This post incorporates a lot of information from the screenshots provided. For the screenshots that are harder to read, I’ve copy pasted the content at the very end, click on links in the captions to skip there, and links at the end to skip back.

Rereading conversations I had from that week, and posts I made, I can feel the skin tingle on my head again. When you get no sleep and no food, run on adrenaline day after day, have no feelings besides that of dread, and force yourself to single-mindedly work on grasping at straws… that does things to you. Physically. You feel exhausted yet unbearably tense. You feel like all the energy in your body is hovering in your chest, kinda like how you feel before you cry, yet you never get the release of crying. Your muscles aren’t completely bunched up, but nor do they relax: they stay poised, ready for fight or flight, for days on end. Your skin feels tighter, like it’s helping you tense up to retain the liquids and nutrition necessary to keep going. And the top of your head tingles. I grew more than 20 white hairs in that week alone. I was 30 years old, and even my father’s death less than a year before or his fight with cancer for the half year before he died didn’t affect me as much. In the situation with my father, success or failure wasn’t all on me, and I wasn’t in a situation where I was trying to fight it all alone.

In WoW, when someone joins or leaves a guild, it makes a little drum sound. It also makes a similar sound when someone types a private message to you. I learned to dread that sound, a feeling I would retain for the next two years, even when things were good. That week, people were constantly threatening to leave the guild. At least two of them did. Remember, we were already down people. The first day we didn’t even have 20 people (the barest minimum for mythic, something we’d absolutely need by the next week), and needed to bring in people everyone knew was far too weak for the content. Many were already wondering if they shouldn’t jump ship, because I mean Syzygy didn’t have 20 mythic raiders! Not having 20 people to do one raid oughtn’t be a big deal, but it would be another reason for people to consider leaving. If a raid night where we wipe 5 times on a boss instead of 3 was already going to cause people to leave, cancelling raid because of an emaciated roster unable to sustain raiding would be even worse. In the end, those who stay loyal would need to suffer because those who aren’t loyal leave, and this was something I couldn’t stand. I can’t bear the idea that those who choose to stand by me are hurt because of their loyalty to me. How many times over the next two years have I repressed myself to be able to avoid that, how many times have I forced myself to bear with things just so we could still have 20 decent people to raid with? To this day, hearing the drum sound brings about just a bit of that ptsd. Did someone else leave? How’s that gonna affect morale? Will we be able to raid? For the next two years, any private message would make me tense up: that drum sound… did someone leave?

Wednesday, our second raid day, I had to ask Amber before raid if any of her clique were going to leave because I had decided to continue doing split runs for one more day. She told me no, but Carain/Allie (people in WoW often go by multiple names. I’m only Liji though), only wanted to bring her main, even though she was slotted to bring her alt that night. And she was going to be late. In fact, she would join late, and then later leave early with no warning to us (apparently because we brought her friend and another person in. Both played a class called holy paladin, just like her, and this upset her, because she felt having three holy paladins was ridiculous. Incidentally, it can make things a bit harder for her, but it’s far from ridiculous). And another one of her clique, Tomi, was going to leave raid early, but that’s not because of the split runs situation, just a real life situation. And another of her clique, Abc, well he didn’t want to bring his alt either, but he’d be so kind as to still join on his main, to help Isam (another of her clique) get more gear (how did she not even notice how her friends obviously didn’t care at all about the guild: only help gear Isam? Because who cares if the rest of the guild gets stronger?). This sort of thing is, in all truthfulness, not acceptable in WoW mythic raiding. No guild at this level would allow members who obviously only did what pleased themselves, even if it hurt their guild. No guild at this level would allow members to feel like they’re doing their guild a huge favor just by showing up during the times they had previously committed to. No guild, that is, except a guild that was desperately in need of people. A guild that was barely surviving. A guild like Syzygy was that first week.

That night, we redid the start of the raid for our second ‘split run’, where those on their mains the day before should have swapped to their alts, and vice versa. We killed the first boss with no wipes, the second boss with two wipes, the third boss after 5 wipes, and wiped one time on the fourth boss before ending raid. Remember, we had wiped 5 times on both the first and second boss the night before, and wiped 11 times on the third boss with no kill. We had excluded the two weakest players from the night before, and brought in two replacements that were friends of guildies (one was friends with Carain, and he did so well that she was upset, because they played the same class as holy paladin, and felt he was ‘impressive at her expense’; the other was friends with Judy, the member in Amber’s clique that had actually been working hard to help us succeed). It was still a split run, so our group was not significantly stronger, but we had improved a good deal over the course of just one day. It is another big reason why split runs are beneficial: they allow your raid group to practice the same bosses more times, and practice always results in improvement. However, the improvement wasn’t enough to appease Amber’s clique. After all, they were all on their mains (because a few of them had refused to keep their word at preparing an alt for split runs), so they felt that we should have done even better.

I couldn’t afford to have anyone at all leave at this juncture. And Amber’s point about successful raids boosting morale was definitely sound. Of course, giving up on split runs would possibly lower morale for those who had worked hard at it, so I knew I was going to have to be careful in how I presented things. I asked Amber to make an announcement that we were going to stop doing split runs effective the next day, and I wrote a long explanation about it. It was the second day we raided, and already I had been forced to make a decision not because it would help us perform better, but because I was appeasing the worst among us. I still believe that if people had kept their word and prepared their alts, we could have practiced at the raid much more, gotten more gear, and just overall would have been able to go into the actual mythic race the next week with a big advantage over many other guilds. But I was to realize, a guild is unlike a PUG: I did not have an endless supply of people to draw from, which meant that I often had to give into the whims of the most selfish among us, for if I didn’t, we wouldn’t have enough people to raid. These were decisions I would never have made in the year I was a PUG raid leader: my decisions then were purely based on what would help the group do best. I would still have considered if my raiders were fatigued, or if morale was low, but I would never have given into the desires of people who used the fact that we desperately needed them to get what they want, regardless of what everyone else wanted.

I’m going to let what I wrote before speak for itself. If it is too hard to read, I have included a copy-paste of the content at the very end of this post. I didn’t really want anyone to dwell on the fact that we were giving up on split runs without really giving them a chance (several members did feel that way), and there were other things going on in guild that I felt could turn peoples’ mind to happier thoughts, so I continued. I talked about how we needed consumables (not having enough guild gold to be able to buy all we needed), and how we had members like Theren who were willing to go above and beyond at helping us with them. Theren had been one of the weak members we brought in the day before. I wanted everyone to be aware that even when we seem to fall behind because we carried someone weaker, the respect and loyalty we gain in doing this can have tangible results too.

I had expected that in being a guild master I would have to make some decisions that I didn’t like, but were pragmatic. So I figured this was just one of them, no big deal, make the best out of it. In my conversations with Amber, I told her I was grateful that she made me aware of how there were people who felt things were a disaster with doing split runs. It was here that she told me she wanted me to trust her more, because she has a lot of experience leading guilds (which I didn’t have), and her advice is always aimed at helping the guild succeed. I think it was her way of opening herself up to me. And it was here that I apparently made my biggest mistake with her. I admitted that I hadn’t fully trusted her advice, because I was worried that she was representing her friends only. I apologized for it, and said that in the future if I had such concerns I’d voice them, and if she told me she wasn’t just representing them, that I’d believe her. I felt there was some danger in giving her this trust, but I also felt that if I didn’t try to trust her, that there was no way we could move forward together. But my confession/apology was apparently a mistake. From then on she always felt that I didn’t trust her, she’d complain to her clique that I didn’t trust her, and she’d gradually start avoiding and ignoring me.

At the time I didn’t know to what degree Amber would stop supporting me. And at the time it didn’t matter, I was still planning on doing everything I could myself, if she decided she’d help me that was just supposed to be a plus. We still needed more people to have a stronger roster, and I was PUGging and streaming, reaching out to people and using my image to draw more people to me. That day I had gotten 2 people, one who would join the very next day, for our third day, and one who would join after the weekend, for our fourth day. In my PUGs I had also found one person who I felt was likely to join us. All three of these people were very strong, and would make an enormous difference if we got them, but all three of them were still slightly up in the air. So I continued going into PUGs. At the same time, I continued studying the raid. Two days after the raid opened, there was already a good amount of discussion on forums, and some videos. I wasn’t spending any time sleeping or eating anyway, so plenty of time to look for people in PUGs and study the fights. That night, Isam read what I had written and came to talk to me. He said he was ready to quit after our first night, but I reminded him of when he himself had tried to keep a guild going in the past, and he really hoped that things would work out now. It was the first voice of sincerity and semi-encouragement I had heard from Amber’s clique. I almost cried.

Thursday, our third raid day, before raid, is actually when Sunstep came to me to tell me that he was leaving our guild after that week. I believe I literally begged him to stay (I don’t think I’ve begged anyone to stay since then, in part because I’m a prideful person, but in part because I realized it doesn’t work). I told him that his leaving at that moment would be a huge hit to our morale, and it may drive more people to leave. He said something like, “no offense, but it’s probably better for them if they did leave, rather than stay at a place like this”. That day we killed the fourth, fifth, and sixth boss (seven bosses total, remember). The fourth and fifth ones took 2 wipes each, the sixth one 12 wipes. We still had a full raid day to go before the week reset, and we only had one boss left. Things started looking up. Way up.

I was ecstatic. That sort of ecstasy you have only when you’re tense and hyped up on adrenaline, sleep deprivation, and dread for 60 hours, and you finally feel an inkling of hope. The sort of ecstasy that is more of a mood swing because you feel so mentally strained. I’m pretty sure I was able to turn that ecstasy into something that hyped the morale for the group. “Tonight we killed THREE new bosses! We still have a full raid day left and only one boss left!! We did so well today!!! We’re so awesome!!!!!!!” We all ended that night feeling good about things. Feeling good in that moment didn’t mean I could slack though. So I continued to PUG. After all, we still needed people even if we weren’t going to lose Sunstep, who may reconsider leaving now that things were good. Plus, I couldn’t be sure that others in Amber’s clique wouldn’t leave. Either way, we had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off (our last raid day being Monday), I started to raid lead heroic PUGs again, in hopes people would enjoy my raid leading (as they always had in my PUGs in the past), and I’d more easily find people to join us. My goal was to find 5 more strong people.

Before that night, I had only joined PUGs that were doing normal to find people. I hadn’t raid led any of the PUGs yet, much less raid led them on heroic difficulty. For three days the only raid leading I did was in Syzygy, and every moment of that was excruciating, because I was constantly worried about people wanting to leave and everything falling apart. Also, Abc from Amber’s clique would occasionally make snarky comments about how there’s no way we’ll succeed, comments not insulting enough to warrant my jumping on him and making a big deal out of things, but snarky enough to make me worry anyone who was dissatisfied with things probably felt more justified in their negativity. When I finally led a heroic PUG, that ecstasy from earlier was enhanced. The raid went so smoothly. I didn’t need to worry about discontent from members of the group. We could just relax, and raid, and people were telling me my raid leading was amazing again. I remembered, then, that I should have confidence in myself. My guild should have confidence in me, goddammit. They had decided to join a guild I was creating for a good reason: I really was a very good raid leader, and I could make things great. I decided to also not let this feeling go to waste.

And my confidence was well founded. People did really enjoy my raid leading, and by the next day, (I was doing PUGs every day), I had gotten 4 strong people total. After what I wrote, a couple more guildies were introducing possible recruits to me too. Hope is too insignificant a word to express my emotions at the time, you must remember that this was day 4 with insomnia. I was hyper, and it perhaps shows in how I expressed myself to my officers:

So, Tuesday was the first raid night, the night Amber and her clique called ‘a complete disaster’. Wednesday was the second raid night where several members of Amber’s clique were particularly obvious in how much they didn’t bother being team members. It was also the day when I got 2 more members (maybe 3), from my normal PUGs and streaming. Thursday was the day we stopped split runs, did well, and I started raid leading heroic PUGs, and got 2 more members. Friday I led more heroic PUGs and got 2 more members. By then I was prefacing the starts of my raids with “Welcome! Please do your best, I will be looking for strong players to join my mythic guild. If you’re interested you can get in touch with me after raid, and I will let you know whether I think it’ll work out!” Saturday I led even more heroic PUGs, this time going ahead and doing the last boss (we hadn’t done that boss yet in Syzygy). We spent quite a bit of time practicing this last boss (the hardest by far) in the PUGs, and we killed it (less than maybe 300 guilds in the world had done it by then, I don’t know if any other PUGs had done so). By then I was also ‘trialing’ people whom other guildies had introduced to me, and we got 2 more people.

By Sunday, Sunstep and Tranquility had quit the guild (god, that drum sound), but because of my frenzied recruiting, we still had 20+ good raiders (remember on Tuesday we only had about 17, including both Sunstep and Tranquility). I detailed the situation to Amber and Noci in our officer chat window, explaining the situation with each person I recruited (and also with some people who were already part of the guild). After I was done, Amber told me “would be better to have had everyone the first week so we could shakedown through a couple of heroic weeks. But it’s first instance of the first tier, so we’ll be able to work with it, and we should be able to spot pretty quickly who can hang and who can’t”. And it was apparently the closest she had come to supporting me since the first day she called our raid ‘a complete disaster’. I literally gushed about how grateful I was for her encouragement and patience. In retrospect, the only way I can explain it to myself is sleep deprivation for 6 days, and the dread I’d felt that whole time knowing that the one officer who was supposed to be my biggest support was spending all her time with a clique of people who “don’t like lijis decisions”, while supporting their decisions to act selfishly and not be team members. You know, that extreme mood swing from dread to joy because of the smallest encouragement.

Monday, our last raid night of our very first raid week. We killed the last boss on heroic that night, as a guild, after only 2 wipes. Most guilds took something like 20 wipes. We were about World 400 at the time, and though heroic ranks don’t really mean much, it at least showed that we weren’t exactly a disaster. And most heartening: we knew we were back in the safe zone of more than 20 good mythic raiders. We were safe again, we weren’t going to fall apart. We weren’t going to fail the very first week we raided, despite it looking like there was no way we would be able to succeed. I could start eating and sleeping again, and gradually, my head stopped tingling.

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Stopping Splits Explanation Part I & II:

Liji 09/22/2016
So, we’re still in the process of figuring out how best to do things
I know there are people who were completely prepared to do our split runs, which means they were fully aware of the huge amount of time this requires (something that staggered me, even when I had discussed it with many and thought it through myself beforehand)
But there are also many who struggled to put that amount of time in, resulting in an uneven spread of gear for our alts
We also have been constantly working on finding more and more people who are ready to raid with us, since having 5 progression-capable people leaving right before the expansion put a big dent in our roster
Every day, we talk to people, so that we can flush out our roster into a healthy 25-30 man group again, some days with more success and some with less
So that right now, every raid, there are possibly people that I want to trial
Being how things are, since the situation with alts makes it that we cannot progress as quickly as many would like
I understand it has frustrated a good amount of people (I assume it would frustrate those who actually geared up their alts enough but find that we still cannot progress in splits as quickly as they like the most)
I’m grateful that people have kept their frustrations, for the most part, out of our raid, to allow us to continue doing what we need to do in raid time
And then letting me know afterwards
This is an example precisely of how I have always asked people to deal with their more negative emotions concerning the raid, and I’m very grateful that people are applying it from the getgo
What I worry about the most right now, is allowing this frustration to get out of hand, allowing it to affect our raids or our raid atmospheres
To this end, I plan to stop doing splits for emerald nightmare
In the hopes that this gives people more time to focus on perfecting one toon
It is fortunate that there is a large variety of methods one can use to gain gear now
And I hope that if everyone’s focus is put just on one toon, then they will burn out less quickly, be able to play that one toon even better, be less stressed about things, and enjoy progressing on bosses more
At everyone who did put in all the extra time, effort, gold, energy, into fully preparing a second toon, I would like to apologize to you, that I was unable to provide enough people to sustain splits as we had hoped to do before
And thank you for having worked so hard for it. It is perhaps something we can aim to do once our guild is more stable and has a large enough roster to sustain it
For those who weren’t able to fully gear up another toon, most did put a significant amount of effort in, and I’m also sorry that I have not been able to make use of that effort you put in
For those who really were against splits from the start, thank you for sticking through and giving it a go despite all your misgivings
In retrospect, I should have recognized as soon as the 5 left right before legion that splits would be a struggle, and I feel that I should have called off splits then.
I would like to thank everyone for being patient and accommodating with what I ask of people
And being willing to weather through the ups and downs as we figure out how to best build this guild into something strong and good
I assume, as we continue, that we will try out all sorts of things, and some will work and some won’t
But we will eventually be able to figure out what works best, and hopefully I will always have both the perseverance to insist on giving things a good shot, as well as the wisdom to recognize when something should be changed
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Another thing that has been of huge concern to me is the situation with consumables
I had hoped we would be able to pool our resources to be able to sustain enough consumables
But, primarily I think because we were so busy preparing 2 toons, few people were able to put enough time into their professions, even preparing a decent amount of consumables for oneself was a struggle for many
We will be constantly working on trying to ease the situation with this, to allow more people to focus on being great in raid
Because really raiding isn’t all that enjoyable if you can’t feel that you’re doing great
To this end, we have people who have volunteered to do what they can to help us
And God, thank you so much
One of these people is theren, who has always been incredibly supportive of what we want to do, and I would like to (with his permission) post an excerpt of what he said to me, so that everyone can appreciate his effort like I do

(I ninja-screenshotted that before asking for his permission to show to others, just so I can have it on my phone to remind me of how so many people can always help, in so many different ways)
I want to say that though he was thanking me for giving him a chance, who I want to thank is our whole raid group, for giving this a go. Because everyone supported me and allowed me to bring him in for what we could. Gratitude and a sincere willingness to help us for things that we have less time for personally are things that are earned, and I feel that our raid group has earned it with your open mindedness and tolerance
Despite the frustrations some may feel concerning splits, and the scary less-than-healthy raid size, I personally think we’re amazing
We are a group of people that started as a pug, and are starting a raid with a real viability at doing what it may take other guilds many many tiers to be able to do
And the attitude everyone has taken is something that I feel some guilds may never achieve
How many guilds can claim that because of them, people are inspired to go beyond their current capabilities or leave their current comfort zone to become something greater?And we have but started out as a guild, with many months ahead of us to accomplish even more
To be able to stabilize us, I will be doing extra pugs every week, to find and test new people, if anyone has the extra energy and time to come do that with me, I will be delighted at your company
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Roster at the End Part I & II & III

Liji 09/26/2016
Tomi feels like he’s being overwhelmed with rl stuff
And can’t do raids right now
So here’s our current roster
Amber
Liji
Noci
Viuda m
Asterix
Fluffed
Beast
Carain
Ultra
Fenhrur
Zan
Vekz m
Exorbit m
Khrori (?) m
Wisping m
Breatine (?) m
Tygor
Isam
Abc
Chaol
Axon
Monscape (?)
Zethyr (?) m
M means melee
(?) are the people who haven’t transferred yet, or guaranteed a date for transfer
Beast is the +10 tank Judy feels is really good
I had him come tank for the pug today
And he has pretty decent survivability
His raid awareness seems about the same as fluffed’s
So we’ll see
His survivability seems better
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I talked to carain about fenhrur, since I was worried she’d be unhappy with 2 hpallies
She seems to want him in, so it should be ok
She said she’d make do with 2 hpally for now, and if it gets to be too bad she’s swap to shaman heals
She also said she was sorry that rl stuff being rough affected her mood while playing
And I told her that it was ok for everyone to have ups and downs and that I believe she will make it through and things will be fine
Vekz is a DH that’s ultra’s dungeon buddy who came in on h xavius and was top dps, and good at mechanics
He said he won’t be able to make a couple days in November, and then in a few months POSSIBLY not make a raid here or there, but otherwise he wants to join and will be fully committed, an will xfer in time for the Thursday raid next reset
Khrori was a DH today that seemed pretty decent (not as good as vekz or exorbit, but still was holding his own), I believe I told him I would strongly consider him, and he could join for our heroic raids and then I’d let him know if he should come over or not
Wisping joined the h xavius and was consistently top 3~5 damage, and had no issues learning mechanics well
He’s already in guild as ‘recruit’
Breatine is the enh shaman I mentioned before, joined most of h EN run yesterday, has joined me in the past in hfc, and seems to solidly put out top dps numbers, hasn’t made any mistakes on mechanics
I told him he can xfer right now, and he said he’d do it but he hasn’t contacted me to join guild yet
Monscape is the warlock who is always focused on getting top parses, can be vocal about it to the point of it being a bit annoying in voice. He joined me before in hfc too, was also a top parser. I’ve told him he can xfer over as well (he seemed quiet enough in raid when we were doing it on Thursday), but he hasn’t contacted me to say he’s already done it and needs a guild either
Zethyr is a dk that was doing very good numbers and seemed to be pretty good on grips today, I’ve told him I’ll seriously consider him and he said he’d be able to xfer Wednesday next reset, if I remember correctly. Xan later told me he would stand in cursed bloods to the point where he died, so I’m a bit iffy about it again, but the rest of the mechanics he seemed to do well and his numbers were good
Wooooooof
And we still have judy’s hunter possibly
And isam also mentioned a warrior
I also have that frostey Mage from Thursday who said he’d wait one more week to see how his guild is doing, then if they’re still too weak he’d come over
For our current roster, there are some weaker players, and we can’t continue bringing them if they don’t become stronger, especially since we’ll keep recruiting strong players
This includes myself, but when I did today’s run, I was able to find that my numbers are much higher, and with the boomkin buffs next week I should be ok
It also includes all of the mages. I want to see Mage dps near the top, not near the bottom.
Chaole and axonometric joined the h pug today on their mages, and I was able to see significant improvement in their performances. Noci you’ll have to do that too. If the improvement continues and mages return to the top of dps charts where they belong, things will be fine
But we can’t afford to take squishy classes that also don’t do very good dps
Xan also still worries me a bit, he can put out good healing numbers but sometimes makes mechanics mistakes that I don’t think should be made. His dps numbers are also far too weak
So we’ll have to see what will happen with that
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There is also a mw monk and a resto Druid, both who seemed quite decent, neither that blew me out of the water (but exarzle didn’t the first time I saw him play too), who are interested in joining if I want them, both on sargeras
None of these that I’ve recruited so far are bad, and a few of them are very very good (so far it looks like no worse than any of our current top players)
Next week I’ll continue with this, as long as I have time I’ll do pugs and find more people who are outperforming their guilds by a lot and want a better guild to join
I’m actually a bit surprised at how relatively easy it was to find people just by running pugs this week, but I feel that may only work the first couple weeks, where people are still floaty and jumpy and easily disappointed in their guilds
But this is also probably the most crucial time for guilds too, a time when guilds can truly form up well and become strong, or a time when guilds can fall apart
Guys, we can do this. We HAVE to do this. I will sacrifice ALL else to make OUR guild one of the successes

Amber 09/26/2016
the beginning of an xpac is a good time to pick up people and then shake down the roster
would be better to have had everyone the first week so we could shakedown through a couple of heroic weeks
but it’s first instance of the first tier, so we’ll be able to work with it, and we should be able to spot pretty quickly who can hang and who can’t

Liji 09/26/2016

awwwwwww Amber your words of encouragement and patience mean so much to me you have no idea
each time you talk about this, I feel like yes Yes YES it can be done
hahaha
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