I had a thought this morning, probably as the result of too much coffee in a quiet basement office. I was thinking back to a couple years back. Something that happened to a friends guild.
They were running SSC pretty regularly and had two teams going through Kara every week, usually single night clears. Things were chugging along nicely, and then came to a screeching halt.
I was not there to see it (I was guilded elsewhere), but apparently one of the healers got into a nasty argument with one of the raid leaders while running heroics. A little bit of looking around later the healer found himself a new guild to run with.
That’s when the drama hit. That healer was close friends with two other healers and one of the tanks. You can see where this is going. All four of them left to go to the new guild.
Suddenly the guild that was knocking on finishing SSC was having a hell of a time fielding a single 10 man for Kara, much less putting together a 25.
The guild did some recruiting and recevered nicely. The thing that sticks in my mind though is how much disruption even a small group can be within a guild.
Then my mind started to wander (if you see it tell it to be home before the streetlights come on) and I came up with this scenario.
Picture this. You are a guild leader, a raid leader, or in some other form or fashion in a leadership position within your guild.
Officers chat, which is normally pretty quiet, starts rolling. The things being said make little sense, you can tell you are only getting part of the conversation.
Messaging one of those talking, you are told that you really should be in vent.
Like right now.
Logging into vent you see most of the officers corps gathered in a private channel, along with all four of your guilds tanks. You hop in and drop right into the middle of a firestorm.
The tanks are demanding the guild cover all the costs of their raid related consumables and repairs. Their leverage? if you don’t pay up, they won’t tank for you.
They seem to have well reasoned arguments that show how much higher their bills are in relation to others, and claim this is unfair treatment.
You don’t pay, they claim they will go on strike. They will shut down your raid.
You have until raid time on tomorrows fresh reset to make you decision.
Sitting there thinking about it you realise it could have just as easily been you healing corps that decided to do this, in fact it likely will be them next if you give in to the tanks. Probably followed soon after by some of your highest output dps. Soon the guild will be expected to pay every ones way, and that simply can’t happen.
Putting together a mental checklist you look at your options.
1. Give in, give them what they want so the raid goes off this week. Hope they don’t ask for more, and hope nobody else decides to try the same thing.
2. Tell them that that will not fly, they pay their own way like everyone else. If they are bluffing you’ll know soon enough. After all, you can always kick them if they are not bluffing.
3. Drop a /gkick at each one of them and start looking for more tanks. If needs be you can always call off raiding for a week or two, surely the guild will understand.
4. Give in for the time being. Start actively recruiting tanks to replace them, planning to stop the deal once you have enough tanks to go without them.
There is a call for an officers meeting the next day, giving everyone time to sleep on it and see if anything else presents itself before decision time.
After sleeping on it you have decided what to do. What would it be?
Filed under: World of Warcraft |
Dechion's Place 
Pardon my french, but I would tell them to fvck off. I am a tank and have never done some crap like that to my guild. These days, tanks are a dime a dozen. Healers are the in demand ones atm.
Is this multiple choice? If so, #2 above.
My guild provides gems and enchants to all core raiders, funded by BoE epic sales and member-donations from the guild bank. Everyone’s on their own for repair bills, though. Player-funded repair bills are an incentive not to wipe, whereas gems and enchants are material investments in our progression. I have yet to hear a single member complain about the arrangement — especially now that everything is on farm. We usually make more raiding (simply from looting gold) than we spend!
Option 2. I wouldn’t be particularly opposed to providing consumables and covering repair bills, especially if the guild was wealthy. I object to their attitude/paradigm that certain class is superior to others.
Thanks for the comments folks.
Before I go into what I actually think on this (might even be a seperate post) let me just put in a disclamer.
I had no intention of putting a single group on the spot as it were. In hindsight it sounds like I am dong some tank bashing. That was not my intention. I love tanks, they keep bad things from caving my head in.
It could be any group, weather they were all tanks, all healers, all dps, or a mix of all three.
There would just have to be enough of them to effectively shut down raiding by sitting out.
Also, if it ever got to that point I somehow think the problems within the guild are a lot bigger than a repair bills and consumables.
second disclaimer: this is purely a though experiment, and neither reflects my current guild nor any other guild I have ever been in.
Having been there before, I would repeat my process. There would be no sleeping on it. They can reconsider the threat or I would kick them, immediately. I do not deal with terrorists. Plate healers have the same bills as the plate tanks. We all suffer. I love me some tanks, but I dont waste my time on assholes…
I would tell the rest of the guild what the tanks asked for and ask them to tell their peers how fair they thought it would be 😉 I wouldn’t kick them, personally, as that would likely cause more drama – but let them have time to understand that their actions would have consquences in their relationships with other guild members – and they’re not just being squashed by those ‘in charge’.
/hug
I would tell them that it would be up to a vote of their fellow guild members. But these types would eventually leave the guild anyway due to their attitude so I would likely call off raids until new tanks could be found.
I mean, would you really want to play with these people after they had pulled such a stunt? I wouldn’t.
#3, without much doubt.
If they got to the point of making the threat, they will NEVER be happy.
By following the hypothetical tanks logic, when they fumble a pull do they pay for everyone’s repair bill since the wipe was their fault? When you pick a role to raid, you accept all the associated cost. Everyone provides their own reagents, buff food, scrolls, flasks, elixers, potions, ect.
I would go with option 2. Regardless of what group of players tried to pull this kind of stunt, I would simply tell them no and that if they didn’t want to perform their role for the guild, then they were more than welcome to leave and seek raids elsewhere. There are plenty of tanks/healers/DPS out there to replace them with. Sure, you might be down for a few weeks, but how long would you be down when other players started bailing because they don’t want to fork out gold for other player’s fun.
I was originally thinking of doing a follow up post on this one, but I think I will just drop my two copper into the comments.
If I was the GM of the guild I would kick anyone who tried to use what ammounts to extortion to get thier way. There would be no rethinking of their position. Even if they backed down they would continue to be what ammounts to a hostile element within the guild. One that would likely bring it down from within at some point.
There are some lines that cannot be crossed. Forming a seperate group within this theoretical guild in order to get your way is crossing the line and jumping off a cliff on the other side. I don’t care if it’s all the tanks, all the healers, or just a group of sufficent size to cripple the raid. Any group that went this far went too far.
I would remove the entire group, and then explain what had happened to those who were left.
At that point we could look at the reasons it may have happened and work to make sure it does not happen again.
Had a group come to me with concerns on how the guild is run, how loot is distrubuted, what the tabard looks like, or just about anything else I would have listened. I would have talked to them and the remainder of the guild, and if problems were found would have taken action to fix them. But resulting to blackmail like they did in my little “thought experiment” was going too far.
Things like this are why I don’t lead guilds, and actually have only ever been an officer once.
Many props to those who do shoulder the responsibility of leading, I just fail at it.