I’ve realized that in taking up this guild master/raid leader role, my time needs to be somewhat strictly portioned out to be able to do my job decently well. There have been many times that I’ve strayed from my set schedule, usually resulting in a poor performance as leader/manager of this entrepreneurship, which spirals into a vicious cycle of bad. So I am now going to adhere to this schedule far more than I did before.

Tuesday~Friday

08:00~09:45

Wake up, read news, possibly deal with any guild issues or attendance issues that cropped up while I was asleep.

09:45~13:00

Weekday Raid

13:00~16:00

Talk to whoever needs to talk to me after raid. Do whatever in-game things I need to do, from grinding to doing dungeons and quests to pugging to making pots and flasks, etc.

16:00~20:00 or 22:30

Work. Find time while at work to write a post logging what happened that day and mule over issues good and bad. And basically sort out my thoughts about the raid.

20:00 or 22:30~23:00

Go over logs. Prep and research fights. Deal with guild stuff that requires sit down time for long conversations/monologues.

23:00~sleep

Work out, unwind, shower, have sex?

Saturday~Sunday

08:00~09:00

Wake up, read news, possibly deal with any guild issues that cropped up while I was asleep.

09:00~11:45

Either strat meetings, or pug raids, or if no need of either, then do WoW for fun or else just relax.

11:45~16:00

Weekend Raid

16:00~dinner

Talk to whoever needs to talk to me after raid. Do whatever in-game things I need to do, from grinding to doing dungeons and quests to pugging to making pots and flasks, etc.

dinner~sleep

Personal real life time. Friends, lovers, alone time.

Monday

Day off from WoW

So since a healer and a dps suddenly had to step out, we’ve found another healer and dps that seem completely capable of replacing them. Both performed very well in raid today. 

However, that doesn’t seem to be enough. One of our other healers had posted out today, so we were already low. Another healer was previously involved in drama and apparently decided to just stop showing up. And one more healer had a sudden power outage and couldn’t even tell us what happened. We went from 5 healers to 2 today, and we couldn’t do many bosses as a result. Two people stepped up to healing, from normally dps roles, and they did very well. It was thanks to them that we were able to do the bosses we did today. But it wasn’t enough for us to do the later bosses that we should totally have been able to do. 

Some things worry me: 1) are people getting burned out? Today’s atmosphere was a bit better, but I could also tell there were people who were annoyed we weren’t progressing. 2) will the new recruits not want to stay since they may feel upset about our roster issues? 3) I obviously need more people, am I going to get them in time? And then 4) there’s the latent issue of certain guildies who have been upset at me because I didn’t punish people involved in drama, and I know I haven’t made them feel like I felt their advice recently was great and I wanted to take it.

Some things that I think are good. 1) I was able to chat a bit today, taking a page from what I did during the achievement run yesterday, and just asking people crossword puzzle questions, which I think amused some people. 2) there are some people I’ve been worried about who seem more likely to think well enough of themselves they’re more apt to wonder if we are good enough for them, but many of them seemed positive and to get along very well with others in guild, so unless things are terrible I don’t think they’d leave. 3) some people seem very motivated to help me, and are encouraging, and talking to them is lovely.

Sigh. Feels a bit like slogging forward, but at least I’m a tiny bit less in a rut today than I was yesterday! 

I’ve decided no matter how short it boring, I must do one post every day I do wow. It’s way past time I kept a log of my daily experiences, so that I can document this process, whether it ends successfully or not.

I guess from that start you can tell I’ve been less than positive lately. I think it may be slight burnout, and that’s probably rubbing off on my guildies and just in general making the whole situation worse and worse.

Today not enough people showed up for us to progress. Same thing happened last Thursday. And the posts to not showing up until late came last minute, so it was quite hard to find a way around it. We normally would have been able to, but 2 of our raiders quit wow a couple of days ago, and though we have found possible replacements, the earliest they would be able to join is next raid week, so this last day has been incredibly rough. And since many people (including myself) are already experiencing some exhaustion, seeing several people not show up is much harder to take than it normally would be.

Instead of the 6 hours of progression we were expecting to get this week on mythic star auger, the 8th boss out of 10, we got half an hour or less of progression on it. 

Things I can think of that I may have done to contribute to this include:

1) hyping everyone up for the earlier bosses, but not being prepped enough as raid leader, and thereby not being able to pull us through with only a few pulls. Instead we went through many many pulls, where people stayed patient on the surface, but were probably privately very frustrated.

2) being exhausted dealing with setting up the weekend group, drama in the weekday group, and having guildies complain to me and telling me they don’t like or agree with my decisions. This exhaustion is lowering my motivation to prep well by far, and when I’m not in wow, instead of wanting to prep, I just want to do anything that’s non-wow-related and just relaxing. So I become less well prepped, and I feel worse about myself, and this ultimately makes everything become a vicious cycle.

3) not giving into the desires of people in guild, who were offended during the drama, to punish those they feel deserve it. I worry that these people are so unhappy that they didn’t get the satisfaction and vindication of knowing those they felt behaved badly were punished, that they are also less incentivized to want to do well. 
Ultimately, the only thing I can do is get myself out of this rut. 

So our roster has problems now. Our roster had problems in EN and in ToV, and we got through it and did better than anyone expected us to. I have always been able to give us a roster of enough people to pull through (even though I have never stopped worrying that the rapid turnover is a reflection on my poor leadership skills). 

So I feel my raid leading has been inadequate and I haven’t been prepped enough. Well stop whining about it and feeling bad about it and start prepping. 

So I’m exhausted. Did I gain 20 white hairs in a week like I did at the start of EN? No. I lived through that, I pulled us through that. I’ll live through this. I’ll pull us through this. 
In the end, instead of doing progression today, we did achievement runs. Putting aside the huge disappointment I feel in not being able to progress, as well as the nagging worry about the effect on morale, the achievement run in itself was fun. I was able to relax in a raid I raid lead for the first time in over half a year probably. I was able to enjoy myself, feel decently good about myself, and chat with people and enjoy the conversation. 

Yes. We’ll pull through. And even in times this disheartening and this scary for us, moments of fun and enjoyment did flash through. That’s the main thing I need to keep in mind.

Sometimes, after dealing with a particularly stressful day in WoW, I only have enough energy and mental strength to lay boneless as a jellyfish in bed.

Recently, I’ve been under a lot of pressure. I think my mind is fraying. I keep focusing on the consequences of what negative people are doing to my guild, parsing through what people say to figure out how much they themselves are upset and how much heir upset is enflamed by other negative people. I start worrying more about how to keep these negative people happy, so they don’t create more drama, instead of how to do right by the majority of my guild. 

Xavius, the last boss, was a time when this came to a head. Many of the decisions I made during Xavius was more about trying to not upset a couple potential troublemakers, rather than doing what my principles require and what’s best for the guild. I was already frazzled by a negative player leaving the guild the day before, and before doing that complaining so much to one of my officers he lost a lot of trust in me (the second officer this player, with others, has done that to). Then, I’ve had healers becoming very clique-y, making other people feel excluded and disliked, and knowing they’re doing this but apparently not caring, and also being so negative others wonder if they are too unhappy to stay. On top of that, I had died maybe 2, 3 times earlier that night during the second to last boss cenarius, and at least 2 of them were my fails. Even if my damage is low I usually manage to still be extremely survivable and do very well on mechanics, so that I normally do not feel like a burden to my raid group. But that night I failed twice, maybe thrice. And worst, I had problems with my game (my weakauras tracking my resources wasn’t working :(), making it extremely difficult to do what I needed to do to damage the boss well. With all this in the background, an event happened that upset me so much, I was either close to tears or in tears during a good half hour when I was supposed to lead my raid.

People were making a mistake that I felt was easy to avoid making. Assigned people had 5 seconds to get to a particular spot, and stand in particular beams of light, at specific timings during the boss fight. People were missing it. Not making it. For 5 seconds they couldn’t get to where they needed to go, even though it takes at most 3 seconds from where most were standing. If people didn’t get in, we all died. So the next time it was going to happen, I said “DON’T mess up this time”. Then, I was standing next to one but outside of it, and the person who was supposed to be in the light was in, but for some reason I was chosen instead of the person it was supposed to choose. And then one of my players said immediately (5 seconds after I told everyone to not mess up), “but YOU just messed up!”. It was just a small event, and people have every right to call me out if I fail. The problem is I didn’t mess up that time, but my explanation could be no better than “I swear that I was fine, it must be a problem with the animation”. Sounds like an excuse doesn’t it? Sounds like I just made a demand of people, insinuating they were messing up on something far too easy, then I messed up, then I gave some trumped up stupid excuse for it instead of owning up. I feel it’s extremely important for a leader to show she’s willing to admit her mistakes. I think this situation put me in a light where I felt that I was more a tyrant than a leader worthy of respect. 

So things, for me, began to snowball out of control and I lost my judgement for the rest of that half hour to an hour. And though the above situation only portrayed me in a light where I seemed to be a bad leader, my lapses in judgement after that were truly incidences of bad leadership. 

First of all, I was so upset by feeling that my raiders needed to call me out the way they did, and wondering if this meant that in my raiders’ minds, I was a burden they had to carry simply because I was their tyrant raid leader, that I basically stopped raid leading for a few pulls. I stopped making callouts, I stopped analyzing mistakes after fights. Then I started crying a bit. God so retarded. Then, I pulled myself back together enough to make some callouts again, but I didn’t make any effort to mask how upset I was, and plenty of people noticed i was feeling down, even if no one knew I was crying. Probably job number 1 of a leader is to keep morale up. I did the opposite there. For what? For my personal emotions? Since when have my emotions been more important than the good of the guild? Even when my father died, even when I found out someone I loved had lied to me for a year, even when I was sick and had a high fever, I had never EVER allowed my personal problems to affect my raid groups. And this??? This little eansy weansy baby setback?? For this, I stopped doing one of the most important of my jobs as a raid leader???? I still am in shock over how I could have allowed that to happen.

Second, one of our healers had been doing badly all night. On xavius it was especially prominent, he missed the light beam about half the times he was supposed to go. Each time anyone misses we all pretty much die. It’s ok for people to have bad nights, but I really should have sat him. I had healers on the bench who would have and could have come in. But, he was the one who called me out in that  fashion. He is also our healing officer. He is the person whom I should rely on to keep things going well in the healing group, and to not let negative people get out of hand and create toxicity or lower morale too much. I didn’t sit him. I was afraid to sit him. I was afraid it would stir up more drama in the healing circle, and they would become even more negative and he would no longer be willing to try to keep things constructive. I was afraid, since he was the one who called me out like that, that he was one of those in whose minds I was a burden to carry. And I was afraid that by sitting him it would turn him against me. I have dealt with sitting some of the people I care the most for in game, and like the most. I have gotten sick because I did that and it upset them so much they almost stopped being friends with me, and that in turn upset me so much I got sick. I have never let fears of a personal backlash hold me back from sitting someone who should have been sat. And therefore I have always been able to say with complete honesty that we go by a pure meritocracy. But this was not an instance of meritocracy. It was the opposite. I allowed the needs and desires of a few, negative people, to dictate how I made decisions in that half to one hour. After this, I barely know how to face my raiders again. I wonder, how do they trust me to be just, to be fair again?

My last lapse of judgement is how I ended that night. We could have finished. Finishing that night would have made our ranks much higher, since we wouldn’t have to wait another 3 days to finish the instance, when we obviously could finish it much earlier if it weren’t for my bad leadership. I should have made everyone stay later. I didn’t because of that healer and one other player who, whenever we extend, gets really really upset. To the point where the people she complains to will tell the whole raid that “there are people who don’t want to be here”. I could have chosen to let her go and bring in the healers on the bench, who would’ve performed perfectly well. But I was worried that extending the times would upset her whether or not I replaced her with someone. And I am decently confident that once she is upset, she will have no problems complaining to anyone she’s close to and turning them against me. I feel she is not the type of person who tries to avoid influencing one person against another. So, as with the healer officer above, I let her desires dictate my decisions with what to do as a group. 

Wow, writing this is tiring and upsetting, even if I feel it helps me release the feelings. Just overall, I am ashamed of how I led that night. I’ve discussed apologizing to my guild, but the advice I’ve gotten was that it would lower morale or create the precise guild drama that I was trying to avoid. So no luck trying to do penance that way. The best that I can get out of this, according to the advice and what I can see, is to take good note of my mistakes, and make sure it never, ever happens again in the future. 

Ganbarre, watashi!!!!!!!

Went really really well. We performed as only very good players do. I was elated for awhile. But now I’m back to worrying. Will it last? If we go from very good to mediocre performance next week, will people start leaving again? Will those who said they will transfer really transfer in time? 

Also, I’ve been trying out other things like having separate guild officers and raid officers. In my mind I like to keep these things separate, where one group helps me with guild stuff and taking care of overall guild direction, while the other group helps me with the raid stuff, and being responsible for helping each and every person improve. But since most guilds don’t do this, I worry that the officers will start feeling that if they don’t get to participate in all officer (guild or raid) related stuff, this means I’m not valuing them or trusting them enough. On the other hand, I really don’t want 6 or more people giving me their advice about all the things in the guild and the raid. How will I manage to do this without making people feel unvalued, hurt, or left out? 

When, oh when, can I feel like I don’t need to constantly worry about someone being upset and leaving, or instigating others to leave? When, oh when, can I relax and actually feel a sense of contentment about what I’m doing, instead of going from elation to dread, from dread to elation? 

Is incredibly difficult. Oh my god. Some people know me and will stick by me. Some people don’t and won’t. The first week of raiding isn’t over yet and already 2 people have left. I’ve gotten another 5, 6 to join already, by spending on average 5, 6 hours a day doing pug raids to recruit. We need 20+ good people. We need a ton extra so everyone feels they cannot slack off or else they would be replaced. The extra people are people I need to be responsible for too, make sure they don’t feel they’ve wasted their time coming here and not have a raid to be in. 

And everyday, I worry someone will decide not to stick it out to see what I can build, with time. I worry someone will leave. Maybe we will be at the point where we only need 2 more people to be quite strong indeed. Maybe I’ll find 1, and if 1 original person leaves, I’ll be stuck in the situation of needing to find 2 again. Only then I also need to deal with this leaving affecting everyone’s morale. I’ll also need to deal with incorporating a player into a spot that everyone was used to seeing someone else in. So instead of purely making the group stronger, replacing a strong person who just left will mean, even if I get someone just as strong in, the overall group will most likely be weaker. And I really probably only needed to find 2 more good people, and we would’ve had a really great group. And by then people will probably feel like it’s never going to happen. Stuff like this. Everyday, I worry about this. 

I try to show people my effort. And I think a good amount appreciate it. But still I worry. Few people come to me and and tell me they will stick through it with me. Most people come to me and tell me if it doesn’t look better soon they’ll leave. I feel there is so little leeway, so little tolerance for me to make this work. And I really feel, every single day, thay I’m pulling this guild together and bringing us through everyday by the skin of my teeth.

I’m trying to build a community. And it seems to me that this type of community I’m trying to build is very difficult, too difficult almost. I want people who are considerate, nice, and respectful of one another. This part isn’t too hard huh. Yet I also want them to be people who ask a lot of themselves, want to be great, and are motivated to do whatever it takes to be great. This part is much harder. Lastly, I want them to all come together and be challenged as a group to do great stuff. And this makes it well nigh impossible (so it seems right now), if I want to incorporate both of the characteristics I mentioned above. When your success is related to your team members’ performances, and you want to be great, it’s hard not be demanding or dissatisfied if team members disappoint or annoy you in certain things. And humans always had trouble realizing that they may disappoint or annoy others in certain other things. 

Yet, I’m trying to build a community where everyone strives to be great, and is still tolerant of others, even when others can affect their greatness. Where are these people? Why does it seem, right now, that they are so hard to find? 

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.

I’m gonna assume you know the basics of raiding, and this is just to help you get a jump start on the Hellfire Citadel raid.

This fight has 3 bosses: Bloodboil, Jubei’thos, and Dia. Dia shields the other two when she gets in 25 yards of them, so you have to tank her apart or kill her first. They each do different mechanics.

Bloodboil puts a bloodboil dot on the 5 farthest players that I don’t really notice on heroic. He also does fel rage on a random non-tank raid member where he fixates them, and they get to do like 200% damage to him. Healers need to watch this person, and this person needs to make sure he’s far from Dia so the shield doesn’t stop them from doing pretty damage numbers to him. After awhile he does an ability that makes him leap from one spot to another in the room, doing damage to anyone near his landing spot. These spots are telegraphed by earthy swirly animations on the ground, so they’re easy to stay away from. When Bloodboil goes below 30% health, he puts debuffs on people that lowers their max health, and this stacks. It goes away after he dies though.

Jubei’thos whirls around sometimes and does raid damage. He also does fel blade where a boomerang gets shot out in the direction of an arrow on the ground and then comes back. Just stay out of that arrow until you see the blade come back and you’ll be fine. After awhile he does mirror images, where he disappears and splits into images all around that do the same thing he does. Just watch the arrows and kill them, cuz killing them also hurts jubei’thos himself. When he goes below 30% health, he does wicked strikes which is sudden aoe damage to half the raid every once in awhile, and this continues even after he dies.

Dia does a tank hit called void bolt that does pretty big damage. She also puts a dot on a few people called mark of the necromancer that ticks harder the longer it stays on a person. It can be dispelled, but once it does it jumps to someone else. The only way for it to fall off is when she casts reap, then it falls off in the form of a void zone about 5 yards in radius, that damages anyone standing in it. So avoid dispelling if it’s healable, and when reap happens run away from the raid if you have the mark to drop your zones out of the way. After awhile she’ll do these ghost things that fly across the room over people’s heads. Try not to be under these ghosts cuz they do a good amount of damage if they fly over you. When Dia goes below 30% health she stops doing reap and applies her dot to half the raid, so from then on it’s rough for healers.

On heroic it’s basically drop your mark of the necromancer away during reap, keep Bloodboil and Jubei’thos away from Dia (especially if you get fel rage), and watch out for the arrows (the blades) and the ghosts during the ghost phase. Also watch out for wicked strikes after jubei’thos goes low health, it hurts. Everything else is simple don’t stand in bad and kill whatever you can kill or whoever your raid leader wants you to prioritize. Most groups do do Bloodboil > Jubei’thos > Dia.