World of Warcraft®

Before I start, some people out there will know who I'm talking about with this, I don't wish to name names (especially as I don't know all of them - and frankly don't care who it is), but if the people involved wish to come forth, they're free to, I'm not asking them to, but please don't call them out if you know who it is, but are not involved.

Raiding is fun for some people. Raiding is difficult to arrange. I get that. But we're supposed to be an open, helpful community, are we not? That's the entire purpose for our global OOC channels and weekly events, to bring us closer together as a community.

There are some practices I've been hearing about lately that have been working to undermine that sense of community.

When RP guilds are competing for members NOT for the sake of RP, but because one of those guilds refuses to allow people to raid with them unless they're in that RP guild.... look, if you're a dedicated raiding guild, I understand that. But if your guild is based around RP, and raiding is secondary, a restriction like that feels arbitrary and creates unnecessary barriers to get involved in raiding and puts up barriers between what should be an open community of RPers.

The worst offenses of this are when these guilds who say "you must be in our guild to raid" start using this to steal members from other guilds who have, in the past, allowed members of that very guild into their own raid with no such requirement. That seems disrespectful to your fellow guilds, especially when the guild who is having their members stolen in such a fashion is berated for complaining about it.

Remember folks, this is supposed to be a friendly, welcoming community. Let's not undermine that by competing amongst ourselves over petty things like this.

If you're a raiding guild, fine, be a raiding guild. Advertise yourself as a raiding guild, and recruit raiders.

But if you're an RP guild, remember - we're a community. Can we not do things AS a community, and not fight over members on an already admittedly small server?

EDIT: Also keep in mind I've not heard all the sides of this story - you know, what with not knowing who else is involved.

Just going to echo what's been said....

Telling RPers they have to leave a rp guild to join another rp guild to raid isn't cool beans.

Little odd that it still happens in today's raiding environment which allows easy access to raiding while taking out a number of the reasons for wanting to maintain your raiding roster specifically with guildies (though a few still exist). The odd part that strikes me is the requirement under a guild that prominently roleplays. On a server with a population of our size its not exactly a good tactic to fill slots when you add additional barriers to getting in.

I agree that demanding RPers join your RP guild to raid with you is unreasonable, and poaching players from other RP guilds for non RP reasons is unconscionable.

But I don't think that has happened here.

Prioritizing spots in the raid for characters who are in said RP guild is common sense. It would be unreasonable to favor a character not in the guild for a spot, kicking out a character in said guild.

08/13/2015 09:21 AMPosted by Nemestrinus

On a server with a population of our size its not exactly a good tactic to fill slots when you add additional barriers to getting in.

Except that I do not think this has happened, but I could be wrong.

I agree that demanding RPers join your RP guild to raid with you is unreasonable, and poaching players from other RP guilds for non RP reasons is unconscionable.

But I don't think that has happened here.

Prioritizing spots in the raid for characters who are in said RP guild is common sense. It would be unreasonable to favor a character not in the guild for a spot, kicking out a character in said guild.

But we're supposed to be an open, helpful community, are we not? That's the entire purpose for our global OOC channels and weekly events, to bring us closer together as a community.

...

EDIT: Also keep in mind I've not heard all the sides of this story - you know, what with not knowing who else is involved.

A hugely important part of being an open and helpful community is not assuming the worst of each other. If it -seems- like something bad is going on, don't just accept that it is, jumping to the worst conclusion possible.

I feel like this happens a lot, that something completely reasonable and innocuous is blown out of proportion and used as evidence of malice. A simple response is turned into "being rude," for example.

I just have to question WHY people assume the worst of those in their community. We need to tear down the mentality of "everyone is against me/us."

I'll have to add that it's hard to convey tone. I'm not trying to be rude or tear down any of you in response. However, this is something that really hurts me. My intention is to be genuine and upfront, not to make anyone feel bad.

If you admit that you haven't heard all sides of the story, gotten any confirmation... Why make this post? Why accuse the community of something so malicious? Why spread negativity? Why not investigate first, to see if there actually is such a problem, instead of picking up hearsay and assuming the worst.

Note: Sorry for the multiple posts, but I wanted to direct quote and I'm low on time.

08/13/2015 05:26 PMPosted by Zaranae

It would be unreasonable to favor a character not in the guild for a spot, kicking out a character in said guild.

Except with the flex system in place that sort of limits the reasoning for kicking out a character from your own guild.

Edit: Specially if all the block from him getting in was simple joining the guild. Other than the tag over his head what conditions changed that allowed one getting into a raid that didn't remove someone else?

08/14/2015 04:39 PMPosted by Nemestrinus

08/13/2015 05:26 PMPosted by Zaranae

It would be unreasonable to favor a character not in the guild for a spot, kicking out a character in said guild.

Except with the flex system in place that sort of limits the reasoning for kicking out a character from your own guild.

Edit: Specially if all the block from him getting in was simple joining the guild. Other than the tag over his head what conditions changed that allowed one getting into a raid that didn't remove someone else?

Not having enough healers to compensate for the scaling due to additional DPS.

08/14/2015 05:30 PMPosted by Zaranae

Not having enough healers to compensate for the scaling due to additional DPS.

True, but we know that isn't the case in question for this particular scenario. Since the person(s) were brought in to raid by simple leaving one guild for another. If it was a question of not enough healers he/she/they wouldn't be raiding with or without joining them for the same reason.

Edit: This is coming off the assumption the individual(s) were even dps, it gets even weaker if they're(?) healers or tanks.

A hugely important part of being an open and helpful community is not assuming the worst of each other. If it -seems- like something bad is going on, don't just accept that it is, jumping to the worst conclusion possible.

I feel like this happens a lot, that something completely reasonable and innocuous is blown out of proportion and used as evidence of malice. A simple response is turned into "being rude," for example.

I just have to question WHY people assume the worst of those in their community. We need to tear down the mentality of "everyone is against me/us."

I'll have to add that it's hard to convey tone. I'm not trying to be rude or tear down any of you in response. However, this is something that really hurts me. My intention is to be genuine and upfront, not to make anyone feel bad.

I will start by saying this: I don't know the situation that gave rise to this thread. The practice described sounds horrible, but not knowing the specifics, it's hard for an outside observer like myself to really get what's going on here, let alone to lay blame. But I do want to go over this piece, because we agree on something: we as a community do have a recurring problem with how we deal with disagreements and conflict.

I get that it's difficult to convey tone in text, especially when you're limited to 255 characters, but if we're referencing the same behavior, we're not talking about a failure to cure simple misunderstandings. That much can be done as soon as the next post without much difficulty in most cases. Instead there is often an equally offended defense of the behavior, which tends to rely heavily on flagrantly dishonest debate tactics such as ad hominem, red herring attacks, straw man assertions, dogpiling, gish galloping, tactical stupidity and gaslighting - all in a format where, due to the constrained resources specific to the format, the other side cannot reasonably put up a defense. We have spoken ill of people who are not around to offer defenses or rebukes to the assertions being leveled at them, and certain people appear very concerned with ostracizing others instead of reconciling disagreements amicably. This isn't a road we should be favoring, and while I don't know if that's how the discussion being referenced went down, I'm confident that my guess is close, because this sort of thing has been replicated so much.

Now, for the record, Zaranae, your defense for prioritizing guild members is correct. If your guild is organizing the thing, it only makes sense for them to reward its members with at least that priority - and that is very different from the assertion that it is purely an exercise in guild exclusivity. If that's the situation at hand, then Harmath's assertion is a straw man fallacy and we should dismiss it.

While I don't know what's triggered this, it's important to recognize that for some players they may rate their raiding experience as more important than RP, even if they see themselves as an RPer (and obviously, vice-versa)

I know that I, for one, have a feeling that if I'm a part of a guild raid, rather than an ad-hoc group formed from many guilds, that I want to put the character I'm raiding on into that guild. In the past that's turned out to be an issue at times, in which case I just roll a new character to raid on and put that one in instead, so as not to cause any issues.

Another thing I can think of is guild achievements for raiding, where a guild may want to keep the ratio of members to non-members set to ensure the guild gets the relevant raid achievements. Just because a guild is an RP guild, it doesn't mean they can't also take their raids seriously and want to work on the achievements.

To add to the flex issue - vent server sizes can also dictate a limit on the raid size.

So, that''s three things I can think of (in addition to those already raised), but an RP guild actively poaching people by telling them they have to join them in order to raid at all is one that I thankfully haven't seen first-hand.

Having indirectly learned that this thread is directed at the Union - since it's certainly not obvious in any of the posts, nor did anyone bother to actually talk to me about what happened before getting upset, I'll now explain exactly what happened.

First of all, our raid was created from the very beginning to be a guild raid because for years we wanted to offer that to guild members, and also because several of us were tired of being kicked from other raids due to hardcore raiders getting frustrated and taking aim at people who didn't meet their standards. The point was to have fun and include anyone in the guild who was trying.

However, our Vent server only allows 15 people, so we set that as our raid cap. We've reached that cap for a raid once. Invite priority is: guild characters, then alts of guild characters, then people in our OOC channel, then those outside of the guild who have raided with us before. We've never actually had to exclude anyone, because we have never had enough guild characters to reach the cap.

One day a certain member of the guild who had been raiding on his guild character asked about raiding using his main instead, who was in a different RP guild. I told him that was fine, but to remember the invite prioritization list.

(Originally I had the chat log of the conversation here, but after discussion with the other guild leader involved and having resolved the matter, I removed the log upon request.)

It turned out that the person lied about talking to other guild leader, and has been banned from the raid as a result. Additional measures may be taken pending further consideration of the matter.

I want to make it very, very clear that the person was NEVER told he had to bring his other character to the Union in order to be part of the raid. That was his decision alone. Most of our raid is currently made up of people from other guilds, according to the priority list which has always been uniformly applied to everyone. While I like Harmarth, his information about what happened is simply wrong, and his post has done nothing except stir up unnecessary trouble. This all could have been avoided if the people who were upset had come to me immediately and discussed the matter. That is what I always encourage. Communication is the key to avoiding drama.

I hope this will be the end of the matter, but I'm happy to talk individually with anyone else who still has questions or concerns.

...I do think that kind of puts a cap on the whole thing, don't you?

Pretty much, yeah. I fully admit, the only person I knew was involved in this whole thing when I made the topic was the person who told me about the issue. I figured I'd make the topic because a) the person was legit upset over it, and b) too shy to start a confrontation over it.

Sometimes all it takes to sort stuff like this out is for someone to be willing to stick their face into the grinder first.

My original intent was to make the topic, and then take no further part in the issue (I even ended up declining further discussion about it with one person, directing them to speak with those involved in the issue if they knew who it was), but I figure a little closing statement here is worthwhile.

I expected drama, and found none. Further proof of why I like this server.

08/15/2015 12:25 PMPosted by Nanfeng

I expected drama, and found none. Further proof of why I like this server.

Boo. Not enough drama. Needs more yelling and throwing of objects at each other!

*throws vase at Harm's head* RAWR!

::whispers:: I heard Harmarth has nightly visits at the corndog ranch.

...The hell is the corndog ranch?

I refuse to look that up to see what it might be a euphemism for.

08/17/2015 10:43 PMPosted by Harmarth

...The hell is the corndog ranch?

I refuse to look that up to see what it might be a euphemism for.

Sadly, it doesn't exist. But man, can you imagine all the mustard and relish..

08/17/2015 09:48 PMPosted by Amaelalin

::whispers:: I heard Harmarth has nightly visits at the corndog ranch.

*GASP* He does?? Oh my god. Does Neir know? How could he do that to her?