Dips on the Guild

I've been having some rough times with my Guild, wich at one point, got me thinking some really crazy ideas, as I wondered some of my most basic stand points, but one of them really caught my interest. Before I share it with you, i'm happy to say, my Guild has settle down and we are once again, advancing.

Who owns a Guild?

Is it the GM, the Officers, the Founding Members, the Active Members ?. Imho a Guild is made by the players inside it, and can only be as good as those players made it. Decisions for the Guild should be share with everyone, since it involves everyone, and there should be room for discussion and improvement; thats mostly how I see it. However, drama is something that's just around the corner, and it may happend at any time, and to anyone.

When really big "Guild Drama" happens, in cases where is not a small amount of people argument, and Guild taking sides, I mean cases where everybody is involve, and a lot of different opinions and decisions are being made, or demanded. Where it gets to the point of people leaving, treathing to leave, or asking for some big lead changes.

I have been in some of these cases, and in one of them the GM, just kicked everyone not sharing his point of the Guild, and those who did share it, remained. In others the GM, some Officers, and some Guildies, left the Guild. I even know of one where everyone left.

What to do in those situations, is an individual decision. Each player, enjoy's different things and aspects of the game, and has different schedules, even more important each player, is different and unique, like snow flakes XD. That's why online gaming is not rated by the ESRB, online gaming is like a box of chocolates...

In Cataclysm, Guilds gained more weight. Guild Perks and Achievements award life quality improvers, and some strong raid helpers. Guild matter more, and whats even more important, in order to get those thing, everyone must help to get them. Sure they can be achieved by few dedicated players, yet it still remains a group effort, and those rewards are earned by everyone not just the GM and Officers.

Here's my point. If you are in a Guild with say 30 active accounts, 1 or 2 raid groups, fairly active and helping members, and drama appears. If things come to worst, who gets to call Dips on the Guild?

Since the Guild reached lvl X, and its made of all the members effort, should it be a vote democracy on those hard decisions?, should it be the Officers who contribute and work hard for the Guild?, Is it the GMs right, to kick everyone out, just because he can?.

In Wotlk you just changed the Guild Tag, and if needed everyone could leave and make a new Guild, but in Cata, is the perks, the Gold spent, the TIME spent. Its everyones hard work. I know a GM or Officer can kick everyone out, they rank permit it so,but what I mean is, Is it still just they Call?.

Maybe im just refering more to the Etiquette in game, for Guilds right now. I mean, if a GM kicks everyone or those who want changes in a guild enterily out of spite, its obviously bad etiquette. So how much the guild belongs to everyone?. We have PUG etiquette, wich changes should be made on Guild etiquette, now that what everyone does count more substantially.

Guild hard times in Cata

I'm really sorry for not posting last week, but Real Life issues must be worked fast.

I'm an Officer in a small Guild, yet on Wrath we did good on progression. We had some problems at the end of Wrath with people leaving due to various reasons, yet as Cataclysm approached, we had some new people and some lost raiders returned. We were ready for Cata, or so we tought.

As we leveled up trough the new content, we had some troubles since, theres was only 1 healer and tank, leveling as a healer and tank. Wich limired the amount of people who could run in Guild dungeon groups. I made Protection my raiding spec, and leave my loved Retribution in Hold, as we needed more tanks.

We were gearing faster, with two tanks leading dungeons, but most of our healers, didn't want to heal, "until they got 346 gear", this only made reading slower. We managed to get some healers to step up, and even tough not everyone had 346; I had like 332 Ilvl, we marched into Baradin Hold, and got ourselves a Kill. At the time we were one of the first Guilds, in the server to down the boss.

And so we went to visit Bastion. Halfus had the Slate, Nether, and Storm, we tryed it but failed miserably, and so we went to BWD. Magmaw HP was slowly going down, but the people were doing better each try we did. We had a Awesome start in our raiding, as we had intented before cataclysm started, but "No king rules forever".

For the next weeks we had a "Series of unfortuned events", the other tank was moving to another city so he miss the nex raid, somehow we managed to bring magmaw down, with 4 healers, 1 tank, 5 dps XD. On the second raid day, more people were missing.

For like 2 more weeks raiders were Intermittent, we somehow managed to down Halfus and the Conclave of Wind, wich encouraged the Guild. But the raids didn't feel right.

Our main tank finally moved, but it would take 3 weeks for the telephone company to get him Internet, and was really bussy on his new job. Our GM also moved and was in the same condition, and the PC of an Officer hit the bucket. Leaving the Guild on 2 Officers, a Lock and me.

We were like 16 people ready to raid, but most of them were DPS. I started pushing 2 more tanks to gear fast, we had our guild alchemist farming truegold, for crafted epics. But we could not make and solid raid group, we had different raiders everynight and got stuck on progression. One week we managed to bring magmaw and Halfus, and made some attempts to the Twin Dragons and the Omnotron. But the raids felt heavy and plain. There was always someone not happy about something on a raid. On halfus I got whispers, complaining that the other Tank (Those 2 other tanks I had been helping to gear up) failed. The same thing happened with some healers. I replied, to those whispers, that it was the first time they were doing the fight, and they were our tanks and healers, and that only by raiding will they learn the encounter.

When our main tank finally ot back, we managed to get the Omnotron and the Twin Dragons down. The raid went a really much easier, and people were missing less raid days. Yet impunctality and Loot, were a problem.

We ran EPGP, in Wrath and we had few issues. Most of our raiders passed gear when the person behing them on priority needed more that piece of gear. But as we were getting ready for Cataclysm we made a major guild gathering on Vent, and talk about making a change for the loot system. We (Officers) wanted to give the Gear wich goes on the Hands (Shields, Wands, Off Hands, Weapons, etc) and Trinkets with Loot Council, decided by the Raid Leaders, since it makes a bif differences in performance, in order to make our raid groups more balanced, and everyone agreed.

With all the issues that presented and the people missing, we had apart form those I already explained, 2 more raiders missing, one due to family problems, and the other one because of school, both were healers. And we have 2 more raiders leaving the Guild.

We weren't running the EPGP, because we didn't wanted to hurt so bad those players missing for real life issues, and thats one of the things that has define us as a Guild. But it was about time, the Raid group seemed more solid, and with EPGP the impuctuality will be resolved. We annouced that we were going to start running the EPGP the next raid, and that was when things went south.

Real Server Downtime

I'm sorry for not posting something earlier, real life crit me in the face really hard this week.
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