Post
by Jon » August 22nd, 2007, 5:33 pm
Tig, now that's just plain comedy. Laughter is probably the best hope for our guild progessing, seriously. In music it's called LSD: 'Lead Singer Disease'. I would say that you have the MT version of that, Chuunks. Concerning forum posts I think I know you well enough now that you write under a pen-name. You may flame me or other people, but generally when raiding and being in vent there doesn't seem to be personal anger directed at folks and the raids go smoothly. You stepped up early to be MT in Kara and have done an outstanding job in the raids. As the guild progression is still in Kara, and as you are the MT in the raid group that has gone the furthest, the guild is revolving a lot on your decisions concerning raid nights/make-up/etc. So that is a reality and your decisions affect our in-game time and therefore our real lives. I have been frustrated with some decisions and brought some of those frustrations up in forum posts in the past and recently. On the other side of the coin, you were and still are a critical driving force in guild raid content, so any negative comments have to keep this awesome contribution in mind. Could some of your raiding agenda be done more diplomatically, definitely. I think it's the visibility, communication, fairness, and some diplomatic qualities of the raiding agenda you've pursued that I would have a real problem with if you were a Guild Leader. I think Dude, Fargol and some others including myself have had to do a fair amount of balancing/damage control for some of the comments, etc. that have occurred and that people have mentioned to me and I've agreed with. But you are a good MT, but MT does not equal dictator. You're still part of a larger team, albeit an important one but it's still 1 out of X people in the raid. The fact that we're having this discussion when you're not either a Raid Leader or Guild Leader probably means something. With that said keep doing what you're doing as a MT but don't try to run the guild unless you really want to step up on the other fronts and look at how to help the guild overall, not just raiding. We've known from the beginning that we're not a hardcore raiding guild, so raid progression does not equal guild goodiness, although it is a factor of enjoying the game. I believe running a guild well takes a lot of listening, or people get fed up and leave when they are ignored. I wouldn't want to personally be part of a guild that has an attitude of get on the raiding bus or take a hike...so I'm talking about balance here. It's hard to keep things inclusive and progress through content. But also having 2 successful Kara groups with members that have reached a point where they don't even want to interact with eachother is not where we need to go. I think it's safe to say we want to try 25-man content as a guild. Do we need two successful Kara groups to get there? I'd say no. We need 25 talented and geared players who can make a time commitment to raid and have organizationally crafted their class specialization as part of a larger group. Talent: Is a second Kara group going to produce talented players: no. That's just paying attention to the details and getting past a huge learning curve that this game presents (2 years in and I'm finally feeling like less of a noob). Sharing knowledge is also key as Kaittlynn mentions. That reduces the learning curve drastically for those that are willing to reflect on contructive criticism and advice. Gear: yes Kara epics can be nice for some classes. But I think we all agree good gear can come from a lot of different places. It's specializing your talents and playing style with the right gear that's the key. Time commitment: We've come far in this respect. Chuunks, you've spear-headed this extremely well and I think it'll help in the long haul. Get prepared people showing up on time. So as far as coming up with the 'organizationally crafted class specialization', what I mean by that is a good 25-man raid roster. For druids do we want a bear tank? do we want a tree or moonkin? Who's taking Improved Mark of the Wild? Where are our weak spots, do we need to recruit, who needs rep for gear, who needs nethers, who can craft, etc, etc. It's this type of thinking that can help make everyone feel included, and can then encourage more of this type of thinking...not please come to our kara raid, or please don't try to take from my kara raid. My initial raid roster was part of that attempt to get organized. My thoughts for doing a pre-BC instance was to take inventory and feel like 1 guild again. I think we're extremely ahead of the curve in this respect: we're mostly mature players who are all glad to stay flexible for the guild good. You need help getting keyed: NP. I should respec tanking instead of balance: NP. Our guild is great in this respect. Let's plan this out and take advantage of it. I've put Gruul's on the Group Calendar for 9/19 just to see if we can try. If we want to try sooner, fine I'm all for it. If anybody is interested please sign up and we'll see where we are at. Guess it was my turn to write a novel =)