Reflections From The Pond

Posts Tagged ‘Guild’

So of course I joined the train of bloggers and blog readers heading for Argent Dawn and the Single Abstract Noun guild.

My first char there was a troll shaman named Tesz, and she got as far as level 4 on that first night. I really wanted a druid, but I have this aversion against Taurens for some reason, so I settled for a shaman.

The more I thought about it though, the more I realised I really did want a druid, and a feral one to boot. Possibly my recent tanking epiphany had something to do with it, but I do have a deep fondness for furball tanks, they are just so incredibly cute, so I thought what the hell, I’m gonna spend most of the playtime shapeshifted anyway, I will roll a tauren druid!

I figured I could always race change to Troll of I will keep playing her in Cataclysm :P

And then I thought more about it and decided to roll a male tauren. That’s right, a male one! If I’m gonna be big and bulky, I’m gonna be REALLY big and bulky!

So I got me my first ever male toon, a coal black tauren with a broken horn and long braids.

Name-wise, I was a bit torn. Some of the people in the guild use their blogger nicks in some form of other, and I was thinking of using Tessy with some diacritic mark or other just for the ease of recognition (not that many people would know who I was anyway, backwater blogger as I am :-) but I have this thing with names and toons, you know.

My toons tend to take on a life of their own, and I can’t just indiscriminately give them all the same name. Tessy, that’s me! That’s one of my own names and my usual internet nick and it will forever be the name of my first WoW toon, Tessy the human rogue. I could justify creating Téssy the human Death Knight because I could see a story there, how the human rogue got lured into the Lich King’s forces and became a Death Knight, but a Tauren? There was no way I would ever gonna come up with a character sheet that enabled me to feel that a switch from human female to tauren male had some basis in reality without invoking dreadfully painful surgery or really mental magiccery, so I had to find a new name.

Argent Dawn is a role playing server, and the taurens do seem to be lightly based on native americans (to me at least, but I’m not an expert on either taurens or native americans and this should not to be taken for gospel!), so I googled for native american names starting with T – the T since I wanted to keep some connection to Tessy.

And I found Teetonka, which apparently means “he who talks too much” in Sioux, which rang true to a blogger like me (not that I talk that much, but still).

So Teetonka it was, this new huge black bull of mine, but it was not until after I’ve tanked the very first guild run into Ragefire Chasm (more on that later) as I realised how truly aptly named this bull was and how splendidly his name ties in with the Real Bear Tankatude.

To quote the Big Bear Butt,

Perhaps true Bear Tanking Attitude comes from the simple fact that, of all the classes in the game that can tank, we are the only ones that “go commando” into battle, waving our mighty wang in the enemies’ face and screaming “I’ve got a great big tonker and there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it!”

This is so true.

(On a side note, this being my first male tank because, as BBB says, the lady tanks like my beloved durid Joaquime have their own way of doing things so I have never actually waved a mighty wang in battle before, and given what I know about men, I would imagine it really takes balls of steel to wave such a precious body part around in the vicinity of sharp axes and plate clad knees. Bring it on!)

Teetonka – tauren tonk in Single Abstract Noun! That’s me!

And I levelled peacefully in Mulgore, meeting guildies all over the place, when the call went out in gchat for a Ragefire Chasm run.

I was lvl 10 at the time, doing my Bear Form quest, but due to the lack of other tanks or tanking pets of appropriate levels I actually had time to finish off this quest line and learn how to transform into a big horned brown-black bear.

Which is why I found myself outside RFC fifteen-ish minutes later, where I discovered remembered I was wearing trash gear. Not grey trash, but white trash, which was marginally better, but thanks to the skills of  a hot belf chick hunter (to be read a s hunter of the female persuasion and not hunter of chicks) and the generosity of the guildies who had put leathers in the gbank I was quickly outfitted in pretty green Embossed leatherwear, giving me a whopping 471 health and almost twice the armor!

And in we went, me and Chas the hunter (see above), our priest healer Conjaw, the mage Tahliana and the shaman Baksylyk hurrying in a bit belatedly but catching up.

Do you know that at level 10 a bear has two special spells? I had Attack, Growl and Maul on my actionbar, no way of getting up rage before a pull and I was half-convinced we were gonna wipe on the first pull and I’d be running aorund trying to hit things and people would die and people would yell at me and people would drop group.

But then I remembered that this was not a random group, this was a group of bloggers, people who seems to have their heads screwed on straight, simply put: nice people!

So we talked, we joked, we apologized when doing something silly, we worked together, I marked (I marked!) Tahliana sheeped, Chas’s pet offtanked, Conjaw healed us all, Baksylyk totemised, we all pewpewed and we progressed through this adorable pocket MC in the middle of Orgrimmar.

I either bodypulled by inching closer to the mobs – they are lvl 14! – or someone pulled for me and I Growled the mob away from them. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not and I had to run around to hit the mob. Sometimes the dps got a bit triggerhappy (or not, they were holding back as it was since I was lvl 10 and they were ranging from 10 to 15) or simply overggroed me and if I was lucky I had my Growl available for a bit of mob ping pong, if not it was a bit of a tank ping pong.

We wiped a couple of times but we cleared the entire place, finished off our quests and I had an absolute blast!

See that bear in the front? That’s me! Mah bear! (With his mighty wang well hidden, I might add,  since this blog is approved for all audiences!)

Looking forward to the next run already!

I’ve been talking about the joys of exploring before, and by exploring I do not necessarily mean just world exploring, I mean going into new instances without a clue of what will happen there.

Well, I know there will be mobs and bosses and Bad Stuff happening and hopefully some shiny things dropping now and again, but that’s about it. I don’t know if there will be fire or frost or poisons or void zones, if we need to spread out or stay together, if we need to run away from stuff or to stuff or maybe behind stuff.

The thing is, we will find out, and we will find out together, and although I know we will make mistakes and mess up I also know we will also have so much fun learning and progressing together.

Raiding is great but there will be plenty of time to research fights and follow in other peoples’ footsteps later, the thrill and joy of looking at bosses and their lairs with fresh eyes for the first time is one of my truly favourite things in game.

So you can imagine how I felt when the leaders in my raid guild announced that we were going to enter Icecrown Citadel without any prior knowledge gathering concerning its denizens and layouts! No reading up on tactics, no looking at videos, all bossmods disabled, we were just gonna walk in there and see what would happen.

And so we did.

We entered Icecrown wearing nothing but our raid gear and with our eyes and ears wide open. We looked at the scenery and the inhabitants of the place, we noted their abilities and their tricks and their way of doing things, and we talked to each other, both during the raid nights and subsequently on our forum, discussing and working out tactics of our own.

We did not one-shot all of the four bosses in ICC but within the first week we had killed them all as number 9 on our server (according to GuildOx), 6 days after the gates were opened.

The boss we had the most trouble with was Saurfang, but it was great fun to spend an entire night and a half wiping on him, working out different raid setups as our raid leaders ran around the platform deploying us chess pieces raiders to our designated spots carefully spaced so we would not splatter hurt on each other, and having the ranged practice Blood Beast targeting on melee so they would pick up the right beast immediately when they spawned and eliminate the risk of a beast running loose and hitting raiders in its way, and working out healing rotas so we would cover everyone and not lose any marked people.

We nailed our difficulties one after the other by trial and error and teamwork and after a lot of biting of dust and kicking of buckets it all slotted into place and we performed a flawless Saurfang kill even earning us the server first I’ve Gone and Made a Mess achievement!

Anyways, this post was not intended to brag about our raiding, but rather point out that it is quite possible to raid successfully without reading up on other peoples tactis or watching other peoples videos.

And, most importantly, to have a blast doing it!

I mean, these raid instances will be around for a long time, you will always have a chance of reading up on stuff but you will have only one shot at getting that fresh powerful feeling of wonder and awe and amazement that comes from experiencing something for the first time so why not make the most of it? Stuff those tactic guides and work things out with your guild, your friends! The kills will taste so much sweeter then, I promise!

Now another gate has opened in the Icecrown Citadel and we are putting on our Explorer’s hats again, bringing out our map-making kits, ready to go beat our sticks and heads and just about everything else we have available against anything that will come our way.

There be dragons there for sure, bring them on! :-)

Yesterday after a fast ICC and TOC we went to Sartharions Lair deep under the Wyrmrest Temple to get yet another Twilight Drake for a guildie.

It was not the first Sarth 3D kill I’ve been in on – I got the Twilight Vanquisher title on one of my very first raids with Adrenaline 3 months ago – but it was still a special one because this was the first time I would be allowed to roll on the mount. Because it is such a rare mount and a result of a group effort you need to have been present at at least 2/3 raids during the last three months to be eligible to roll for it, and my three month anniversary with Adrenaline had rolled by just a few days ago.

This time the RL’s decided we were going to zerg it, so four of us healers swapped to our pewpew specs and outfits, leaving only two healers to deal with keeping people alive.

After a few tests we went for it and poor Sartharion went down like a snowman in hell. He did manage to splatter the tank and a few of us around him at the end, but he was so low on hp that the remaining raiders finished him off without even breaking a sweat.

And when it was time to roll for the mount I rolled highest of all eligible members and won it!

Larúe got herself a beautiful twilight dragon!

The twilight dragons are not part of any of the usual Dragonflights - Malygos’ blue ones, Alexstrasza’s red ones, Ysera’s green ones, Nozdormu’s bronze ones or Deathwing’s black ones – but seems to be the result of a breeding program by Deathwing’s consort Sinestra in Grim Batol.

With the discovery of the twilight egg nests withing the Obsidian Sanctum, guarded by Deathwing’s henchman Sartharion, it is now suspected that Sinestra did not act alone but that Deathwing himself was involved in this breeding of twilight dragons, and that he has far-reaching plans of plunging Azeroth into a new Cataclysmic twilight…

I got a Purple Ribboned Holiday Gift in the mail some days ago, seems a guildie of mine had been overcome by the Winter Veil spirits, or had possibly drunk too much of it, and had sent all his guildies a gift!

Upon opening it, I found it contained a Club!

To me, this is the essence of Club-ness.

It is a piece of sturdy plank, considerately wrapped with cloth at the handle end so the wielder won’t get any splinters in her tender hand when whacking it around, and – like an afterthought – a huge nail is hammered through the bad end of it for extra efficiency.

This is a club made for one purpose – to hit people and to make sure they stay hit.

It is what I have always wanted! :-D

I am a member of two different guilds on two different servers.

One of them, my Aerie Peak guild where I have most of my chars and where up until a month ago I was an officer, is a  casual raid guild filled with fun and friendly and nice people.

The other one, my Stormrage guild to which I applied and got invited with my shaman a month ago, is a raid guild filled with fun and friendly and nice people.

Real life constraints (raid end times vs my getting up in the morning times) had made me unable to raid seriously with my Aerie Peak guild for a long time and as I had been working on getting around this in a variety of ways without success and the only way untried was emo’ing my way to making the raids end earlier, I decided to not put my guildies through that since everyone seemed happy with things the way they were and applied to another guild where the raid hours suited me better.

I didn’t make a secret of this, I told my fellow officers about it and when I got accepted I retired as officer, telling everyone why and where I was going with my shaman and I kept all my other chars in the guild.

I retired because it would not feel right to still have a say in what the guild was doing and where it was going when I was raiding with another guild, and also because the months of trying to make things work for me had been rather draining my energy and I wanted to relax a little and not worry about every little thing.

I still play all my chars on Aerie Peak a lot, and I raid with my Aerie Peak guild too when I get the chance. Why shouldn’t I, they are all sweet and nice and wonderful people and really I like playing with them. I would not have applied to another guild had I been able to raid with them more.

Because I like to raid. It is fun, it is challenging and it is social. I like to quest and play solo a lot too, but if I hadn’t been able to raid at all I think I would have quit the game.

So to satisfy my raid itch, I found this Stormrage guild, and you know what? They are also sweet and nice and wonderful people, they dragged me into their chat channels and bid me welcome and didn’t blow up on me when I made mistakes.

I was worried at first, they are focused about their raiding, they do 25mans and hard modes and although I really wanted to try it out I was not sure I was cut out for those challenges. But you know what, I was and it’s fun! Great fun!

So I was happy, getting to know my new guildies on Stormrage and still spending a lot of time with my guildies on Aerie Peak. I was eating my cake and having it too.

I made a point of not mixing the two guilds, if anyone asked me I answered, but I didn’t volunteer any information or told stories from one guild in the other. I do not think one guild to be better than the other, they are simply two guilds with different styles, both good.

Also, I was terrified of my Aerie Peak guildies thinking I now saw myself as teh uber raider, doing all these 25 mans hard modes, or that someone would feel I was trying to poach people from one guild to the other. So I kept quiet and kept having fun in both places.

And then drama flared in my Aerie Peak guild.

The GM left, being badly burned out, and one of the officers and raid leaders left as well, saying he is going to make a new guild dedicated to more focused 10man raiding. Nobody else have yet left but some people have signed off the raid core and it is not unlikely that more people will leave.

The new GM, a lovely and passionate and adorable person whom I really care about and who was appointed officer just before I retired, came to me in her need and asked me to help out, and perhaps even coming back to being an officer.

I would do anything to help my guild and this girl out, she is absolutely outstanding in her dedication and passion and will to make things work and a fun giggly person to boot, I might even consider being an officer advisor or similar for some time til everythings sorted out, if they want me.

But I am not going to leave my Stormrage guild. I told her this, and it was perfectly ok.

And as my Stormrage guild is recruiting and could use a few more people for our coming hard mode attempts, I also told her that I might ask a few of the people who left, if any, to join me on Stormrage. Not asking them before they left, or even hinting that I would ask them, or in any way leaning or persuading or poking someone to leave. Not poaching on my Aerie Peak guild, because the people I’d ask would not be in the guild anymore, but rather poaching on the guild my ex-guildie is forming.

Logical, and clever, don’t you think? Any people leaving my Aerie Peak guild now is not leaving because I asked them, they are leaving of their own accord, right?

I wish it wouldn’t make me feel like such a rat.

You know one surefire way to make me start to tremble and feel icy clammy slithers of dread down my spine?

It is when someone I know comes up to me and says “we need to talk”. Guess I am one of those that see the glass as half empty because that “we need to talk” opener, however worded, always fills me with apprehension of the bad kind.

So when one of the officers in my new guild whispers me just before raid start and ask if I have a minute to spare because she wants to talk to me you can imagine what happened. Did someone suddenly turn down the temperature in the room?

I know I haven’t been slacking too much in this last month I have raided with my shammy. I have made some a few a lot of mistakes, but I like to think I have learned from them and did not do them twice, and also think that I managed to do a few many some things right from the start.

So this talk a month after I got invited to the guild when I happen to know after having read somewhere that a new members’ trial period is a month should not be something to be afraid of, right? If I sucked badly they would have told me something before, right? Right? Right?

Still, I shiver a little as she asks me how I like it in the guild.

I reply truthfully – I like it a lot! The people are fun and friendly and nice and helpful, the raid leaders are calm and cool and I have a lot of fun raiding there.

And then she replies to me, saying not the words I dreaded but those I hoped to hear – they are happy with me and would like to offer me a full membership!

Yes! Yes, please! Thank you!

I still tremble but as I get promoted from Trialist to Raider in Adrenaline those clammy shivers are now replaced by a broad smile and tears welling up in my eyes and I jump up and down in excitement.

I R Raider!

Look at these words below and tell me what colour the letters of the words have:

Blue

Green

Red

Black

You got it right at the first try? Congratulations!

Me, I always stumble on this, I start to say that the letters of the word Blue are blue although I clearly see they are red, and it takes an actual effort of will to look past the word itself and say the colour.

Red! The letters are red, dammit!

For me, the words clearly have much more weight than the color they are written in, I have trouble un-seeing the semantic value of the words and see them as colours only, devoid of any other inherent meaning.

I got reminded of this after looking at a few different guild applications lately (both of the guilds I am in are recruiting and new applications pop up every week) – some people write long, well disposed applications which seems to indicate that they have put a lot of thought and effort into it and really want to join, and some people copy-paste the application template and answer in leet-speak and monosyllabics, yes, no, u and i, things like that, and of course capital letters or periods are nowhere to be seen, which seems to indicate that this person wrote the application on his/her 5 minute coffee break and isn’t really that interested in joining this particular guild.

But am I (and many others with me) biased here too, getting fooled by the semantics and failing to see the colours?

Now, I don’t like leet speak. I don’t like people skipping out on capital letters and punctuation marks. I accept that people use it as a shorthand in chats and in forum posts – I even do that myself – but a guild application is not something you need to rush through. I doubt many guilds are that choked for applicants that a few extra seconds spent typing ‘you’ instead of ‘u’ are going to seriously impede your chances of getting invited.

Leet speak is adequate for short fast typing but for anything lenghtier than a few sentences it sucks and I hope your application will contain more than that. You don’t necessarily have to do like me and orate on forever and ever about just anything, but I guess most guilds have a “tell us about yourself”-section or similar in their application templates, and I hope you manage to flesh ut out a bit.

And unlike what many people seem to think, grammar and spelling and punctuation is not something invented by sadistic language teachers, it is actually a very useful tool when you want to communicate with people. The punctuation breaks the information flow up into easily digestable chunks, the capital letters helps by making it easier for the eye to see where new sentences start and also by flagging some words as more important, namely names with their initial capital letters, the spelling makes people understand what you are talking about, is it faces or faeces or fascists?

So, having said that I think it weighs in your favor if you make an intelligible application, if you use the language tools available (including spellchecker) and wrap it up nicely in small easily readable and digestable chunks.

That is only half the work though, the other half is having something to say, and you know what, brevity is not necessarily a bad thing.

But since the application you put in will in many cases be the first contact the majority of the guild have with you and their only way of determining what you are like and if you will fit in the guild it is not in your own interest to try to make your personality show through the lines, to give your possible new guild mates a prewiev of what you are like? Isn’t that rather hard to do that if you limit yourself to the barest minimum?

I think I can get over my aversion to distaste for leet speaks and spelling errors and such if the applicant manages to convey a real interest in the guild, a true wish to be part of the fun and has shown willing to put some effort into it.

In that case I think – I hope – I can see beyond the semantics and actually see the true colour of the application, and in it a hint of the true colours of the person behind it.

There are many guides and articles out there on how to successfully run a WoW guild or how to be a good guild leader, most of them oriented towards what is good for the guild and how to keep the guildies happy.

But what about you? What is good for the actual person(s) running the guild? What kind of traits do you need to have in order to survive the ordeal of running a guild?

Because running a guild is an ordeal, make no mistake about that. It is time-consuming, most often thank-less and sometimes you wonder why you even bother. And of course sometimes it is a source of fun and pride and joy and happiness, which is why you keep doing it.

So, from my own limited experience of being an officer in two different casual guilds, I have accumulated some wisdom that I want to share with any prospective guild leaders out there.

Apart from the usual management and people skills you will need a generous helping of some more defensive traits as well, like

Thick Hide

No matter how friendly the guildies are in general, you will on occasion get attacked by people who think you are doing things the wrong way, or doing the wrong things, with a chip on their shoulder or who think that you just generally suck. 

They may be right or they may be wrong but rest assured they are nasty and viscious. They are not trying to help you solve something, they are just out for the kill and for boosting their own egos by blaming their own failures and shortcomings and mistakes on someone else.

These people will try to belittle you and to make you feel bad, and they will inevitably attack you as a person and not as an officer or representative for the guild leadership.

You will need a rather thick hide to be able to see it for what it is and not take it personal.

Infinite patience

When something happens, the shit hits the fan and people start screaming at each other, you will need to keep cool and calm and not get dragged into the fighting yourself.

It is difficult to not go into defensive mode or to start pointing out what people did wrong while glossing over your own actions, but you will have to stay away from that. If necessary, if it is something that involves the entire guild or is very visible to everyone, you can state a small summary of what has happened, making sure to keep everything matter-of-fact and to keep all value-laden or emotional words out.

And then sleep on it. A couple of days or a week. Very few important things need to be decided on the spot so do not, I repeat do not,  make any hasty decisions while you are still upset, do not make any public posts or quit as an officer or quit the guild in a rage over something. This will only add to the drama and make the mending of fences much more difficult.

Give it a few days to calm down, and most likely you will see things differently when you are cool and collected. Everything does not need to be fixed right now, many things will fix themselves with time.

And when guildies whisper you about it, or whisper you about anything, complaining or arguing, be polite and patient but answer neutrally, do not let yourself get drawn into polarised explaining and defending.

Remember, patience is a virtue, not only when it comes to having patience with others but also when it comes to being patient with yourself.

Selective Memory

It is all too easy to let the bad parts take over and dominate your impression of the guild leading. After all, the bad parts are the ones most infected and associated with strong emotions and hurt and even tears.

The thrill and joy of downing a boss for the first time can easily be overshadowed by having to resolve an argument over the loot distribution following it.

The satisfaction of slotting the raid groups in a good and fair way can easily be forgotten when someone whines about being benched.

The praise and cheers from your guildies about you and your guild leading can all too easily dwindle to nothing when some malcontent calls you names.

You need to have a very selective memory to not let the good and fun parts drown in the bad small-mindedness, because if that happens you will burn out real fast.

These three traits are necessary if you want to be able to run a guild and stay sane in the process.

I am not sure I have them all. Or, more truthful, I am not sure I have enough of them all.

I love riddles.

I can spend serious amounts of time solving logic problems, puzzles, crosswords, any such things.  And I am especially fond of riddles like this famous Zebra puzzle:

Facts:

There are five houses in five different colours in a row.

In each house lives a person of a different nationality.

These five owners drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of
cigarette and keep a certain pet.

No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of smoke or drink
the same drink.

Clues:

The Englishman lives in the red house.

The Spaniard owns the dog.

Coffee is drunk in the green house.

The Ukrainian drinks tea.

The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.

The Old Gold smoker owns snails.

Kools are smoked in the yellow house.

Milk is drunk in the middle house.

The Norwegian lives in the first house.

The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.

Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.

The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice.

The Japanese smokes Parliaments.

The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Question: Who owns the zebra and who drinks water?

(If you are too lazy to figure this out yourself the solution can be found here.)

Now, some months ago when I was a brand new officer in AT I offered to help out with raid preparations and sorting the groups out, also known as raid slotting. At first, I was really clueless and unsure about how to do this and the raid leaders had to give me a lot of pointers and switch people around to get viable raid groups.

But I got the hang of it eventually, and these days I most often manage to sort our two 10-man raid groups on my own and our raid leaders seem to think they are ok (at least they don’t object too much ;P).

And I’ve come to realise why I really like doing this raid slotting. It is a puzzle, a logic problem!

And it is even more complex than the one above because I have another dimension to keep in mind: time. I need to keep track of past and future attendance, to get a fair and even slotting for the raid groups I am currently sorting. Complex, many-sided puzzle… me likes!

So, check this example out:

Facts:

AT guild raids are held on Wednesdays and Mondays.

These raids’ primary venue is Ulduar.

There are two raids with 10 players in each raid.

In each raid there will be two tanks, three healers and five dps’ers.

Raid Core (RC) players will have priority on going to Ulduar and on raid spots overall these nights, with the option of offering their spot to a guildie or alt if the raid goes to Naxx instead.

Players not in the RC will be rotated in as fairly as possible, considering gear levels and number of past raids attended.

Rotating RC players out of Uludar runs will also be done as fairly as possible, considering past raid venues attended.

Raiders saved from the Wednesday will have priority on the Monday run.

If all raiders do not meet requirements for Ulduar, the group will go to Naxx or other 10-man raid venue. 

All classes should be represented in each group to ensure maximum buffage.

Clues:

Sign-up/sign-off post for Wednesday. (RC signing off due to RL issues, not-RC guildies signing up if they want to come)

Sign-up/sign-off post for Monday next. (See above)

Excel spreadsheet on past raid attendance and raid venues, including RC, not-RC, benched people and replacements.

Question: Which players shall go where tonight?

Solution:

*cogwheels start to spin*

Our raid force consists of 17 people in the Raid Core (people who have committed to raid two days a week) and about 5-10 more who sign up for individual runs with very varying frequences.

So, contrary to the Zebra puzzle, the raid slotting may have several solutions, and there are a lot of “If A Now Then B Next Time” situations as I work it out.

“If I bring my warlock to group A tonight, resto druid X can come heal and next Monday when X can’t make it I’ll bring my resto shaman instead and mage Y whom will be able to come then will pick up the empty spot left by my warlock.”

“Paladin tank Z will be coming on Monday, so if feral druid NN tanks tonight he can go kitty on Monday and I will slot in that new DK tonight.”

“XX, YY and ZZ has been in Ulduar every time they’ve signed up, so since we had to settle for one U group tonight, they will go Naxx instead.”

The cogwheels keep spinning as the raid groups form, as I work throught the clues and check them against the facts.

And then I present the solution, two groups with the right amount of tanks, of healers, of dps, replenished, heroic, buffed to the teeth with every possible buff you can think of, the group outlines for the continued raids already formed in my head.

It is satisfying, and it is beautiful.

And like every other thing of beauty, it is ephemeral and next week I will do it all over again.

You know how it is.

You get home after a long days work and you are tired and hungry and can feel a headache coming on.

So you ditch your fancy office clothes and don your comfy sweat pants and that t-shirt you spilled coffee on last night.

You settle down to tirade your partner about how some wo-worker of yours have been extra annoying today. You are venting your irritation and frustration and maybe you are not exactly fair and just and forgiving, you are feeling miffed and restless and you want it out of your system.

Who is it going to hurt anyway? The only one listening is your partner and he nods and comes with an occassional concurring mhmm at seemingly appropriate times. Mostly.

You would never say anything of this to your co-worker’s face because it really isn’t that big a deal, it is just one little straw in a whole haystack but spouting it out at home will make you able to come back to work tomorrow, cleansed, energized, able to be friendly and polite once again.

Your partner just has to suck it up and listen to you ranting. And he will, because he loves you. Most of the time, at least.

This is in no way the same as thinking less of people. I get mad at my dearly beloved husband sometimes (you know, the one who faithfully listens to me when I am tired/upset/miffed at something) and need to talk things over with a friend to get things in perspective. I would not want him to listen in on those conversations. Same for the kids, I can really blow my top at them and rant about how I am going to swap them for a dog and sell the dog. But I would never do that.

And of course I do not do this all the time. I don’t do it very often, even. But when I do, I expect my rantings to be forgotten as soon as I utter them. They have served their purpose and reiterating them to anyone would serve no purpose at all.

It is the same in a guild or any place where people come together. There will be clashing of personalities, misunderstandings, people feeling miffed, people making jokes that other people don’t find funny. In a game like this, where much communication is written, hastily written, by people from many different countries and cultures,  many not writing in their native tongue even, there will be upset feelings galore. Even in a so called mature guild, there will be drama because people will have different opinions on what is fair, what is polite, what needs pursuing and what can be let go.

You need a place where you can blow off steam or cry a little and people will nod and murmur agreement, knowing full well that once this has passed you will be your normal sunny self again.

If you are a guild member, you have your party chats and whispers and other ways to communicate where noone else will see what you are talking about.

If you are an officer, you have /o and probably a private officers’ part on your guild forum where you unload and where you collect yourself and get down to the serious business of trying to get your guild run smoothly.

And your discussions about things are done partly in the forum, partly in-game, partly on vent, partly on the phone and partly on msn.

Sometimes you agree, sometimes you don’t agree, but what you all expect, consciously or unconsciously, is that these discussions will not be taken out of your forums, whatever they may be, for other people to see and act upon.

Sometimes you discuss matters with a friend or spouse to get some perspective on it, especially if it is a matter that is important to you, but you do not ever expect said friend or spouse to chip in on these discussions to anyone else but you. You expect them to listen to you and advice you so you can handle the situation, you don’t expect them to jump in and pounce and have their say at everyone involved.

Now, consider a woman who has a husband and lately she has been finding herself unhappy in her marriage. The husband looks through his wife’s personal correspondence when he finds her e-mail open one day and finds a letter from her lawyer about a divorce paper she has asked for.

Drama ensues.

The husband is hurt and mad about his wife’s thinking of leaving him, the wife is hurt and mad about her husband’s snooping through her private correspondance.

And the husband chucks his wife and her belongings out on the street.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and while not being straight with your husband if you think of  leaving him may seem like the bigger wrong for many people, to encroach upon someone’s personal integrity like this is a major no-no to me.

Somehow it doesn’t even matter if the wife left the mailbox open and the husband technically had every right to go through it since the program was licensed to him, it would still be a huge infringement on her personal right to read it.

Reading anything that is not meant for your eyes is wrong. Acting upon information you have gotten this way is also wrong.

But acting hastily upon information like this is most wrong of them all.

It leaves no room for reconciliation, no room for thinking things through once more and come to an agreement.

It just slams the door shut with no sight of a window opening.

Now consider the guild again. The social guild where friendliness and having fun together was ranked as more important than “performance” or “progress”.

Consider all these discussions, finished and on-going, all the rants, justified or not, all the general orating that takes place in the officer’s forum, this not-public forum for a few people’s eyes only.

Consider the posts you have made where you have opened you heart to your fellow officers in a matter that was important to you, doing this because you trusted them enough to understand, or if not understand at least not laugh at you or scorn you for being silly. They may have thought you were dead wrong and you might have gotten into one of those no-win internet arguments to be solved only when the initial fluffed feathers were smoothed by some of the other officers, and you would have come to an agreement and moved on.

It is kind of like an on-going multiple person diary.

Dear Diary, today I had to spend 15 minutes explaining to our new recruit why he didn’t get that shiny sword that dropped yesterday, and then another 15 minutes listening to him ranting about the unfairness of this – gief pixelated earplugs.

Dear Diary, I feel sorry for the guildie who drama-quitted last night when I heard his brother had recently been in a car crash which can explain his suddenly volatile temper, shall we throw out an opening to come back to him?

Dear Diary, why did my fellow officer act like that yesterday, it really pissed me off!

Dear Diary, I think we are on the wrong track with this new award system, I think it will lead to jealousy and unnecessary strife in the guild, I want us to go over it again.

What is the defining characteristic of a diary? That’s right, it is private. And because it is private, you can freely pour any emotion or silliness into it, because nobody is going to laugh at you or think you are silly. Or you can keep it rather neutral, avoiding any emotional outbursts, but it would still be your private thoughts, not meant for anyone else than the people you show it to.

Now, how would you feel if someone took your diary, your thoughts, your conversations and your opinions and published them for the world to see? Throwing open all those short and long entries, the things you’ve said and felt and argued for, letting everyone, all those people you meet every day, in to have a peek and giggle and get mad or pity you when you stand there without make-up in your sweat pants and the coffe-stained t-shirt.

Would you feel upset?

Would you feel betrayed?

Would you feel violated?