End of Expansion Blues

I've been running around the magic fountain in my garrison talking on TS, stopping to check my emails, write essays and do some facebooking. This can only mean one thing the end of expansion blues has begun. Our raid team have achieved what many think is our limit that is we killed heroic Archie a couple of times and most of us have got the Moose Mount....ah the moose mount with it's shining blue antalas flying through the air with no wings....how does it do that anyway, I wish real life were more like WoW where things like physics didn't matter. Apparently, I've managed to piss a heap of people off with my natural ability to piss people off talent. I only know this through whispers in the dark, hints and innuendo coming indirectly to me. Apparently, I'm so unapproachable it's necessary for people to send the message through others. These are the messages.

People are unhappy about Kylz taking over the weekend group and recruiting for it.  As a show of dissatisfaction a few raiders have decided to withdraw from all raiding, this is unfortunate. Kylz is doing a good job so I have no intention of demoting her to make other people happy. This brings me to the main raid, apparently people are pissed off with me for inviting people who aren't part of the main raid team. This is a problem I agree. So not turning up yourself is really not the ideal solution. The reason I've been inviting people who are not part of the main raid team is because people in the main raid team aren't turning up. It's a catch 22 situation. People don't want to invite PuGs and in fact many have said they will just leave the raid completely if I invite PuGs who have the appropriate item level  and required Dps. This may come as a surprise to the main raid team, most of the guildies don't actually have 728-731 item level gear because, a lot of them haven't been in the main raid team. They've been doing LFR and Mythic Dungeons and the weekend raid to get gear.

It really is annoying when we have a solid team and then team members start dropping off or moving on to other guilds or other games. I understand the frustration of having a full team of people with ALL the appropriate gear to progress into Mythic HFC and then having to gear up four or five other guildies, this puts us back to heroic again. I was looking at our team on WoW Progress the other day and my heart just sank when I saw how geared our main team is, and then realised that most of them aren't coming to raids anymore. I realise that as the Guild Leader the buck stops with me and that I have to work harder to keep people in the guild and in the raid team. What I would ask of the team is that you communicate your dissatisfaction with at least one or two solutions to the problems in mind. I would also ask that you be reasonable in your requests, For example allowing me to invite PuGs so we can progress if you aren't happy with the lower item leveled guildies coming to the main team raids. Being a bit flexible in terms of item level or helping the lower level guildies get gear by taking them with you to PuGs.

I did enjoy my break from Guild Leading it was very nice to have a holiday for a few weeks and I may have another holiday in the future. I've been the GM of this guild for four or so years and it's been a real learning experience. I will be more open to suggestions and listen to you more. However, I'm not the kind of person who is a hard line leader, I'm not going to be kicking people from the guild or the team unless there are good reasons to do that. I'm going to give people a chance to improve if they have the right item level. We all had to learn once.  One of the things I have been passionate about is for Riftwarriors to be a place to give new players and new raiders a chance to do proper raiding with a team of more experienced raiders. Some of our best raiders only had the experience of LFR before joining us and look how far they have come. Some of the more experienced raiders have come from top raiding guilds and I appreciate their patience and input into the training of the less experienced players.  I agree that Heroic Raids aren't the place for learning that's why we have Group 3 or the Weekend team. Please read about or watch the fights before you go into them. There are plenty of guides around. You can even watch the Riftwarrior Recordings if you like. These can be found on WoW Progress too.