The Maloriak Incident

This year has been a rough one in terms of morale.  Our gl burnt out and refused to take a break from raiding, either from delusions that he's irreplacable (not even close) or from terror that we'd find someone better and replace him (ok he might've gotten this one right, but we reassured him several times that we wouldn't).  He was "unable" to make raids several times, forcing us to reschedule main raids for Mondays and Thursdays and sub raids to Tuesdays and late for nearly every single raid.

Late in March, it got so bad that when he posted (yet again) that he couldn't make it, the following thread got underway:

GL:

There's this big competition my friends are in, last i heard it was pegged for a couple weeks away, but it seems the date was changed to this sunday (they said they told me last week....they might have, but i think i was too drunk to remember about it). It's a big deal for them so should really go along to support them.

Sorry about this, and all the lateness over the last couple months, and the other couple times ive had to skip thanks to work things. I've been trying to take steps to fix this, with any luck they might pay off soon.

I should be able to make a monday/tuesday raid if we can get it organised (just need to know before hand, there's a big crunch going on in work and i was going to be volunteering to help with some testing for it when i can)

 This is a legitimate reason for not being able to make a raid.  Under normal circumstances, it would've been greeted with a slew of "Have fun!" 's and a discussion about rescheduling.  At the time, however, we had rescheduled 6 different raids in 3 weeks, and the officers (myself and my co-gl) were completely burnt out, partly from our raid schedule (pretty much 4 or 5 nights a week were scheduled as raids, some of them doubled up with 2 raids scheduled for that night, even if we only raided 2-3 of them each week), but mostly from fighting an uphill battle against our GL to keep raid morale up to a point where people actually wanted to raid and were capable of killing anything at all.  And so it began.

Me:

I'm more than likely overstepping my bounds here, but I really feel that this needs to be said.

Would it be possible for you to organise your personal stuff on one of the 5 days that we don't have set aside for raiding? I understand that you have a new job and all, but you are allowed to say "no" to overtime - at least you are in South Africa, I imagine the relevant laws are in place in Wales too. Remember that you're not the only person in the guild with a job, even a job that requires overtime, and everyone else still manages to be at almost every single raid on time. At the moment you're asking the entire guild to re-organise their social lives around yours every second week or so, having to shift raids to Thursdays and such.

A little respect for the other 9 people you raid with would be massively appreciated. I feel that a small reminder about how much our guild leader's disinterest in our raids affects raid morale overall wouldn't be entirely out of place here either. I know I'm not speaking for everyone in the guild, but I personally am starting to get those "Why do I even bother to look forward to raids when I know they're not going to happen? What's the point in even logging at all?" thoughts.

Co-gl:

Firstly I'd like to say thanks for the heads up I've moved the raid to Monday with the alt raid on either Sunday or Tuesday, depending on interest.

Secondly I do agree with a few of the points [my name] has brought up while I understand at times there isn't much you can do about it, but there are nine other people dependant on you turning up to raids and being in the mood to raid. This is not intended as a personal attack and applies to anyone in the raid, there are times when I would rather be doing anything else but you just need to suck it for the few hours of the raid and then go crash out.

Co-gl again:  (I swear he just does it to up his postcount on forums)

I feel I should also say if you do want or need time to sort everything out then feel free to take a break from raiding for a bit I'll work something out to fill in while your gone, and then when you come back you can just step back into your current role. I would much rather do that than you try to keep everything going now and then burn yourself out in the process and either feel like your forced to raid and not want to be there or just stop out right.

GL:

Well, it's never quite so simple. Overtime is actually me volunteering, and to be honest, given this is my career im trying to build and im still in my initial 3 month probationary period, im doing all i can. It has to have priority, but im still trying my best to work it around meeting you guys in game as best i can. And personal stuff? it's not like ive not declined invitations so i can raid with you guys, but this sunday isn't something i cant just reschedule. (It's not like i really go out on sundays at all often either, with work the next day and all)

You make it sound as though I'm not trying as best I can, i get up, leave my house, do my hours, go home and arrive back home 12 hours after i first woke up for work give or take 30mins, and as soon as I get in, im online being criticised for being late bwhen ive not had even 5 minutes to sit down yet.

It's not so much about not being in the mood, it's being exhausted with no room to rest and then losing focus because of the piss poor sleep i had the night before.

Have been trying to get earlier days in too, and if there weren't some accident, or whatever it was causing some insane 2 hour traffic last wed, id have been home well on time =/

But there is a silver lining though, am planning to move someplace closer to work in the next month or two, should help fix half my problems and give me a couple more hours a day in spare time.

But basically, it's not that i dont care, far from it, raiding with you guys is like, why i play the game. I come along regardless of what state im in, am trying as best as i can and am doing what i can to improve it.....if that's not good enough for you...then i dont know what else i can do.

Our pro holy pala:

To be honest [GL], it sounds like you've tried juggling everything around in your life as far as you can and you still can't manage to make time for raiding (and if you can't be there on time, prepared, with enough energy to actually enjoy yourself and play your best, then you haven't managed to make time).

That being the case, why not just take a break until you do have time? We can get by without you for a while, and once you're set in the new place closer to work, you can come back to raiding. You know there'll always be a spot for you.

Basically I think that punctuality and a decent attendance rate are things we would expect from any raider. If anyone else's circumstances changed to the point where we couldn't guarantee that, we would do the decent thing and step out of the raid team until such a time as we could.

Me:

You know we love you [GL], and that we will always keep your spot open for you. We all understand real life commitments and how you feel you should act when building a new career and how exhausting a new job can be. There's no shame in admitting you've taken on too much and you're just not coping. I would much rather you take a break, however much it nerfs our raid team, than you wind up hating WoW and cancelling your subscription or having a nervous breakdown like a friend of mine has twice now (she seems to think that working 20 hours a day 7 days a week to do 4 people's jobs is a normal job requirement and has done it at 2 different jobs now, nearly getting fired at both due to serious medical issues resulting from 10 hours of sleep a week). Remember: Your guild policy has always been that people should have fun and progress is nice too.

It's affecting all of us too, however much you'd like to think I'm being unreasonable, demanding bitch. I know you're going out of your way for us, but as things things stand most of us have 4-5 evenings a week "scheduled" for raid, even though we only end up raiding 3 of them (including the alt run). Tonight, for example, most of us have 2 raids scheduled in our heads, which feels like an awful lot to me And WoW pretty much is my social life - imagine how those of us who actually have a social life feel about it!

  The following Wednesday, he actually showed up on time, catching us all unawares.  We had unofficially moved raid start back half an hour due to his consistent lateness - ie, we had told everybody but him and left the time unchanged on the calendar in case he looked at it (supremely unlikely) and thought he could leave work half an hour later.  We greeted him with shock and he responded by reproachfully asking if we had thought he was lying when he said he was leaving earlier in the morning so as to be on time for raids (we had), then discovered that one of our raiders was having serious net troubles and was unable to log.

We looked at pulling in a sub, but the resto shaman sub (have the resto druid go moonkin and me go shadow for 2healer fights) wasn't online and the prot warrior sub was... well quite frankly, just not up to it (http://soulwarding.blogspot.com/2011/04/officer-stuffs-failing-trial.html).  So a reschedule was suggested and I flipped.  I was completely fed up with rescheduling not only our guild's lives but also a few regular pugs in our sub runs' lives as well.  I managed to scrape up a replacement (a friend of mine's offrealm alt) and off we went, clearing up all our farm content except Nef, Maloriak (not on farm on heroic yet) and Al'akir (next planned heroic target).

On sunday we found that our guildie's line still wasn't fixed, so I once again talked my friend into raiding with us on his alt instead of doing Nefarion heroic on his main (his guild are 13/13).  The plan was to kill Maloriak heroic, which we only had one kill of at that point, then do Nef normal quickly and move over to Al'akir and started working on him on heroic.  It didn't start off great, it's a bastard of a fight and we had only killed it once, so we wiped a fair bit.

Suddenly, as we're about to pull, our gl says "brb it's important".  So we wait.  And wait.  And wait.  After a while I ask our co-gl to look out the window and check for signs that our gl's house is on fire.  Apparently it's not.  10 minutes later when he gets back we ask him what the problem was, half-expecting to be told "That's private" like he's told us a few times.  But no!  This time he's willing to share.  Apparently his father had slacked in filling out the government census which was due that day and our gl had to go log him into the website so they could submit their form that day.  Now, our raid ends at 22h30 UK time, so must of us pointed out that if it waited this long, it could wait another 3 hours without any serious injury coming to anybody and one of the guys pointed out that most people weren't filling in their census this year anyway because it had been contracted to an American gun company so people were objecting by refusing to fill it in (I would too tbh).

Anyway, we pointed out that this was, in fact, not important and that we would appreciate if he could tell his father to wait until we were done, pointing out (again) that there were 9 people to consider in the raid other than him.  A few afk's later, I crapped him out about it again, saying that this was disrespectful, that he's old enough (24) to tell his dad to leave him alone for a few hours and that he should explain to his father that this rubbish was messing around 9 other people.  He responded that his dad didn't understand, to which I said "Put him on vent, we'll explain it to him.".

Interruptions aside, suddenly everything came together.  We were at 38% halfway through the second black phase, all the Arcane Storms had been interrupted timeously, healer mana bars were looking healthy... It was looking like a kill with 2 hours to spare to work on Al'akir.  And then we hear our gl's voice on vent:  "Wipe it guys, be right back.".

...

Our best attempt of the night, wiped.  Why?  Because f* you, that's why.  Vent and /ra exploded.  We were livid.  In fact, livid might actually be a severe understatement of how angry we all were.  When he got back, we rained hellfire on his head.  Even our co-gl, who is well-liked and respected by the entire guild, couldn't stop it.  Normally when he says "enough now", everyone stops, no matter how angry they are with each other.  Usually it doesn't even go to whispers.  But this time, people ignored him.  We lambasted our gl for a full 10 minutes mostly in /ra (I don't think some people trusted themselves on vent), but partially on vent as well.

You know what the worst part is?  Yes, it gets worse.  He was upset, even angry, with us for being so unreasonable.  He actually was sincerely and completely convinced he had done nothing wrong and that all 9 of us were being jerks for not understanding how important it was that his dad fill out an internet form with him hand-holding the entire way before raid end.

We're lucky we didn't lose half the raid team.  Only our co-gl (soon to be our gl) is to thank for that.  How he managed to hold the entire raid team together I don't know.  How he had the strength to not say "So guys, I'm starting a new guild, who's with me?"  I don't know.  My guild, my guildies and I owe a lot to this man, and I think that he will be an incredible gl and make our guild and our raids a lot stronger than we ever have been.  I have a lot of hope for our future with him in charge.