Guild Update, and Matticus’ Challenge

Matticus has issued a challenge to me, among others, to post an article springing from the headlines in a recent issue of Cosmopolitan. (No, I have no clue why in the world Matt is reading Cosmo; unfortunately, I saw his post too late to include it in my 20 Questions for him.)

Here’s Matt’s challenge, in its entirety:

Cosmo’s Headline: The Silent Way He Shows He’s Whipped

Okay, Kestrel. I know you’re also a GM with your own flock of geese. How’s this?

“The Silent Way Guildies Show They’re Whipped”

We want raiders to be whipped, don’t we? Who wants a bunch ofuncontrollable DPSing players anyway? Surely there must be some obvioussigns.

Unfortunately, I really can’t answer that, for several reasons. First…we don’t raid. We don’t even do 5-mans anymore. The time has come to admit we’re a dysfunctional guild, and have been since several members split from us a couple months ago. Since then, three of our oldest, non-founder members, have removed at least one character from the guild to join another (all those who left joined the same raiding guild).

One of my co-founders is pretty upset at what she characterizes as poaching, especially since the latest to leave related how she was being pressured quite a bit by the earlier departees (including, it should be noted, her husband) to /gquit and join the other guild. I suppose, in a strict sense, our members were poached. On the other hand, we’re a very small guild, and we weren’t really offering the opportunity for those who wanted, to progress into end-game (raiding) content.

As the GM, when I first inherited the position, I scheduled several instance runs. Many of those were at the request of individuals who needed them for one reason or another. But when those people didn’t even show at the scheduled times, it gets a little hard to run a non-PUG. Since then, I’ve really kept a low profile (and have discovered battlegrounds, as well). I could see the writing on the wall.

Perhaps I should have done more to keep people (the last three to move characters still have many alts in), and to keep them interested. However, I tend to put people off when I try to advocate something: I’m pretty direct, and sugar-coating is not one of my spec talents. Perhaps we should have recruited, but we’re a close-knit group of friends and friends-of-friends.

The encouraging thing is, there’s been little to no "drama" in all this (although I guess as the nominal Guild Master, I’d have appreciated some kind of message as people /gquit…but that’s just me, and it’s not a huge deal). I think we’ve all remained friends, although to me, loyalty to a guild is an important part of the game.

On a positive note, we’ve made an acquaintance in another guild, and havedone a BG and an instance with her. We’re on each others’ friends list,so I’m hopeful at the least we’ll be able to hook up for moreinstances. And we can certainly group with those still in the guild,although we see them infrequently on their in-guild characters.

So, where do we go from here? I think the three of us remainingfounders will be discussing that in detail soon. For myself, I reallydo want to run more instances. I do want to get keyed for Kara (patch2.4 notwithstanding) and run Kara. The other two founders are bothclose online friends, so no decision will be made unilaterally. At thispoint, though, I’m not sure of their motivations and goals; that’ssomething we definitely need to discuss.

One thing I am sure of, however: This experience has only reinforced my aversion to being a GM. I really didn’t want this position, but at the time, I wasn’t prepared to say "no," if for no other reason than to minimize the drama when my predecessor left. I could be an officer, class lead, or similar, but I don’t enjoy being the point where the buck-passing stops. Life’s too damn short for that kind of grief.

So while I appreciate Matt’s gesture in trying to get me to write something, this will have to do instead of his suggested topic. Not that interesting for most, I expect, but somewhat cathartic for me. I’ll keep you posted on where we go from here.