Am I an idiot, or is he an asshole?

Maybe both?  An exchange between my brother & I regarding my desire to apply to Strategos’ guild left me with a lot of food for thought:

ME: Hey Bro, Babyfresh wants to join StrategosGuild. To be honest, I do as well. I really like their organization, leadership, raiding with them, and they have concrete Wrath plans.

BRO: Honestly, I’m getting really sick and tired of your waffling back and forth.  Go join them then.  I’m going to start a war with that friggin guild tho.  Their guildmaster is a shady piece of shit and he was actively poaching you two gullible fools.  He even admitted to Quagmire that he was poaching you guys.   What a scumbag.  I’m calling him out ON his vent and in trade chat.

ME: Omg… We wanted to raid and he let us raid with him. It’d be different if our guild were raiding and he tried to get us to raid with him instead of our guild…. But since our guild isn’t raiding it’d be obnoxious to accuse him for doing us a favor!

BRO: Doing you a “favor” with the SPECIFIC MOTIVE of poaching 3 already guilded players.  That’s not a favor.  That’s a dirty trick.  Especially since all their officers were in on the scam and they were laying guilt trips on you guys.  This is NOT according to me, this is according to Quagmire and [Anonymous].  These guys are scum, making their own guildies sit out so randoms could play, just so they could guilt you into eventually joining.  And you fell for it.  You know, you may have raided a lot in the past 4 months or so, but in reality you’re such a noob when it comes to WoW, it’s not even funny.

He’s scum.  And you’ll find that out eventually when you’re on the OTHER side of seeing him telling guildies to sit out so randoms can take their DKP.

I would never ask guildies to sit on the bench so I could poach randoms. Any good guild leader wouldn’t.  It sets a terrible precedent.  And I’m sure you think he’ll never do it again, right?  If he was any good as a leader he’d have made you guys app instead of spitting in the face of all the guildies who HAD TO APP to get into his guild.

And I like how you put in that they have “concrete” plans on what to do in Wrath, like anyone’s plans for Wrath are ANY DIFFERENT from ours.

I have to lol at this.  Stealing guildies, yes, that’s a HUGE favor!

Well!  I take his words with a grain (more like block) of salt, but still I am a bit disturbed.  LOL the part about me being a gullible noob at WoW really stunned me, and I look back at this post with new eyes and wonder if it was extraordinarily naive of me.  Either I’m to be really naive, or really cynical huh!

Friends with (raid) Benefits

Sooo… You’re lookin at a BT raider.

Contrary to my expectations, even after being informed that I would not be joining his guild, that retired military GM (let’s call him Strategos) continued to invite me to their raids.  Quagmire, Babyfresh & I have become “part of the family” (quoting his words to me last night :^D), & can always expect a place in his raids, even though we’re in a different guild!  Woot!  And honestly, they did give me a bad first impression, but the more I raid with them, the more I’m starting to like them.  Strategos informed me that he held a guild meeting  last night & everybody’s feedback was unanimous: they considered us “Good people, considerate, top of their classes & eager to raid“.  Heh!  You dang skippy!

So I’ve helped them down Naj’entus & Supremus in BT.  IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!  I love BT.  I also love Strategos… he’s going out of his way to treat us so kindly! 

Like, Babyfresh & I started our Hand of A’dal quest chain.  FYI, the second part of the chain involves a few 25-man raids: you need to kill Fathom Lord Karathress in SSC, then Al’ar in TK, then Rage Winterchill in Hyjal.  Strategos, bless his gallant heart, arranged his whole raid to get Karathress & Al’ar down for us, and I’m sure he’s going to schedule a Hyjal quite soon as well.  And we’re not even in his guild!  It’s too much!  <:^D 

It’s really amazing, I would think that doing so much for non-guildies, or even our constant presence in their raids, would cause grumbling & complaints within their guild, especially since a couple of my friends have won loot from them.  I don’t know if it’s excellent hardcore officer leadership or just an extraordinarily whiner-free compilation of guildies, but they seem to harbor no ill-will at all.  It’s all just really humbling.  Lord knows the little circle of QQing beeches in my previous guild would’ve had plenty to say if our officers had let outsiders become a regular part of our raid & roll on lewtz. 

Not to belittle our contributions to their raid though… I’ve been giving their top healer a run for his money & have become mighty quick on my feet (Boar’s Speed ftw!), which means basically I haven’t died a stupid death in a while & have created kind of an expectancy for being the last healer standing.  And Quagmire & Babyfresh are also consistently headlining the damage meters and, with a little secret bullying, I’ve made Babyfresh get really sharp on summons & soulwells while their own locks sit oblivious, which hasn’t gone unnoticed by the officers. 

So yea, I do believe it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.  But like… Strategos sometimes allows me to bring in some less geared newbie friends out of pure generosity.  I mean, he even benched his own officers once to give my undergeared friends a chance to see new fights.  And they were all so gracious about it!  The benched folks sat on vent and cheered us on instead of complaining about being taken out for lesser-geared non-guildies!  It’s incredible, and just a really nice thing to have found, when I was so bleak and depressed about not having any opportunities to raid in this casual friends guild.  And we found each other so completely randomly, I feel blessed I really do.

<:^]

Anecdote from the Memoir of an Uber Leet Pro Healer

Okay so there we were fighting Kael-thas, the last boss in Heroic MGT. The hunter who’s in charge of kiting the phoenix forgets what “kiting” means and dies right away, so I pop the brez early on. Being the uber leet pro healer that I am with legendary mana regen, I’m at full mana keepin everyone at full health til we hit the first gravity lapse.

Suddenly, ppl are being all kinds of mentally challenged! Getting hit by the 0.0001mph orbs, taking damage, swimming AWAY from me, out of range, out of LOS, right into the orbs like Smart People. All our dps die like noobs. Tank & I look Kael’thas sitting at about 40%, grimly nod at each other & go at it.

Tank goes plink plink plink I scratch u with my sword! Take that! And that! And oh yea that!

I pop out of tree, MOONFIRE INSECT SWARM WRATH WRATH WRATH *gulp mana pot* OH SHIT HEAL HEAL MOONFIRE INSECT SWARM WRATH WRATH WRATH HEEEAL.  The dead nublets are like, “Hurry up & wipe so we can run back.” Me & tank ignore them. Two more gravity lapses & I’m out of mana. INNERVATE FTW~!~!~!

Back at full mana, going at it- TRAGEDY STRIKES! TANK DEAD! KAEL’THAS AT 15%! Impossible! It’s unfortunate that I never looked up the definition of that word. MOONFIRE! WRATH SPAM! MANA POT! DRUMS OF BATTLE! SWIM AWAAAAY FROM ORBS! LIFEBLOOM! LIFEBLOOM! MOOOOOOONFIRE!!!

Kael’thas, dead.

Dead folks, screaming.

Me, quietly eating my mana biscuits.

Cos uber leet pro people don’t bask.

We just are.

____________________________________________________

Oh, btw. I haven’t been drawing lately. I guess that makes the premise of this blog pretty misleading.  So uh here’s an old sketch for your viewing pleasure, not really WoW-related but one of my better ones IMO:

Tragically Misunderstood

Tragedy & Humiliation in SSC

Ugh!  Humiliating!  I died to SPOUT!  Me, the original Spout-Evasion-Technique Ninja Master!  I looked like a noob!  Arrrgh!!!  Hehe… oh but it stung… dishonored my name… Lol~

Okay so… They’re not the friendliest guild, despite my instant rapport with their GM.  I’m talkin bout the one that invited me to SSC with them, whose officers are all retired military men. 

I was the only non-guilded member there the other night.  Now, in my old guild if we’d had a new guest with us on a raid, a whole bunch of us would’ve chatted up to the stranger and tried to make them feel comfortable, or at the very least politely responded to their comments.  This other guild… well I understand they’re a very serious guild, but I did feel kinda cowed by the cold silence my friendly little overtures were met with (in raid chat).  I got too intimidated to even slip a pun out there.  They were Quite Serious Indeed.

I made a couple of faux pas and only one really big mistake besides getting Spouted on… I had a brain fart and battle rezzed the best healer.  Unfortunately, this was during a trash pull.  I’m not sure what I was thinking, looking back on it… Well, 1. there were several dead at the time and 2. I never saw the Leotheras fight before and I had a confused impression that the trash & Leo were connected because as we were fighting the trash they were talking about Leo strats in a very ambiguous manner (ie., “As soon as those are dead be ready to pick up Leo”)… but I know this was my fault for not being as aware as I could’ve been.  And 3. It honestly didn’t matter in the end because by the time another battle rez was needed, the cooldown was finished.  I guess no one could’ve predicted that tho. 

Anyway, I got barked at pretty harshly by 2 of the officers: “NEVER use a battle rez unless you’re told to!” <– this was kind of unfair because during the Hydross, Tidewalker & Lurker fights I’d used them with excellent judgment without being told to, and a couple of other times when the best choice wasn’t clear I’d asked them for their preference.  There was also a lot of other commentary from other people, several painstakingly enunciated “You do not use battle rezzes during trash pulls” and variations of the same thing which I felt were kind of unnecessary.  I mean, it was a mistake & I apologized.  Over the night, I battle rezzed 9 times… that was the only time I messed up, and it was only because I saw the best healer go down in the middle of a difficult pull (that I mistakenly thought was connected to the boss fight).  It kind of sucked that the whole guild had to chime in at that one point, as if they hadn’t seen me exercise better judgment previously.  No one said anything to me at all before, but just that one time all those previously silent ppl just had to speak up… >.<  Not the way I would’ve treated a new guest raider if they messed up… *mumble mumble cut cut*  Whatever! 

Nevertheless, all in all besides the Misfortunate Spoutage & the Brez Incident, I think I acquitted myself pretty well.  I tend to dwell on my mistakes a lot (perhaps you’ve noticed), but honestly I think I did alright overall.  It’s clear that they have some very good quality healers, but I kept up with them okay & in the end inched my way up to 2nd on healing charts, 2nd lowest on overheals.  Their lead healer was this ridiculously awesome priest who’s really the only one I think I would have a hard time matching in terms of skill even if I did acquire equivalent gear… man of few words there, but I think he thought I did alright too.

The GM invited me to go with them to Hyjal tonight.  I said I’d love to, but went ahead & told him I wouldn’t be joining his guild, whereupon he kinda-sorta rescinded the invitation (said he’d “let me know”… I don’t expect to hear back from him =P).  I always knew that I wouldn’t join a guild just for progression, even if I am itching to raid.  I was tense & apprehensive during the whole raid with them, and certainly that Brez incident made me feel pretty crappy.  Plus, they have a princess chick that I think I would hate being guilded with.  Any girl who can condescendingly say to a much older officer, ”Sweetheart, you have no idea how much my repair bills are” is not someone I’m gonna be sisters of traveling pants with.  I’d like to raid with them again to up my performance, do even better & of course see Hyjal again, but it’s not the guild for me & I already know it, so no regrets either way.

Still can’t believe I got Spouted… it’s because he’d just come up & started facing just to my left instead of starting at the tank as usual!  Still, I could’ve avoided it if I’d been standing at my usual spot right at the outer edge, but I’d moved to get in range of someone to heal during the add phase…  Okay, no more dwelling.  =P  Grr…

And So the Drama Thickens

Things are looking pretty rough for the guild right now.  Yesterday I saw new sides of Mom & Mr. Moderate which dismayed me quite a lot. 

Basically, Mom kinda flipped out from the stress of having only 11 raiders show up for the past 4 raids, and kicked a whole bunch of people from the guild… injudicously kicking certain people who didn’t deserve it & threatening others who have been busy IRL for the past couple of weeks.  She did this in the middle of the raid, which brought the low morale even lower. 

Then Mr. Moderate showed cracks in his perfect raidleadership… it became clear that he’s got a real needing-to-be-in-control problem.  I hate criticizing him because honestly I think he’s the best thing since cheesy bread and flying mounts, I probably have a little e-crush on him and in real life I think masterful guys are totally hot… but it’s not good for the guild.  It really isn’t.

Mr. Mod is our One and Only Raidleader.  I think having more raidleaders would be beneficial, actually it’s necessary.  We are lucky enough to have a few leader-types in our guild who are very capable, love to research new fights, are patient and good with explanations.  They are currently sitting around twiddling their thumbs feeling bored and redundant because Mr. Mod never misses a raid and always takes the MT/raidleader position. 

My suggestion was that it would invigorate those would-be leaders AND take pressure off Mr. Mod to let those other guys try leading a raid once in a while so we could see how they do.  If they do well, maybe we can create some new Raidleaders so if Mr. Mod needs to miss a raid (which he’s had to recently), we won’t have to hit a panic button (which happened the first time he was absent) because we’ll have other known raidleaders able to smoothly take the lead.

To be honest, I thought Mr. Moderate would like this suggestion.  I half-expected Mom to object because I’ve noticed she doesn’t like changes to tradition, and indeed she did object strongly, but I really did think Mr. Mod would approve, be relieved to shed the burden of being sole raidleader and take the other would-be leaders under his wing.  Mm.  Nope.

If the would-be leaders were lacking in some way, I wouldn’t be so disappointed in their reactions.  But I wouldn’t even propose someone that I didn’t have confidence in, and in any case what I was suggesting was to give them a chance to lead a raid, to test them and just see how they’d do. 

Last night Mr. Mod had to work late, so I talked Mom around to letting one of the itching-for-more-responsibility guys, Angel, lead the raid.  He took a straggly group of 15-18 people into TK and we cleared up to Void Reaver with 2 wipes.  He was quick with the marks and positioning, delegated target assignments to class leaders (something Mr. Mod never does, he assigns everything specifically himself), and generally I was extremely impressed with what he did with such a half-assed, lacking-in-DPS raid.  Biggie whispered me, “Who is this guy? He’s good.”  The people Angel delegated class assignments to seemed happy as well, they really stepped up to the plate and became mini-leaders to the others in their classes, I’ve never seen them act like that before when Mr. Mod made all the decisions.

Mr. Mod logged on when we hit VR.  He re-designated himself as the MT, which had the other tanks sending me unhappy tells, and took over the leading.  Mom, surprisingly, told him in officer chat to be quiet & let Angel continue leading.  I didn’t say much because, as a junior officer, I felt I’d pushed my opinions enough with the suggestion in the first place.  It was truly disappointing to me that Mr. Mod behaved, there’s no other way to put it, childishly for the rest of the night.  He complained in officer chat through everything, saying “We’re going to fail, this is gonna fail, what a waste of time,”, etc.  And continued to interrupt in vent.  And seemed inappropriately pleased when we wiped.  It was bad.

We took VR down in 2 attempts.  After 4 attempts on Solarian, Mr. Mod cheerfully called a wrap.  The guild, having been greatly reduced in size during the raid (Mom had her rage-induced gkicking spree, remember?), was full of discontent, which all poured out on me in a barrage of tells.  And let’s not forget the unfortunate gkicked people who directed their angry tells to the person who didn’t agree with their kickage.

Mom & Mr. Mod are not happy with me or the guild.  The guild is not happy with Mom.  The tanks and wannabe-leaders are not happy with Mr. Mod.  QQ ensues. 

Bottom line, one of the people Mom threatened to kick is NiceGuy, who hasn’t been online lately cos of real life issues and job searching.  If he really gets kicked, it’s going to set off a chain reaction in which Biggie will also leave.  If Biggie leaves… well…

It’s an ugly thing when guilds get to this point.  It’s all really depressing.  I just wanna raid.  Preferably with people that I like.  That’s all.

Have I become one of THOSE girls?

What did 0 say to 8?
“Nice belt.”
LOL.

Okay sooo… Now I’m starting to feel like one of those e-hoes people complain about who take advantage of their X chromosome LOL. Yesterday was my birthday; I have a couple of real-life friends in the guild, namely Biggie, whose new alias is gonna be Bigmouth btw, who made sure to mention it several times to everybody. So last night I found a lot of goodies waiting for me in my mailbox… Most of it was silly stuff, like a new Prairie Dog pet from Mom, a Rabbit’s Foot and assorted Soap on a Rope-type novelties from guildies.

The real shock was what I got from Tangent Boy… Well, first some backstory:

A few weeks ago I’d bought a Steamy Romance Novel and enjoyed the two pages of seriously titillating romance so much that I’d mailed it over to Tangent Boy with the express message that I was only letting him borrow it and that he was to send it straight back to me after reading. I was outraged to learn that he’d DESTROYED IT WITHOUT READING IT!! Of all the unappreciative, crude, barbaric things to do! Book-burner! Cretin! Farenheit 411! I sulked at him for a while, only half-kidding because I really did like my book!, and also because I’d only sent it to him because out of all my friends, I thought he’d be the one most likely to enjoy it as much as I did. Little did I know!!!! He rofled at my burning wrathful indignance, then said:

“This is gonna cost me a Gigantique Bag to get off your ignore list, isn’t it?”

… Well… Well, what was I gonna say, No? Hell yea I jumped on that. But in all honesty, I didn’t think he was serious and I didn’t expect him to do it. I just wanted my book back, that’s all.

Right so yesterday I came upon his birthday mail: a tattered new copy of the Steamy Romance Novel and, yep, an honest-to-goodness Gigantique Bag! The accompanying letter read, “THE REWARD IS NOT NEGOTIABLE! Happy 26.” (he was quoting from the Steamy Romance Novel)

<:^O ! I was touched, and a little bit horrified. In case you don’t know, these 22-slot bags are sold by Haris Pilton for 1200 gold. Definitely felt like an e-hoe. Especially when Snuffles found out & exclaimed, “So that’s why he was doing dailies all the time!” …Nooooo!!! My gosh, what am I? I hate the idea of guys wasting their time and money to pander to flirty girls over the internet! It just went against the grain to accept it all carefree & “thanks! teehee ^_^”, birthday or not.

…

No no I didn’t return it, HAHA what are ya nuts? Avarice, thy name is druidchick. But! I did go grab all my saved-up Badges of Justice and sent Tangent Boy 6 epics gems, a Primal Nether and my old Rabbit’s Foot. I know he’s been trying to gear up his new priest & hopefully the gems’ll help socket his new gear, or he can just sell ‘em, whatever. I didn’t have much time after being pulled into a raid last night, but tonight I’ll armory him and see if he also needs some Golden Spellthread and maybe send him one of those too.

Bleh… I didn’t feel a need to repay him when he sent me that useless Gold Eternium Band, but somehow this feels different. Maybe because I did ask for it this time, no matter how not-serious and totally-kidding I was. So in the future, I’ll watch my words around him since now I see he’ll really do these things.

Although… you know… these bags are not unique-equipped… hahahha TOTALLY KIDDING FOLKS, totally kidding! <:^D Nah I’d go broke trying to assuage my guilty conscience afterwards so yea, no more joking about expensive items from me. Really. xD

Hello, UBER LEET PRO WINDOM!!!

Yesterday! I! Joined! Biggie’s! Sunwell! Trash! Pug!

And! I! Got! Leather Chestguard of the Sun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m really slow to understand things, sometimes.  When this BoP LW pattern dropped, Biggie & my friends were screaming and cheering for me but I, who’d only been looking out for Tranquil Majesty Wraps, reacted with mild, “Great.”  In my head I was thinking, But can I still roll for the gloves if they drop?  The others were incredulous at my lack of enthusiasm. 

“You know this has a really rare drop rate, right?”
“Oh, cool.”  In a calm voice.
“You know this is the BEST CHESTPIECE IN THE GAME for you, right?” 
This got my attention.  “Really?  Oooh, I want it.”  Still with less fervor than they expected, and it was with some chiding that they passed it over to me, “You better go make this tonight. Or we kill you.”

After the run was over (we farmed the trash for a couple of hours, got a few epics and tons of epic gems… no Tranquil Majesty Wraps), I went and took a closer look at my new pattern, and a few things started to sink in.  Slowly, staring at the stats, my peabrain started to churn.  33 Spirit… wait… AND 13 mp5?  Is that one… two… THREE red sockets?  And the appropriate reaction finally hit.  OMG!!! UBER LEETNESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!  BETTER THAN T6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO PAY DKP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Biggie let everyone free-roll on everything since it was a random pug trash run, and I happened to be the only resto druid in the pug anyway.  It was mine, no cost, no questions asked.  Goodbye, Shroud of Nature’s Harmony.  Hello, UBER LEET PRO WINDOM!!!!

I am so glad I’m a leatherworker.  Took me about 1,000 gold to grab all the mats (which were relatively cheap if you see what it takes to make Leather Gauntlets of the Sun!).  I’m extremely poor now, but hey it ain’t easy becoming this superfabulous.  Just kidding, clearly it was extremely easy. PUAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAA!!!!! 

/end obnoxious smugness

<:^D !!!

Officially Official

How come Attumen does all the talking?
Cos Midnight always feels a bit horse.

HEEHEEEE.

So… *bit bashful* I was made an officer last night.  :^P  Bleh!!  After all that blabbering I did about why I love being a regular member and would never ever choose to be an officer, no sir not me… (-_-)  Well, Mom kept nudging me gently about it & I was starting to feel like a jerk to keep declining.  And Biggie made it all sound so reasonable- he said my only duty would be to run applicants through test heroics, and since I run heroics all the time anyway, I might as well… but of course I know, and they know, and I’m sure you all know, that the job’s not gonna be that simple.  I’m gonna take Auzara’s words to heart though; I figured out after reading her post that my problem as a guildleader in my previous game was that I was one of the too-generous-with-my-time leaders, and it wore me down.  Now that I know my weakness, hopefully I’ll be able to avoid the problems that burned me out last time.

I’ve been trying out new mods.  At the risk of sounding immodest (hehe xD), I think the only healer superior to me in the guild right now is Socrates.  It’s true he has T6 gear, but even if we had the same gear I think he’s got me beat as far as skill and quickness goes.  So far I’ve been using Blizzard’s raid windows with a mouseclick + keypress method for healing, but I know Socrates uses X-Perl and swears by Healbot (which is weird, from all other accounts I’ve heard Healbot isn’t as useful for druids).  Nevertheless, he must be doing something right, right?  So I downloaded both the other night and joined a Gruul raid to test out X-Perl.

Disaster!  Clearly I’m a creature of habit, and I’ll need a lot more practice before getting used to new unitframes.  I had to relog to turn it off before finishing the rest of the run, it was that bad.  It really sucks because configuring that crap was a real kick in the balls, took me 2 hours to get it all set up in a way I thought I could handle.  TOO MANY OPTIONS!  Exactly why I never played Sims 2, I spent about 3 hours just making a satisfactory character, thought about how long it’d take to build & decorate a house, and fled.  I’m a simple-minded person, I just want some simple raidframes… <;^(

Friend’s recommending Grid over X-Perl, so I’ll check that one out tonight.  If it comes down to it though I can’t see that I’m doing so badly using Blizzard’s regular raid frames, so… we shall see.

Breaching Mount Hyjal

Wowwww… where to begin.

So yesterday!  Mom & Mr. Moderate decided to take us into Mount Hyjal and clear some trash, just for a break from our SSC disappointments and to perk up the crew some. 

What an awesome idea.

There were a couple PUGS but mostly the guild.  Almost all of us were complete Hyjal virgins (not me tho >:^D), and Mr. Moderate was using his Moviefone voice to walk us through the strats very well.  We were actually doing quite excellently with the trash, getting through them fast and neatly with time to spare for drinking.  We wiped a few times, as expected, and then…

Rage Winterchill DOWN!!  We took him down to Chinatown!  Everybody was so happy, and Mr. Moderate was doing his, “This is incredible, I never expected us to get this far!” thing that makes everyone feel so good.  One of the PUGs immediately applied to the guild.  Everybody was just dancing around, we were so pleased with ourselves.  We’re stuck in SSC, never even downed Void Reaver in TK, but here we are progressing in Mount Hyjal!  Yea baby!  I think it’s time we go back to TK and give the Void Reaver another shot.  In the jaw.

Btw, updates to those who’d been following my guild stories: Snot was booted (not sure why [I mean, besides the obvious]), Overhealz is on indefinite hiatus because he took a long-distance truck driving job, and Biggie of all people has been pressuring me to become a guild officer.  He and Mom have become close confidants, it seems.  It’s strange because a few weeks ago he was thisclose to gquitting, but now he seems to care enough to consider taking an officer position himself.

To be or not to be

Two brooms decide to get married.  On the morning of the wedding, the bride broom says to the groom broom, “Honey, I’m pregnant!”  The groom broom is shocked!  “B-but,” he sputters, “How is that possible?  We haven’t even swept together!!”

:^D  That’s one of my favorites. 

So over the weekend while I was having a blast at Otakon, drama was stirring in the guild.  Two people left, including one prominent officer, and a couple of people were booted.  Now we’ve only got one officer (Socrates) and the three GMs (Talky, Mom & Mr. Moderate).  Talky has been inactive recently, which is probably a good thing since, honestly, he was the cause of a lot of discontent among the members.

So!  Last night!  Mom & Mr. Moderate pulled me into a private vent channel and invited me to be an officer!  I… said no.  Told them I’d be their biggest supporter, a super-duper regular member, but no officership thanks.

Before WoW, I was hooked on another MMO.  In that game, I’d created my own guild & it prospered, became one of the most popular leading guilds on that server.  In the beginning, it was awesome and I really enjoyed it.  The guild was respected, I had a lot of friends, it felt really good to have a lot of influence and rep.  However… when it started getting really huge, I started to feel desperate.  Obviously in a group of over 100 people, there will inevitably be personality conflicts and drama.  Not everyone is going to get along.  As the guild leader, any time someone had a problem with someone else or were unhappy about something in the guild, they’d come straight to me.  I’d picked pretty awesome officers, but everybody still preferred to come directly to me since I went out of my way to make myself very approachable.  I had to make some judgment calls that were personally painful, and sometimes was forced to choose between fairness and friendship.  I had to steel myself enough to be firm with people, and do things for the greater good of the whole guild instead of acceding to the wishes of individual close friends, which sometimes they couldn’t understand and got upset with me for.  

It got pretty bad; I had to simultaneously be arbitrator, entertainer, counselor, general and diplomat.  To everybody.  I really stretched myself thin trying to be everything to everybody, lost a lot of sleep because everybody wanted some of my time.  The game became less and less fun, more and more stressful until the day finally came that I dreaded logging on.  I felt horribly guilty at first, but it became easier & easier to stay away, harder & harder to think of logging back on.  That’s when I turned to WoW for the first time.

Man, what a blessing!  It felt SO FREEING to be able to just play around in a game without dealing with so many people’s problems, have a bunch of people waiting on my every move, to be able to log off whenever I wanted without feeling guilty, or log on whenever I wanted without having a hundred messages immediately bombard me.  Being a regular member is something I have learned to really, really appreciate, and I try my best to be the best, least problematic, most helpful regular member to the officers that I can.

So I declined the officer position, but I think it’s really better this way for the leaders also.  As “one of the mob”, I’m in a good position to, ahem, sway the mood of the rabble without it looking like I’m doing an official duty.  Mom & Mr. Mod understood, I was really happy to hear Mr. Moderate say, “Okay that’s fine, just whatever you do, don’t leave us!“  <:^D  They do care!  Heehee.  I won’t leave as long as Mr. Moderate & Mom are there.  <3  <:^)