I sometimes think no matter what my guild situation is, I will never be perfectly happy with it. And I don't think that's necessairly a bad assumption or something to be looked down upon. Obviously, I would rather be happy with my guild all the time, but the fact is that guilds are made up of, well, different people and if your mode of communication is guild chat (pixelated words without tone or inflection) then things are sometimes going to come off wrong and people are going to be miffed or hurt or defensive. I go through a cycle of these feelings with my guildmates all the times, even the ones I feel really close to so I think a state of "never quite completely perfect" is natural, most of the time.
That being said, lately I have been feeling the loss of not being an officer anymore. I have been with the guild since it started and only stepped down from being an officer about two months ago due to my hectic work schedule and slight burn out. Stepping down was definitely the best choice. It took so much weight off my back and it was nice to log on and not really have any "responsibilites". I could do what I wanted, when I wanted!
Now that work has evened out though and I'm no longer traveling on business, I miss having the authority to smack people down when their being borderline idiotic or thoughtless. We have a mage in our guild now that is essentially Mr. I Know Everything There Is To Know About WoW. He offers advice when it's not needed or wanted, he has a thousand and one ideas of how to do things bigger and better than what we've got in place now, he feels the need to try and tell everyone how to be better, get better gear -- wait, that all doesn't sound so bad, does it? And it's not, it's really not. It's the way he presents these ideas and opinions.
The other day one of our hunters asked in guildchat where she could buy tier gear. We told her she could go to Dalaran or the Argent Tourney for Tier 9 and suddenly Mr. Mage pops up.
"Hold on, let me RAWR you and tell you exactly what you should get."
I would have said, "Hey, if you want, I can run RAWR real quick and you can see which pieces might be better for you." If I say it like that, it's more of a question, a suggestion really, and my guildie would not be under any obligation to listen to me if she didn't want to. This is what bothers me about this guy - he doesn't present things as options, it's more "here's what I think and here's why I'm right" or "we did this in my last guild and it was awesome so we should it here", etc, etc.
Sadly, after he looked up our hunter (who is rarely online and doesn't raid) he blurts out in guildchat, "WHOA, you really need to get some gear!"
This just burned me up. Our guild does not focus on gearscore. We're there to have fun and we very often carry people through raids that are not geared for the content. We do NOT carry lazy folks who don't bother working on their toons, but we certainly don't mind bringing a slightly ungeared guildie along so they can get some loot they'd actually use.
To me, it was entirely inappropriate for Mr. Mage to pass judgement on the hunter's gear in guildchat. If he wants to talk to her about her gear, fine, lovely, but do it in whispers. Our hunter did not respond to the above - probably either embarressed or annoyed, I'm not sure which - but I did. I just couldn't help myself.
My exactly reply was:
"Hey now, gear isn't everything. :)"
I put the smiley in there so he would know I wasn't yelling at him, but trying to subtly make a point for him to drop it. He replied:
"I never said it was, GeeBee," but he used my full name as if he were scolding a five-year-old. I had to zip my mouth shut after that or risk saying something regretable but it made me wish I was an officer again just so I would have been able to whisper him to tell him we do not address an individual's gear issues in guildchat - or at all, really, unless it's hurting the group as a whole, which it was not. Was what he said really wrong? Not really, it's just the way he comes off - as sort of superior, I guess - that makes me want to take him down a peg or two.
The reason I'm telling you all this is because of a post made by Tam recently. It got me thinking about things that irritate me within my guild, about how the way people say things can really affect my perception of them. Mr. Mage is probably a perfectly nice human being. I just wish he would think a little more before opening his mouth, make an attempt not to sound as if he's deigning to help those less fortunate than himself.
What's possibly more uncomfortable is that I want to like him, I really do, I can see where he's trying to be helpful - but it's his presentation of his help that always ends up rubbing me the wrong way. Probably doesn't help that I'm the boat-rocker, the one who can't keep her mouth shut and has to call people out when they're being ridiculous.
And maybe that's my own annoying habit - Miss Can't Keep Her Mouth Shut And Go With The Flow. I'm not mean about it, but like with the mage, I thought his remark was careless and so I responded. I felt I had to say something so that our hunter would know that we didn't care about her gear, we liked her and knew she didn't have a lot of time online and that was okay with us.
So, Mr. I Think I Know Everying and Miss Can't Keep Her Mouth Shut. I'm sure we make quite a pair.
Whether or not I will become an officer again remains to be seen. I've been told I'd be welcomed back at any time but I'm not sure the pros outweight the cons on this one. Not yet, at least. Until then, I guess I just need to learn how to deal with those who aren't always as polite as I think they should be. Who's to say I'm any better anyway?
In slightly better news, I wanted to report that things with the other holy pally in my guild are going... alright. I have not spoken to her about my concerns. I sort of wanted to see how things played out, but our exchanges have seemed better and she responded to something I posted on our forums with laughter, which I thought was a good sign. I'm hoping things on that front are slowly improving. It's not all patched up yet, but I think it's getting there. If it gets worse, I'm taking everyone's advice and talking to her, until then though, I'm sorta hoping she gets over it on her own.
Ah, guilds. Without them, what would I have to post about?
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
In Your Raid, Stepping On Your Toes
So, I've been traveling for the last month and hadn't been online much, either to play WoW or do anything else really. Needless to say, I returned to my guild happy as a clam that I could actually relax and play a little in comfort.
However, another person was not so happy.
Let me preface this story by saying that my main is a holy pally. I'm not going to link her amory or reveal her name in the interests of protecting my guild, but I may eventually, if I feel comfortable enough to do so. My guild is a relatively small, casual guild that does a variety of things - PVP, raiding, RP, etc. Because of that, we're not really focused on one thing. For instance, raiding. As a guild, we have never cleared ToC 10. Mostly because we've never had enough members geared enough to do it. Right now I would say that we have 6-7 ICC geared folks but we can never get all of those folks together on the same night to do anything. In any case, this is not too much of a problem for us as we are not inherently a raiding guild. Lot of our members PUG the raids they need, as do I. In our guild we have very few mainspec healers. In fact, I believe it's just myself (the holy pally), a disc priest and a holy priest. Before I left for my month of traveling, I was the only geared mainspec holy pally but I had been helping a fellow Ret pally to start a holy set. Well, she did. Guess who was not so happy to see me back?
Our guild is small enough to where I've always been the "go to" healer. It's my main spec, it's what I prefer doing. While I was gone, apparently my friend became the sort of "go to" healer. When I returned, I easily slipped back into my old place, not really aware of at first all the changes. Needless to say, there has been some stepping on of toes.
She has not said anything to me personally but there is a kind of... frosty air about our exchanges now, a sort of passive-agressiveness on her part. This saddens me because I've always thought of us as friends, and when I was encouraging her to make her offspec Holy, I sort of felt like I was mentoring her and was proud of all her achievements. Now I feel as if someone is glaring into the back of my head whenever I'm asked to heal something.
On Saturday night, a group of us went to Ulduar. I love that raid (I go Rambo on those Iron Dwarves, man). So I and a PUGged second holy pally healed (my guildie was not signed up for this raid). Actually, I'm being gracious. We stopped at Freya but for the entire night I had been grumbling about the other pally. Many times I would catch him just standing there, not casting a thing and my blood pressure would rise. Two holy pallies in a 10man is not my preferred setup anyway and my job was made doubly as hard with SLACKER!pally. At the end of the night, I had near 5k hps and he had about 1.3 hps. I was furious. The meters show me doing about 75% of the healing. Mysteriously, right at Freya, our two pugs (the SLACKER!pally and his moonkin friend) disconnect so we pause to see if we can find another healer. We do a switcheroo instead and one of our tanks gets his healer and one of our DPS switches to his tank set.
We clear some of the trash before Freya and my guildie logs on. We ask her to come on in but I notice that no one specifically tells her she would be coming in as a DPS. She thinks about it and then, a minute later...
"Who's healing?"
I answer, "Myself and [insert priest name here]."
Not a word. No response.
For my part, I feel as thought SHE feels that I'm trespassing on her territory which, at least in my opinion, seems crazy. She's not the only holy pally in WoW, obviously, she can't get upset everytime there's another one in the vicinity of her. Furthermore, I always thought we were friends, some competition is always healthy of course, but not to this extent. I feel now that we can not both be healing the same raid, the tension between us makes me too uncomfortable. For now I'm going to let her choose which role she wants and I'll do the other but I'll not go head to head with her in a healing match. I think doing so would only make things worse since my goal is for her to feel comfortable again and to stop feeling like she has to compete with me.
I don't know really. The whole situation saddens me. The fact that I even have to contemplate it saddens me. Have any of you ever had to deal with this sort of situation? A guildmate being territorial? How did you solve it?
Until then, I guess I"ll just have to ride my sparkle pony to make myself feel better.
However, another person was not so happy.
Let me preface this story by saying that my main is a holy pally. I'm not going to link her amory or reveal her name in the interests of protecting my guild, but I may eventually, if I feel comfortable enough to do so. My guild is a relatively small, casual guild that does a variety of things - PVP, raiding, RP, etc. Because of that, we're not really focused on one thing. For instance, raiding. As a guild, we have never cleared ToC 10. Mostly because we've never had enough members geared enough to do it. Right now I would say that we have 6-7 ICC geared folks but we can never get all of those folks together on the same night to do anything. In any case, this is not too much of a problem for us as we are not inherently a raiding guild. Lot of our members PUG the raids they need, as do I. In our guild we have very few mainspec healers. In fact, I believe it's just myself (the holy pally), a disc priest and a holy priest. Before I left for my month of traveling, I was the only geared mainspec holy pally but I had been helping a fellow Ret pally to start a holy set. Well, she did. Guess who was not so happy to see me back?
Our guild is small enough to where I've always been the "go to" healer. It's my main spec, it's what I prefer doing. While I was gone, apparently my friend became the sort of "go to" healer. When I returned, I easily slipped back into my old place, not really aware of at first all the changes. Needless to say, there has been some stepping on of toes.
She has not said anything to me personally but there is a kind of... frosty air about our exchanges now, a sort of passive-agressiveness on her part. This saddens me because I've always thought of us as friends, and when I was encouraging her to make her offspec Holy, I sort of felt like I was mentoring her and was proud of all her achievements. Now I feel as if someone is glaring into the back of my head whenever I'm asked to heal something.
On Saturday night, a group of us went to Ulduar. I love that raid (I go Rambo on those Iron Dwarves, man). So I and a PUGged second holy pally healed (my guildie was not signed up for this raid). Actually, I'm being gracious. We stopped at Freya but for the entire night I had been grumbling about the other pally. Many times I would catch him just standing there, not casting a thing and my blood pressure would rise. Two holy pallies in a 10man is not my preferred setup anyway and my job was made doubly as hard with SLACKER!pally. At the end of the night, I had near 5k hps and he had about 1.3 hps. I was furious. The meters show me doing about 75% of the healing. Mysteriously, right at Freya, our two pugs (the SLACKER!pally and his moonkin friend) disconnect so we pause to see if we can find another healer. We do a switcheroo instead and one of our tanks gets his healer and one of our DPS switches to his tank set.
We clear some of the trash before Freya and my guildie logs on. We ask her to come on in but I notice that no one specifically tells her she would be coming in as a DPS. She thinks about it and then, a minute later...
"Who's healing?"
I answer, "Myself and [insert priest name here]."
Not a word. No response.
For my part, I feel as thought SHE feels that I'm trespassing on her territory which, at least in my opinion, seems crazy. She's not the only holy pally in WoW, obviously, she can't get upset everytime there's another one in the vicinity of her. Furthermore, I always thought we were friends, some competition is always healthy of course, but not to this extent. I feel now that we can not both be healing the same raid, the tension between us makes me too uncomfortable. For now I'm going to let her choose which role she wants and I'll do the other but I'll not go head to head with her in a healing match. I think doing so would only make things worse since my goal is for her to feel comfortable again and to stop feeling like she has to compete with me.
I don't know really. The whole situation saddens me. The fact that I even have to contemplate it saddens me. Have any of you ever had to deal with this sort of situation? A guildmate being territorial? How did you solve it?
Until then, I guess I"ll just have to ride my sparkle pony to make myself feel better.
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