It’s a new expac, a new guild of my own, and I once again feel in over my head.

A few days before the new expansion started, a group of 5 people up and left because their old guild was going to reform. Out of these 5 people, 2 of them was the second and third tank, and I had spent a month trying to work out the tank group, and moving times around to make things work with them. I can understand their desire to play with their old friends, so I’m OK with it, but it was still a huge blow to me. Then a day or two later a raider who had not been performing well left. That wasn’t a big blow to the raid team, but then she posted in our forums saying that she felt I didn’t value people and made them feel worthless. So that was a huge blow to me, personally. I’m pretty sure I make those who work hard to be strong players and assets in raid feel appreciated, but maybe that makes those who aren’t as strong in a raid environments feel like I don’t appreciate them. All of this, a couple days before the new expansion, was pretty disturbing to both my mentality and my sleep. So I didn’t start this expac strong, I started tired and unhappy.

Then, after the expac started, I tried to rush my leveling, but I was just SLOW. It probably took 12, 14 hours to finish my first toon (though my second one went much faster), because I spent a lot of time just not being efficient with where I was going, what I was doing. I didn’t know until a week later that dots on the minimap with arrows above or below indicated elevation of the desired spot, and sometimes I would run below to find a cave when really what I was looking for was on top of the cliff. Or I would get a quest and I should really just use an item on something small right in front of me and I wouldn’t know and would run around like a headless chicken not even fully aware of what I was looking for. And this inefficiency all but convinced me that I am truly too weak of a gamer. A truly good gamer should be able to react much faster to these quests, and know where to look to be able to find what they need. They should’ve figured out on the first day of questing concerning the arrow on the dot on the minimap. A good gamer wouldn’t run around not even knowing what to look for. And it made me wonder, makes me wonder, am I truly at the caliber of play I want to be and expect my raiders to be at? Is my awareness in game high enough to be able to do the sort of progression I want?

Which brings me to, I’ve never come near to experiencing the sort of progression I want. I’m used to going in already knowing what strategies to use, based on other people’s strategies. So even the first time I go in, I already have an idea of what will work and what won’t. Do I arrange for 3 sets of 3 minute healer cooldowns, and will 1 cooldown be enough each time? Things like that I already know very well. And this time, I won’t really. Normally I can tell just from the guides what the crux of the fight is, so that I can direct people’s attention to it, but cutting edge progression, I won’t know until we actually go in to do it. So will I be able to tell quickly? I don’t know. Will I be able to react to new things happening fast enough to make the right calls? I don’t know. My slow reaction during leveling certainly doesn’t boost my confidence.

And beyond that, what about consumables? I need to make sure everyone in the raid can feel that the guild is behind them, create that feeling of community-oriented support I so wish everyone to feel. That requires leveled professions to be able to create the necessary pots, flasks, gems, enchants, etc. I have characters that can gather herbs, make gems, make pots and flasks. But to get the necessary recipes I need to spend a long time doing the quest chains, which I haven’t finished.  I already feel like I haven’t been doing all the other time-consuming things I should be doing as well, to stay competitive.

The other time-consuming things I need to do include doing world quests (quests from all around of world that take travel time and time to finish), because I’m already behind on the number of rewards you can gather from these. One of these rewards is artifact power, and others have gotten enough to get to rank 19, 20, whereas I’m still stuck on rank 18 (and the amount of artifact power needed per rank increases almost exponentially). Another of these rewards is reputation with specific factions in game (each quest can grant you a certain amount of reputation points, and there is a threshold before certain dungeons become accessible to you). I know several people who got enough reputation last raid week to open up the final 2 dungeons and go into those and get gear, but it’s a new raid week now and I’m still not there yet. My gear is decent enough that it’s possible I won’t need gear from those dungeons, but it is still lost chances at getting gear.

Which leads me to another time-consuming activity that worries me. Dungeons. I have gotten to the point where I know the 8 dungeons accessible to me decently well, though I don’t know the last 2 yet. But my degree of understanding is only decent, next week when raids open I will need to know them all so well I can successfully do the timed versions of the dungeons (that also open up then), since the gear from there is much higher. Though this doesn’t worry me too terribly, it is something I feel I’m behind on, in terms of what I should already know.

But as far as things I should know goes, I still need to spend, I’m guessing 5~10 hours studying the new raid that opens up next week to make sure when I go in, I’m as prepared as I can feasibly be. And this is non-negotiable. I am the raid leader, there is no way I can go in even an iota unprepared. When a group performs badly, in my mind it is at least 75% the raid leader’s fault, either for not being prepared, or not making good calls or decisions, or creating a detrimental atmosphere. I will need to know the fights well enough that my damage numbers can be high even without my needing to think about it, because I don’t have the ability to lead a raid well as well as figure out my own damage rotation at the same time.

These are my purely game-based worries. Now let me address the ones concerning managing a guild. I barely have 20 decent people (the number necessary to do mythic raids when they open 2 weeks later). Guilds that do this kind of play though, they run with 25~30 people at least, so if anyone can’t do something for a day, or has internet issues, or has a character that is no good for the fight, you won’t have to give up that night because of one or a few people’s problems. At this point, we are barely at 20, and there are several people in the 20 that I feel are at least as weak as me if not weaker. Finding people last minute is difficult though, so I don’t know how things are going to turn out.

Then, recently there have a good amount of minor bits of friction between people. Person A didn’t choose to play with the guild and instead went to play with his other friends, though his presence would have been helpful to the other guild members. Person B doesn’t like Person C’a chatter, finds it offensive and can’t stand it. Person D kicked Person E from his dungeon group, making Person E and all his friends upset. Person F got gear that would have been helpful to other guildies, but decided to sell it for gold instead. I tried to personally deal with some of it, but I eventually started feeling like this sort of GM’ing doesn’t feel like being a guild master, but like being a guild mom. And I’m not sure being mom (be careful of how you phrase things, it may upset others!) is not really the best way of going about things. I’ve yet to hear of a naggy mom actually getting her charges to act better…. Not annoying them would already be a boon.

Doubts and fears, doubts and fears. At times I feel like I can’t do it. Rationally, I trust my ability to learn, and I fully believe I can be great and create a great team if I work at it. But emotionally, and in the meantime, doubts and fears.