Well I was completely blown away last night at my raid. Once we got everyone in vent, my guild leader announced that she and her husband, the raid leader, would be stepping down from their positions. I have a pretty good idea why they have decided to make this move, but I think their reasons are best left as personal.
I’ve had a lot of tears and laughter with both of these individuals. While I didn’t always agree with them, and at many times was very angry at them both, it would be ignorant to let their contributions to the guild and raid group go unnoticed. I feel like my friend made an excellent Guild Leader, but I think the strain and stress of dealing with people’s problems (very many have been my own) have probably weighed heavily on her in this latest expansion. I can’t think of an individual of value that wasn’t fond of Ahi. I’m sure everyone will remember our former leader with gladness, and she will certainly leave a legacy behind her.
Her husband, the Raid Leader, seemed to do a decent job at not letting things get to him, almost to a fault. Yes, he did a good job making sure his gear was gemmed and enchanted—did a good job preparing himself for raids, but I think his lack of people skills was his Achilles’s Heel. He has this tendency to bear everything on his shoulders that he could, and while this may be a noble gesture, his attempts at being the martyr ended up causing some problems in the end.
I think perhaps at some point he forgot that the raid had other people in it heh. A lot of us were generally bright and intelligent people with varying perspectives of insight to contribute to the group. It wasn’t always about who had the best ideas or finding ways to make Bez look bad; a raid group succeeds together just as much as they fail together. We all put in our monthly fee (fees for some >.>’), we all put in our time each week, and we all want to see things go well.
It always seemed like the harder things got, the bleaker situations seemed, the more Bez would try to do things himself. I always had a tendency to take this as an offense instead of a gesture of good will. That has probably been one of the largest dividing issues for me, and I truly regret that.
A History (I think it’s supposed to be “An History”…)
I’ve been friends with the Guild leader since I started college, but we really got to know each other well during the Summer of 2007 when he husband, at the time fiance, was back home in Virginia. We spent about every other day eating dinner with each other, going shopping on the weekends, and spending vacation days just hanging out together. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life, to have someone include me that much in their own life.
When her fiance came back in the fall, they started spending more time together again and I got to see her less and less; part of this really was my fault as I had let myself get completely caught up in Rangarok Online, trying to salvage a dying server. In October I went on a business trip for work and made the decision to quit Ragnarok cold turkey. It worked—I haven’t played since that day.
Well I started trying to spend more time with my friend at that point, and I noticed more and more that almost every time I went over, they were playing WoW. After about 3 months of this, after about 2 years of being asked to play wow by the two of them, even after swearing I’d never allow myself to get addicted to WoW (because I was pretty sure it would happen if I started), I downloaded a trial copy of the game and created a human warlock. And so it began…
Over the course of the game I felt like like the two people that asked me to come play with them so much were the people that played with me the least. While, at the time, I didn’t understand what a big deal raiding was for them, I still was very sad that I was always seemed to be doing everything alone (with the exception of some amazing dungeon zergs with a certain hunter and shaman). I figured it would be better in the Outlands because they wouldn’t have to leave their continent XD but it still didn’t get much better; I felt like I had to guilt them into running a dungeon with me :(
So, while my frustration and pain might have come out of misunderstanding and overreacting somewhat, I still think I was justified in my disappointment. It was hard to swallow that I had gone from what seemed like the biggest part of someone’s life to being one person in a sea of online people with which she played. I felt neglected and abandoned, and began wondering why I ever started playing this game.
Fast forward several months, several heartaches (many caused by me), our guild has grown from the people I saw in real life plus a few to over 50 active members. The group was teeming with life and diversity, and I felt like I finally had people who were able to distinguish me from the large group of people—for the first time it seemed like people were willing to pick me up out of the crowd every now and then, so I began to build a relationship with the guild again. It was then that I realized how much the guild meant.
The Moral of the Story
While a lot of this seems like girl drama and /weaksauce, I think a lot this goes on in WoW between friends and in friends and family groups. I’ve learned several lessons through the entire ordeal—some are lessons I’m not a big fan of, but in the end I found some peace with most of the things that bothered me. In the beginning I didn’t realize what a priority my friend had in tending to the entire guild, even as small as it was at the start.
It took me about 8 months to realize that my goals, my desires, my plans just weren’t as important to her as the overall goals, desires, and plans of the guild or even of her husband. While I still don’t think I agree with the earlier of the two, I can still respect it. I gave my friend a lot of grief about this during the first 6 months of my playing because it never made sense to me, but I think I understand better now. I’ll always want to be a significant part of her life, but I’ve learned that it’s not going to be the same as it was that one summer.
In the Future
I will certainly say that it’s always intimidating to me for people to put down the game for any period of time. I understand what a committment the game takes, let alone holding a leadership position of a guild or raid. I think my friends realized that and have made the responsible decision to dedicate more of their time to their lives. Like I say when anyone makes that decision, I highly admire them.
I honestly think that things will work out the best for everyone now. I wish my friends and my guild the best of luck in the coming months as we all begin new chapters of our lives.
I can understand the situation. I started playing WoW in 2005 and my partner soon got hooked, which was great since we had something to talk about together. Then one of my friends also began playing and it was awesome to have two people close to me playing the same game.
Fast forward two years into the future and well into the death of BC and I found that I played less and less with my friend because my partner and I were aiming to do raid content. We were willing to put in the late hours and frustration that comes with raiding and my friend wasn’t. Nothing wrong with that, just differences of opinion and interest.
Because of the raiding scheduled, guild politics, and just drama in general my friend ended up quitting the game and now I’m uncomfortable talking about it when he’s around. Mostly because my friend resents the game for how it drove us apart (gaming-wise). It’s a hurdle for sure, but I understand his perspective and, given enough time, things will get back to normal I hope.
Yes. It has certainly been an interesting experience. I would like to think that my friends and I can start doing more together in real life from now on :)
Oh, I’m sure you’re happy now that they’ve stepped down due to the seething comments you made about of ex-raid leader and his wife in a previous post. That’s why now you’re almost (almost) looking back fondly over the time you had with them. But I seem to recall that at every turn, that at every chance you had with a listening ear you would badmouth them, their characters, or whatever displeased you that particular day behind their backs. And then you grudge and grudge and grudge. You do this with anyone you’re angry with- you vent instead of dealing with the problem the way you should. You start drama with your passive aggression and try to bring people to your ’side’ instead of doing the responsible thing a friend would do- keep others out of your problems with your other friends. It’s YOUR problem, don’t involve them.
At the end of the day, what did they do to deserve such hatred from you? It’s a game. It’s a GAME. An online game where people can be themselves, or the furthest things from themselves as they wish to be. The ex-raid leader and ex-guild leader in their cases, chose a different kind of game to play from most- management. They had to remove themselves from most normal play to organize everything, study fights, and keep morale. This is why you were never in a management position- you destroy morale. You hold grudges and can’t keep a cool head. This was something they could do. What you saw as uncaring deaf ears was tough love. If you could have gotten over your ego for a second you could have seen that.
So now the problem is over now that they aren’t playing anymore? They’re the same people! Nothing has changed other then that your ‘authority figures’ have stepped down. And in response to your admin comment, the only reason your friends haven’t been doing anything with you in real life is because you abandoned them first. They invite you out? You’re playing WoW that night. They invite you over? You’re on your blackberry talking to the WoW crush of the month, or you just obviously don’t want to be there. Or you fall asleep because you were up all night… playing WoW. You don’t do things with us in real life anymore because you don’t want to, not because we didn’t.
You have an ADDICTION Rae. A real, life eating addiction. It blinds you to everything else around you. The best thing you could ever do for yourself would be to put down the keyboard and never ever play an online game ever again. You crave camaraderie wherever you can find it, and online games are so easy to get swept up in. You did it with Ragnarok- it consumed your life for what, 2 years? Yes, your friends wanted you to play WoW so that they could play with you once in a while, but if they had known what I had they would have never mentioned it. The game became your whole life. Your social life (the real one that matters) suffered, your school suffered, your job suffered. And what happens when you were forced to quit your job? You brag that now you will have more time to play WoW. Mark my words, if current courses hold, you will be kicked out of school in the year and forced back home with the mother you blame for most of your problems and in a lot of debt. You were foolish to quit a job that was paying for all of your college, and the dilemma that you claim the job presented you with would not have probably happened had you actually done your job in a professional manner. But WoW was so important that you oft showed up late, in poor condition, and your work suffered.
WoW, when you play it, is your whole world. Anything wrong in your world you are bitter about, and are unable to tell the difference between the real and the game. In doing so you have alienated your old real life friends, who despite all of your transgressions (which I believe you condemn your character by some of the things you have said in this blog and are self evident) want you back. We miss you, or at least what you used to be. I, personally, removed myself from raiding in WoW when the drama reared it’s ugly head. I knew it was coming, and I hoped it wouldn’t get this far. I have been thus far quiet, passive, and worried. Now I tire of the viciousness you have shown towards our friends. You have lots of things to work out in your life, as do we all, but don’t think for a second that you aren’t responsible for your own actions. If you won’t apologize to them for at least the things you have said here (and they know about this site btw, they showed it to me) then I can’t ever find myself around you again. That might not be much at this point, or nothing to you, but believe me when I say that it hurts me, as it has been hurting me for years now. I have said all of this with no malice, though I am sure you will take it as such. It is out of the respect of my oldest friendship that I have that I even say anything now.
Take care.
First of all, there’s been no hatred here. You’re gravely mistaken if that’s how you have interpreted things. My post entitled “Teamwork” had a small rant at the end based upon several comments that [the raid leader] has made to me recently. The truth is that [the raid leader] has been rather inconsiderate and disrespectful to me recently; I know [the guild leader] probably still disagrees with me on this, but in any case he has certainly not treated me like a friend. I have had other people apologize to me for the way he has treated me if that gives you any idea. As a raid leader he may not be able to chat it up with me all the time, but I at least deserve the same respect he gives his other raid members.
Another thing is, I don’t understand why people think I’ve said anything negative about [the guild leader] at all. I haven’t mentioned her in my posts until the latest one where I did nothing but exonerate her and retell some history. I keep reading over the posts trying to figure out how people could misconstrue this as hatred or anger towards her, unless they just didn’t read the post completely. I have done everything I could to keep from saying a cross word to [the guild leader], especially about WoW. My rant was incited and partially targeted at [the raid leader] and a few others, but not [the guild leader].
Also, none of this was about me being an officer. I accepted a long time ago that I wasn’t going to be one, and frankly it’s frustrating that people keep using this against me.
I started playing WoW because everyone else was so wrapped up with it; it was the only time I could actually interact with you guys without feeling like I was interrupting something more important. Yes, I do play the game a lot. Sadly a lot of the time the game is more reliable than real life people are because there’s always someone online in the game. That’s not meant to be an insult or a blame, it’s life. You guys are all married and always have that person to be with and plan things with. I’m always by myself, and honestly I felt forgotten a lot in the beginning. Just about every time I was invited over to someone’s house for a while, there was at least one individual playing WoW, and the solution was always to turn on the TV for Rae so she would have something to do. That’s not my idea of hanging out, and so I began opting to do things that were more fun for me.
At some point I had to start planning my wow events in advance because I felt like it required some kind of planning; things worth your time are worth planning. Most of the time when I was busy on certain nights was when you asked me the day of or hours before when you wanted to get together. I’m sorry I couldn’t make every single one of those events, but I did make some of them. It just seemed like you focused more on the ones that I missed because of WoW instead of the times that I skipped WoW for you or others. Did I ever give you hard time about you not wanting to go camping every time I suggested it? Did I give you a hard time every time you scowled at my choice of restaurant or store or [insert means of spending time]? Not at first because while it was a little sad, I still allowed you to have your preferences. Now later on I started addressing the issue more often because I got tired of feeling like my opinion wasn’t valued, but I was always met with a lecture in return.
Regarding my past mmorpg tendencies, I told [the raid leader] how much I got addicted to Ragnarok and how I knew the same thing would happen with WoW. I said this to him for three months straight, and every time he said that it wouldn’t be like that. He kept giving me reasons for why it would be ok to play the game and why I should. For three months. Yet, it seemed like once I started playing the goal became to keep people from thinking [the raid leader] was biased towards me in any way.
I think some misunderstanding is coming from the fact that you think I quit my job to play WoW more. I think [the guild leader] is the only person who knows what it was like for me at my job, and she is probably the only person that understood what was going through my head when I made this decision. Right now my education is worth more to me than some barely adequate salary. Sure it would have paid for my education, but I would have been doing it for four more years. Four more years of being unhappy with no prospects of advancement. Four more years of being secluded from the student body with slim chances of social interaction or even romantic endeavours (btw I don’t see how your comment about my “WoW crush of the month” was not malicious; that was incredibly insulting). It’s hard for me to breathe when I think about spending the next four years like that, especially when everyone else keeps making plans to move on.
I think that you see part of the story, but don’t see the whole picture, and are therefore lacking much insight in the situation. It’s quite painful to read your grim outlook on my future, but all the same I do appreciate your concern for me. I understand that I have hurt [the guild leader] and [the raid leader] in the past due to my selfishness and misunderstandings, but I don’t think that has any business here anymore. If I still have atoning to do for my actions in the past, then I will talk with [the guild leader] about it.
The things I said in my post entitled “Teamwork” were opinions pertaining to the raid group. The fact that several people have mentioned to me that they’re glad to see their own frustrations take shape in cognitive language. I realized that the last section of the post was particularly poignant, but I needed to get it off my chest. It’s really frustrating to be talked down to for making intelligent input, but feeling like not raiding was letting people down. I was caught between a rock and a hard place for a long time, and the last section reflects just that.
I assume because you responded to “Under New Management” you took more offense to this post than anything else. I have a lot of mixed feelings regarding ([the guild leader]+[the raid leader]) + WoW, but I tried to convey the best of those in that post. I really did try my best to honor the things they both contributed to the group without it sounding sappy, disassociated or full of hot air. I tried to explain a lot of things and convey some of the lessons I’ve learned, and I guess I’m just really taken aback at how upset people have gotten over this. I think it has been widely misinterpreted, and I would really like to understand why.
I was hoping the last paragraph would stand out the most in the post, but perhaps by that point the damage had already been done and it was impossible to obtain any positive value from those last few sentences. Perhaps I should have chosen a more sensitive title for the post, as in retrospect it appears to foreshadow the text with a different meaning. Perhaps I shouldn’t have written it at all and left off with the angsty rant post, but that didn’t seem like the best course of action.
I’ll say it again for emphasis—there is no hatred here. There’s been a lot of pain in my past, yes, but I don’t hate anyone.
Other people talk Rae. The blog has small vents from you made out of some frustration and anger, (perhaps not hatred, I may have used the wrong wording). But it has come to my attention that you vent about them to other people. I tend to believe this because you have vented to me and Chris before about them. You have also vented about me to Jen, or vented to all of us about your mom or dad or brother or your boss, etc. You can’t deny this. You have said plenty of bad things about Jen and Daniel, just never to their faces, save perhaps for passive aggressiveness. This blog post was just the last straw if you stood where I stand and knew the back story. What you actually wrote in the blog pales in comparison to what you have actually said over a long time. And what you did say there, do you think that maybe some of it might have offended them?
Most of what you have written back is ‘poor me poor me, it’s not my fault I do what I do, he did this, she did that’. I am to gather that you are not apologetic in the least for what you have said about my friends over a long period of time. I don’t care what they did or didn’t do- You are entitled to your opinion, but I really wish you would keep them between yourself and the person you are upset at. Once you get other people involved, you get people like me. And my ‘grim incite’ as you put it is because I have sat back and watched you from a long time and have observed a pattern- a ‘big picture’ if you will. But hey, prove me wrong. I hope you do. And I hope you eventually realize that you are the one who is in the hole, and that I don’t care much why you’re down there or who helped you dig. If you want a hand out though, all you have to do is ask. From here on out, I will be silent again, and even forgive you even though you are not apologetic. If Jen or Daniel wish to take any action I will leave them to do so. This is between y’all, and I suggest you keep it as such from now on.
(And keep this to email, I don’t know why you felt the need to respond in two places if other than to make yourself appear better to whomever might read it here. It would be fine if you deleted what I had said and kept it private or if we had spoken only here, but as it is I think whomever reads this needs the whole story.)
I think that if you had read my posts more carefully or even my last email that you would have gathered that I was indeed apologetic about what I have said in the past. I have apologized to [the guild leader] many times about it, cried in her arms as I told her I never wanted her to forget what she really meant to me. Of course that was preceded by possibly one of the nastiest letters I had ever written, though, at the time, seemed to convey much of the pain and heartache I had been experiencing. I bore the disapproval of several angry people in [the guild leader]’s life because of that letter and I carried it heavily for a very long time. I guess maybe those wounds haven’t healed yet. Perhaps that is why [the raid leader] has treated me the way he has. I guess at this point I can’t blame him anymore.
As for my blog posts, it’s possible that the last section, the rant, in “Teamwork” was too harsh. I was rather angry at [the raid leader] for actively promoting behavior that I felt was detrimental to the raid group. I wanted to point out just how that made me feel. I will see about taking care of this section.
But, like I said previously, the latest post I made was sincerely an attempt to explain things and apologize, but it seems certain parts of it have been blown way out of proportion. Maybe I didn’t give the kind of apology you were looking for. Maybe I wasn’t apologetic enough. It’s hard for me to feel like I’m the only one expected to apologize for things when I don’t feel like I’m the only person that did anything wrong, so perhaps that was reflected a little too much in my words.
I’m sorry if my latest post sounded like I was digging up the past and trying to convince people of how much I was hurt. Most of it was to show that I thought at the time the things I said and did were justified, but I would later come to find the error in my ways. I want my posts to be informational, but also reflect myself. Maybe this was my way of talking to people because I don’t feel like I can do it face to face, and I seem to have a bad track record with emails. Perhaps it was not the best way. I will certainly try to keep things less personal in my posts from now on though.