The first day of week 1, when mythic opened for Emerald Nightmare, we went into heroic instead, to farm the bosses and get more gear. That first day, we killed all the farm bosses, which was pretty decent. We wiped 2 times on one boss, 1 time on two bosses, and all the other bosses we one shot. We now had 22 raiders, despite losing a couple of strong players the week before, and all our raiders could learn from their mistakes quickly. Most of the players we had were doing strong numbers, and we only had a handful left, if that, who did weaker numbers. We also now had new raid officers, and everything was just looking up in general. It was a welcome relief from the stress of the week before, and I was finally being able to eat and sleep again. This did not mean I actually had much time to rest though: after raid, I spent a few hours studying how top guilds did mythic that first day, and thinking through what strategies our guild could use. I then wrote down guides for a couple bosses, and asked Amber to make an announcement for guildies to read them.

The illusion of the straight sailing ended after these few hours of study. Apparently the smoothness of the raid did not mean the complaints and criticisms, particularly from Amber’s clique, would stop. I was told it took “entirely too long” for us to decide who gets what pieces of loot. Amber then suggested that she could be in charge of distributing loot, and that this would be a big step in the right direction, that she “would not steer me wrong”. I was quite surprised, because this seemed like such a unimportant issue to me: coming off a week of not even having enough players, still in constant fear of losing people, and needing to spend hours studying mythic strategies and making sure raiders could perform… this did not even make my radar. Also, it was the first day officers were involved in doing loot, so before the kinks were worked out being a bit slower was natural. Furthermore, even if we did speed it up a lot, we would at most save 10 minutes out of a 4 hour raid night. But anyway, minor though it was (and couched in somewhat critical and condescending terms), it was still legitimate and her solution reasonable. After all, why not save time if that was possible? At the moment, I did not say yes because I was so surprised at it being presented as such a big an issue, and thought that maybe there was something I’d missed and I should think about it a bit more. Later, though, I completely forgot about it, so I did not end up giving Amber control over loot. I now realize that she probably did not forget it, and this likely served to her as another example of my refusal to trust her.

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The next day, day 2 of week 1, we entered mythic. We killed the first boss, Nythendra, after 6 wipes. For some context, about 300 guilds out of tens or hundreds of thousands in the world had killed Nythendra by that time. After this boss, we had 4 others to choose from, and I had chosen one called Dragons of Nightmare. This was a rather harder one, and we ended up wiping on it 14 times, with no kill. Since then I have learned that wiping this early in progression should not feel like the end of the world to a guild. But at that time, following a good raid night which still elicited complaints, coming off being told we were a disaster after our very first heroic raid, and not yet recovered from a sleepless and foodless week… I would not feel safe within my guild even if we had no wipes. And as we wiped, I suspected this would further anger Amber’s clique and make them mock us more in their private skype call, something that was pretty much confirmed when Abc would make snarky and sarcastic comments during raid after wipes. So, despite us objectively doing quite well, despite the fact that I had worked literally 24/7 the week before to overcome all our issues, especially all issues Amber’s clique had with us, I was stressed out, and according to conversations at the time, I felt like a failure.

This is an aspect of my personality that has, I believe, ultimately led to my failure as a leader. I relegate all responsibility for others’ happiness to myself. If they are unhappy, it means I’m not doing well enough to make them happy. If they do not trust or respect me, it means I have not done enough to earn their trust or respect. Though I am aware of the fact that some may, like Abc, simply be the type to like to complain, or some may, like Amber, be unfair in how she steadfastly looked down on me, my awareness does not linger on these facts. What I dwell on is how I did not do well enough and what I need to change to make others happy, to earn their trust, to create success where failure used to be. And, unfortunately, leading a constantly changing group of 20~50 people means a constant stream of discontent from someone or other, all of which I blamed myself for, and I lack the inner strength to withstand that for years.

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The next day, day 3 of week 1 of mythic, since we were aware of the difficulty of the Dragons boss, we swapped instead to other bosses: we worked on Elerethe, and killed it (we were now about world 250, US 106 in ranks). Ranks can fluctuate a lot that first week, depending on each guild’s raid days and which bosses they choose, but still, we were doing rather amazingly well. Then we worked on Ursoc, and drama with far-reaching consequences erupted behind the scenes (see future posts for how it played out in the following weeks). After one of our wipes, when we hadn’t gotten very far, Abc said he felt we should make adjustments to our strategy by moving our timing of when we used a major raid cooldown called Heroism. Then, a good 5 or so people spoke up at once, some in support of this change, some against it, and some, like Xanort, to say something chatty and random. After a bit I said “no, we aren’t going to change hero”, but my voice is soft, and I doubt many people heard. And Abc himself continued speaking as well. From what I understood later, Abc had muted most people, so he may not have been aware of the cacophony in Discord at the time, and perhaps thought he was the only one speaking over me. Therefore, it is possible he did not realize that when Asterix laughingly said “shut up! shut up!”, it was for everyone to quiet down so they could hear me, the raid leader, give my decision. Though this moment was no big deal for everyone else, and passed without much reaction from most in raid, it apparently angered Abc enormously, and he came to me after raid to express his discontent. I did not take screenshots at the time, but I copied-pasted everything he wrote, and am including it below, cleaned and color-coded for readability (blue for Abc, on his character with the long name, and orange for me), and annotated, but with the content, typos and all, unchanged:

[13:18:17] [W From] [110:Ayepapichulo]: so we have a guild meeting about someone being called a “hoie” but when asterix tells me to shut up mid sentence we all good?
[13:18:37] just wanna be clear before i attempt to contribute to raid again
[13:37:25] I think he was talking to xan XDD
[13:37:39] no he directed it at me
[13:37:56] is that so? I heard xan talking when he said it
[13:38:07] im sure your recollection is better than mine
[13:38:13] glad we addressed this

At this moment, I wasn’t fully aware of the fact he was being sarcastic to show me that he felt his recollection must be better than mine. At most I felt maybe we both saw the same situation somewhat differently, so once he realized there could be another perspective he wouldn’t be as outraged. I was also fully cognizant of his threat “before I attempt to contribute to raid again”, and how dangerous it was considering his influence over the rest of Amber’s clique. We now had 22 people, we could not afford to lose 3~5 suddenly, especially with 3 of them being officers.

[13:38:28] XDD
[13:39:26] i appreciate the double standards XDD

This was where I realized he was seriously offended by Asterix. “XDD” was an acronym I was rather known for using in lieu of “lol”, one which he did not use.

[13:39:54] hmm
[13:39:55] well
[13:40:11] I can go to asterix, and tell him that when he said shut up, he offended someone
[13:40:23] and ask him to be more careful of saying shut up in the future
[13:40:31] ah yes a slap on the wrist, fitting
[13:40:42] I dont’ believe I faulted allie at all for typing hoie
[13:40:45] LOL
[13:40:52] I talked to her after it
[13:40:59] when I did, I thought she called him an asshole
[13:41:04] and even then, I didnt’ call anyone out
[13:41:08] I said, let’s be careful of what we say
[13:41:32] to be able to work together, we have to try to be a bit more considerate of each others’ feelings
[13:41:45] if you’re saying that in saying shut up, asterix seriously offendedc you
[13:41:57] that’s something I can address, and ask him to work on
[13:41:57] im saying that is was rude to say shut up when i was suggesting a strat
[13:42:01] i dont give a fuck waht the cunt says

I was rather shocked by this. First, I despise the word ‘cunt’, and second, I have rarely come across someone who would respond to my trying to be reasonable and sincere with such blatant rudeness.

[13:42:09] then what’s the problem?
[13:42:10] but if he wants to interrupt when people are trying to help
[13:42:26] if I recall correctly
[13:42:32] you were saying we should hero at the start
[13:42:36] correct
[13:42:42] to see more of the fight
[13:42:46] and instead of discussingf that
[13:42:50] he said shut up and that was that
[13:42:55] how in any world is that a fitting response
[13:42:56] and I think many people were speaking at the time
[13:43:01] to the degree that
[13:43:06] I suppose you didn’t hear when I said no
[13:43:11] and maybe no one else did
[13:43:19] how are you so blind to the actual evbents
[13:43:25] you do what you think is best
[13:43:25] I’m not
[13:43:29] ignroe other peoples ideas
[13:43:32] but I have my assessments and judgements
[13:43:37] and I do consider various ideas
[13:43:41] and I have to come to a decision
[13:43:42] id make more headway talking to a brick wall
[13:43:45] thank you for your time
[13:43:54] thank you for trying

Normally, the rudeness and open mockery would dismay me, but in less than ten minutes I would write it off as someone who doesn’t share my values, and forget about it. With Abc, I could not simply do that. I already knew that his clique was not happy, as the week before Amber had represented them in telling me we were a disaster and they may leave. One clique being unhappy was already bad enough, what with how their leaving could cause us to fall apart. But even worse, Amber was part of this clique, and I had invested a lot in having her be my officer. I fully believed that if I could earn her trust and liking, if she had my back, she would be an amazing officer, as she had been when she was devoted to her last guild. At the moment though, I knew that she was more than willing to side with her clique against me, and more than willing to allow criticisms of me to feed into her confirmation bias against me. Furthermore, Judy and Isam were two of my raid officers now, and they were also from that clique. And apparently, Abc had whipped them up into a lather about the situation, and they were furious at their fellow officer Asterix. I had just created an officer text channel a few days ago, and Isam started the conversation, clearly angered:

I could see that Isam at least was easily influenced by Abc’s manipulations, and would judge those Abc disliked before trying to see all the facts. With how things were going, I decided I needed a sounder assessment of what sort of person Abc was: if he was the type who needed to rant, or if once he got angry he was likely to cause problems. I chose to ask Judy, as she was the only one out of the clique who seemed to truly be concerned for my well-being. She told me that Abc was often dissatisfied with something or other, but that it should not affect his performance as a raider. That put me somewhat at ease, though it did confirm to me that he was more interested in seeing the negatives in things, and that he might find people like me, who are focused on being sincere and solving problems, stupid and naive. I spent awhile thinking about it more, and the next day decided to do nothing. I concluded that in the end it was simply a difference in personalities, and perhaps this difference would lead to some people parting ways with me in the future, but when it happened it would be natural and organic: different people will seek out those they mesh better with. As for how Abc affected others of Amber’s clique, I felt that whatever I do may not make much of a difference. If anything,  playing moderator too much may backfire and annoy them. Moreover, I knew I could hold my head up high in my conduct: I am completely sincere and always do my best for others, so hopefully with time, Amber’s clique would see this, and feel that I was a worthy enough leader for them. My thought was: ultimately, it is not what I do, but who I am, that will make or break the guild.

Happily, it was the weekend, so Syzygy would have 3 days off before our fourth and last raid of the week. That these were ‘off’ nights did not really apply to me though: I could not rest, especially since I could not be sure if Abc would leave, or would incite others to leave. So these 3 days meant leading PUG raids for recruitment galore, doing up to 12 hours of raids a day. This was on top of hours spent studying the mythic boss strategies for the bosses we had not killed. Still, it was relatively restful for me: though I had to raid lead well to find good recruits, and spend hours pouring over analyses of fights, these are things I do well naturally. And most importantly, I did not need to constantly worry about a wipe, or loot distribution, or whatever, causing people to say we suck and want to quit the guild, or incite others to leave. Those few days also involved my talking to recruits for hours, to make sure they knew what sort of a place they were joining (I would prefer not to accidentally recruit someone like Abc), and the nice thing about that was that I would get a lot of compliments on my leadership. The contrast between the affirmation from recruits and PUGs, and the constant criticism from my own officers and guildies was palpable. And I thrived on the compliments, the approval.

Though I was personally in a better spot for those days, I believe it was then that Amber’s clique started gradually imploding. Apparently Allie and Abc were jealous of the promotion Isam and Judy got, and concluded they must have gotten it because they kissed up to me. Then, because Judy later said that Asterix was not directing his “shut up, shut up” at Abc, thereby essentially siding with me, Abc unfriended her and started criticizing her to the others in their clique behind her back. Amber was caught in the middle, but leaned towards Abc’s side because she appeared to care the most about his approval. Abc seemed very good at the whole mean girl/queen bee thing, as he had also previously tried to exclude Amber behind her back by saying she was a weak player (only to be thwarted by other members of his clique who refused to drop her), but Amber would get extremely stressed out if she ever felt Abc was annoyed at her. I am to this day amazed at how one person can treat another so manipulatively yet still keep their loyalty, while my sincerity gets ignored. Anyway, this was the beginning of a schism and distrust between former friends that would keep growing, and eventually cause huge problems weeks and months down the road (only after almost all their members and those their influence spread to left, often in hugely harmful ways to the guild, did we become free from the toxicity their clique-oriented ways caused).

Amber’s clique’s drama aside, Syzygy was now doing great. Because of how well we already performed in our first 3 raid days of mythic, we were suddenly the place to be. People were applying to us left and right. And I was still picking up good recruits like crazy. Over those 3 days, added with the recruits we had gotten earlier that week, we had 15 good recruits. Fifteen. FIFTEEN! That was more than the total number of good people we had just one week ago! We now had over 30 people for our raid team (the max amount of raiders for heroic), and I could at last start feeling like I did when I raid led PUGs: I could make leadership choices by deciding what was best for the group, instead of catering to the whims of the selfish, or being afraid to hold people responsible for their bad actions. In truth, I did not even need to do that now: when the bench is overflowing, people police themselves better, to avoid behaving in ways that may get them sat. Of course, this still did not mean things were fine and dandy. The officers were not really happy with the fact that we over-recruited, since it meant more to manage. And certainly, it was bound to create a different type of stress for me, since I would need to juggle more people, each with their varying personal situations. Sitting people who did not feel they should be benched was also a sure way to create drama. To try to head this off before it happened, I wrote in our guildstuffs channel:

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Three days without being weighted down by people in guild worked wonders on me. I was feeling like my positive self again, starting to wonder if we should not skip farming heroic entirely the next week, and dreaming of a timeline where we could perhaps do the mythic raid fast enough to kill the seventh and last boss in about 3 weeks, by 10/22, my birthday. It’d be a birthday present to myself. I also looked into extraneous stuff like buying a second monitor for myself, to improve my quality of life. It was a rare moment when I was able to enjoy life.

Then we had our fourth, and last raid day, of the week. We tried to kill Ursoc, and failed. Ursoc is a ‘dps check’ boss. It is the type of boss where you can perform all mechanics perfectly, but if your raid’s numbers are not high enough, you will reach a scripted moment in the fight where the boss ‘berserks’. When the boss berserks, the raid is wiped. Therefore, the point of the boss is to be able to do a large amount of numbers to ‘make the dps check’ within a certain number of minutes (5 min for Ursoc). We did not make the dps check. There are a few factors in making this dps check. One factor is players’ ability to perform their rotation of spells well and put out good numbers, and while this was something we would have done terribly just a week ago, by this time, we were actually fine. Another important factor is the how much players leveled up their artifact traits, something you can only do if you spend a lot of time in game killing enemies or doing quests to gain experience. The biggest factor, though, is having good enough gear (the reason for which top guilds do split runs: top guilds had 5 times the gear we had, because they did 5 split runs, while our 2 split runs fizzled to no splits). It was a bit demoralizing to not make the dps check, and we spent the rest of the night practicing the Dragon boss (the one we worked on our second night), with no kill. So our last raid day was wipe after wipe with no hope of a kill. Despite this all, I was able to ignore Abc’s snarky comments (or perhaps he kept most of them for Amber’s clique’s private chat), and still feel ok. After all, we had a lot of good people now, and all we needed was more gear!

At the end of raid, I spoke up about it. I made sure the entire group felt what I felt. I utilized every tool I had. I spoke in exclamation points. Guys! The ONLY thing holding us back is gear and artifact level! Do everything you can before we get back to Ursoc in a couple days, to level up your artifact and get more gear! If you work hard, maybe you can get 1 or 2 artifact levels! If you do that we will kill the boss! And you have to do that! Because if you don’t, well we have 30 people now, I will only bring in the people who do! So everyone! Make sure you work hard and get that gear, level up those traits, show this guild and show the world that we won’t let anything hold us back!!!

And so, with tentative hope and a hell of a lot of enthusiasm, we faced our second mythic week.