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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Guildmates and You!

So if you're playing WoW(and I assume you either are currently playing or have played it at some point since you're reading this blog) then you have probably been in a guild at some point. It doesn't matter the type of guild, whether it be a leveling, a social, a raiding, a PvP, or even a guild that does all of it. I believe that being in a guild of some kind is a huge part of experiencing the game and those that have never been in one are missing out on a huge part of the game. My guild is a mainly PvE guild as we are focused on PvE content but we're not a bunch of care bears, the horde we camped until they cried politely explained the errors of being a horde on a PvP server the other night can testify. Why am I listing my guild credentials you may ask? Well because today's topic is going to be about Guilds and what they can mean for their members.



After our guild first downing of Putricide last week(woohoo guild first! Yeah yeah months behind but I don't care) I was running randoms on Rhommel for badges when a guildee complained about a trinket not dropping in regular ToC for him. I volunteered to help him and so did a warrior guildee who asked if he could practice tanking. We all get into the group and I noticed that the hunter was dying, so I flew to where he was and saw him pvping against some horde hunter. I of course joined in and long story short I walked away with several honor kills and a good laugh at how badly we rocked the hunter and the friends he called in to help him. Man I do love me some world PvP!

Anyway back to the instance run, the hunter guildee had to go for a bit so I asked the warrior guildee if he really wanted to get some experience tanking and he responded that he did so I switched to my resto shaman and offered to queue with him. He warned me that he was not that great and his gear was also not that super, my response to him was "Meh." My shaman is ICC geared, if he couldn't keep up an under geared tank through a heroic then no one can. We queue and I was hoping to get an easy heroic for him to tank when the insta queue popped and we load...into HoL! Not horrible like the ICC5 mans but still not necessarily a cakewalk. Oh HoL, I remember when you were big and mean and required the top gear to do successfully. How far you have fallen in the world. We load in and I tell him to keep pulling until I tell him to stop. First pull and he grabs one mob while the other one runs into the group and starts hurting the rest of the group. This lets me know that this heroic is going to be a long run but it's for a guildee so at least its for a good cause. Having a geared prot warrior myself, I can at least offer advice to the guildee. I more or less proceed to walk him through the whole instance and I was glad that I was geared because he had some agro issues. I looked at his spec, his glyphs, and his enchants and gave him a lot of tips which he was very very grateful for.

So what does all this have to do with anything? Why am I going on and on about a heroic HoL run? Well it's because to me this is what a person should do for a guildmate. You help them out, you suggest changes, you use your over geared characters to help their under geared characters. There are some people who think that a guild only exists for them and that they should be babied. I say good day to those people!

In my mind a guild is like a family...filled with a rather eclectic mix of people. To me it's a family because you spend so much time with these people that you get to know them and their personalities. I have guildees that have been with me for almost 5 years, from the days of vanilla wow through this expansion. I also have guildees who have joined the guild only a short time ago. I hope that all of them find the same type of environment in my guild, one of helpfulness, fun, and maybe just a little bit of competence ;-). I think when you join a guild you are signing up to become part of the family and that you need to make an effort to at least try to fit in. If you log on each day and don't participate in guild events, talk to anyone in guild, or at least acknowledge people in your guild...you're doing it wrong. A guild is a great way to unwind from the stress of life, virtual or otherwise. We joke around in gchat and when you're grinding out badges for gear for the millionth alt, sometimes that gchat humor is the only thing keeping you from insanity.

The sad thing is that there are many guilds out there that have one policy: Guild leadership > you. These are the guilds that are so focused on one thing, raiding/pvp/etc, that they forget that they are a guild. They eventually break down because people don't feel happy being in them or they don't feel like the guild is a home. The guild may start to make WoW feel like it's a job instead of a game and sadly this turns many people away from the game. I've talked to people who have told me that their guild is suffering from drama because the guildmates don't like each other and yet they are forced to deal with each other in groups or raids. Eventually things will blow up and people are left feeling lost. I hope that my guild never gets to that point but I think we have a rather unique view on life in and out of game. I play the game to have fun and if I'm not having fun because of something in game that I can change then I actively go and do my best to change that.

I don't know if this rant helped anyone or not but hey it made me feel a little better by getting it out of my mind so I can make room for other things...like my plan to train a monkey to play WoW or my dream of owning my very own X-wing. Yes...these are the thoughts that keep me up at night.

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad the rant made you feel better. It actually made me feel better too. I struggled with this for a long time, in guilds where I was not happy. Sometimes you are with a group for so long, it is hard to leave. The subtle social nuances change so gradually that sometimes it comes as quite a shock when all of a sudden you realize you're raiding with people you can't stand.

    I agree with you about what a guild should be like. What you did for that warrior is what I would do for a guildie as well. The only trouble is that I've run into situations where I'm the only one willing to give. Will that warrior help you with something later? Who knows?

    In the end, I've found that often people use other people, usually not maliciously, but still selfishly. Which brings the argument full circle. In order for each of us to enjoy our game time we have to be selfish sometimes, otherwise we're not playing for ourselves and it becomes work instead of fun.

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