may not be the best people to be guild leading at this point in time. We are, but we aren't.

We are because we're there for every raid, usually set a good example, always bring our A game, are good players, are generally passable raid leaders (something nobody else wants to do), etc...

We aren't because we don't have the drive to recruit (Dee has done several long passes at recruitment and what do we end up with in the end?... The same people we've always been able to rely on - this server sucks for recruitment - we've been demoralized enough. We do have open recruitment, but nobody else is recruiting either), and we're no longer online all the time.

It's not even that we refuse to recruit. We would recruit if we thought it would help. Given the part timers and unreliable people we have, we never know what we're really in need of. We like to run a tight ship because we don't like to sit people who have as much business being included as anyone else. We also have several people with undeniable and irreplaceable talent - like Keith. I've known very few people who can match his talent. He has had life issues come up that have taken him away from the game, which meant either I or one of our ranged had to tank in his absence, which, in turn, meant we lost a good ranged DPS or Healer, spots that were filled with people who couldn't fill our shoes, making the group less successful. We *could* recruit another tank, but the likelihood we'd ever bring that person over Keith is pretty much null and I'd hate to recruit someone just so they can sit on the bench. So we've been dealing with these issues as they arise and they've definitely taken their toll on guild morale, confidence, and trust, all of which are very difficult to recoup.

Overall, I guess we still do more good than evil, so we're keeping our positions until someone shows some initiative and actually does more than we do overall. I've asked people for ideas about what we need to be doing and nobody has offered anything useful or offered to actually take on some responsibility themselves (recruitment, etc...).

So where are we?
ME: Aside from playing rift a couple hours a day on non raiding days, I've taken on several projects at home and have activities planned that will actually require us to leave the house (OMG!), my list includes swimming, getting the kitchen done, minimizing our junk, learning to be a better guitar player (doing some lessons with zoe), trying to be better at keeping this place guest-ready so zoe can invite friends over (which has been an absolute NO forever), doing more things that merit taking pictures, lots of different sewing projects (working on window treatments for kid's rooms now and it's soooo time consuming w/out a sewing machine). In other words, i'm not just sitting on my ass avoiding WoW.
DEE: Is working on writing droid apps and watching Dr. Who from beginning to end. It's literally all he's been doing outside of WoW raiding (driving me nuts, btw).

That's all I have for now... ciao.