A couple months ago I was hearing a lot of voices saying they wanted to have a guild rated battlegrounds (rbg) team, which requires 10 people. The leaders of the guild seemed to already be stretched too thin to host it, and no one who wanted it seemed to be willing to take responsibility for it, so I decided to host it to help out.

Since then I have gotten quite busy with recruitment as well, since a couple people flaked out of raid (though thankfully after maybe spending 70 hours on it over the course of a few weeks, we are stable again now…. though my trauma never lets me feel safe: how long before someone else flakes?). I’ve continued making sure these rbgs happen though, even going so far as risking losing money in my real life in order to keep my schedule clear for the times we set.

And it has been useful. People have gradually started learning rbgs more, and we are helping to get people good gear. It has also been useful as a recruitment tool, because recruits like to know they’re joining a guild that is active and has many activities. It is, indeed, positive enough of a recruitment tool it can balance out some of our negatives (which for many include late raid times, for example). So I have felt some pressure to keep this going, and worry if anything happens to make these rbgs difficult.

It’s a bit like I’m back to the days when I was the guild master/raid leader. The work required to maintain a guild that people want to join is really enormous, and the sacrifices required are innumerable. Over these past weeks I have sacrificed almost 100% of my rest time, sleep, mental health, and potentially money, to help out the guild. But all that is fine, it’s a choice I’m willing to make for the guild.

Until the cognitive dissonance happens, as I realize yet again that almost no one else is willing to even put in the minimal effort to help keep things going. When I first asked about people’s interest, 11 people said they were interested. When we started, 2 or 3 people flaked out from the very first night. Afterwards, over the course of a few weeks, 1 or 2 more people flaked out. Up to yesterday (the run being today), we had a core of 7 people left, and often needed to pug the last 3, which makes things MUCH more difficult. Then, one of the regulars (with more experience) posted out a few days ago. Then last night before I slept another person said they were no longer going to continue with us to accommodate a time change for a different group. Once I saw this I started reaching out to people who are not our current regulars to see if they could make it, to compensate for these people posting out or quitting. This reminded me of the past when every day I would reach out to all 20 of my raiders just to check if they would honor their commitment to show up the next day, then find people to replace for one day those who decided not to honor that commitment. Then a few hours before I woke up, someone else posted out today because of computer issues. This left us with only 4 regulars, and one of the regulars, on seeing this, said they would prefer not to join today then.

I woke up today early, again sacrificing sleep, to be able to host this run, and the first thing I see on my phone is that enough people are suddenly saying they can’t make it that it seems likely we will need to cancel the run. This is following on two weeks that were not smooth for us: two weeks ago we lost most fights, and last week we only won 4 out of our 7 fights. Before that, we won most of our fights, so the rbgs seemed stable then. But this is what happened during raids in the past too. When things go smooth, everyone wants to be there, and as soon as things don’t go smoothly, people start flaking. If there was no issue with just not doing the run, that wouldn’t be a problem, but with raids or rbgs, there may be people who actively want it, and now can’t do it because others flaked. There may be others like me, who sacrificed their sleep or whatever to keep their schedule free for it, and finding out last minute that the sacrifice was in vain never feels good. There may be more recruits we could attract if we had this as a more stable activity. And if people stick with it, we are bound to improve. But no. They flake. And then it’s on the leaders to deal with the fallout of cancelling the activity.

Now. None of these people are bad because of what they do. Perhaps they don’t feel like they should need to commit to this sort of team activity, or are not as committed as I am, to be willing to sacrifice other things to ensure they don’t flake. Indeed, when the time came, some of the people who said they couldn’t make it agreed to join for as much time as they could when we needed. The problem for me is that there is still a huge disparity in the effort put in to our joint venture by me versus those I work so hard for. And the bigger problem is, all this triggers my past trauma of this situation constantly reenacting, with much worse consequences: possible guild disbandment, resulting in my failing those who actually are committed; constant criticism towards me about why my guild isn’t better or worth commitment; etc. So it feels so much worse to me than if I had never had my past trauma. And today, waking up to see people flaking out and feeling the pit of stone in my stomach, to start my day…. all I could think was: oh god. It’s happening again.